At KitchenAid, Ayala Vertis North. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The girls and I went to Ayala Vertis North so our grocery shopping would be a little different. We did this late in the afternoon since the girls had their mock entrance exam the entire morning while I grilled herbed pork steak outside the apartment.
We dropped by KitchenAid to check out Instant Pot so I can see for myself how big it is. It is selling for around PHP 7,000 (the 7-in-1, 6 quart variant). I was tempted to buy this after doing the grocery shopping but I checked the prices first on Lazada.
Lo and behold! It’s 1k cheaper on Lazada and it comes with a free ceramic inner pot for slow cooking.
I pulled the trigger when I got home and paid for the reservation. It is done.
I primarily wanted this for making yogurt. My girls consume a lot of Greek yogurt, or any type of yogurt for that matter, so it turns out it’s more expensive than eating ice cream.
The pressure cooker and slow cooker functions are just bonuses for me since I already own a Crockpot (which is on its last legs). Let’s see how I can make beef pho soup and tonkotsu ramen broth with this. The classic Japanese tonkotsu requires more than 12 hours of slow cooking pig trotters and chicken carcass so that the collagen will be drawn out.
Photo from Seriouseats.com
Ever since I read that article from Serious Eats, the slow-cooked tonkotsu broth never went out of my mind. I said to myself, one day I will just devote an entire 24 hours just making ramen broth. That’s a mark of a serious home cook 😂
I miss Japan. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The thought of making tonkotsu broth in an Instant pot and/or Crockpot made me crave for ramen so Twin A and I had ramen while Twin A had some rice meal set.
Dinner before doing grocery shopping at Merkado.
Ramen at Jaoan Fudo Street. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Once I learn how to make the right tonkotsu broth (kinda like what Ramen Nagi serves), I don’t think I will tolerate anymore the flavored water excuse of a ramen some shops offer.
In a totally unrelated development/event…
My cats looking out the window. They were looking at the birds. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
When will zoonosis stop? Perhaps never. It’s nature’s way of flashing the dirty finger at humanity.
Can we just keep them within their borders??? I mean none of their citizens can leave the country now since their passports are held or are no longer renewed (Zero-Covid policy of China). This ought to stop the spread of this new zoonotic disease, methinks.
Time check: It’s 10:45 pm and I’m still working. Replying to emails, uploading stories, picking up stories to edit first thing in the morning…OMG why am I doing regular OT? I am burning myself out.
On the side, I’m having an exchange with a former presidential spokesperson regarding nuclear power on Twitter…
I need a life. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Have paper bag, have cat. And another cat. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My life now revolves around my children–the twins and the cats.
I should probably take time off…drive to Zambales with gay extraordinaire K and dance on the beach and have drinks by the bonfire. He messaged me today to check up on me. I said I may go to S.Korea in October while he said he has no travel plans yet. I said maybe we should go on a roadtrip. Then he suggested we go to Zambales by the end of this month…Will have to check my calendar as I have to bring the girls to my hometown on the 19th to prepare them for the simulation entrance exam to be conducted by their review school. It is yet to be decided if this would be conducted F2F but I have to prepare just in case.
Now I wonder how I would fit the buffing and polishing of my car into my schedule.
Tonight I made cold soba with zaru soba sauce and flaked roasted chicken. We’re laying off red meat for a while after that high blood-inducing, 10-hr bulalo that tasted heavenly but deadly. I still have the bulalo broth that I can use for pho, which I plan on making this week as well.
Zaru soba. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
My girls like the cold soba and the ready-made sauce that I bought from SM Hypermarket in Marikina. Since it is a hypermarket, it has more imported food items like Japanese sauces and noodles.
I wonder what I would serve for lunch and dinner tomorrow…
Ah the men in my life didn’t know they had it good with me because I can cook. Idiots.
I have to say that today’s lunch (and extended to dinner) was the best Hainanese chicken rice I’ve done so far. I know now the secret to the yummiest rice—I bought the secret from Fairprice 🤣 For years I struggled with cooking the rice that matches the the the taste of the rice served by the various vendors I patronize in Singapore. It turns out it can be achieved through a packet. OMG, I have wracked my brain for years…
Perfected by trial and error. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
But the chicken itself is a different story. I experimented for years and it was a lot of trial and error. The best technique for me is not to cook a whole chicken if I won’t do it in a huge stock pot and hang the chicken on poultry hooks while it is being poached in liquid with aromatics and its own chicken fat. If I didn’t do it this way, I always end up with a bloody chicken or an overcooked chicken. I instead chop the chicken into manageable sizes, season as usual, then poach it. This way I end up with perfectly cooked skin and inside.
After poaching, I put the chicken in an ice bath to arrest the cooking process so the skin will still remain tight. Then I rubbed sesame oil on the skin. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The soup is lovely. My girls and Ate C enjoyed the dish that 1) Ate C had to cook rice again; 2) Twin I went for seconds or thirds even. The ginger sauce/paste I bought from Monterey Community Market and Lee Kum Kee Hoisin sauce completed the dish. *chef’s kiss*
Tomorrow I want to make Nasi Goreng and Nasi Lemak. I need to do a big vegetable shop and I can buy from the veggie shop in UP the lemongrass and pandan that enhance the flavors of Nasi Lemak.
I’m not yet that brave when it comes to cooking Laksa. Rendang I can manage but it does require slow cooking.
Another option for tomorrow is kolo mee, which is basically pancitcanton for us in the Philippines. Mee or Mi is the Hokkien/Minnan/Fookien/Fujian word for “noodles”. The Filipino Chinese here call noodle soup mami, which became a generic term but it is actually Ma-Mi, which is a noodle soup dish popularized by a Chinese migrant whose last name is Ma. If I’m not mistaken, he was the founder of Ma Mon Luk in various Chinese enclaves here in Metro Manila.
In Batangas, where my family comes from, we have lomi, which are bigger noodles with thicker soup compared to mami.
The word pancit came from the Fookien words biang shi/biang sik, which refers to food that can be eaten with the hand/flat food. Traditionally, we have dry noodles that were served on banana leaves and we eat it by shoving the noodles into our mouth through a folded banana leaf, kinda like what you do with nan bread or tacos–only you don’t eat the banana leaf. I had this kind of pancit habhab in Quezon province when I went there during one Pahiyas Festival. I remember buying big packs of pancit habhab to bring home because the one I tasted in Lucban, Quezon was delicious.
My daughter, Twin I, said, mommy, why do you know such things??? I told her I am a walking encyclopedia of useless facts. I love reading and researching such things and for some reason I retain them.
That’s also the reason why I can recall deals and so many facts about the companies in the Philippines, their history, who is not in good terms with whom…the tension between the Chinese Filipino tycoons and the old guard Spanish families and that’s why we had two stock exchanges before (Manila Ex and the Makati Ex), which was stupid, really.
I’m the trivia girl. It serves me very well in my job right now.
Yup, it’s almost a month since I went out of my 4-km radius. To make matters worse, it has been raining so I couldn’t ride the bike to go anywhere. Physically yes, I can bike under the rain but I don’t want to risk getting sick before I am to leave the country for the first time since July 2019 (Jakarta).
I can last a month without seeing other people. 🤔 The introverted side of me is ok with that.
So today I’m just stuck here as usual and I’m cleaning out my refrigerator so I’m using the last bit of ingredients in my pantry before I do another big shop.
Tonkatsu rice bowl with egg. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I made tonkatsu, which turned out good because I finally figured out how to do double frying as I’ve seen from Imamu’s Room Youtube channel. My kids loved it because it was crunchy and I seasoned the meat last night so the meat was savory. Since I don’t have mentsuyu to cook the pork with the egg, so I just made a runny sunny-side up fried egg to top my rice bowl. I paired this with miso soup with kombu.
For dinner, I made ramen and eggplant tempura and eggplant fritters.
Garlic pork tonkatsu ramen. Photo by CallMeCreation.comEggplant tempura and eggplant fritters. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’m down to my last vegetable dish tomorrow (sauteed squash with string beans) and I’m thinking whether I should add coconut milk and a bit of chili flakes since I don’t have sambal. Oh, I should remember to buy sambal and bak kut teh spices when I shop in Singapore. (*Makes a mental note*) I should haul my ass out of this house tomorrow to shop for fresh veggies.
Cooking is some kind of stress-reliever for me—as long as I don’t have to do the wash up after.
Next year when it will just be the three of us, I would be batch cooking and probably supplement it by hiring my mom’s cook on weekends. (Ate C and I agreed that I would be releasing her from my employment and I will just finance her last year in college as my scholar with the usual monthly allowance, her tuition, and other school expenses. She would be staying with her sister until she finishes college. It’s just for a year). Imamu’s Room and Nami on Youtube have tutorials on how to prep bento lunches–packed meals for my girls and prepared lunches for me because I’m too busy with work to bother cooking during weekdays.
I will buy a robo-vacuum for daily cleaning and hire my mom’s bi-weekly cleaning lady for general cleaning during weekends. Besides, it wouldn’t be that hard to clean a 52-sqm apartment. The girls are already folding and putting away clean laundry as part of their daily chores and I would start them now with doing their own laundry with our automatic washing machine. How hard can it be?
The only thing that I dread doing starting next year is the daily litter box cleaning, because my critters are useless 🙄. When you are owned by a cat, you clean up after them for life. That is a fact.
Yup, I couldn’t lie on my bed because they have already commandeered it. I adjust 😂. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
We are in a scarier environment now with the China credit crunch unraveling further. While US economists/pundits are debating whether they are already in recession, China logs the slowest YoY growth in eons, registering 0.4% growth in 2Q22. Then here comes the threat of end-buyers/homebuyers not paying their loans because housing projects couldn’t proceed as real estate companies suffer from the Evergrande fallout.
China’s real estate sector is grappling with a crisis that has seen developers squeezed by eye-watering levels of debt, sparking a string of bond defaults among major groups including Shimao and China Evergrande — the world’s most indebted developer with about $300 billion in liabilities.
This is like the US subprime crisis of 2007-2008, just a different flavor and shown with subtitles.
When the world’s two largest economies are hobbling, then not far behind is probably the Great Financial Crisis 2.0. We are going to see a domino effect that could further weigh down emerging markets like ours, which are already suffering from sky-high prices of goods and services. I’ve been editing a number of stories that point to tightening of belts and external funding already coming in trickles. Soon the tap will be turned off for the time being as market chaos reigns. Huge valuation differences and forex issues (especially for the Philippines, which saw its currency weakening from 53 to 56 in just 30 days) are holding up deals.
This is a tough year; next year would be horrible.
I should move quickly and have my house up before December so if there is some kind of financial fuck-up that may happen, being homeless will be the least of my problems. I have logged a lot of paper losses from my investments and I’m kicking myself for not shifting my pure equity funds last year into fixed income because I was too lazy. I’ll just treat this market rout into a buying opportunity.
We should treat food insecurity with self-sufficiency and generosity. I will plant an edible garden and alongside that is encouraging people to do the same. A half kilo of minced meat and eggs with lots of vegetables go a long way for food-insecure families.
Primer. I need more dry days for the finishing and buffing.
Keeping my fingers crossed, praying for more dry days so the paint job will be finally done. The broken taillight will be replaced and hopefully I can take this home early next week before I leave for Singapore. ❤
There are still a lot to be done with this car: central locks and alarm, new carpeting, new tint, and sound system (but that is already the least of the things I must do). When my house is completed by December, I’ll start hauling my books and arrange it there. I found that when moving houses, the books are the most difficult to pack and unpack. I will be moving small items little by little so by May of next year, only the big ones will be moved. If the headwinds have died down and the economy recovers from this horrible stagflation, then I will sell this and get myself that new Toyota Avanza for minimal headache.
I’m still thinking if it’s still worth it to reupholster my couch or just buy a new sofa bed from Ikea. From a sustainability perspective, I should have my current sofa reupholstered so that there would be less waste. From a cost standpoint, I don’t know if it would be cheaper. Let’s see after I consult with the reupholsterer.
I think this would be safe from my cats.FYRESDAL Daybed with 2 mattresses, black/Ågotnes firm
Besides, Twin I also wanted this particular sofa bed and begged me to buy it for our house. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Why would I want a sofa bed? I remember in high school and college, we had a constant stream of friends sleeping over at our house since we had five rooms that can accommodate them. I mean, all of us children had short-term (friends’ homes are far and they want to take naps in between classes and a comfortable place to study) and long-term guests (friends from broken families who needed to get away from the chaos of their homes; friends with no family to stay with during Christmas breaks). My parents made our home open to our friends and I want to keep that tradition. All of our friends had fond memories of spending time in our house. My friends spent their Fridays with me, watching movies in our tiny second floor TV area when we were in high school. In college, our house is where my friends spent and got rid of their hangovers.
I made sure that in the new plan for my tiny house, the kitchen will take the center stage as I will be providing a lot of food for hungry teenagers—and for my sister-in-law and cousin who love my cooking. I’m not an excellent cook but I do some dishes exceptionally well. My friend K and everybody else in my family love my potato salad combined with grilled fish or meat.
Hotpot with mishua tonight. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I’m excited about the my prospects for the next 12 months. I’m already drawing in my head the plan for the back garden and the front garden. I already have the laborers in mind and the things that should be done (compost pit, growing beds, flower beds, irrigation system, and movable chicken coop).
And this is the goal:
And no one is allowed to rain on my parade.
A colleague asked me today why can’t I just ignore those catfishers? I said, “because I’m bored.” I also want to release this pent-up fury through passive aggressiveness towards unscrupulous strangers. I want to hit and hit ’em hard.
I know this will backfire on me but I just want to get even with the opposite sex, even though it doesn’t really make sense. It’s not even apples to apples but doing this cools my deep-seated anger. I recognize that this anger is unjustified but can you blame me for harboring it?
I didn’t want to think about what to serve my kids for brunch so I opted for the easiest, which is omurice with leftwovers combined to make fried rice. We’re supposed to go to the health center of a nearby barangay for my 2nd booster shot later in the day.
Omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Surprisingly it was easier to book Grab today. Probably because our destinations are all nearby.
Coming back from the barangay health center. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Unfortunately for the girls, the booster shots for their age group haven’t been approved yet. So they just had to settle for a trip to the salon to fix their disastrous haircuts.
Twin I with a better haircut. She’s quite happy. Photo by her.
We had an early dinner at the nearby Vietnamese restaurant because I was feeling sick after the booster and was not in the mood to cook.
Pho and fried spring rolls. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I took a nap after this as I was already aching all over, my head was pounding and that my eyelids were ready to shut. I thought the booster #2 would be easier. Nope, I was still feeling sick despite having 4 vax shots now.
Meanwhile, my journalist group chat has been discussing that the Imelda Marcos-style living is back in Malacanang, without any regard for the citizens who are suffering from high prices and struggling with high transportation costs or the lack of means of transportation.
It will be a very long 6 years.
Right now I’m not in the mood to be sociable and I just want to shut myself in my room. The girls are going to be fetched by their dad in a few minutes. I’m so irritated with the world today. People think that just because you’re responding to them, they can just take you for granted.
I’m tired of it. It happens again and again. So no, I choose myself this time. Goodbye.
