Sloppy Macarons from The Cookie Jar

A few minutes ago, I posted this comment on The Cookie Jar's Facebook page:

I bought three vouchers from ensogo. Taste-wise, your macarons were okay. But I felt shortchanged when I got my order. I felt they were dregs and rejects from orders from your other clients. In each dozen, 2 were somewhat collapsed, and 3 were mishandled when they got out of the oven. The sizes and shapes were irregular. They were totally different from the photos posted on the ensogo site, and by what I saw at Moonleaf. Is this because I got them at a discount? I was planning to give it as a gift, but I felt I would be disrespecting my friends by giving them sloppily made macarons. Likewise, I felt disrespected by what I received from you.

Here are all the photos I took of the macarons.

I honestly felt annoyed when I examined the macarons.  I'm a homebaker and I know a slew of homebakers.  We would never, ever disrespect a client by sending them something as sloppy as this. 

Losing Sleep over Game of Thrones

I havent' been able to get my hands on the Kindle ever since Nards and I finished watching the first season of Game of Thrones.   (By the way, if you're planning to watch it, make sure you have all episodes on hand.  And that you have at least two days straight to watch.  We learned that once we started, we simply CANNOT stop watching until we finished the whole season.)

I downloaded the six books of A Song of Ice & Fire on the Kindle, because the next season will be aired April 2012.  Between now and then, I was hoping the novels would fill the gap.  Except that Nards beat me to it.  I don't mind, because I am still on the Otori series by Lian Hearn.  (Yes, I have the physical book, thanks to Leslie, who kindly lent us the whole series.)  But he has gotten really rabid with the novels (which really is brilliant).

So rabid in fact, that for two days since he started reading the first book, he would go to sleep at 4AM and only because he's too tired to read any further.  I put my foot down on the third day, and told him that he confine his reading during the day, and that he rest and sleep like the rest of us commoners at night.  I told him that since we're sharing the Kindle, during the day, he can take his turn reading, and at night, it's my turn.  Unfortunately, I always fall asleep ahead of him, so he just resumes reading when I start to snore.

A couple of nights ago, at 11PM, I found him in bed, bent over the Kindle.   I just finished emailing a client, and I went in our bedroom, carrying my phone, my iPod and his iPod (because I was charging it on the desktop).  I forgot to bring a glass of water, and he volunteered to get it.

Before he leapt off the bed, I said, "hand over the Kindle, Nards.  It's my turn."  I fully meant to hide that thing so he'd sleep early.  He knew that's what I was planning to do.   He eyed my hands that still held a phone and two iPods.

"How many gadgets do you need woman?" he asked and fled down the stairs.  I laughed and laughed over his rebuttal but stayed put.  I was too tired to chase him around to get the Kindle.

Today, thankfully, he might actually go to bed early.  We had an early photobooth gig, and he was forced to dispatch our staff at 7AM.  And I made sure he didn't take any naps in the afternoon before he had to go to the gig himself.

....

Maybe not.  I'm about to fall asleep here.  While he's still bent over the Kindle.

Bakefest

My sister and I had a bakefest last Friday to test out recipes.  Now that she has a bit more time, we're putting together an online store of baked goods.  It was fun!

We were pretty organized.  Beng prepared little post its to label our bowls of dry ingredients.  She even scheduled our baking time in the oven based on temperature.

She tried out three different kinds of muffins: cappuccino, banana and orange.   She used a lot oranges so I decided to make orangettes.  I also made my usual chewy chocolate chip cookies and fudgy brownies.

I saw this recipe of orangettes from Smitten Kitten.  It was fairly simple and straightforward, I wanted to try it out.  I peeled off the oranges and cut them into strips.  I blanched them three times to make sure the bitterness is gone.  But my family said there was still a lot of bitter left.  My Mom said that next time, I should scrape off the white as much as possible.

I boiled it in a simple sugar syrup for an hour.

I couldn't cool them and drain them on a cooling rack because it was full of cookies and muffins.  So I carefully laid them out on parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  I dipped some in chocolate but my Dad prefers them as it is.

These muffins are just divine.  They're light and fluffy and so so so delicious. :)

Kitchen Confession

I'm going to tell you a secret.  Before I moved out of my parents' home, I gave the kitchen a wide berth because I didn't want to cook.  I was a bit interested in baking because I loved cakes, cookies and sweets in general.  Only enough though, that I would copy recipes on Mom's notebook and badger her to bake them for me.  I did go to the kitchen despite my aversion to cooking, mostly to raid the fridge and to wash the dishes.  (I love washing dishes, not only was it the only substantial contribution I can do in the kitchen, but I also find it very therapeutic.)

Both my parents are such good cooks.  My friends remember visits at our home by what they ate at our dinner table.   A bunch of old co-workers would remember my 23rd birthday by the Kare-Kare my Mom cooked, so good that they remember the creamy peanut sauce and the pieces of meat that melted in their mouths.  Deepa loves telling our friends that if you happen to be at our house, and my Dad asks you what you want for dinner, he can and will cook it for you.  I have classmates from college who clamor for the Lengua con Champignion that they shared with us one Sunday when we worked on a group report for STS.

My parents spoiled me with food.  Which is just another way of saying that I'm very picky about the food I eat outside the house.  I remember skipping meals at work because I just found the food available in cafeterias inedible.  (I think my Dad knew this because he started packing lunches for me.  Imagine me bringing my lime green see-thru kerokerokeroppi lunch box in the office.)    How I was going to feed myself when I moved out was a grave concern for me.  My Mom and sister were seriously worried about my lack of cooking skills and was pretty sure I'll be eating fast food and canned goods all the time.

Moving out was a good thing, because I was forced to learn to cook.  And when I discovered that the apartment had a working oven, I started baking as well.  I started with simple things like frying eggs and instant soups.  A few weeks after that I asked my Dad for recipes of my favorite dishes.  The first one I tried was his recipe for Chicken Curry.  Boy, was that a disaster.  His recipe called for 3 tablespoons of curry powder.  So I obediently fished out my measuring spoons and portioned out the curry powder.  Turned out, he meant tablespoon that we used for eating.  So my first Chicken Curry, though it smelled delicious, I couldn't eat because it was way too spicy.  Good thing my roommates then enjoyed spicy food and polished off the whole pot.  I took that as a sign that what I cooked was at least edible for other people.   From that point on, I started to enjoy cooking.  I kept asking for my parents recipe and trying my best to make it as good as the dishes they cooked.

One of my favorite moments was when our friends came over for dinner.  They requested bulalo, and I did it just the way my Dad taught me.  They tucked in to that meal enthusiastically.  I felt like I won first prize.

I definitely like baking more than I like cooking.  But it still surprises me that cooking comes easy for me.  I have learned to become more flexible with measurements.  (Saying that I'm a stickler for measurement is an understatement.)  I have also learned to experiment a bit with taste.

It's definitely still a work in progress.  Until I can replicate my Dad's Pata Tim or my Mom's Kare-kare or Lengua, I'm still a long way off from the kind of cook I want to be.

Rainy Saturday

It's another rainy Saturday.  Nards and I are staying in.  I can usually see the buildings in Ortigas, San Juan and even Makati, but today everything is enveloped in white mist.

Quesadilla Night

A couple of weeks ago, Nards and I were hankering for quesadilla.  Good thing we had all the ingredients so I made some from scratch.

We had some chicken breast in the freezer.  I cubed it and sautéed it with onions, bell pepper and taco seasoning.  After it cooled down a bit, I spooned it on store bought tortillas.

Nards had a pack of mozzarella slices in the fridge so I took some and layered it on top of the chicken, and grated cheddar on it.  (We really wanted it to be cheesy!)

On a non-stick skillet I toasted the quesadillas until the tortillas were a little brown and the cheese were all gooey and drippy.  

Done!   Served it with sour cream and tomato salsa.    Not bad for my first quesadilla. :)  

Eating at Chelsea

It's been a long time since I blogged about food!

For Mother's Day this year, we all went to Chelsea at the Podium.   It was a rainy Sunday, and I'm glad my sister insisted on going there early.  The place was packed by the time we put in our orders.   Here are a few snapshots Nards and I took.  We weren't able to take photos of all the dishes because we were hungry and we tucked into our meal as soon as it was placed before us.

I love the bottle :)

Some lamb dish, I forgot the name.  Mom's order.

Fish and chips that I shared with Nards.  It just had to be shared.  The portion is HUGE.

My Dad ordered coffee and it came free with Chocnut :P

Toblerone Torte

Valrhona Chocolate Cake

Tiramisu

I'll definitely go back there to try their other dishes :)

The Great Kindle Debate

Long entry, I apologize.

I remember a year and a half ago when Nards was telling me about this article where BBC asked a 13 year old boy to participate in some sort of experiment.  They told him to swap his iPod for a classic Walkman from the 80s for a week and to write about his experience.  It was a fascinating read, and the boy had interesting observations.  But what struck Nards most was the subtext of the article: that a lot of the things our generation grew up with are fast becoming or has become obsolete; and that the children of today will only see them in museums or in wikipedia.  Including books.

I was saddened by this.  I'm an avid reader, and a rabid collector of books.  I started reading when I was three and my parents have always encouraged me to keep on reading, so they kept buying me books, magazines and comics (graphic novels in today's lingo).  I had my own bookshelf in grade school and I took great pleasure in filling it up.  I had Pippa The Mouse, Nancy Drew, Bobsey Twins, Hardy Boys, Peanuts, and a whole slew of classics: a humungous volume on classic fairy tales, Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, Heidi, Black Beauty, Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm, Anne of Green Gables series, etc.  The list is long and has not stopped growing to this day.

(Slightly getting ahead of my point for this blog entry but: when Nards and I got married and I moved in to his condo, we had a problem with shelf space because between the two of us, we had an ENORMOUS collection.)

A few months after he told me about this article, Nards's attention was piqued by Amazon's Kindle.  And I vehemently protested to owning one because our discussion over my beloved books' looming possibility of obsolescence was still fresh in my mind.  (No, no no no Nards!  NEVURRRRRR!!!  I want our children to actually leaf through a book and smell the pages when they read, instead of clicking on a device!  I will not give in to technology! -- this I did while waiving around my iPod.  I know, the irony.)

And this is how I crossed over from one extreme side of the Great Kindle Debate to the other side in three simple steps.

First, Nards decided to read electronic graphic novels via CBR Reader on his desktop before buying one. Which I sometimes read rudely over his shoulder.  

Second, I started doing the same thing.  When Nards and I did our usual bookstore trolling, I hesitated buying unknown authors and dicey blurbs.  So, egged on by Nards, I acquired the e-book version first, read it, before making a decision to buy.   Which eventually lead me to asking why I even bothered buying since I've finished reading it.  (Except for Neil Gaiman's work.)

And last, Nards birthday was coming up, and I promised to give him an e-book reader as a present.  He was reading his e-books and graphic novels on the PSP, and was considering upgrading to either the Kindle or the Nook.   It took a month of deliberations, but he decided on the Kindle.  So I ordered one from Amazon that same day he made a decision.

Photo by me using the iPod, Kindle case by Nards, fluffy red blanket from Mitzie

The day the Kindle arrived, I oohed and ahhed in appreciation at the fantastic e-paper screen, the slim dimensions, and the battery life.  After finishing his book, he handed it over to me to try it out.  

And I have not let go ever since.   Only occasionally sharing it with Nards, when he wants to read.  (I'm eating my words.  The one above in italics.)

I am actually on that end of the spectrum that is defending e-books now. 

Last week, while having dinner after a trip to a bookstore in Cubao X, the girls were comparing book purchases.  Leslie convinced Beng and myself to read the tales of the Otori.  (Yes, I'm reading this now on Kindle.)  Problem was Leslie only had one set of books to lend.  I told Beng she could have it and I'll just get the e-book.   This eventually led to the Great Kindle Debate, more to the point, why am I championing a cold gadget over words printed on actual paper.  

My reasons for advocating the Kindle:

1. 2GBs of Memory - It can literally carry up to 2,000 titles.  Read and unread books in neat collections.  Imagine the amount of space it doesn't occupy on our already overflowing bookcases;
2. Slim and light - It's the size of a large index card.  I don't need to lug around my usual two paperbacks in my bag, not to mention the three hardbounds I keep in the car, in case I finish my paperbacks while I'm out  (I just hate not having good reading material on hand);
3. E-paper technology - I was surprised that the screen reads like an actual book.  No glare whatsoever, and I can adjust the font size;
4. Long battery life - one month max, with the wi-fi and 3G off; and
5. Eco-friendly - It saves trees!  I love trees!

Don't get me wrong.  I will always love books.  But I have to admit that with my constraints on space, the limited amount of weight my doctor allows me to carry and the relative ease of acquiring new books online, the Kindle has perks that outweigh an actual book.  I would be wailing and rending my garments the day when the last publishing company that uses a printing press has closed shop but I have to say that that alternative is not that all bad.

Simpleng Pilipino

I first heard this at Ortigas Center where Gang talked about the butandings and Rock Ed Philippines to a group of employees.  I remember I asked Karl Roy to distribute white bands while Nards took photos.  It was awesome.

I have heard Noel sing this song many many times, but I have never grown tired of it.  It always reminds me that though I am comfortable, a lot of Filipinos are struggling just to have three square meals every day.  That I cannot be apathetic to our brothers and sisters who barely make a living peddling anything on the streets regardless of the weather.  That even though I cannot give to all of them, I can at least treat them with respect and dignity.

Everyday is a day to be grateful.    Everyday is an opportunity to help others.   

There is no excuse for complacency.  There is no excuse to be unkind.

Rock Ed Philippines - Noel Cabangon - Simpleng Pilipino (by RockEdPhilippines)

Assimilated

Nards says that I've been assimilated.   Just like The Borg at Star Trek TNG assimilated every possible being to their collective, that's how I've been reeled in by Mac.

He called my iTouch the gateway electronic.  In the beginning, like any other gateway anything, there was some resistance from my end.  Mainly because I wanted to clobber iTunes.  (I was strangling its figurative neck, while I was trying to import more than 5,000 mp3s from my hard drive.)  Eventually, I got used to iTunes and its nasty little quirks.  Then it got me hooked on its music features like Genius.  Then apps became readily available and I was soon seduced by the slew of $0.99 games and utilities that were so freaking easy to purchase.   

Which eventually resulted to me discarding my first iTouch (Nards inherited it, and I daresay, he's gotten hooked as well--he's been on that thing from day one and he's downloaded scores of apps -- but this is another blog entry all together), and upgrading to the latest generation.  

Which had a camera, and a fantastic thing called FaceTime.   

There was a whole new world of apps to be explored: Instagram, Angry Birds, Posterous, Pocketbooth, Cut The Rope.  The list goes on.  I even downloaded a Catholic Missal, and a comprehensive Prayer Book, so it goes with me even in Church.  

It was my pocket computer wherever I went.  I checked my email, surfed on Safari, updated my calendar, plurked, tumbled, tweeted, watched videos on YouTube and even purchased stuff on Ebay from this little gadget.  Then Nards told me I can get a bluetooth keyboard from the Apple store so that I won't have a hard time typing.  I even started using it for taking notes during meetings.

Friends were telling me to get an iPhone, but I adamantly refused because I didn't want phone calls or text messages interrupting my music.

It was so convenient.  I don't have to lug around my unwieldy laptop.   And Nards and I can go through our normal work day with just my iTouch and the slim keyboard.

Did I mention that we had three laptops that all died in the same year, nearly a week AFTER their respective warranties expired?  We needed a laptop for work.  With the advent of the second generation iPad, Nards and I were toying with the idea of just buying one to fill our laptop need.  I had qualms about the iPad because it seems redundant to have one given the two iTouch units we have.  The way I see it, it's an iTouch on steroids, and I didn't want to blow a truckload of cash on something that was unnecessary.

But we needed a laptop, so I started canvassing online.  I found some affordable Vaio, Dell etc.  But I had serious misgivings about these branded units.  My last laptop was a Lenovo.   I always handled it with great care, and bought accessories to safe guard it from heat and dust.  It was never abused from frequent travels like my old Vaio.  Yet, the motherboard died, and because it decided to do so a week after warranty expiration, I had to pay for labor and parts to get it fixed.  The fees totaled to more than half of it's buying price.  

Three days ago, I came across a week old post in a forum about uber cheap mac stuff.  I texted the seller on the off chance that the unit might still be available.  It was!   I told Nards about it, and we both agreed it was good deal.  So uncharacteristically dispensing with our usual month long rumination on whether to go for it or not, and to hell with the consequences of switching from PC to Mac, we met with the seller and bought a unit.  We got the latest MacBook Pro.

What amazes me is that it took me about half an hour to get to know the OS.  I find it simple, straightforward, and very easy to use.  And I can still access our home network.  We're still figuring out our network printer though.

And the best part is, my Sims 3 is running!!!  

So there.  Assimilation complete.