Learning to Cook and Other Things

Yes, let us --- drink to a new wine rack. Another aspect of our furniture that I want to update is the wine cabinet. What we have right now is so massive and dark. Actually this is my partner's choice. He normally goes for dark and massive types of furniture. On the other hand I like the opposite. I like natural finish and medium-sized home furnishings. Does that indicate something? Fact is, I prefer medium scaled furniture, not massively built. I'd rather have it quaint and understated. Because, that is actually my personality. I believe that you could tell the personality of a person from the way his or her house is built, that's if it had been built from the ground. Get a glimpse or an indication of an individual's taste, attitude and psychological leanings; though that is not entirely conclusive, but yup, somehow, you can get the ' feel '. Also, smaller houses and smaller furniture are easier to clean and maintain right? Although, I may not be doing t

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have always dreamed of a large and a nice and elegant looking kitchen. Here's a website I found that displays the kind of kitchen furniture, I would have love to have. If only in my fantasies. Check them out here . And below I hope the site wouldn't mind if I borrow these aweso me photos: <---- Counter top furniture for brief tete-a-tetes and coffee sessions. But maybe I'll get it in natural finish. Whoa! And I wouldn't mind at all if I get this wow! laptop movable table.

Isn't it obvious that the kitchen and the dining areas are now my most favorite places in the house. I guess have never really talked about this aspect because, hey it is a cooking blog. Right? Wrong. I should have. After all, these two home areas are essential to cooking and of course dining. Where do we prepare and cook the food we eat? And where do we serve them? It is just that I prefer to talk about our home meaning the structure and its furnishings in an appropriate blog which I try to maintain as well. And surfing through the many online furniture sites recently, my dream of owning or building a dream kitchen and dining has been revived. Even before I even learned to really cook, I have often fantasized that our kitchen and dining room must stand on a combined floor area not smaller than 100 square meters. Spic and span, lined with elegant yet modern wood kitchen furnishings, including cabinets in natural finish, to me would be awesomely welcomed. Yet, I feel thi

Today, is one of my son's birthday. I am borrowing this recipe from Myrna D. Segimundo's recipe book called Philippine Cuisine. (It was a gift from him). The recipe is a traditional Filipino poultry dish and is called lechon manok ( oven roasted chicken). According to the recipe book, "the lechon manok recipes vary from region to region depending on the flavor preferences of the place. In the southern regions, the most popular flavor stuffing are tamarind leaves and lemon grass." As the book required: 1.5 kilos whole chicken, washed and patted dry 1 bundle fresh tamarind leaves or 3 pcs lemon grass or 1 sachet of tamarind broth powder (sinigang sa sampalok powder) liver sauce for lechon The preparat ion instructions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit 2. If fresh tamarind leaves or lemon grass are available, stuff the chicken cavity with either of those two. Otherwise, rub the chicken inside out with the tamarind powder. Set the chicken on a baking rack and roa

The social networking site my blog log just requested me to verify my cooking blog. And so I am right now undergoing mybloglog verification. Okey, so I did. Maybe it will help increase my blog traffic? :-)

Have you heard anything about vegetable s used as musical instruments? Cool! I say if you don't want to eat them, play them instead, right? I think this is one terrific and novel way of promoting healthy eating through vegetables. I am not trivializing this now. Because, seriously, there's one orchestra based in Vienna, Austria, considered Europe's classical music capital. And they are known as the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. "The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetable sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly stewed listening habits putting focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens". So if you're a vegetarian and

It's been quite awhile that we cooked this yellow fin tuna dish with tamarind sauce and kuki. Kuki is more popularly known as miso. And so I bought miso in accordance with my plan to cook this dish. Miso or kuki which was how it was called back in the Japanese Edo period, is a "traditional Japanese food produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt and the fungus kojikin. (the most typical miso is made with soy.)" So I bought around ten grams. Wikipedia further informs us that during "the Muromachi era, Buddhist monks discovered that soybeans could be ground into a paste, spawning new cooking methods where miso was used to flavor other foods." And on to my wet market trip, I got 4 large slices of yellow fin tuna. It looked so fresh I couldn't resist the temptation. Yellow fin, is of the tropics, usually three 12-inch rulers long and to me delectably flavored. In fact a more superior variety is used to prepare sashimi. In fact I hea