Monday, February 23, 2009

A Special Valentine present


My daughters made this art craft, a special flower vase, as their gift for me on Valentine's Day. It has two flowers in it, they said one from Skye and one from Snowe. It even has some soil inside made of pieces of paper.

Hugs and kisses for my loving daughters, from their proud Mom!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thursday afternoon in Shanghai

Grilled Oysters



Wash the oysters carefully and place on the hot grill for a few minutes until the shell opens. Serve each oysters on the half shell with a dipping sauce or sliced lemon.

I prefer this vinegar-onion sauce:
Combine chopped red onions, a teaspoon of salt, a pinch of sugar and ground black pepper in a cup or individual soup bowl. Stir until the juice of onion dissolve the crystals, then mix in a half cup of vinegar. You can add chillies and chopped spring onions if you like.

Sarap nitong pulutan!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Nutcraker Suite

Skye and Snowe love singing The Nutcracker Suite of the Little Einsteins and never seem to get bored watching it on DVD. They already memorized the song and had the habit of singing it after dinner to entertain their Dad. The music is included in their piano so they get to play it a lot everyday.
Watch Skye sing while very Kulit Snowe runs around her in this video clip.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Crispy Pata and Fresh Vegetable Salad


We had this for dinner last night. Eio bought about a kilo of pork shoulder last Sunday and asked me to cook it for dinner the next day. I thought, that would take hours to prepare. So, before we started watching Stargate SG1 series on dvd, I washed the pork, placed it in a casserole covered with water, added some salt, black peppercorns, cloves of garlic and onions. After removing the scum as it started to boil, I left it covered for about 90 minutes in low heat. I put it in the fridge in the morning and took it out before 6 in the evening.

While heating the oil in the casserole, I prepared the sauce. I mixed together half cup of rice vinegar, 1/4 cup kum chun soy sauce, minced 2 shallots, crushed a clove of garlic , sliced a piece of green chilli, a teaspoon of sugar, salt and ground black pepper. I also prepared All-around-Sarsa ni Mang Tomas for the kids' sauce.

Before putting the pork in the casserole for deep frying, I added a pinch of salt in the hot oil, Mom said it would reduce the spattering of oil. While waiting again, for the pork to brown, I prepared the veggies. I placed pieces of romaine lettuce, slices of cucumber, tomatoes and fresh mint leaves on the serving dish. The dressing for the salad would be Kewpie's roasted sesame salad dressing.

When the pork is already brown, I added about a tablespoon of cold water in the oil before i took out the cooked pata, TF said to make the skin crispy. And just after taking the photo, hubby arrived. I served this with hot steamed rice and a bottle of sprite. I thought there'd be left-over pata for today but we were able to finish it all last night.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Update: Maestrong Marc

Congratulations once again to Marc, for winning in the recent PLDT-DPC painting competition.
3rd Place, 2009-2010 PLDT-DPC Telephone Directory Cover Visual Art National Competition. The winning smile with his mother Tita Letty.