Food Trip

When I was in grade school I hated my lunch. It was a single hotdog on 2 cups of rice, squished in a Sanrio plastic lunch container. By mid noon, the rice would be cold, tough and the hotdog in the middle would taste boiled. I had a nanny who dutifully prepared my meals which consisted of either a drumstick or a...

I  am not a chef. The last cooking lessons I took were back in high school. I am, however, a mother. Like most mothers, I try to make sure I cook something healthy for the family. So when I come across something that I really, really like, I try my best to replicate it. This is one of those instances. I was able to...

I mean really… how many nights a week do you cook at home? What do you usually cook or end up doing?

There’s no way you can cook good Palabok in less than 30 minutes. I tried and failed. I can’t be miserable about it because the main ingredient, aligue, makes everything taste heavenly. This was an experiment. It succeeded the first time we tried it at home because I had several people helping me out to prepare the...

I remember cooking this the first time to try it out. It wasn’t at my place – it was at my friend, Frances’s place. We both wanted to try something different but at that time I was in college and I couldn’t afford to buy shrimps. So I told my friend to buy the shrimps and I’ll bring the ingredients. Since I’m...

If my life was a book, it would be a cookbook entitled: A Filipino Fiesta [feast] of  Food, Friends & Family. On the right page would be each recipe, with doodles and drawings on the side and on the left page – a story. It can be a story of how that recipe came about, memories that food brings or a totally unrelated...

I am not a foodie – although I do love eating. I love trying out new food, new recipes and new ways of doing old dishes. The reason why I decided to write about food, cooking and recipes is so that when my son decides to have a family of his own, he can have a list of the food that he loved as a child, tuck away...

There are people who have the patience to make aligue [ah-league-eh]. Aligue is the filipino word for crab fat. These are extracted not just from ANY crab. They’re taken out of crabs that are thumbsized called talangka or shore crabs. They live along riverbanks and mangrove forests. They’re so small that they...

Food reflects the society that grows and cooks it. One man’s waste is another man’s food. These are the thoughts that came into mind as I visited Il Mercanti a few days back. I decided to take the free shuttle service from the office to the nearby weekly food bazaar, Il Mercanti. It has more than 30 concessionaires and...