Red Hots Apple Cider

I have this need to smell cinnamon all the time around these months, lol. Also, I still have some more Red Hots in a secret stash (my aunt sends candy in bulk) that Marguerite doesn't know about. If I don't do something about them, they just might still be around when cockroaches take over the world. Anyway, had apple juice as well, so why not some apple cider?

I thought it was a nice ruby red, but it lacked embellishment, hence... topped with whipped cream:

That still wasn't enough, so I added twigs of cinnamon pretzels and sprinkles of chocolate shavings. You can see it here.

Strawberry Wine from Baguio

Lookit! My cousin Cheska gave this to me when she got back from Baguio. It's strawberry wine. It may look harmless, like wine cooler or something like shandy, but it did daze me, lol. Probably because I treated it like a bottle of soda. It did leave the impression of being part strawberry syrup, part wine and mostly pink food color. :)

Do Grasshopper Pies Have Real Grasshoppers?

Yesterday, Marguerite and I made a grasshopper pie. We were inspired by Teri Shuester in Glee gorging on grasshopper pie, pretending to be pregnant (yes, we - mother and daughter are both Gleeks - Marguerite's just all about the performances, of course). I didn't have marshmallow creme or peppermint extract, so I ended up just melting peppermint candy along with the milk and marshmallows.

Ingredients:

30 Oreos (pounded and crushed by a three-yr-old)

2 T melted butter

3/4 C milk

30 large marshmallows

4 pieces of peppermint candy

whipped cream

green food color (optional)

We mixed butter and Oreos, pressed the mess into the pie plate to make a crust. Heated milk, tossed in candy and marshmallows to make marshmallow cream (added green dye to make it look all minty). Poured that into the pie shell, and then covered that with whipped cream. We then crumbled another Oreo to garnish the thing. Voilà!

 that's supposed to look green

 you can see some of the green I meant peeking out

Okay, the thing is, we haven't tasted it yet. I'll just have to update you on that part. For now, we think it looks good. :)

Non-powdered Spiced Tea

Obviously, I couldn't get a good picture of this thing. A little girl kept on trying to snatch the glass. That's spiced tea, btw. It's my variation of the usual spiced tea mix. We don't have powdered drinks here (except for Husband's ever present Nestea), so I didn't have the Tang or the powdered lemonade. What I did basically was just to brew lemon tea. I then added natural orange juice, muscovado sugar (sorry, I didn't measure - just kept on adding until just right), ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Since my allergies were acting up yesterday, I heated a mug up so I could drink mine hot. And no, I didn't give Marguerite tea. She was able to sneak in a sip and seemed to like it, but I gave her plain orange juice and she accepted the trade without any fuss.

Flaming Red Applesauce

It's been a long time since I last made applesauce. This is not how I usually make it, but I was inspired by Supermommy's post. I had the red hots, the apples, and the water, so why not go for it? It smells wonderful. It's also great with dessert.

Tuna a la King

Tuna a la king. It's a modification of a recipe I found online. I used frozen mixed veggies instead of just peas, and I also added a cup of chicken stock and some grated cheese. Last night, we topped it on rice and today, we put them on buttered toast.

Experience with Kesong Puti

Hi, all! Look who's going to post an entry after months of absence! Anyway, still haven't concocted anything worth blogging about, but we did go to Laguna recently and went home with three bundles of kesong puti. We drove through at Jollibee (Pakil or thereabouts) and there was a young boy right beside the window selling them. We bought 3 bundles and waited a week before eating the things. They already smell spoiled, as a rule, and they supposedly do spoil easily, but to wait a week before consuming them was just plain, uh, adventurous. If you must know, we didn't suffer any ill effects. The spoiled smell wouldn't matter if you're a fan of stinky cheese, like I am (believe me, I've come across worse smelling cheese). Anyway, fried up the things and put them in between buttered slices of bread. They were good. But. That big bundle holding these puny blobs of cheese! The fridge was unnecessarily overcrowded.

Hi! We're Still Alive!

Oh my poor neglected cooking blog. Hi, people! I do cook, but not anything new lately. I'll try to back in cooking cooking groove soon. Just saying hi for now.

Jazzing up Bananas

Ants had attacked this week's bunch of bananas which is why Husband washed them. Which is why they became more prone to mold. I decided to get all the good ones (before they went to waste too) and fried them in butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Yum.

I "Confect" That I Copied This Idea

I saw this on TV while my sister and I were hanging out. I think it was one of those filler commercial thingies for Sam Oh's True Confections. It caught my eye because I thought it would be something my daughter would be willing to eat (uh, false). I tried googling for a similar recipe since I couldn't recall the steps, simple enough as they were, and found the exact recipe here. I have to perfect the toasting part, but it could be a good snack for less picky children, lol.

Faux Tocino

This is just something dumb. I learned it from my friend when I first had my own place and didn't know beans about cooking (not that I know a lot now, but there has definitely been some progress). Whenever I got a craving for tocino and there wasn't one handy (primarily because I never buy any, to the present) I just cut up some turkey spam, coated the pieces in brown sugar and fried them. Now, I'm not saying they it tastes exactly like tocino, but whatever taste it is I'm craving in tocino (durr, the sugar?) is pretty much met.

Cream Dory with Citrus Butter Sauce

Hail to the never ending cream dory recipes!

I love me so cream dory, lol. Anyway, this is simple, but my husband sincerely said it's good. I rolled the fillets in Crispy Fry breading and fried them. That's straightforward enough, lol. The sauce is:

6T mayo
4T butter
4 T milk
juice of 3 calamondins (calamansi)
salt
ground black pepper
thyme

Melt butter in a pan. Add the other ingredients. Simmer while stirring. Btw, sauce in picture doesn't reflect actual amount made. Lots more in the pan that we just added to our own servings.

Tuna, Mushroom, Mixed Veggies Rice Topping

This is a modified tuna casserole recipe. Instead of mixing it with noodles, I used it as topping on rice.

1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can tuna, drained
half an onion
1 C mixed vegetables, prepared
ground black pepper
5 slices of cheese

Over medium heat, mix everything in a pan, stirring constantly until the cheese melts.

Just an Update

If you've been following Spinning Lovely Days, then you know that I got sick and found it hard to regain momentum. Anyway, this is something I had a week ago. It's cream dory. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and thyme, then fried it in butter melted in oil. I ate it with kimchi that my SIL made. That's all the update I got. Haven't been experimenting in the kitchen at all. Will try to do better this week. :)

Chicken Burger

This was my dinner two nights ago. Yesterday, I was too sick to blog. Anyway, we have some homemade chicken burger patties courtesy of Husband (ground chicken, salt, pepper, onion, garlic, thyme and rosemary), so I cooked one for myself and two for him (Marguerite still does not have much of an appetite), poured some gravy (okay, it was from a mix) and added some mixed veggies cooked in herbed butter.

Tuna Flakes Adobo

I was feeling lazy. I dumped a can of tuna in the pan (oil and all), sautéed it a bit, added soy sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, a crushed clove of garlic, some ground pepper and let it simmer. At the last minute, I decided to add some chopped onions. Voilà my tuna flakes adobo.

Pasta with Fish

I had cream dory, mixed vegetables, almonds, and pasta, hence this pasta with fish concoction. My dish was inspired by this recipe. I naturally made some changes and subsitutions. I fried and sautéed in butter, for instance. The almonds were cut up instead of ground. I used oregano and basil for the herbs. I also used spaghetti noodles, as you can see. It was good. Or we were hungry. Anyway, it's all gone.

Some Other Kind of Fried Chicken

I know it looks particularly ghastly in the pic, but it actually tasted good.:D I didn't want to do the usual breaded fried chicken, so I looked around for another simple fried chicken recipe and came across this. I didn't have the spices specified, so I substituted with oregano and basil. I also adjusted a couple of things since I was only cooking three pieces of chicken.

Fried Cream Dory

Some more cream dory. I thought I'd look for another recipe and in my search, I found somebody asking if this was the fish in Finding Nemo. Good question. Is it? Anyway, it's just the usual fried fillet recipe: breading seasoned with salt and pepper. Dredge fish in flour (also seasoned), dip in lightly beaten egg, and then dredge in breading. Fry, turning until both sides are golden brown.

Tofu Fingers

I had a block of tofu in the chiller, so I thought I'd halve it and make some breaded tofu. I found this recipe and decided to make the Vietnamese peanut sauce as well. However, I find handling tofu rather unwieldy, so instead of making perfect cubes, mine ended up more like tofu fingers. I'd say it was an okay result. My daughter had several. I think the peanut sauce I made needed more water though.

Semi-chili

I had tinned pinto beans, the kind some open and just spoon straight from the can. It already had tomato sauce, garlic, onion, and pepper. I'm not about to eat it from the can unless there's campfire. I want to use it though, so what to do? How about a variation of chili? I had ground beef in the freezer (left over from the batch Husband made hamburger patties with). So, with this as the aim, I thawed the beef and then cooked it in a saucepan with garlic and onion. I drained the juice and then added salt, pepper, cumin, tomatoes, and the can of beans. I let it cook, adding salt until it was seasoned to my taste. When it was done, I put my portion on lettuce leaves (something like a lettuce cup) and grated cheese on top. I loved it. Wish I had other beans though and chipotle.

Lemon Asparagus Red Snapper

This thing is a semi flop. It's edible, but didn't really become tasty until I added cheese. I got this from a Campbell's Cream of Asparagus label. The thing is, the recipe called for chicken, but I doubt if it would have been better with chicken. Whatever. I've found the recipes given on Campbell's labels to be on the bland side. That's me though. I like my food to be really flavorful. Anyway, here's the recipe:

1 T vegetable oil
4 boneless chicken (in my case, I used red snapper fillets)
1 can (305 g) Campbell's Cream of Asparagus Soup
1/4 C milk
1 T lemon juice
1/8 t black pepper

Heat oil in skillet. Add chicken and cook until browned.
Add soup, milk, lemon juice and pepper (in my case, I also grated some chicken bouillion on top of the concoction - not much, just shaved off one side). Heat to a boil. Cover and cook over low heat 5 mins or until done. Because the thing tasted bland to me when I tried it, I sprinkled a generous amount of cheese on top and that made everything better.

Tuna and Quail Eggs Dish

I have been besieged by MyLot tasks (which is a good thing) so I mostly spent last week writing those pieces. Anyhoo, we had this dish last night. I don't even know what to call it. Main ingredients are tuna, mixed veggies, and quail eggs. I started by sautéing garlic and onion in butter. I then added the tuna, followed by the mixed veggies and boiled quail eggs. I added about 1/3 C chicken stock and let the entire mess cook for another 3 minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper and then serve over rice.

Cucumber-Carrot Salad

I had a cucumber and a carrot that had been irreversibly maturing in the vegetable crisper for about a week. It would be unthinkable during these hard times to have them end up in the trash bin, so I got them out and made a salad out of them. It was inspired by this recipe. I naturally had to adjust a couple of things, but I think it turned out okay.

Simple Mushroom Rice Dish

Last night, I made some mushroom rice, the recipe of which I found here. I just substituted some ingredients with ones that I had on hand. I used half a regular onion instead of the green kind and basil instead of parsley (I'm not sure if basil is really a substitute for parsley, but I decided to go on a whim). I later sprinkled my own serving with parmesan cheese, as recommended in one of the comments.

Broccoli Milanese As My German Translated It

I have been trying to feed my daughter more greens, but she won't accept them unless they've been juiced or puréed and then mixed with something like eggs so she can't tell that they're there. Anyway, knowing the above doesn't stop me from trying to feed them to her in a form otherwise. Yesterday, I made us some fries and broccoli milanese for lunch. I first came across the idea of broccoli milanese here ("In Lombardy, florets are dipped in egg, cheese and breadcrumbs and fried in butter to create broccoli Milanese."). I thought that certainly seemed a tasty way of serving broccoli. However, when I googled for a more specific recipe, the ones I found were this, which is kind of far from what my original source described, and this, which is in German. Would you believe I ended up following the German recipe? No, I don't speak German, but I can guess what most of the words meant having been exposed to German talk while a member of the UP-Deutscher Verein in college. Also, there was Google Translate. At the end of the day, the verdict was 50-50. I loved it while Marguerite simply picked at the cheesy breading. I think it's mostly a texture problem with her because taste-wise she really doesn't seem to have an issue with veggies.

Nutrijell Strawberry Jelly

I was about to grab the usual gelatin brand when I noticed this packet. NutriJell is from Indonesia and has the Halal mark. I normally think (without knowing anything about it, lol) that Halal is better than not Halal, but I thought I'd try it anyway since it also boasts of being enriched with fiber, vitamins, calcium, and prebiotics.

Basically, you just mix the powder with sugar, add water, boil, add fruity acid, and pour into mold. It sets quickly and it seems to be more dense than the usual gelatin. Color-wise, it's more of that orange color, but I think it's because I used brown sugar. Taste-wise, my daughter prefers it to Jello, but maybe I just messed up the Jello somehow, lol.

Sesame Cream Dory

Another lovely fish I've encountered is the cream dory. I got about four slabs from the freezer and proceeded to follow a sautéed sesame fish recipe I got from a book called "Easy Meals in Minutes" (Time Life Books, 1997, Alexandria, VA, p.223 - or however you're supposed to cite; this is one other reason why I won't take a gig from a term paper mill). Here's the modified version:

Ingredients:
1/4 C flour-------------------------------------- 1 egg
1 t salt------------------------------------------- 1 T milk
1/4 t pepper------------------------------------ 2 T butter
four fish steaks (about 2 lbs total)------- 2 T vegetable oil
2/3 C breading
1/4 C sesame seeds

In a bowl, combine flour, salt, and pepper. Dredge fish lightly in this. In another bowl, combine breading and sesame seeds. In a third bowl, beat the egg with milk. Dip fish into the egg mixture, then into the breading mixture, coating the fish completely.

In a large skillet, melt butter in oil over medium high heat. When butter and oil are hot but not smoking, add the fish and cook them until golden brown, about 5 mins on each side.

Mojos

Had a cup of gravy left over from last night, so I decided to make some mojo potatoes (it was either that or chicken and since we didn't have chicken...). They were a semi success because while they tasted good, they didn't look very attractive. I used two potatoes for this, sliced them into chips, coated them with a mixture of flour, salt, garlic powder, and black pepper, dipped them in beaten egg, and then coated them with breadcrumbs. Fried them in oil until the coating turned brown. I had to use my phone again for this picture because by that time, Marguerite had already taken three chips and if I had taken the trouble of getting the big camera, she might have already demolished the entire plate.

Leftover Morning

What? Another grainy picture? Now, it's just a case of being too lazy to get out the camera. So, today is leftover morning. I made some fried rice using some oil, 2 cloves of garlic, a fourth of a large onion, a small chip from a chicken broth cube, a handful of mixed vegetables, canned tuna, leftover rice and soy sauce. No clear recipe here because I just started tossing in the ingredients, very haphazardly, I might add, but in the order that I listed them down here. Would you believe it turned out edible?

Graham Cream Fruit Dessert

This is something I usually make when I get a craving for cake and there isn't a "real" cake handy. I don't know what it's called (although the closest thing I found on the web would be this easy crema de fruta recipe), but my Mom and my sister have been making it forever sans the fruits (although sometimes they would put in ripe mangoes). Basically you just layer a container with graham crackers, slather a cream and condensed milk mixture (up to you just how you proportion them, more condensed milk if you like it really sweet, of course) on top, add fruits (in my case, I used strawberries and bananas - my usual preference, even with smoothies):

Add another layer of graham crackers, repeating the process:

You just keep on doing it over until you run out of something, lol. The top should be the cream and milk mixture though. Dust with crushed graham crackers for the heck of it. Obviously this is a very flexible recipe. :)

Chill or freeze for a couple of hours so the cream won't be runny when you serve it.

Obviously, I'm temporarily back to my camera phone since Husband took off with the Nikon to take pictures at his friend's gig.

How Do You Like Your Tuna Spread?

I'm still a little out of it, hence the minimal activity in the kitchen. I got carried away doing chores the other day (while I was still getting over a bad cold) and it resulted in a mild asthmatic attack (I don't get serious ones anymore). Anyway, I've been doing simple stuff like potato chips and glazed carrots for Marguerite. And rice. Of course, you gotta have rice. For the most part, the lechon manok (roasted or turbo broiled chicken) that Husband brought home Monday night sustained me from then until last night, lol. In between, I make do with sandwiches and instant stuff. Speaking of sandwiches, I was wondering how you make your tuna spread (I can't get away from tuna, can I?). I love what my Mom makes, but I haven't been able to copy it. I just make do with my own version then. What I do is dump a can of tuna into a bowl, add some heaping spoonfuls of mayo, about a tablespoon and a half of brown sugar, and then grate some cheese over it. Since I'm of the philosophy that you can never have too much cheese (a belief that has punished me from time to time, lol) I just rub cheese and grater furiously for about half an hour (hehe, kidding!). I grind some black pepper over the ol' mess and then mix well.

I don't know if it can be seen in the picture, but there's a big slab of cheese somewhere in that sandwich. I'm not kidding about loving cheese. :)

What about you? Care to share your tuna spread recipe?

Mushroom Quesadillas And a Little Fun with Jello

Made a couple of mushroom quesadillas for dinner. I used this flour tortilla recipe (I prefer corn, but masa's hard to find here). Of course, I had my little helper, who treated the entire thing as sandbox-cum-playdough time; place was covered with flour in no time. I fried the mushrooms in butter. I made pico de gallo using 2 tomatoes, half a medium onion, a clove of garlic, salt, basil (didn't have cilantro), juice of half a lime. I basically just layered cheese, mushrooms, and pico de gallo between two tortillas.

For dessert, I served this Jello atrocity, the recipe of which I got from The Biggest Loser (this is a modified version of creamy layered squares). This is edible, but if you ask me what I have done today to make myself proud, it wouldn't be this. Next time I'll stick to Jello shots, lol.