I must have inherited this predilection to cooking from my mother. My mother has an advanced degree in cooking and she likes to cook at home. I remember my mother baking layer cake with butter icing. My favorite is when she makes butter cookies.
Well I told Nicki that it is my turn to do the cooking since she has done this for many years for us. But I also enjoy cooking.
I cook Filipino food, chinese, italian, american. I am compiling a folder full of recipes that I have gotten in the internet. Some favorites are crispy pata, callos, pusit (my favorite), and so many. Nicki likes to make desserts. I've done ensemadas, pastillas, leche plan while she likes to make ginatan bilo bilo, and so many others. When somebody came from the Philippines they brought us pastillas as pasalubong. The pastillas inside the wrapper is so small it is a shame. I started making pastillas which is not hard to do. Our neighbor Lulu is a former professional bakery expert and she can make desserts better than one you buy in the grocery store. Her hopia and other bakery items are the best so I stopped making that.
Lately I've been cooking chinese noodles like chow mein and Filipino ones line bihon, palabok. Nicki's specialty is pansit canton. I am experimenting on difference noodles. So far I like the egg noodles specially the fresh ones.
I used to make sourdough bread. It is labor intensive and you can buy a loaf at Walmart for $3 so I stopped doing that. But the joy of baking and the smell when the bread comes out of the oven is overpowering. Another favorite is bavlava. I will make it a point to cook Beef Wellington for the holidays this year.
I read that there are food items that is good for the brain in preventing dementia and brain diseases. So encourage Nicki to eat food such as coconut oil, food rich in omega-3, avocados, dark chocolate, walnut, eggs, blueberries. Hopefull it will improve memory and push away senior moments.
I learned that vegetables, although it is good for you, are full of carbohydrates and increases your weight. There are some veggies that are not like that though.
When we go to Costco Nicki and I like to buy the $1.50 hot dog with drink. Costco maintained that price since the beginning and you can not beat that. Sometimes Nicki prefer a slice of pizza and the size of that slice is humongoes.
I prefer cooking and eating at home. First it is not as expensive as going out to a restaurant. Also you can control and know what is put in the food you are eating. And the price of restaurant food is going up. The worst I think is that minimum tips nowadays is set at 20%. That is plain and simple gouging the consumer. In my protest I go out to eat as little as I can. Besides as the food price in restaurant goes up, the quality of the food go down to the toilet. Enough is enough.
In two days we will have a small party at home with friends in Trilogy. I will make crispy pata and adobong pusit. Its pot luck so somebody will bring dessert, beef steak, pansit. Drinks we will provide. This is a regular format with friends in Trilogy. We will still be going out to eat when somebody has a birthday but its going to be dutch.
What are my favorite dishes to cook? One that comes to mind is beef Wellington which is a steak disk, covered with bread and in between is a layer of mushroom and sauce. I like lasagne and pasta dishes but they make your weight increase. The same thing with vegetable dishes. Yes they say eating veggies is good for you. But the carbo is pretty high contributing to weight gain. I like chinese noddle dishes. Every country has a variation of the noddle dish. Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Italian, Filipino have their own version and style of cooking noodles. Well noodle is made up of carbo like wheat, rice, and so on and is the staple food all over the world. And then transform into pasta for better appearance and taste I guess.
I was a vegetarian for one whole year. I did this just to try out and see what the heck it is all about. One year no meat, just veggies. I lost weight that Nicki started complaining. Did I feel better? No. Just the lost of weight is what I did. After about a year of this I was assigned to Shell Oil in Batangas, Philippines. I was eating a packet dish in one of the restaurant. I thought it was all vegetable but I noticed that half of the damn dish is full of bits of pork. From then on I forgo being a vegetarian and back to normal eating.
