Tag: food

Jalapeño poppers recipe – my take

I just had yummy jalapeño poppers from Pal’s brewery and my friend’s dad’s house. But back in the Philippines, we do not usually cook this, so I looked into recipes. The easiest recipe I found involved stuffing the jalapeño with cream cheese, wrapping it in bacon, and baking it. And as a self-acclaimed innovator, I did mine with a little twist. Can you guess what I did differently?

I love bacon, but it is not very healthy, so I vowed not to eat it unless it was free or part of a recipe from a restaurant’s menu. So, my jalapeño poppers had spam instead (free from the university pantry), plus I added ground meat and topped it with shredded cheese.

Ingredients:

1 bar of cream cheese

6 pcs jalapeño

1 cup ground meat sauteed in 1 tbsp oil with 1 tbsp garlic and a quarter of onion (optional)

12 thin strips of spam

1 cup shredded cheese (optional)

Procedure:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 425F.

2. Slice each jalapeño into half, giving you 12 halves of it. Remove the middle part and all the seeds.

3. Fill the middle part of each half jalapeño with cream cheese and ground meat (optional).

4. Top it with cheddar cheese and a thin slice of spam.

4. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Note: if you do not like it very spicy, you can opt to use small bell peppers instead of jalapeño.

I hope you realize your own beauty

There’s nothing wrong about getting enhancements if it makes you happy.

At some point in my life I wanted to get a rhinoplasty mainly because I was tired of not just other people but my own friends and family bullying me with my big nose. It was my greatest insecurity until I realized that I am beautiful despite having a big nose but it took me two decades to accept everything I was born with.

Accepting everything you have is not easy especially when your brain was wired by your environment that you fully trust since day 1.

You are fortunate if you have an affirmative surrounding telling you that you are enough and nothing is wrong with you however this is not always the case.

I thought I was the ugliest and felt like life was not fair. But, the universe allowed me to see the world in a broader perspective and that changed how I see myself now.

Life brought me to a place with a very diverse culture. People across the globe who lived their lives way different than me and found how each of us are uniquely beautiful. These people never pointed out that my nose was big but made me feel that I am enough and beautiful. And for that I will forever be grateful.

The people I have been meeting made me feel secure and accepted. I am thankful I didn’t end up changing anything in my body.

But again, it’s ok to have physical enhancement but I think what’s more important to improve is our personality, character, values and knowledge. Stay true to yourself, kind and loving to yourself and other people. Crave to know more. Think before you speak. Try to see different angles of where things are coming.

And I hope when you find out how beautiful you are, you can also be a medium for others to see their own beauty.

That was me 10 years ago and the way I see myself now has changed a lot! I know now that I am beautiful even with my big nose. 😉

My kaBOBAhan mistake: How to cook white tapioca (BOT BANG) pearls?

I grew up buying cooked boba or tapioca pearls in the market so this was my first time cooking it and I thought I was smart enough since I cooked brown tapioca pearls before perfectly!

Wait, let me defend myself a bit. There was no instruction on the packaging! But my inner self was screaming — you should have searched it! Internet is free!

Boba is a Tagalog term for stupid girls which I brought to life when I did not cook the white tapioca pearls correctly. LOL.

Here’s the thing. The white vs the brown tapioca shares similar and different things when cooking them. Similar in terms of putting them in boiling water but different on the duration that you will have to simmer them.

Below was the disaster I made which was dissolved white tapioca pearls:

Please DO NOT put yet the tapioca pearls unless the water is BOILING!!!

LET THE WATER BOIL FIRST!!!

Then, put your pearly white raw tapioca.

Reduce the heat and let it slowly boil for 30 minutes.

Unlike the brown boba, with white tapioca pearls you should let the pearls sit in the water until it cools.

You should see mostly translucent pearls and few opaque like the photo below. If you see a lot of opaque, you need to BOIL the WATER again and cook the half cooked pearls for 10-15 minutes and let it sit in the water until it cools for 10-15 minutes.

After this time, you should see that most of the pearls are translucent.

Wash them to remove extra slimey coating of the pearls.

Then you can cook them in sugar syrup if you want them sweet!

Thoughts about the ‘Magtanim ay ‘di biro’ documentary

The recent documentary Magtanim ay ‘di biro by Kara David was about the sad reality for our farmers.

Farmers who stay under the sun for hours and doing physical work to give food to our country.

It was hard and painful to watch that to those who went through that struggle and still in that struggle and to me who tries to show how wonderful it is to become a farmer or at least get involved in agriculture. It makes you feel hopeless for the farming sector of our country or even the country as a whole.

In every part of the world, we have agriculture to sustain the quantity and quality of food the people need. Farmers in different places have their own struggles in growing crops alone and in the Philippines, the bad road and supply chain adds up to what they already had to deal with during the growing season.

Imagine a farmer without crop insurance and uncertain market for their produce will risk a whopping P40000 ($900) to earn at the end of the season of P6000 ($120) or worst nothing! In any business, it will drag you to bankruptcy and debt. The young generation will not want to become a farmer to experience what their farmer parents did.

A heartbreaking reality that we can all help in our own little ways by trying to find them a direct market to eliminate the cost for middlemen or if you are close to that farm, find another way to sell them like using our social media platforms.

I guess we cannot solely rely to our leaders anymore in helping our farmers. If you know an avenue to empower our farmers, let us do it!

Easy to make Pinoy dessert – maja blanca (coconut pudding)

After Christmas, we are going to prepare for the New Year’s dinner. In the Philippines, we call it media noche. Now that I live outside my home country, I usually want to bring something Filipino in gatherings like Christmas or New Year’s eve dinner. However, I often struggle what to make that is easy to make but will still tastes good and ingredients are available in the nearest grocery. And it dawned me – why not make maja blanca.

Maja blanca is like pudding but you do not need to bake it! It is a Filipino dessert or snack mainly made of coconut milk. Below it the ingredients and how to make it:

Ingredients:

400-ml coconut milk

350-ml evaporated milk

400-ml condensed milk

1/2-tsp salt

1/2-cup granulated white sugar

1 1/2-cup corn starch

1 1/2-cup water

1-cup whole kernel corn

Preparation time: 25-30 minutes

Procedure:

1. Combine coconut milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk in a pot. Put the pot in a stove under medium heat. Mix it well until there is no curds.

2. Add the sugar and salt in the mixture and mix.

3. Dissolve well the corn starch in the water. Make sure there is no corn starch curds in the water and the mixture is homogenous. Add this to the simmering pot of milk mixture.

4. Continuously mix until it begins thickening and then add the corn. Make sure to add the corn when the mixture is not very thin but before it gets very thick.

5. Mix very well until all the corn kernels are evenly distributed and the mixture gets thick.

6. To make it very Pinoy, put it in a bilao. But, if bilao is not available, the baking pan will work fine.

7. Cool and serve with cheese (optional)