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First, a very Happy Birthday to Marc, one of my classmates from high school. Hope you had a great day fellow geek! =D
It's interesting to note how cooking has become such a key part of my daily routine. I know I'm nowhere near as skilled as I want to be (or perhaps need to be), but I'm moving right along as best as I can. It's certainly challenged the more OCD-ish parts of my brain since a lot of the more interesting kitchen experiments have required me to leave the comfort of precise measurement and looking for highly-detailed recipes. Instead there's a lot of "winging it" in terms of what's available or the usual sense of adventure when you want to try adding in other ingredients because you like them or maybe because something in your head makes you think the entire combination just might work.
Starting with the very basic topped rice dishes Tobie and I started out with, I'm proud enough to note that I've added some pretty decent dishes to my menu, mostly thanks to my mom. It started with the very hearty creamy chicken soup recipe I got for her and now I'm building up to making her picadillo soup, if I can manage it. I've also managed to create a decent pork sinigang, although I know I was missing a few ingredients to give it that extra kick. I've also bough ingredients for making some sort of pork giniling, and I can only hope that it turns out as well as I envision it.
That brings me to the topic of grocery shopping, which is a natural partner to cooking. In the beginning it was all about quick, easy and of course the nearly ready-to-eat. Thus that triggered a lot of canned goods, instant soups and the like, which was okay but nothing amazing. Today's grocery trip was one of the more extensive ones not in terms of volume but more in terms of trying to think of the actual dishes I wanted to prepare and somehow mapping out the recipes in my head. I definitely need to work on this since we still get into that back and forth shuffling between aisles and sections as we remember things that we need sort of last minute and end up doubling back.
Today we shopped at the local Shopwise for the first time, which wasn't too bad an experience, nor was it all that great. I've always liked the fact that they're sort of aiming to be something like a Wal-Mart by trying to have everything you might need including having a rather robust appliance section. They also have a better selection that SM Supermarket in certain aspects like the kinds of brewing coffee they offer and the diversity of their imported goods and snack foods. I'm just not 100% comfy with their meat / poultry / fish section since it's strictly in-house and I have to admit I've grown up to be a Monterey kind of guy.
Things ended rather badly once we hit the check-out counter since they appeared to be having some trouble with the BPI credit card reader. After the initial swipe, it was unable to confirm whether or not my payment went through and thus they needed to call BPI to verify if the charge was valid. This led to a lengthy waiting period while the cashier tried to make the calls as their customer service desk while Tobie and I were falling asleep as we were waiting - both of us had been up all night. It's a shame things didn't go as well but more or less resolution was reached to some degree. I still need to call them back tomorrow to check on the charging of my card and if everything went as it should have but for now we'll just let it rest. There's only so much I can do.
Now I need to get something to eat before shift - I have my usual tuna over rice in the rice cooker with the added benefit of tomatoes, onions and lettuce. This is the first time I tried adding a little cayenne pepper for some extra kick so let's hope that doesn't turn out badly, hehe.
I'm sorry, but I REALLY found this totally hilarious, hehehe
It's interesting to note how cooking has become such a key part of my daily routine. I know I'm nowhere near as skilled as I want to be (or perhaps need to be), but I'm moving right along as best as I can. It's certainly challenged the more OCD-ish parts of my brain since a lot of the more interesting kitchen experiments have required me to leave the comfort of precise measurement and looking for highly-detailed recipes. Instead there's a lot of "winging it" in terms of what's available or the usual sense of adventure when you want to try adding in other ingredients because you like them or maybe because something in your head makes you think the entire combination just might work.
Starting with the very basic topped rice dishes Tobie and I started out with, I'm proud enough to note that I've added some pretty decent dishes to my menu, mostly thanks to my mom. It started with the very hearty creamy chicken soup recipe I got for her and now I'm building up to making her picadillo soup, if I can manage it. I've also managed to create a decent pork sinigang, although I know I was missing a few ingredients to give it that extra kick. I've also bough ingredients for making some sort of pork giniling, and I can only hope that it turns out as well as I envision it.
That brings me to the topic of grocery shopping, which is a natural partner to cooking. In the beginning it was all about quick, easy and of course the nearly ready-to-eat. Thus that triggered a lot of canned goods, instant soups and the like, which was okay but nothing amazing. Today's grocery trip was one of the more extensive ones not in terms of volume but more in terms of trying to think of the actual dishes I wanted to prepare and somehow mapping out the recipes in my head. I definitely need to work on this since we still get into that back and forth shuffling between aisles and sections as we remember things that we need sort of last minute and end up doubling back.
Today we shopped at the local Shopwise for the first time, which wasn't too bad an experience, nor was it all that great. I've always liked the fact that they're sort of aiming to be something like a Wal-Mart by trying to have everything you might need including having a rather robust appliance section. They also have a better selection that SM Supermarket in certain aspects like the kinds of brewing coffee they offer and the diversity of their imported goods and snack foods. I'm just not 100% comfy with their meat / poultry / fish section since it's strictly in-house and I have to admit I've grown up to be a Monterey kind of guy.
Things ended rather badly once we hit the check-out counter since they appeared to be having some trouble with the BPI credit card reader. After the initial swipe, it was unable to confirm whether or not my payment went through and thus they needed to call BPI to verify if the charge was valid. This led to a lengthy waiting period while the cashier tried to make the calls as their customer service desk while Tobie and I were falling asleep as we were waiting - both of us had been up all night. It's a shame things didn't go as well but more or less resolution was reached to some degree. I still need to call them back tomorrow to check on the charging of my card and if everything went as it should have but for now we'll just let it rest. There's only so much I can do.
Now I need to get something to eat before shift - I have my usual tuna over rice in the rice cooker with the added benefit of tomatoes, onions and lettuce. This is the first time I tried adding a little cayenne pepper for some extra kick so let's hope that doesn't turn out badly, hehe.
I'm sorry, but I REALLY found this totally hilarious, hehehe
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