P.S. I rarely interfere with our kitchen affairs but it doesn’t mean I don’t know my way in there

So for today’s lunch, I saw a bag of fresh ground coconut (“kinudkud nga lubi”) and a whole chiken being defrosted in our kitchen sink. My mom summoned me and told me to prepare the ingredients for the chicken curry. It was my first time to extract juice from the coconut to be used for dish. The last thing I remembered, I was using that coconut’s milk eons ago as hair treatment. ahahaha. So I had to ask my mom for instructions since I was lost.

Extracting the Coconut Milk as per my mom’s instructions:
1. Remove the coconut from the plastic bag and transfer it in a bowl.
2. Add 2 glasses of water
3. Start squeezing the coconut to extract its juice (considering you already washed your hands, k?)
4. When the color of the extract turns to white after a couple of squeezes here and there, you can stop now and strain the milk to get rid of the coconut pulp.
5. Set it aside since this will be your broth for the chicken curry.

It was almost 12noon and my mom tried to ask me to hand her the whole chicken so that she could slice it but I simply denied her request and told her I know how to cut the chicken and that she should just rest or take her lunch (since she’s not gonna eat this dish anyway – she’s allergic to chicken).

So I grabbed the whole chicken and started cutting it in half. We’re not gonna cook all the chicken since we’re only 4 in our household. I placed the other half inside the fridge and started slicing the other half. I was able to slice the chicken into 7 parts. I washed them with water and then added some salt to marinate them. After this, I resumed straining the pulp out of the coconut milk and then crushed 3 cloves of garlic and sliced 1 whole onion. And then I started cooking…

Cooking the Chicken Curry
1. Heated the pan and added oil.
2. Sauteed the garlic and onion until golden brown
3. Dropped the marinated and sliced chicken in the pan
4. Added ground pepper
5. Sauteed them altogether till the outer portion of the chicken gets cooked
6. Just before the sauteed chicken ran out its own juice, pour in the coconut milk
7. Drop 2 pieces of finger chilies (siling espada)
8. Let everything boil
9. When you see it boiling, add curry powder. The amount? enough for you to see the entire broth turn yellowish
10. Let it boil some more till the chicken is cooked and the broth evaporates? hahaha (sorry. no idea what the term is)
11. Just before it rans out of water, turn the stove off and voila! you have your chicken curry!

And here’s my own version of the dish they call Chicken Curry. Mind you, this isn’t spicy since my pop is not allowed to eat spicy foods. But if you want to try cooking this dish, you can modify the steps and perhaps even slit the siling labuyo to release the spice in it.

I was happy that I was able to cook this dish. And to think I thought it was so difficult to cook this! Well, extracting the coconut milk could be tedious but that wasn’t difficult. To me, difficult would be making tocino, chorizo, embutido, kare-kare, dinuguan, laing and rellenong pusit! All of which are my mom’s specialty. Hmmmmm…made me think I need to ask her to teach me how to prepare those dishes too!

Now mentally adding Chicken Curry to the few dishes I know how to cook!

Never seen such a beautiful cake like this one for the longest time. It really looked yummy! Didn’t get the chance to eat it though. Perhaps I don’t want the cake’s taste to ruin my perception of its beauty

When I see images of those cakes, my eyes would start to salivate and grow big as I’d want to taste them all. And to satisfy our taste bud’s curiosity, we definitely have to taste all of them!

Yep, that’s what me and my ex-colleagues did after meeting one night to catch up.

It is tradition that if someone leaves the office for greener pastures or whatever reasons we have, we’d have to celebrate the “joyous” event by having a cake day for that person. This time, it was Kingsley’s cake day. And so we met and chose the Fudge Restaurant to celebrate the event and drown our tonsils  with sweets of different sorts.

Those cakes were sinfully good. You have to go to Fudge Restaurant if you want to satisfy your sweet tooth. Those cakes aren’t priced over P150.00 and I believe that it’s already a good buy considering how yummy they all are.

Interested about this restaurant? Check out this old post here.

The Fudge Restaurant is located at A.S. Fortuna St., Mandaue City. For more information, check out their Facebook page.

Photo Credit: Praline of Glitterstop.com

It is said that it is a bad thing to make fun of food. However, I couldn’t help myself from doing the inevitable. After checking out the lighthouse in Liloan, Cebu, we decided to hang out for a couple more hours and our last stop was at the Pan de Manila branch in Asiatown, IT Park. We ordered coffee and pan de sal (bread rolls). At Php 3.00 per piece, I ordered 5 pieces when I saw how yummy it looked.

When I got the first bread out of the paper bag, I immediately noticed how light it was. After my first bite, I couldn’t help squeeze the bread until it formed into a small ball. I thought it was better flattening or squeezing whatever air’s inside the bread.

Pan de Manila sells pan de sal in small and large sizes at Php 3.00 and Php 6.00 respectively. I wonder if there’s a difference in the bread’s consistency if I choose to buy the larger size.

closing time

I’ve always wanted to check out this Yogu place since their small store is located beside a gasoline station and I think it’s cool to have this cute pink stall sitting in the middle of this busy street.

chandelier and lanterns

I didn’t like the variety of toppings they had. There were too many dried toppings and there were lesser fruits. I even tried ordering strawberry toppings (i think since it was red) and when they opened the lid, there were bubbles in it and the staff immediately told me that it was already spoiled. It took time for me to select my toppings after that. I end up settling for mango, blueberry and chocolate tidbits.

My friend also wanted to order the create-a-crepe one but when she learned that only a few toppings will be added, she hesitated. One thing that stopped her from ordering one too was when I pointed to her that big circle where they bake the crepe. On top of that thin baking circle thingy was a bowl tin can filled with food. I’m not sure if it was their dinner or if it was food for the cat/dog since it looked more of a lamaw (mixed leftover food) to me. Or perhaps it was just rice with green vegetable soup in it. That one was definitely a turn off. I just hope that they removed that thing when they saw we were coming in the store. tsk tsk tsk.

large cup of Yogu with mango, blueberry and chocolate tidbits

As for the Yogu, it was ok. I wasn’t satisfied with their serving of toppings. When ordering, your only choice is a regular cup or a large cup. I didn’t notice the size of a regular cup since I just followed what my friend ordered. I had a hard time finishing the yogurt and my friend mentioned that the bad thing about their sizes is that they don’t have a medium so you’ll really be stuck at ordering just a small size or the large one.

another photo of the lantern

My experience dining at Yogu wasn’t that superb but I’m not complaining too. I just had to mention a few things that I observed from the store. What made our yogurt treat fun was the assortment of stories my friend and I exchanged. I got busy taking photos of their lantern too. I simply adore them! I wish I could take them home with me. LOL.

I Wena was so talkative that we failed to realize it was already 12 mn. The staff was standing in front of us and that’s when we realized that we were too busy chitchatting that we already forgot about the time. They close at 12 midnight. So upon learning this, we hurriedly stepped out of where we were seated so they could clean our table and close the store. Hmmm…I guess they really close at 12mn sharp, with or without customers.

We only noticed that they have free wifi before we left the place. darn!

Yogu is located along Gov. M. Cuenco Avenue, Banilad, in between the Shell Gasoline station and The Sentinel condo on your way to Country Mall after crossing the flyover from Ayala.