I am a night owl, and my favorite drink is Schlurp! :) Yummy! I found it in 7 Eleven during a midnight snack run, and I simply love the taste.

It actually tastes like tea. That’s what I love. Most of the commercial products of iced tea pale in comparison to this one. Nestea, C2, Real Leaf Tea – they are simply sweetened and flavored water. Schlurp tastes like tea! Ok maybe I am not being fair, the brands I mentioned aren’t exactly known for milk teas, just regular iced tea. But the fact is, the milk and jellies part of Schlurp is just a bonus for me. The selling part is really the strong flavor of tea. So yay for bottled tea I can buy in bulk and store at home to drink at my leisure! :) :) :)

Oh and did I mention no preservatives, and barely sweetened? The ingredients read: Purified water, premium brewed Earl Grey tea, low fat non dairy creamer, brown sugar and jellies. Wow!!! No high fructose corn syrup here! No aspartame! Wowww, no wonder it tastes so good. You could even try your hand making it at home with such a simple list of ingredients. :)

This is starting to sound like I am being paid for writing about this tea. LOL. I am not. Just happy I finally have a suitable replacement for my pop soda addiction. I just found out Diet Coke (and any kind of carbonated drink) gives me stomach ulcers. So this is a really lucky find for me.

I hope Schlurp branches out soon. Right now I’ve only found it in 7 Eleven and not in any major grocery. Good thing I have a 7 Eleven right beside me office. :)

Schlurp Your Tea!

My friends and I went to watch Rock of Ages last Saturday. It was damn good! Tom Cruise and Catherine Zeta-Jones were AMAZING!! They really made the movie! And of course Diego Boneta provided the candy. :-)

Afterwards we had dessert at J Co donuts in SM Megamall. I wanted to try them because they are new to the Philippines, and a lot of people were raving about the taste.

I ordered Al Capone and Green Tease while my friends ordered Avocado and Chocolate Crunch. The flavors are interesting but… Meh. Krispy Kreme is still the best for me. I would categorize J Co donuts on the level of Gonuts Donuts. J Co is sometimes too sweet like their signature Al Capone, it really didn’t do it for me. And the Green Tease was weird, I don’t think it accurately captured the green tea flavor though I liked the creamy filling inside. The dough of the donuts is just OK, nothing special. In hindsight I think I like Gonuts better.

I am glad I went though. I can finally put it off my mind. Next time I am craving sweets I will either go to Krispy Kreme or Chewy Junior, both of which are available in Makati! :-)

The most Filipino food I can think of is adobo. You will encounter it in the Philippines in so many different versions but one thing you can count on is that you WILL encounter it. The base of adobo is pork, vinegar and soy sauce. My mother likes to add garlic and laurel leaves. Some people like to put in potatoes or boiled eggs. Gim likes to eat it with a fried egg. I like it with a ripe banana on the side.

Whatever way you eat it, it’s delicious and one of my most missed homecooked foods. I am just so lucky that Gim is a great cook. He made this adobo for me the other day. Just the way I like it – how my mom cooks it. ;-)

I love it when my boyfriend drops by the office to have a quick break with me. He works day shifts and I work nights so we hardly see each other. Well, we see each other sleeping a lot!!

So it’s a good day when he’s off from work early. It’s lunch for me and dinner for him.

Earlier we went to Max’s Chicken restaurant in Valero St., Makati. It’s a good place. Not too full during dinnertime (unlike Ayala Triangle). The service is really quick and the food always hearty. And the price is not bad at all! I love going there.

We ate chicken and chopsuey. Good combination! Oh and there’s a satisfied me! Hahaha!!

This is possibly the best cake I have ever tasted in my life. Strawberry shortcake.

Let me just say that I am not fond of cakes. So much so that when my friends decided to get a cake for share, I decided to get a slice of strawberry tart instead since I already knew I wasn’t going to like the cake.

Boy was I wrong!!! The cake was so delicious!!! It was a layer of whipped cream over a layer of strawberry-infused cream over strawberry-infused cake over strawberry cream again over strawberry cake, topped with fresh strawberry slices.

My God!!!! Every bite of that cake was scrumptious, melt-in-your-mouth goodness!!!

I love that strawberry shortcake. Yum!

You can get it at Visco’s in Baguio. Strawberry season is short, so go get it as soon as you can!!!

Visco’s Restaurant & Cake Shop
#5C EDT Bldg (Puso ng Baguio Bldg.)
#5 Session Road, Baguio City
Tel# (074) 446-7082

Anyone who knows me knows I love Japanese pastry. And I SUPER LOVE mochi ice cream!!!

I was visiting a friend in Katipunan, QC yesterday and we decided to stop by Rustan’s for a bit of grocery. I was so surprised when I saw Ben & Jerry’s ice cream packs in their freezer!!! I thought I could only find those in S&R! Wow, now I don’t have to go too far!! (Assuming they also sell those in Rustan’s Makati…)

Upon closer inspection, I also saw – MOCHI ICE CREAM!!!! OMG OMG OMG! So happy there is finally mochi ice cream in Manila supermarkets!

I immediately bought a pack of green tea mochi. Although, it was traffic going back from Quezon City to Makati, so my mochi wasn’t frozen anymore when I arrived home. But I couldn’t wait, so I ate it anyway, all sloppy. Haha. But oh so yummy!!

Now I have to go visit Rustan’s Makati and hope to God they also sell mochi ice cream. I want to try the other flavors. :)

Let me start by saying that I love Cash & Carry! It’s a mall in Makati, about ten minutes walk away from my apartment. As a mall, it’s nice enough. A little bit of everything but not particularly outstanding (except for the mezzanine mecca of cheap imported goods but that is another post). As a grocery, though, wow, it’s amazing!

So far I’ve grocery-shopped in Rustan’s, Shopwise, Robinson’s, SM and Landmark. But Cash & Carry definitely takes the cake. It has the MOST number of aisles I’ve seen in a grocery, and a GREAT selection of items, with a lot of imported goods that you can’t find in other supermarkets, and the prices aren’t bad either!!

My most favorite item to buy in Cash & Carry Makati is – BEEF!!! Yes. Cash & Carry has several freezers devoted to premium meats – beef, lamb, salmon, turkey, game hen, and did I mention, beef?!? Not just the regular cuts, but prime marbled ones!!! And at such affordable prices!

Ok – maybe not exactly prime – I’m not sure if these steaks are graded. But they’re definitely at least choice or select cuts. The point is, they taste great. And that’s prime in my book! Hahah!

When I first discovered it, I was mighty tempted to buy it but I was afraid (I’d ruin it) because I had never tried to cook steak before. However, I have had it in restaurants and it was love at first taste. Except, steaks are mighty expensive, usually a meal costs upwards of Php1000! The steak I was looking at in Cash & Carry looked just as big as the one I ate at a restaurant recently, and it cost less than Php200!!! How about that?!? So that cinched it for me. I mean, if I ruined it, at least I could do it again.

Just to show you why I drooled so much, here are the cuts of meat that I bought just this week.

Look at all that fat!! OMGGG I can’t wait to pan-fry these cuts, yum!!! And look at that, 300 grams and it’s only Php148 – wow, huh??? Look at how much 300 grams will cost you around steakhouses in Manila (in Batangus grill, 230 grams cost Php480, I ate there and the steak wasn’t even marbled at all).

Here is another one.

Ahhhh! That center marbling looks DELICIOUS! These are rib-eyes, my favorite part. I also like sirloin however Cash & Carry slices them too thin, so it’s not as juicy. I haven’t tried the porterhouse and t-bone cuts but I’m definitely going to. I tried the New York cut but found it tougher, so I didn’t like it.

This one is already open ‘coz I already ate the other half. Hihihi! It was wonderfully flavorful. Let me tell you, don’t ever buy steak that isn’t marbled. The fat provides the flavor, so if you buy steak that’s not streaked with loads of fat, it’s like you’re just buying any other beef part. Why pay a premium if you won’t get marbling, just get some fresh meat off the deli counter, they’re much cheaper and will taste the same.

But let’s not talk about healthy, ok? I know very well this is SINFUL! Hahaha!!! But life is too short to deprive myself of the finer tastes. Besides, since these premium cuts cost a lot more than pork or chicken, I don’t have it too often. Maybe just once a week. Or else I will soon be broke and probably living back under my parents’ roof. Yikes!!!

Do you want to see the cooked meat? Of course!!! Here they are!

That above is sirloin. Just seared lightly. Still a bit bloody. This is Gim’s steak, I think. He likes it medium rare. I prefer mine well-done. :)

Ok this one is a new york cut on the left, and a rib-eye on the right. That’s mine. :) The rib-eye looks great, huh?!? These are past steaks, since the raw ones I showed above are still stored in my freezer. I just popped them out for some pics, haha. But they won’t be consumed today. I’m saving them for the weekend when Gim comes home. :)

If you’re wondering how we cook them, it’s very simple. Bathe them in salt, don’t be shy, as in literally cover them in salt front and back and leave on for about 10 minutes. The salt will draw any water out, because you want your steak to be as dry as possible, to be as juicy as possible. After salting, rinse them to get rid of any salt (you don’t want to gag on an oversalted piece of meat!!) and then pat dry with paper towels. No more need to season with salt since some of the salt you put on earlier will have made it inside the meat. Just add pepper. And other herbs/rubs, whatever flavoring you like. I prefer just a light smattering of powdered pepper. Heat your pan, and when REALLY hot, put in your steak to sear with a bit of oil or butter, then flip and sear the other side, and serve! The cooking part is really fast, usually 2 to 3 minutes is enough to cook your steak well-done.

There. Well I hope I’ve inspired you to cook steak right at home! :) People in the Philippines don’t cook a lot of steak. In fact I had never had it in my life until I came to Manila. And it took me about 3 or 4 years until I discovered how easy it is to cook steak. Even easier than pork or chicken because there’s no need to marinade. It’s just that people don’t generally know that steak can be bought cheaply. I certainly didn’t until I saw the steaks in Cash & Carry. :)

Cooking at home is so much more satisfying than going to a restaurant. And so much cheaper, too!

Now I’m looking forward to the weekend!!! :)

Here is a sampling of the food that Gim and I ate when he visited last month, right after taking and passing the board exams. We definitely splurged on food!

They say that you are disabled if you can’t do your job anymore, because of a medical condition, and this disability will extend to at least a year or more.

Can I say that I have been disabled by eating too much?? Eating too much = babuyasis syndrome (the feeling of being a pig and wanting to sleep after eating) = I-don’t-want-to-work-anymore-I-just-want-to-eat-all-the-time syndrome. And yes I believe this medical condition will last me until death do we part.

Let’s go to the pics!

Eating at Bonchon! Yummiest chicken in Makati!

Dinner at Hana, Little Tokyo! Yummiest california maki in Makati! And yummy other kinds of Japanese food too. See how we almost finished dinner before I remembered to take photos?? Haha. Oh and this was mostly finished by me because Gim needed to take a call – his cousin was consulting him on what medicine to take for her colds.

Next up is Spaghetti Factory! We ate some oysters, yummy!!! I ordered pork ribs. And had a plateful of spaghetti for share! Yummmy! And we also had a banana split for dessert. Yumness!

This is so months ago, but I wanted to dump our photos so here we go. :)

Thanks to Deal Grocer, I got two coupons for a brunch buffet at Chef Jessie’s in Rockwell Makati, and ate so much it almost disabled me (hello SSDI?). It was touted as a French-Mediterranean spread so I was super excited. And at only P700 per person thanks to the 50% off coupon, it was a great deal. :)

We got served some fruit juice mixed with vodka, I think. I took a sip and hated it. Gim took a sip and loved it. But none of us drank it, because Gim was on his self-imposed alcohol break due to the pending medical boards. Actually he kept shooting me nasty looks since I wouldn’t drink it, hahah. He wanted me to drink for the both of us, since it was a shame to leave the cocktails untouched when he was itching to dump them down his throat. But everyone who knows me knows I can’t stand the taste of alcohol, so I shot the nasty looks right back at him. LOL.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the spread, just a few photos of our plates and me and Gim. But I mostly enjoyed the bacon, as you can see from my photos. Hahaha. Though I have no idea how that is French or Mediterranean?? There was also some slices of meat, but a bit too raw for my taste. Gim enjoyed kept coming back those, though. I loved the beef chunks roasted in garlic. Best dish of the meal!

There were lots of eggs. Poached, bedeviled, omellettes. Some caviar too. And some fruits. But you know what was lacking? Pastries!! I really thought there would be cakes and baguettes and all sorts of breads. Like you’d expect from a French buffet. But unfortunately, their idea of French pastry was chocolate cupcakes. Meh.

My final say on this spread would be that it was a fail on a choice of foods. But it if weren’t labeled French-Mediterranean, I would’ve found no fault.

Here come the photos!

More random shots below. :)

Summer is (literally) just around the corner, and I’m absolutely raring to go on trips and more trips! I just got back home (Makati) with my ever beautiful Flisha (meow-meow), and we’ve spent all night busy planning our vacays to Pagudpud, Vigan, Pampanga, Batangas and Naga- basically landtripping! Guess what we’re soo excited to do (aside from the sights and sounds of provincial Luzon)?

The food!

Pancit Batil-Patong

I just cannot wait to try out Tuguegarao’s Pancit Butil Patong, Vigan’s Longganiza, and Laoag’s Bagnet! It’s going to be a sad deal for our waistlines (at this point, I think it’d be best to break out that adapexin-p) but at least a really warm happy deal for our hearts. And this I think is the most important thing- to have fun doing what you want to do with the person you love the most. :)

Sapin-Sapin