New Favorite Stuff!

I've been really busy here in our new home and in my studio. I have so much more room to do projects... which makes me super busy... which leads to little blogging time. 

But I wanted to write a quick post of some things that I'm totally loving now.

1.) Loreal Everpure Sulfate Free Shampoo and Conditioner.

photo from Frugal-Freebies.com

My mom told me that she had started using sulfate free shampoo and conditioner and it had done wonders for her hair. It also had a wonderful price at maybe P1200.00. a bottle. That's pretty pricy shampoo! 

So she sent me on a mission to find affordable sulfate free shampoo and conditioner here and I found one manufactured by Loreal.

I bought some, tried it out and I am now a sulfate free shampoo convert! My hair has never been this soft and healthy! My hair is naturally on the frizzy side but it now dries silky soft and slightly wavy with no help from a hair dryer! I've gotten quite a few compliments on it too! Plus the bottle lasts really long because you only have to use so little of it at a time.

And the best part? Less than $7 a bottle (tube?) from your local Target. (I love Target!)

2.) So remember a few weeks it was my birthday? Well Gerard took me to Ruth's Chris Steak House where we had a wonderful, intimate meal. The veal was delicious. But my no doubt ultimate favorite part of that meal... was the Sweet Potato Casserole. It was like a mashed sweet potato  dish with a kind of candied pecan topping and it was like having dessert. With your main course. Matter of fact, that was one of the reasons Gerard wanted to take me there. For their Sweet Potato Casserole.

I loved it so much that a friend gave me the recipe she uses to replicate it. And I made some for my belated birthday dinner too!

 I know it may not look like much in the photo. But it's SO GOOD that I made it TWICE in March alone. (And I wonder where these few extra pounds came from!) I'll post the recipe on here soon.

3.) Spicy SPAM

photo from spam.com

 I've never been a huge fan of spam, until my friend Nicole served some for breakfast at her place one day. It was spicy, crispy, and perfect with steaming hot white rice.

Fast forward several months later and I found spicy spam on sale at our local Seafood City for $2.50 a can. And what does Maita do? Buy 4 cans.

Not only do we love eating it with white rice, it's A-MAZ-ING with the sweet potato casserole above. The contrast of the spicy, crispy, meat with the sweet potato is addictive. Super addictive. So addictive that I cooked up another casserole last week and have been slowly eating it with spicy spam.

Sounds weird, I know. But don't knock it til you try it.


3. Since I've been cooking more now that we have a separate kitchen/dining room, well, I've also got to clean up more to. I'd seen this product around and read a review in my favorite magazine, Real Simple.

It's the SLIPPER GENIE, basically slippers with microfiber fingers underneath that clean as you walk. Plus the soles can be detached and thrown in the washing machine. I wear them so that while I'm cooking, I'm cleaning the kitchen floor too!

Unfortunately, at our local Ross, all they had was the kids version.

photo from amazon.com

And I bought them anyway :). They actually fit me just right! And they were only $5.00 compared to the $13.00 price tag on amazon.

Gerard thinks they're cute. And I've got clean floors so I'm not complaining. Mine are blue hehe. We don't know it its supposed to be a puppy on it or a donkey. Any guesses?

So there, I just had to share these things which I'm totally loving and they bright up my day. Do you have a list of your current favorite things? I'd love to see them!

Mini Dinner Party

Two things I love:

1) Extended Birthday Celebrations

2) Sharing a good meal with great friends

After three weeks of moving, unpacking, buying furniture plus a washer and dryer, we finally felt our home was organized enough to host a mini dinner with friends. Or we scrambled like crazy to at least get it half presentable the day of. (Which is it? I'll never tell.)

I always tell myself it takes at least 6 months to get settled in somewhere, and I'm just so grateful that we have friends and family nearby. We may not get to see them very often but I've always felt that one of the things that makes a house feel more like a home is having friends and family over. I love having people over! More so than going out, I think. Well that's fun too but I guess I'm low-key like that.

Plus we love to cook! So a post birthday celebration/housewarming was the perfect excuse to cook up a mean meal. And I do mean, a daze-inducing, stuffed-to-the-brim, I'm-so-full-I'm-not-eating-for-the-next-week, mean meal.

 Menu: Steak, Butter Lemon Garlic Crab, 

Sweet Potato Casserole, Roasted Bone Marrow, 

and White Jasmin Rice.

Oh, plus brownies and vanilla bean ice cream for dessert :D.

We had an awesome time, talking about the most random things like Evian face spray bottles and the fact that you can buy crab fat in a jar in the Philippines. And the food was wiped out!

Thank you, H, D, and J, for joining us to celebrate lots of things, our new home, my birthday, and love, laughter and friendship.

Looking forward to many more yummy dinners :D Already thinking of more occasions to celebrate! Anniversaries, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, hmmm...

Hello, Whimsy! Holiday Rush

I have been so busy preparing packages and cards for the holidays I've barely had any time to blog! So I thought I'd just catch you up with the packages I've been preparing. Some of these are special orders, some are gifts for family friends. These are photos of the stuff I've been doing on my new design blog, hello, whimsy!

Special Delivery: Chocolate Bark Gift Box

A Gift Box Full of Chocolate Pockets!

Chocolate Bark Gift Tin

Full of Pretty Chocolate Pockets

Another Chocolate Gift Tin

Full of Chocolate Bark in Assorted Flavors

So that's what this busy elf has been up to! Working with lots of new chocolate bark flavors too, like White Chocolate & Macadamia, Milk Chocolate & Macadamia, and Dark Chocolate with Walnuts. And lots of candy making and gift-wrapping in the works!

Can you believe it's 14 days to Christmas?!

Awesome Oreo Cupcakes

Ok so I'm still working on the budgeting entry #2 and trying to figure out the best way to organize all the budgeting tips I've learned. But in the meantime, here's what I think are the best cupcakes I've made so far! I call them the Awesome Oreo Cupcakes.

I started off with the ever dependable Hershey's Chocolate Cake Recipe found here. But before pouring the batter into the baking cups, I carefully twisted some Oreos in half and placed a cookie with frosting in each baking cup. 

For the frosting, I used a tweaked version of the Cupcake Project's Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting found here. But instead of adding cocoa powder, I added the crushed other half of the Oreos (the ones with no creamy center) and added them to the mix. (We don't have a rolling pin so I had to make do by placing the Oreos in a zip bag and running them over with a bottle of wine.)

I still have to learn the fine art of piping frosting but luckily I was able to convince my husband to frost them for me. He used to be a pastry chef after all!

After the first taste, we both agreed that the cupcakes tasted very reminiscent of cookies and cream. The Oreo in the cupcake became a sort of fudgy crust and the frosting had chunks of cookies which added a nice crunch. Success!

Now if only we had cookies and cream ice cream to top them off with instead of frosting, then we could call them the Ultimate Oreo Cupcakes! Mmmmmm...

And now, back to regular programming.

Learning to Budget Entry #1

On my fourth month here, I'm thinking about the practical things I've learned. Especially about living in the US.

I think the biggest lessons I've learned in the practical aspect, has been about money. Budgeting has become an important part of my day. It's been a challenge but also it's also been fun in its own way because it forces me to be creative. Out of all the things I've learned, here are the ones that have made the biggest impact on our spending/saving habits.

1. The most important change we've made:

  

Eating at Home versus Eating Out

We have color coded chopping boards. Green is for vegetables.

We eat at home 90% of the time now. Wherein we used to eat out about 60% of the time because we felt that buying all those ingredients and cooking for two would be more expensive and more time and energy consuming than eating out. But I've learned how to plan out meals (I may not be as ambitious as those who plan a whole weeks worth of meals) but I roughly plan out most of our dinners a day or two in advance. I usually base this on what we have at hand or around something we want to eat (like seafood or pasta.) And when we cook, we usually make enough for a few meals so that we have a stash of food good for another lunch or two.

We've also slowly built up our ingredients collection so that it's easy for us to change up things in a pinch. Bread crumbs, spices and seasonings, soups, and marinades have become some of our kitchen staples. And of course, our trusty crock pot and rice cooker now have permanent places on the counter.

Maximizing our freezer is another habit that I've picked up. Whenever we buy meat, usually in "bulk" (not crazy huge portions as we're still only two) we portion them out into servings already before wrapping them in foil and placing them in storage zip bags. For example, we'll buy eight pieces of chicken and portion them out into two servings. So we'll pack four pieces of chicken per bag, with the contents and date stored written on the bag for easy reference.

If I want to cook chicken tomorrow, all I have to do is place one of the allocated storage bags in the fridge to defrost today. Aside from meat, we've also got bagels, yogurt, pizza, basil, and more stored in the freezer. Yes, most of the time it really is cheaper to buy in "bulk" than in smaller quantities. All you have to do is store your perishable items well.

Grilled Steak and Asparagus

Some of the best meals we've ever had, we cook ourselves. We've had barbecue pork ribs, dungeness crab with lemon butter sauce, truffle macaroni and cheese, grilled steak, and more, all at the fraction of what it would cost eaten at a restaurant. (Being married to a chef helps of course.)  Not that we don't eat out anymore, we still do occasionally (you can't beat Japanese restaurants or the variety of food at the farmer's market) but we've learned the value and pros of eating at home.

Dungeness Crab with Seasoned Butter Sauce

And I'm very glad that we have, because I am really enjoying cooking now.

Budgeting Entry #2 in the next post.

P.S. Can I just say that I've become a huge fan of frozen vegetables in steam packs? All you have to do is microwave them and season them yourself upon serving. And at $1.50 a bag, very affordable and pretty good (for vegetables. I'm not a big vegetable fan.)

Safeway Steam Pack Vegetable Mix

Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes! Yes, seriously!

After weeks of toying with the idea, I finally got around to making... Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes! 

When I tell people about Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes, most of them give me mixed reactions like "it sounds like a good idea in theory but I don't know...". Prompted by the fact that I've been super curious about them and that we had a lot of leftover buttercream frosting, I finally got around to trying my own version.

I started off with Hershey's Chocolate Cake Recipe (the same one you get off the box of Hershey's Cocoa Powder) because it's the chocolate cake recipe my chef husband swears by. But of course, our cocoa powder is Barry Callebaut, not Hershey's.

Here's the part that may make you raise some an eyebrow. After frying some 6 strips of bacon, I saved the drippings and substituted it for half of the vegetable oil required in the chocolate cake recipe. Then I chopped up the bacon and mixed it in the batter before baking. I ended up with over two dozen cupcakes (I knew I should have cut the recipe in half.) I don't know how Gerard and I are going to finish two dozen cupcakes!

After frosting the cupcakes with the leftover buttercream frosting, I added some caramelized bacon chips and a sprinkling of salt. Voila! Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes!

Cake-wise, I honestly think this may have been the best chocolate "cake" that I have ever made. It was soft, and moist, and it tasted so good, I could have eaten it without frosting! But the whole point of the bacon is to give you a "sweet and salty" experience all at once and I can say that this cupcake attained that goal. The cake and the frosting weren't overly sweet and the salt and bacon had just the right touch of saltiness. All in all, I'd say my experiment was a success. 

Now to find people to share it with because we're too tempted to finish all two dozen cupcakes by ourselves...

My Truffle Addiction

Gerard and I have been on the lookout for affordable truffle salt and we finally found some at the Sur la Table in Walnut Creek. During our last conversation, my friend Melissa had told me about truffle mac and cheese so that's what we decided to have for dinner since we didn't really feel like cooking anything too complicated anyway.

Now we're not big on making things from scratch, but making things better. So at Safeway, we found triple rich mac and cheese and my chef husband sauteed some mushrooms and prosciutto to mix in, which he topped off with bread crumbs and the truffle salt before popping in the oven for a few minutes.

So there you have it. Semi-home made truffle mac and cheese which didn't even make it to the next day. 

Warning: extremely addictive

The truffle salt added this really rich, unique flavor to the mac and cheese. The flavor is so addicting, I've taken to just having a taste of the salt every now and then. But I've stopped now that my lips feel dry and cracked from too much sodium. 

Visions of truffle salt enhanced dishes are swarming through my head... definitely can't wait to try it with some fresh french fries and popcorn too.

Easy Peasy Chocolate Nut Clusters

I love chocolate covered nuts. I love chocolate covered many things.

Today, I had a craving for nut clusters, something akin to my mom's favorite See's almonds in chocolate so I decided to make a few pieces. I mostly try to make things in small batches so they won't go to waste or so we won't tire of them too easily.

Ever since my husband taught me how to microwave melt chocolate (stop every thirty seconds and stir after) it's been super easy to make chocolate covered things.

For my nut clusters, I started with:

1/3 Cup Chopped Chocolate (I use Callebaut, of course. This time it was a dark chocolate.)

1/4 Cup Chopped Pistachios

And that's it!

I microwave melted the chocolate and it only took 2 30-second intervals to fully melt it so a minute total. For large quantities of chocolate I'd definitely go with the double boiler method but for this, the microwave worked perfectly.

I mixed in the chopped pistachios and spooned the mix onto my trusty Silpat atop a baking tray for three perfectly sized Chocolate Pistachio Clusters. (I told you I liked things in small quantities.) 

Then I put the tray in the fridge for a few minutes just to let the chocolate harden again.

There you go, super simple! For larger quantities, just double or triple the recipe, and you don't even need to be exact with the chocolate/nut ratio. You can even change up the nuts for variety, try peanuts, almonds, macadamia nuts whatever! Next time, I even want to make an almond nut cluster with dried cranberries.

I wish we had some of those individual candy liners to spoon the mixture on to but I'm definitely thinking to get some for when we make these as Christmas gifts. I'm determined to give home made chocolate gift boxes this year. 

So that was my chocolate craving. For now. I'll probably have another Chocolate Marshamallow Tart after dinner. 

Puff Pastry Possibilities

I've recently discovered puff pastry, so easy yet so versatile!

I wanted to do something different with leftovers aside from reheating and serving so this is where puff pastry first came into mind. I had some leftover pork belly, mushrooms, and gravy so I sauteed them all together to use as filling for these babies.

Since the pastries were already pre-made, all I had to do was throw these little flat discs of dough into the oven and watch them rise and turn a perfect shade of yummy, flaky, golden brown. I cut out the top and inside as instructed and filled the pastries with my pork filling, which did make for a very yummy lunch.

While putting away the box (I'd only baked half of the pastries) I came across their website, www.puffpastry.com, which lead me to a myriad of interesting and easy recipes. Since I was craving dessert (when am I NOT craving dessert) I checked out their dessert section and came across even more ingenious, easy, CHOCOLATE recipes. 

I really really wanted to make the chocolate ravioli, but I didn't have the right type of puff pastry or the heavy cream on hand. So I chose to make Chocolate Marshmallow Tarts instead as I already had everything in our pantry.

It was super easy, just spoon some chocolate pudding into the puff pastry, and top with marshmallows or marshmallow creme. The recipe calls for broiling to brown/melt the marshmallows but lucky for me, my husband has a creme brulee blow torch. Oh what fun!

There you have it. Super easy dessert in under five minutes (aside from baking the puff pastry.) And it was so filling, I only ate half of it. I don't know how often that happens, probably cause I was still full from lunch in the first place. Puff pastry is actually very filling!

I'll definitely have to try the Chocolate Ravioli recipe next time. Ooh the puff pastry possibilities...

In Search of French Pastries

I love that my husband loves me enough to give into my cravings.

For the last two weeks, I've had French pastries on the brain and I searched and searched all over the internet to find out where to get the yummy sandwich cookies called French Macaroons. (I think the last time I'd had these wonderfully delicate cookies were in Manila, from my friend Audrey's French pattiserie in Manila, Bizu.)

One place kept popping up: The Bouchon Bakery in Yountville, up in Napa. (Lucky for us, Napa is only 40 minutes or so away.) So one Sunday, without anything planned, I managed to convince him to spend an afternoon checking out Yountville. And while in the car, I read him reviews of this bakery. (Note: my husband is a chef/food scientist so good food is always an awesome topic of conversation.)

So after 40 minutes or so, we found ourselves in the quaint town of Yountville, a starting/ending point for many people who come to Napa for wine tasting and the like. 

I had already read about the bakery being small and the lines being long so that was no surprise. But the line moved quickly enough and my husband was pleased to discover that the bakery was beside the Bouchon, a Thomas Keller restaurant, that he would like for us to try one of these days. (My husband loves checking out restaurants to add to our list.)

But today, after five minutes of waiting in line, we came out with a croissant and three French macaroons. Husband had the croissant. I was more interested in the macaroons.

And they were exactly like how I'd expected them to be. The cookies were delicately crunchy on the outside, wonderfully sweet and chewy on the inside, and the creamy feeling in the middle was pure heaven. The whole thing just left an aroma of flavor in your month. 

In the case of my first cookie, it was blissful hazelnut. The other two I chose were chocolate and pistachio. And since the cookies were huge, (most French macaroons are near bite size, these were the size of whoopie pies!) I tucked the box into my purse and decided to save the rest for later.

The bakery had other yummy looking stuff on display too.

And these are the chocolate Bouchons, brownie bites baked with chocolate chips and dusted with confectioner's sugar but at $2 a pop, we decided maybe next time.

After the bakery, we decided to explore Yountville a bit and it was a pretty cute place. They had some gorgeous shops with glass art, jewelry, and fine art. And at the Bottega store (by the Bottega restaurant of Chef Chiarello Bottego), I had a taste of truffle salt that left me craving for more. I had visions of french fries and popcorn sprinkled with truffle salt... Yum. But truffles are another topic altogether.

We're definitely passing by the Bouchon Bakery again the next time we're in Napa. But at $3 a French Macaroon, that could become an expensive habit if done too often. Maybe just one cookie at a time?

But then again... didn't my husband study French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu? Doesn't that mean he could probably make me some of these at home? Hmmm.... let's go find a French macaroon recipe...

Napa Nights

Sixty something wines, awesome food stands, plus free entertainment, all added up to a great night with friends in St. Helena, Napa Valley.

On our last trip to St. Helena, I noticed this poster for a "street celebration" of sorts, held every first Friday of the month from August til October and I casually mentioned to Gerard that it might be fun to do. Dubbed "Cheers! St. Helena", I mentioned it to some friends too and we made plans to meet up in Napa Valley to check it out.

35 dollars gets you a bracelet, a plastic cup, AND unlimited wine tasting of wines from all over Napa Valley. Not a bad deal, if you ask me, especially if you're into wine. Sadly, I've been steering clear of it as I've been prone to migraines lately so I was after the FOOD! And I was not disappointed.

Check out my photos.

First tasting, a sweet Rose.

Gerard having another pour. Notice the fancy shmancy wine bus. 

You can book it for private tours.

Entertainment provided by The California Repercussions.

There was also a great acoustic band tucked away in a corner.

This is what I was after! Yummy Tri-Tip Steak Sandwich!

And the grilled corn was super sweet!

And of course, dessert! Lemon and Blood Orange Gelato. 

Nothing beats Gelatissimo though!

At the Cheer! St. Helena website I found out that you can get a season pass for $75. This would be worth it if we lived nearer the area but I think I'm ok with once or twice a year visit. 

The St. Helena Main Street is very pretty and they've got a lot of promising restaurants and cute stores. One of my favorites was Olivier Napa Valley, which sells gourmet oils and specialty food. I've been dying to buy a bottle of their truffle oil and the spinach artichoke dip we sampled was super yummy!

Photo from Oliviernapavalley.com

St. Helena is definitely on my list of places to take friends and guests too. I love quaint little main streets like theirs, which aren't too bustling but full of interesting finds.

All in all, my first Cheers! was a great evening and I'm definitely coming back to St. Helena for more.

Sunlights

Love the perks of my husband's job.

These are sooo addictive.

Deep Fried Goodness

I've been craving these for some time now and one lazy Sunday afternoon, with no other cake or yummy pastry around the house, it was time for...

Fried Oreos!

Now how disgustingly yummy does that sound? 

I've made them a few times before and they're super easy to make. I just dip the oreos in some pancake batter and fry them up. They were done pretty fast and gone pretty fast too!

It was the perfect finish to our Sunday brunch.

Speaking of a "perfect finish" I've been dying to buy this dessert cook book by Bill Yosses, executive pastry chef to the White House, and Melissa Clark.

photo from www.joyhog.com

From the reviews I've read, the recipes are great and easy to follow! Now I've just got to find a cheap copy somewhere. Ebay perhaps?