Category Archives: Yum Factor

Dear Diary, Yum Factor

I am on a diet

Ah, Goolai salad: you are one piece of veggie heaven in a plastic container. ♥ I just had a Goolai salad for dinner, and it was awesomely delicious. The creamy dressing is not really a good choice, but it was the only salad left there, so I couldn’t really pick anything else. I wish it was more accessible to me, though, but not always eating would stop me from getting sick of it too fast.

Don’t you like it when you know you ate healthy in one meal? :)

On another note, my mom started doing the General Motors diet starting Wednesday last week. General Motors diet, or the GM Diet, is this seven day diet where you eat specific types of food on each day:

Day One
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons the first day. Especially watermelon and a loupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing three lbs. on first day are very good.

Day Two
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large baked potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.

Day Three
A mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet. No potatoes today.

Day Four
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. This will be combined with the special soup which may be eaten in limited quantities.

Day Five
Today is feast day. You will eat beef and tomatoes. Eat two 10 oz. portions of lean beef. Hamburger is OK. Combine this with six whole tomatoes. On day five you must increase your water intake by one quart. This is to cleanse your system of the uric acid you will be producing.

Day Six
Beef and vegetables. Today you may eat an unlimited amount of beef and vegetables. Eat to your hearts content.

Day Seven
Today your food intake will consist of brown rice, fruit juices and all the vegetables you care to consume.

There are other details in the diet, which you can read from this page, like the wonder soup, and something about alcohol and what it does to your body and such. It’s made to be some kind of cleansing diet, to help you eat right, and get this: it’s designed to make you lose 10-17lbs in a week.

Ten to seventeen pounds. In a week. That’s almost as much weight loss you’d get if you drink weight loss pills, based on this phosphacore review I read.

The biggest weight loss I’ve had in the past six months I’ve been in the gym was 3lbs in a week, and about 5lbs of body fat, and that’s after a whole lot of physical activity and careful diet. I can’t even dream of losing that much weight in a week.

So why not follow it, right? Well, call me a gym junkie and a purist, but I’d really rather stick to my own diet rather than do something like this. I thought of following this diet early 2009 after a friend told me about it, but I loved food too much to do something like this, and I really don’t believe any diet that tells you you could lose weight without exercise. Plus isn’t losing too much weight in a week dangerous or something? I hear the healthy goal is 2lbs a week, right?

So yeah, maybe I am a purist. The diet I follow right now is based on the servings that my nutritionist made for me when I started out at Fitness First, which consists of approximately:

Continue reading I am on a diet →

Big, Fun and Scary Things, Dear Diary, Yum Factor

Pan De .

Day 11First: thanks to Marvs for the topic of today’s entry.

Second: If you’re kind of squeamish, feel free to skip this entry.

So today my boss brought some bread from the nearby bakery for us at work. He lives in Marikina, and there’s an abundance of bakeries where they live. He even used to bring us this gigantic pan de sal that looked like the kind of bread that Jesus and his disciples ate back in Jerusalem. Seriously. One time when he brings one again I’ll take a picture.

So anyway, he bought us this bread:

Photo from kapeathopia.wordpress.com
Photo from kapeathopia.wordpress.com

I know everyone who grew up in the 90’s or 80’s (or even earlier) knows this bread. I’m sure you’ve seen this at one point at your small bakeries, and has eaten them at some point, too.

Anyway (again), my boss brought some of this earlier at the request of Earl (I think) and that got all of us munching happily on the bread. I wondered if the red part has some flavor, and apparently there was, but because I’m not much of a cook, I can’t explain that.

But that’s not the point. The point was, at some point during the afternoon, some of us got wondering what this bread was called. I knew it was called something weird, true to the Pinoy style, but I couldn’t remember what it is. Apparently, my teammate Grace knows, but she was keeping mum because it’s really not someone with a queasy stomach would want to know.

Then I asked Marvs and Cors, who I was chatting with earlier, and then Marvs gave me the answer:

Pan de regla.

To those who don’t know what regla means (and again, I warn those people who have queasy stomachs, because you may be grossed out after this), it’s menstrual blood. As in period (hence the title of the post, in case you didn’t get it). To quote (from the source of the photo):

Why Pan de Regla, you asked? Look closely. Red coloring right smack in the middle of bread that looks like a female sanitary napkin.

Trust Filipinos to have a weird sense of humor and call it like this. The real name of this bread is kalihim (loose translation: secretary). The bread is sweet and the red part is moist and sweet, almost like monggo, but not quite (told you I’m bad with flavors).

…I just realized my choice of words may not be right.

Oh. I think that’s the reason why I’ve been wanting to throw up ever since this afternoon. :-& Ugh.

But don’t get me wrong, this bread is good. Classic Pinoy afternoon snack, up in the line of spanish bread (yum yum). But I think I’ll try to forget the name of this one the next time I eat it. Maybe I dwelt on it too much.

11/30.

Yum Factor

Blueberry Cheesecake

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Blueberry CheesecakeLast August, a dear friend of mine celebrated her birthday and I promised that I would bake her favorite on her birthday, Blueberry Cheesecake. Incidentally, it was in one of my baking goals for this year, so it’s just convenient that I’d be able to bake it and I can give it as a present for a friend on her birthday (and possibly on Christmas too).

Looking around online, I tried to find the easiest cheesecake recipe I can find and I got this Blueberry Cheesecake recipe from one of Noemi‘s blogs. It seemed easy enough, so I decided to stock up the ingredients and cook it. My mom is really supportive of my baking endeavors, so she readily bought the ingredients for me.

Who knew ingredients for Blueberry Cheesecake can be so expensive?

Anyway, I’ve plurked about this while I was cooking it (too lazy to find the actual Plurk to link — will do tomorrow) but the photo on the left is the actual thing I cooked. Yum yum, it still makes me hungry. :D

Some notes on this:

  • As Noemi mentioned, it’s not too sweet. I like it that way, as the blueberry really gives its sweetness.
  • The ones I cooked are thinner than the usual cheesecakes since I used a thinner pan. I ended up having two thin cheesecakes instead of one. No one’s complaining. :P
  • Blueberry is yummy. :D So is the cheese part of the cake after it has been baked. I can’t stop nibbling on it — I personally think I can eat a cheesecake plain. :P
  • I personally think the walnut is optional, as it gives kind of a weird taste with the crust. I tried grinding it on the second try, but it’s taste is really distinct that it turns off some people. Next time I’ll try cooking it without the walnut in the crust.

Yummy dessert, especially after it has been chilled. :D I’d definitely cook this again, and next time try it with different toppings. I think this wouldn’t be good with those on diet or on weight loss pills, but I can use a lighter kind of cream cheese (those with less fat) so it will be a bit less guilty. :P

Next on the list! This cheesecake. Or an apple pie. Or a double layered chocolate cake! Yum!

Yum Factor

Dairy Queen's Yule Flip Peppermint Chip

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One of the things I like about working in Eastwood (besides that I live nearby) is the fact that there is a Dairy Queen restaurant (should it even be called a restaurant?) near the office. I discovered it when I was frequenting this area during my application/interview times and my brother and I bought some Blizzards. When I was younger, there used to be a Dairy Queen stall in the mall near where we live, and we used to buy Blizzards there all the time — my favorite being M&M’s and Butterfinger. I remember these Blizzards being much larger than it is now…but that’s not my point.

It’s suffice to say that I love ice cream, ergo, I love Dairy Queen. During my second week at work, Grace and I managed to go to Dairy Queen about four times during that week. Brownie Temptation Blizzard = yum. Dairy Queen = happy food. :9

So earlier this week, I was really stressed with some of the work I had to do, so I deemed myself worthy of a Blizzard. When I got to Dairy Queen, I saw the big new sign of their Blizzard of the Month. I told myself I’d get one once the entire thing is over, and now it’s over, I finally got the chance to try…

Yule Flip Peppermint Chip

According to the website:

Peppermint candy pieces and chocolate chunks, blended with creamy vanilla soft serve. Try one “Yule” love it!

The Peppermint Chip Blizzard is their Christmas Blizzard, and from the looks of it…it does look Christmas-sy, being red and all. Just as what the description says, it contains their creamy vanilla soft serve ice cream, mixed with chocolate chunks and peppermint candy pieces. The candy gives the ice cream a good crunch that nuts and crispies could. The chocolate gives it extra texture from the rough candy. I think they also put some peppermint flavor on the ice cream, hence the red coloring.
It’s not too sweet, thankfully. But it does have a weird taste in the mouth. At first I thought it tasted like medicine, but I realized it was only the peppermint. Eh? It’s not unpleasant…in fact, you’d get used to the taste after a few spoonfuls. It’s just very…cold. Okay, that’s a silly description given that it’s ice cream. But seriously, the peppermint gives the dessert even more coolness — I half expected to get brain freeze after eating the 12oz cup.

All in all, the Yule Flip Peppermint Chip Blizzard is an okay treat. It’s not a favorite, but it’s nice to eat it once in a while. If you’re not fond of mint, then I don’t think you’d enjoy this. ^^;

This Blizzard is available at all Dairy Queens for the Christmas season I think, starting at P99 for a 12oz cup (it’s not available for 9oz, so no small treats. You could share, though :D).

Ahh. This is enough Dairy Queen for now. I’m going to need Miracle burn after all the dairy I consumed this week. Ergh. :-s

Yum Factor

Food Trips

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It’s way past the time it should be dinner time, but until now we don’t have anything to eat just yet. Ever since my mom went to Saipan, our menu at home has been limited to my cooking skills. I’m not always the healthiest cook mostly because of the limited time and knowledge for cooking (ask me to bake, then that’s a different story :P). What my brother and I usually have at home is something fast, easy to cook and prepare (and that sounds exactly like fastfood).

But let me just say, I am so sick of eating the same kind of food every day. Argh. Fastfood ain’t fun to eat everyday, not to mention unhealthy. I miss being able to eat different kinds of lutong bahay ((Read: home-cooked food)) that my mom cooks. I miss having to smell different kinds of smell everytime I go home, and being surprised by the food that she cooks. Hay, I really need to learn how to cook proper meals soon, and actually cook them.

So now that we’re talking about food, here are some of the food I’m craving for right now. Eat your heart out!

  1. Crispy fried tilapia – as in very, very crispy, like when I bite I can hear its crispiness. Yum yum. That, with lots of tomatoes, rice and some patis (fish sauce).
  2. Crispy fried galunggong – Yum yum yum.
  3. Daing na bangus. Same as above. :)
  4. Isaw. So unhealthy, but so good especially with lots and lots of spicy vinegar. Enough said.
  5. Fried liempo – just the way my mom used to cook it.
  6. Chicken with mushroom sauce – my brother and I tried to cook this once, but the chicken wasn’t all good anymore, so it tasted a bit too yucky already. Boo.
  7. Scrambled eggs and tuna – in short, torta. I’m gonna cook this one tomorrow, actually. :P The spicier the tuna, the better. :)
  8. My mom’s macaroni and squash soup – my favorite sick day meal. It’s got no meat, just tofu, squash, macaroni and lots of oregano. :)
  9. Pancit Malabon – I want it full of flavor. :) With lots of hard boiled eggs. Haha. There’s a Pancit Malabon booth at Eastwood, must check that out.
  10. Tapsilog – I want the classic one, not the ones I can buy at Eastwood. Something ala Vivian’s Tapsilog in Marikina. =9 Big chunks of tapa, garlicky rice and sunny-side up eggs.
  11. Sinigang na bangus – milkfish stewed with different kinds of vegetables with a sour tamarind flavor.
  12. Sinigang na hipon – same as above, only shrimp. :) Better be careful with the allergies, though. :D
  13. A nice, fresh and healthy salad. We usually have our own salad bars at home and my mom usually puts different kinds of stuff in it: grapes, ripe mangoes, nuts, pomelo. Mix that together with the other usual salad stuff (lettuce, tomato, carrots, hard boiled eggs, etc) drizzled with natural Ceasar Salad dressing. Yummeh.
  14. Kwek-kwek. Translation: quail eggs covered with orange colored flour. It’s not exactly the healthiest kind of food, but it’s good to eat every once in a while. :) Mike! Kwek-kwek break?
  15. This has to be the weirdest, but I’m so craving for Chocnut.
    .

Argh, now I am even hungrier. Time to raid the kitchen and get cooking. Hmm. I guess I’ll just go cook the hotdogs right now for dinner. Tomorrow I shall cook again for lunch, and again it’s something fried. But I swear to myself that I’m going to find some veggies from whatever garden of life there is in Eastwood just so I can eat a bit healthier. *determined nod*

Yum Factor

Bloggers Taste Asia

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After spending four years in DLSU for college, one of the important things I have learned is this: food is not cheap. Yes, even for the stereotyped “rich Lasalistas”, we scrimp on food. The cheapest food we can get around the premises is around P25-P30, I think? But that still isn’t cheap, as compared to say, UP. So whenever there’s some kind of event — be it college week, YFC event, org event or university event — we’re all on the lookout for free food. We’re not patay gutom ((Okay, how do I translate this? Dead hungry?)), mind you, we can just be really stingy on food since everything else around us costs a lot.

And besides, a lot of orgs give out free food during their activities. Even if the food is basically the same, it’s still free lunch. :P

But that’s not the point; I just want to share that so I can segue to the event that Aileen is plugging (and yes, I know it’s not a smooth segue :p). Event details are as follows:

WHO: Pinoy Bloggers
WHAT: SM Hypermart invites Bloggers to get a “Taste of Asia”
WHERE: Taste Asia restaurant (beside SM Hypermart) in SM Mall of Asia
WHEN: July 3, 2007 (Tuesday), 7:30PM

Friends, this is free food! Not only that, you’ll get to meet fellow bloggers as well! Come one, come all!…

…wait, it’s only for the first 100 active bloggers who sign up pala. To sign up, post a comment on Aileen’s entry or on any of the coordinator’s blogs that can be found in the same entry (each coordinator leads a category, I think, like Yuga‘s looking for 10 Tech bloggers and Jomar‘s looking for 10 “Religious” Bloggers).

And to those bloggers who I owe something, like Pierre (the CDs) and Jun (some baked goodies, am I right?), please remind me about it the weekend before the event — I’m bound to forget it. ^^;

See you there!

Yum Factor

Easy Apple Crisp

As mentioned in my Friday’s Feast, I embarked in another “culinary” endeavor this weekend. Ever since baking the Chocolate Revel Bars a month ago, I started feeling the need to bake again like I did back in high school. So now I’m easing myself into the baking slowly, partly because I don’t have time and partly because baked goodies means more flabs coming in. So I’m doing it one weekend at a time.

Apple CrispLast weekend I cooked some Coconut Macaroons which didn’t really turn out as yummy as I thought it would be (the almond extract made it taste too much like it had liquor in it), and Monday found me looking for recipes for an apple pie because it’s one of my dreams to bake a perfect apple pie (along with the perfect double layer chocolate cake). The recipe search brought me to this: Easy Apple Crisp. The recipe looked easy and a lot of people were raving about it in the website, so I copied it and was all set to make it for the weekend. :)

I modified the recipe a bit from the original one, based on the suggestions of the commenters. Here we go:

EASY APPLE CRISP

7 small apples – peeled, cored and sliced
1 cup water
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, melted

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 9×13 inch baking dish.
  2. Arrange apples in an even layer in the baking dish. Sprinkle 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp nutmeg over apples.
  3. Put 1 tsp vanilla in 1 cup water and pour over apples.
  4. In a separate bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon and butter. Stir until well blended, mixture will be crumbly. Sprinkle mixture over apples, covering hem.
  5. Bake in oven for 50-55 minutes.

Serve warm or cold with whipped cream or ice cream. Makes 12 servings.

Apple Crisp with Ice Cream

Some notes on this creation:

  • The pre-baking mixture looks the same with the post-baked. The usual “stick a toothpick in the middle of the batter to see if it’s clean” or “wait until it is golden brown” is not applicable since the toothpick will not come out clean and the mixture on top does not turn into golden brown after. The difference between the baked and not baked product is that the apple has carmelized (is that the right term?) and you can see some goo on the sides from the heat when it’s baked. :) Slicing it through, you’ll see semi-translucent apples with lots of apple gooey-ness inside. Yum.
  • This really tastes yummier with ice cream (see picture — sorry it’s blurry; Captain Tal took it. That’s cookies and cream flavored ice cream). Of course, it’s a lot sweeter, so if you plan to make this and serve with ice cream, lessen the sugar to 3/4 cup. Yes, putting ice cream or whipped cream on it, it’s just become a lot fattening. :P
  • The one I made is quite thin, because I used a big pan to cook it. A smaller pan would make it thicker, or add more apples. :P
  • Speaking of apples, I think different kinds of apples would give a different taste to this. Try using green apples or the big ones (is that Fuji apples?) to see how it would taste like.
  • Other variations in the recipe include: putting lemon juice on apples, mixing oats with the flour mixture and sprinkling nuts on top.

Yes, it’s yummy! I’ll be serving it in our SFC household later. :) I’ll do some experimenting with it in the next few weeks when I have the chance to get some apples.  Next up on the baking list: chocolate chip cookies! Yum. :9

Say Cheese!, Yum Factor

Chocolate Revel Bars

Chocolate Revel Bars Back in sophomore year in college, one of our favorite snacks is this yummy chocolate revel bars we buy for Php 25.00 each at the now defunct Coffee Club. Sometimes we’d buy two of those and enjoy the yummy chewy chocolatey goodness of it. Since the coffee shop closed within a year or so, the only way we could get our revel bar fix is whenever there’s a bazaar in our college and someone decides to sell them.

Last night, my mom asked me to look for chocolate revel bar recipes because she planned to bake some to bring for their outing. She was too tired to bake so the recipe was untouched. This afternoon, I was left alone at home (mom has a swimming thing and my brother has work) and I have nothing much to do except watch CSI:NY Season 3 and more TV. So what did I do? Bake. :P

Just a little backgrounder, I used to bake a lot when I was in high school, particularly the summer before sophomore year. I bake every single afternoon — cookies, cakes, brownies (the most popular one), and whatever I could cook given the ingredients we have at home. My mom liked it, and that started her baking, which started my brother’s baking/cooking too.

Anyway, so this afternoon, I decided to get busy in the kitchen and get going on those chocolate revel bars. :) The picture above is the finished product, I’m done eating that slice, and bias aside: it’s so good. :P Here’s the recipe I used, from AllRecipes.com:

Continue reading Chocolate Revel Bars →

Say Cheese!, Yum Factor

Hello, Kitchen

I cooked dinner tonight! :)

I’m not as good a cook as my brother is (who took culinary classes a year ago) so mostly all the cooking at home is done by my mom and my brother. I’m more of a baking person, actually, but that’s for another post. I can and like to cook, but I don’t cook…and believe me, that has gotten me into trouble. ^^; I know all about those cooking terms because I like watching shows on the Lifestyle channel…but to actually cook? Nah, no thanks.

Anyway, on our way home from Galleria today, my mom and I were talking about dinner and then she told me we’d just eat dinner at Sta. Lucia or something because she still has to go there. My feet, which has been on the go for the past few days, were already complaining and then my mom said that if I want I could go home already and then she suggested that I should cook dinner tonight.

Again, I don’t cook…but then again, why not?

So I went home ahead of her, and got set to work. I looked for some recipes online but I ended up making my own because I thought we didn’t have all the ingredients. An hour later…I got this:

Tuna Spaghetti

I know it doesn’t look that good on the picture; my camera’s not good with food photography, but believe me, it’s good! It’s tuna spaghetti sauce and spinach pasta plus garlic toast. :) It looks so Chrismas-y. Haha. Yum yum. :D

Yay for my first successfully cooked dinner. Maybe next time, I’ll do it again. I’ll have to learn how to make better (and healthy) meals, especially if my mom goes to Saipan again, that way my brother and I can still have non-fast food meals. :D

If you want to know how I made that, post a comment and I’ll email you the recipe. It’s sweet and sour with yummy bits of stewed tomato and tuna, and the bread makes an excellent companion for the pasta. :D Wohoo, my days watching the Lifestyle Channel is not wasted after all!