we made ice cream!

The title says it all! Eizel, D, and I made ice cream at H and Ni's place over the weekend. Our ever gracious hosts cooked up a storm for dinner - Kung Pao linguini, Italian style spaghetti, barbecue wings and so much more :) We did a few rounds of karaoke, then traded in the lousy singing (albeit fun!) for ice cream making.

We adapted the base recipe from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams but instead of making the salty caramel variant we intended to, we made avocado ice cream by adding avocado puree to the base recipe. It was fun experimenting and seeing the liquid being churned into ice cream in just less than half an hour! Of course, with food, what really matters is the taste, and I am happy to report that there was no reported case of stomachaches. Although the ice cream lacked a distinct avocado taste and had lumps of cream cheese, it was still ice cream - cold, sweet, and milky! Next time, we'll get rid of the lumps by whisking like mad and add more avocado puree. And maybe do away with the honey which we adapted from the roasted pumpkin ice cream recipe. I had fun though and am looking forward to trying the other recipes from the book.

Today, started the day off with a hearty breakfast of bagels and Ling Nam congee and apple cinnamon tea, then had lunch at Xin Tian Di (unlimited dimsum!), then walked the calories off at rockwell.

Headed off to BGC for dessert at Geisha - the matcha cheesecake is light and sweet. Got vanilla pudding and mango panna cotta for take out at Chez Karine. I wonder if the macarons are good. They have interesting flavors - passion fruit white chocolate and earl gray and salty caramel.

I am just starting to realize how much I ate today :|

Got a new book  by Monica McInerney, who became one of my favorite writers after I read The Alphabet Sisters.

Looking forward to a productive week with sunny weather.
The rains this past week were scary.

once in a blue moon

Blue cheese ice cream is an acquired taste. Finally got to stop by Sebastian's today and try out their cornflake milk ice cream, their take on the Momofuku cereal milk. It's sweet and creamy with cornflake bits. Breakfast delight in an ice cream cone :) Reminds me of Frosties. Also tried the salted butter caramel, which strikes a yummy balance between sweet and salty. This is also the flavor combination to Jettee's dark chocolate cookies with sea salt. I've been hearing good things about New York bakery Baked's sweet and salty cake as well. Will probably give the recipe a try once I get a better hang of baking.

Watched Tao, the drums show at RW today. Enjoyed the comedy parts and the numbers that combined the traditional koto with the tao drums. Saw in a Japanese drama before that there are some places in Tokyo that offer exercise via tao drums. It'd be great upper arm exercise.

Repetto has a store in Greenbelt. I've never heard of the brand until today but I always love good ballet flats. Prices are high-end though but they seem to be sturdy. Speaking of shoes, the rainy weather has made me want to buy colorful galoshes (fire engine red or deep blue with yellow stars) to keep my feet dry.

karaoke

Today,

I had lunch with D's family at Circles. There was an ongoing Italian theme and lunch was accompanied by a serenade of Italian songs. One of which was Benvenuto by Laura Pausini. Sharing the video below.

Walked around Glorietta a bit afterwards. Dahil sa Pagibig cast members were scheduled to have a finale mall tour later today. I wonder how the series will end.

Had dinner with Zel and D at Army Navy. Then, we headed off to an impromptu karaoke session at CenterStage :) Fun night.

Was browsing through the June issue of Australian Home Beautiful. In the issue, there's a bookshelf that's similar to the one below. I can't find the exact image of the one in the issue, but the one below is similar. Credits to tinyhousetalk. I love how they fit a cozy sleeping/reading corner above the bookshelf.

dole fruit crisps

I have a new favorite snack - Dole Fruit Crisp! (photo from the Dole website)

I read about it in an issue of Yummy magazine and have been wanting to try it. D and I went to Rustan's yesterday - grocery shopping or just walking around looking at stuff is a nice de-stressor - and voila, I found it! It's like apple pie in a cup. I like eating it warm so I heat it for a few seconds in the microwave. The crispy oat topping makes all the difference. I also a pineapple mango variant but I'm not a big fan of pineapples and mangoes with crisp. Apple pie all the way!

I finished reading Zel's Summer I Turned Trilogy by Jenny Han. I really liked the story and the characters. It's a really simple story about friendship and first love and family. I laughed and cried with Belly, the main character. It's been a while since I read a good young adult book. Refreshing read after all the dystopian themed novels coming out. Although I do love Delirium and Pandemonium. Currently reading Erin Morgenstern's "The Night Circus." First few chapters in but it seems like a captivating read.

I've been feeling a bit restless lately. I've been wanting to study Korean or review French or take a cooking class (Kitchen Revolution in Alabang!), or plan a trip abroad. I reviewed my French verbs two days back and was relieved that I still understood simple phrases hehe. Got inspired by Nini's recent trip to Europe. Imagine all that culture and all those languages! It'd be a dream come true to actually be in France and converse in French :)

I hope to get some more work done tomorrow, without all the phone calls and client visits. I'm up to my head in documentation backlog :(

Tried Geisha with D's family two weekends back. I liked the restaurant. Food's a bit pricey but the entrees are interesting. Tried the tuna sashimi with watermelon and salmon sashimi with pears. Liked the watermelon combo better. I also found adding julienned apple slices to sandwiches gives the sandwich a wonderful crunch and refreshing sweetness. Been thinking of how to add more fruit to regular dishes. I think grapes would work just as well in sandwiches. Going back to Geisha, the tea choices are interesting, and they have an interesting tea brewer. Just pour hot water over the tea leaves, time the tea leaves soaking time with an hourglass (depending on how strong or mild you like your tea), simply place the brewer on top of a tea cup, and the tea flows out leaving the leaves in the brewer. Magic :) I'd go back to Geisha for the tea and the salmon with ponzu and the edamame risotto.

I've been thinking of making vegetarian tacos/burritos. Bought chili beans and vegetarian ground beef (for making burgers). All I need now is to find time to use them to whip up something...edible enough hehe.

food fest

I ate sooo much today.
Resumed my tutor tasks today. The kids have both grown up! Murray's voice is changing. And Jhanna has braces! Glad they still remember their Japanese :)

Had lunch at Nolita. Big pizzas! Prices are a bit high end but the pizzas, served piping hot, are yummy! Tried the fried peanut butter and sandwich, but liked Borough's Elvis better. Watermelon mojito drink was refreshing. The place gives off the same vibe as Borough. It's a great place to grab a cola and a slice of pizza, just as if you were in New York.

We passed by Cake Club to schedule cake pick up care of DealGrocer. The place has a fancy feel to it, though it'd be nice to sit here late afternoon for a cup of coffee and ensaymada.

D and I have both heard a lot about Jamba Juice so we decided to try it out. We had the berry banana smoothie. Not really a big fan of smoothies. They do use fresh fruit though so it's a healthier alternative to milk tea.

For dinner, we went to Tita Moning with Zel. Again, this dinner was care of DealGrocer. We were so stuffed from the three-course dinner. Dinner at Tita Moning's is an interesting experience and the food is good too. It's Filipino food, served fancier. Not your typical Barrio Fiesta fare.

I've been trying to cope with work these past two weeks. I think I'm getting used to it though my time management sucks.

Got to talk to Nini on skype today :) Best moment of the day.

Marriage

Reposting from insertemotionhere

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PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
by Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn’t want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn’t fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering days and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other’s presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other’s foibles.

It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed.

It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other’s laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility.

One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.

If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can’t accept, you will inevitably come to grief.

Look at the way he/she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.

There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed.

We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presences, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom. Endlessly.

worries

I tend to worry about things that will happen. And i stress about those possible things that I end up doing less :-/

Things are a bit...challenging...these days. Praying gives me strength.

Tried Gino's brick oven pizza with D, Ni, H, and Zel today. We had the bianca verde and margherita pizzas. I liked the dough. It could give Papa John's dough a run for its money. Yummy chewiness :)http://books-and-coffee-lover.tumblr.com/post/18722240107

simplicity

Got to spend some time with parents today. Met up with them after violin lessons and had dinner at Oki Oki. Japanese curry is my all-time favorite comfort food. It's so easy to make on your own too. Just combine potatoes, carrots, and onions in a pan. Add one to two cubes of store-bought Japanese curry. Just add a steaming plate of hot rice and you're all set.

Shopped a bit with my mom. Got a pair of metallic Yosi Samra ballerina flats. They're quite comfortable and travel-friendly as they fold up thus taking up less space. Plus, they're available in many styles and colors.

We went home with three boxes of Royce chocolate potato chips and three boxes of Cinnabon rolls, thanks to credit card promos :)

It was a quiet uneventful evening, but I am thankful for its simplicity. I appreciate the small acts that make my parents who they are, be it shoe shopping or claiming freebies from credit card promos. I feel thankful and blessed that I have a good family. It makes it easier to get through tough times.