Long Weekend Day 2: Glutinous Rice Balls

One of my favorite frozen yogurt toppings is mochi. This sweet, chewy treat compliments the creamy tartness of yogurt. You could say I'm a mochi fan. So when I found a magazine recipe for mochi, I was completely won over. Never mind that its a Filipino recipe and the type of mochi that I like are Japanese almond-scented ones. For weeks, I read and re-read the recipe and imagined myself chewing on a piece of home made mochi at home. 

Never mind that I never handled galapong before or that I don't even like beans. I wanted to make mochi filled with sweet bean paste, like the one in the picture above. I even spent the whole afternoon shelling red beans; a very long process involving not only one cup, like the recipe called for, but rather two, since apparently dried monggo beans expand when soaked overnight. My fingers are still smarting from squeezing out shelled beans from their peel. At the end of a long journey which took most of my free time, I ended up with these: 

Long Weekend Day 1: Chocolate Truffles

It's a known fact that I love chocolates, cream cheese and cocoa powder. Why not have all three in one bite? This is precisely the reason why I created these cocoa powder coated chocolate truffles - I did not exactly invent the recipe, I borrowed a recipe from a magazine for truffle acorns and ended up with these creamy, powdery chocolate treats. Not bad, not at all.

How could the one food that looks like poop end up to be the best tasting food ever invented?

Today was my second attempt at making chocolate truffles; I was confident enough to try making three kinds of them: dark chocolate, white chocolate and milk chocolate. My first attempt was the milk chocolate kind, using Philadelphia cream cheese and Ricoa Easy-Melt baking chocolate chips (semi-sweet milk chocolates). So far, so good: by the time Carlo had recovered from a recent bout of stomach flu (another story) he and I were literally at each other's necks for dibs on the chocolate truffles chilling in the fridge. 

Filipino: Language of the Learned

Because I did not want to promote the article itself, I attribute this blog post to a link I found posted by a Facebook friend: AdMU student's essay on Filipino language raises online firestorm

Here's my two-cents on the issue:

For while Filipino may be the language of identity, it is the language of the streets. It might have the capacity to be the language of learning, but it is not the language of the learned.

In the same way that there's cockney English and pidgin Latin, there's Filipino spoken on the streets: salitang balbal. This is far removed from beautifully spoken Filipino, the Filipino language of the learned. Mr. Soriano has probably never read great literary masterpieces written in Filipino. His knowledge of the Filipino language is a slap in the face for Amado V. Hernandez, Lualhati Bautista and all of us who appreciate the beauty of Filipino as our native language.

Surprise, Surprise!

I can't believe how time flies! Last time I posted on this blog, I was twenty five and unmarried. Now I am twenty six and unbelievably happy. It's a puzzle how I ended up this way, I think its a combination of events that led up to my current generally happy disposition. As an update, and because they paint a thousand words, here are some of my life's significant events in the past months, in pictures:

I tied the knot with my sweetie of nine years in a gorgeous church wedding last December. If I were to do it over and over again - this whole wedding business, I would always get married to the same person and in exactly the same way. :-)

A few months later, we spent a week in Coron, Palawan, a piece of paradise on Earth, if I say so myself. I will not trade vacationing in our own Coron with traveling to Europe or the U.S. or whichever popular tourist destination. I guess its just my kind of honey moon place. Now I can tell anyone from anywhere that I've visited the most beautiful place in my country - or the whole world, for that matter.

Some of the happy trips I've gone to during the year include an office trip to Davao and a trip with college friends to Bataan. I feel so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life!

Ala-Saturday afternoon teenage flick series

Let's do it! Taken at Pearl Farm, Davao

Guess What?

A total of 52 years' worth of friendship is in this picture. Seriously.

Friendship with Abby = 17 years
Friendship with Arvin = 17 years
Friendship with EJ = 18 years (debut age!)

Grand total = 52 years!

Yes, I am proud to still be friends with those who have known me when I was eight. They will be helping me with wedding chores, etcetera, etcetera. Which means we necessarily have to be friends for decades after. And our children, and children's children should be friends too. That's a sweet yet creepy thought... (for reasons I can't explain... LOL!)

Alumni Homecoming

I am not really familiar with the standards set by whoever as to whenever an alumni reunion must be held. Yesterday, however, we had a college alumni homecoming. It was nice seeing old faces again, friendlier albeit older (and hopefully, wiser) faces. Unlike other reunions, I guess the KC Reunion was a much friendlier affair because no matter how we turned out, there was a general atmosphere of supportive-ness. I was also surprised at the number of fellow Kalayistas taking up law! A few more Kalayaan graduates to enter law school and I'll start thinking about setting up a law students' support group. LOL As if reading cases won't be enough work! Here are some of our pictures:

The triumverate is complete! Also, Carlo looks like Tracy in this shot.

 

Our requisite photo with the school founders

Old friends. Posing outside and not knowingly, right in front if the school's new van!

Bonus: we got free coffee from Vaj! He's setting up a business of roasting coffee and has given away samples at the event. No wonder Vaj was such a wonderful group mate in our Marketing classes. He's really planning on being an entrepreneur. I hope I will be as successful in my plans of becoming a business lawyer. =)

Free coffee! I am sucker for freebies, you know.

Next week, me and my college sweetheart will be tying the knot. I guess our story didn't end with our college graduation. Neither will our stories with our college friends. =)

Masquerade Party

Ho hum. I've been busy (and stressed) from all the preparations I have to go through for the wedding (in six days... yikes!) and have been neglecting my personal blog. I feel like hurling through the nearest wall any wedding magazine I see, even when only a few months ago I hungrily and dreamily search each and every page of The Wedding Digest and Martha Stewart Weddings. 

At least, in the last two days, my last weekend of being unmarried, I was able to do some non-wedding-related stuff. Our office Christmas party held last Friday is the most beautiful and opulent office event I've been to so far. I wore an old dress of my sister's, since I wanted to save every peso I have for incidental wedding expenses, even when my mask and jewelry were not exactly cheap. Even when I didn't win the Best Costume award, at least I got to doll myself up. (I'm the simple, classic, button-down shirt, straight skirt and black pumps girl, with only lip gloss on.) Here's a masqueraded me with a cocktail dress on, sans makeup. (One of these days I am truly learning makeup skills, grrr!)

A few pics of my office mates who have turned into faeries and princesses and angels and empresses for the night:

Our Best in Costume awardee: