I have decided to post some recipes that I know are delicious and recipes that we have done in our culinary class :)
And for now, here is a simple recipe for potato chowder!
Ingredients:
85 gms. Bacon
125 gms. Onion (Medium diced)
30 gms. Celery (Medium diced; same as your onions)
42 gms. Flour
42 gms. Butter
1 liter Chicken Stock (you can use chicken cubes if you like ^^)
1/2 kg. Potato (I prefer buying larger ones so that it would be easy to slice into medium diced)
500 mL. Hot milk (just hot not boiling!)
85 mL. Hot Cream (you can use the famous All-Purpose Cream and just heat it up)
Salt
Pepper
Chopped Parsley for garnish
Procedure:
1. Cut the bacon into fine dice then render it in a stock pot. (you can place few drops of oil first before putting the bacon or just putting in on the stock pot without oil ,and just wait for its own oil/fats to come out, but don't forget to keep stirring so that it won't stick on the pot)
2. Add the diced onion and celery. Cook in the fat (of the bacon) over moderate heat until nearly tender or translucent. DO NOT brown.
3. Add the butter THEN the flour. Stir into the fat mixture to form a roux(roo) Cook the roux slowly for 4-5 minutes, but do not let it brown. (In other words, once you put the butter and flour you must keep on stirring it until it forms a ball like type of mixture)
4. Using a wire whisk, slowly stir in the chicken stock then bring it to a boil while stirring constantly, to make sure that the liquid is smooth and that there are no lumps.
5. Add the potatoes and let it simmer until the vegetables are tender (particularly the potatoes, of course ^^)
6. Stir in the hot milk and hot cream.
7. Season it with salt and pepper to taste.
8. After plating it, top with chopped parsley for garnish.
9. And voila! you made you and your family and friends a yummy soup that can beat those winter blues away..
Other options:
- You can add carrots to make it more warming in appearance and for it to taste better.
- You can replace potato with seafoods and there you have a simple seafood chowder. ^^
- You could add some toasted bread or store-bought croutons.
This recipe was prepared by our Head Chef - Chef Roque ^^ There are more recipes to come... :D
take care and God bless! 
Well, after a week of school, I sure do have a lot of things to do but here's an update for you guys ^.^Last last Sunday was my 18th birthday, and we celebrated it at Yakimix (a buffet restaurant/ shabu2 with grill kind of Japanese/ Korean restaurant) and I must really admit that I HATED IT! The service was not that good and the food was not-so-great!!! You see, my brother got some noodles from the buffet station and when he sat down and gave it to my sister-in-law, my sister-in-law saw a huge cockroach in it!!!As in a whole one... GOSH!!! so much for their reputation! It was not only that, as my brother called one of their waitresses and pointed to the plate without uttering any word, the waitress told my brother that "Sir, we do not allow leftovers.".. My brother became so mad at that time, because it wasn't about the leftover but about the cockroach and so what the waitress did was she took the plate and left without saying sorry.. And the rest is history! In short, we just really had a bad experience and maybe that is the top reason why we don't want to ever step foot on that establishment ever again... BUT another thing that I did not like about the establishment was that the food choices were quite few.. there were a lot of sushi, though I consider it being in just one group which is "SUSHI".. ... And their choices for cook foods were just around 8... again... I just really did not like my experience there... If you would like to have your own experience or make reservation at Yakimix, here are their contact numbers: +632-3878120 / 632-3878112. And if you like to read a good review about them here is a link that might help: http://www.metrorestoreview.com/reviews/2009/03/10/yakimix/Aside from that, I fell/"nadapa" during my birthday and it really hurt! My left foot even got swollen.. (sad) but it's better now ^^After that day, it was time to go back to school and go under the stress of being a student... All that I can say is that school is bittersweet and all... good and bad things happen and I know that those things are just part of life...So let's fast forward to Saturday.. ^^ Last Saturday was one of the best days of my life. My high school friends(Jeannine, jenny, jia lu, jerome, marianne, maribelle, angellyn and allister) and I went to Robinsons Place Manila to celebrate my 18th birthday as well as Jerome's birthday the day before... I thank God because even though it was the Feast of the Black Nazarene, we did not have any problem in our transportation (LRT1) going to and coming from Robinsons, the train was even empty on our way to the mall ^^...Whenever it is my birthday, I want to make it a tradition that my friends go out and I treat them lunch or dinner or anything that I can afford! I decided to treat them at Gumbo this year :D! But before that, we first watched a movie and it sure was a great movie - Alvin and The Chipmunks (The Squeakel) - though it was too short and we wanted to watch it again, time did not permit us :| We finished the movie around 4.30pm and since we were all still full from the buckets of popcorn we ate, we decided to go to Tom's World and have some fun/work-out..hahaha...After that, we decided to go to Gumbo even though we were still full.. LOL... I ordered carbs as in meals full of carbohydrates :D Pizza, 2 petite ahh... Jambalaya and Lasagna and drinks...At first, I thought that it will surely be not enough for us since there were 9 of us but in the end it was enough! It was shocking! ^^.. And while we were munching the bits and pieces of everything, I or we (including Jerome) were surprised that the servers of Gumbo started coming in and singing us happy songs, or happy birthday songs Gumbo style :D I was expecting that to happen but I wasn't expecting them to bring out a huge cake! What I was expecting was something more like a scoop of ice cream with a stick of candle on top... The cake was from Secret Recipe, then and there I knew why it took so long for Marianne, Maribelle, Angellyn and Allister to go to the restroom before everything happened... The cake was wonderful, it had two candles on it, the pink one for me while the blue one for Jerome. They kept on telling us to blow the candle and so we did, not knowing that those were tricky candles or what they call long life candles, the candles that never get out of light... So after blowing the candles for one last time, we sliced the cake into 10 big equal parts and divided it to everyone... And the last slice goes to Edward and co. (our server that night)... I forgot to tell you that the cake was Choco Fudge, it is a huge huge cake and according to their menu it weighs more than a kilo so you do the imagination part :D.. As soon as I receive the pictures we've taken from Marianne or Maribelle, I will add it here in my post :) After giving up on finishing our slices of cake, they accompanied me to Bread Talk to buy my family some "pasalubong" :) And after that we went home and had an unforgettable day to remember for the rest of our lives :) THE END!
Some actions have been taken ever since I posted my goals for this year...
- A baptismal class has been offered by SSP and I have registered my name :)
- I am now a member of YMCA for the use of their swimming pool and i did swim a while ago.. (30 laps to be exact) :D -hope this helps
- I also am trying my best to read the Bible everyday and every night with the help of "Reading your Bible through a year".
- I am working hard to discipline myself to buy things that I need and not things that I want, in order to save money. ^^
I have a lot of things to do and I feel like I have very little time... That's all for now guys.. hope you enjoy reading my posts..
take care and God bless!
Hi there!! It's 2010 and I sure have a lot of plans for this year.. And I want to share with you cause I do believe that once it is written or posted, it is much more (how do I say this) real or it is much more like a commitment since not only I know these things but all the people who reads it. :)So, here are some of the plans I can think of (now that I am 18 years old ^^ ):- I really want to baptized this year!! (This was also my resolution last year :( )- I also want to lose some weight.. (kahit na kunti lang..^^)- I hope I can find another way to have income aside from my "weekly allowance"- I hope that I can do my devotion everyday..- I hope to be able to attend church regularly and also be a part of YPF!- I really really want to travel again this year.. maybe HK or China?? or Europe?? (anywhere??) ^^- If I get baptized this year, I hope I can juggle in Church Choir.. (azi Pat have been asking me to join.. and I really miss singing in a choir) ^-^- I hope I can do well in my studies.... Excel if I can :)- I plan to vote this year but I don't know who to vote for YET.. :(- hmm... what else?? I plan to... save money.. (this is my everyday struggle LOL)- I hope I will be more disciplined this year :)I'm sure these are just some of the things I plan to accomplish this year 2010.. And I can say that I am ready 2010!! Bring it on!! :)) At the end of this year, we will see the things I am able to accomplish this year :)What's your plan for this year???Happy new year! take care and God bless!p.s. I hope to post regularly my blog site.. :) and better if I learn how to customize it :D
