TOP 3..

things that caught my attention this weekend.


Since my last visit to a Kawachi, a store that sells mostly dry goods, from food to cosmetics to toiletries to bento stuff… I knew there are some goodies begging for me to take home. And I just can’t help but imagine having all these things on our walk back to our house. To cut the chase and imaginings I asked my hubby what he’ll get me for Christmas! And I think he knew where I was heading…so when we got home I browsed and found these online. I can’t wait!

After the cuteness encounter, we went to kathy’s house for her despedida. We were greeted with lush green scenery with mount Tsukuba and perfect blue sky as backdrop. Right on 8th floor, I knew there was something good inside. Food was great, conversations were interesting and the cherry to the cake was Wii.
I never really liked gaming because I had this past where I would ditch everything else to play pc games (Sims City, Battle Realms) the whole day. Thing is, carpal tunnel syndrome plus my eye problem and minimal burning of calories weren't actually ideal for me nor for anybody. So i guess a Wii would fit in lazy winter weekends and good for bonding too!

Last that caught my attention doesn’t need a funding campaign. I always have this trouble of setting the language of blogspot from Japanese back to English. No matter how I save the settings it just keeps getting back at a kanji galore page. This morning is beyond any of those days because I leisurely scroll on other languages apart from English and I found FILIPINO! So I set it up to this.

I know it will probably be changed back to jap again…but I can always find comfort in scrolling and choosing the language knowing that it can, in its tiny ways, lead me back home.

i wanna..

change my outline AGAIN. i dunno why i feel distracted with the swirls and paint blots i cant seem to find the words to write anything. *me so blah* even though i already mapped everything in my head, my fingers refused to type along! lol. weird. so i want a change of layout. ill stick to blogspot anyways even if wordpress has really nice templates. aesthetics matters a lot to me *shrug*. guess ill have to blog a little sensible later! lol. have to run and make lunch and be early at work. its friday hooorraaayyy!!!

Hisashiburi!

Long time no see!! whew! never knew I set this blog aside for a very long time! I really need to update my links..

Anyways, you probably know how tough it is to write when there is so much to write about! so let me write back to my darling blog with a tickle.

The joys and pains of freelance english tutoring in Japan. The student is instructed to listen to a song and write down the lyrics.

The student's rendition of Everything I Own by Bread



This post does not mean to offend or whatsoever. :P

Side dish recipes from our kitchen

Pesto and bacon roll

This one is really fast and easy except that maybe I should put milk and create custard first before baking. Anyways I’ll do that next time. What are trial and errors for?

I used:

Bread slices, sides removed

Bacon strips

Ready made pesto

1 egg

I simply flatten the bread slices using a bottle. My kitchen lacks rolling pin :P

Spread thin amount of pesto, laid the bacon strips and roll. I obviously secured it with a toothpick and roll it in a beaten egg. Then baked it 200 degrees or until it turned golden brown. Best to eat this when its still hot.

Onion marmalade

I got this idea from 101 Cheap Eats by GoodFood magazine. It’s a book of compiled recipes that I bought from Page One in Hong Kong. Although it clearly listed the ingredients, I still made something that suits our palate at that time; the later meant only one thing—no more Chinese food or anything that resembles it.

This is a tipid recipe and you will need:

Apple juice (amount depends on the sweetness you want to achieve)

Tomato ketchup (I used Heinz)

Onion cut thinly

Soy sauce (amount depends on the color you want to achieve)

Parsley chopped

Salt and pepper

Cook the onions in a pan with olive oil until softened and lightly browned. Add the tomato ketchup and balance the sour taste with apple juice. Adjust the color by adding soy sauce. Sprinkle parsley, salt and pepper. Top with sesame seeds if desired.

Have this as a topping to any kind of baked, grilled or shallow fried meat. It even went well with mojo potatoes. It was also a good filling for onigiri. It’s very versatile you might want to eat it by itself as a main dish!

When is busy really "busy"?

After about six hours of sleep I will wake up to prepare our lunchboxes and start getting ready for work. I will probably check mails or websites or weather or news if I could squeeze it. Then it will be ten hours in the workplace, driving to and from included. Work includes mostly my right brain plus some cardio from running, walking, hopping, skipping…all the joys of preschool! But hey, don’t kid me, I barely have time to eat my lunch at work. Working with children surely isn’t a walk in the park. And then back at home I have to prepare my lesson for an hour of private tutorials, let’s say it takes about two, travel time included. After which I will pick hubby from his lab and we will either catch dinner out or I will cook in, the latter collecting the most frequent vote. On board our sanctuary a few episodes of downloaded TV series will glue the munching of food and day stories in between bites. Come weekends, it will be a whole lot of household chores, kitchen experiments that mostly include a lot of baking, cyber chat with friends, grocery, gizmos scouting, combing stores in different streets, long drives, gas refill… oh the works! I never usually finish one whole week without someone commenting on how I managed to do this and that.

Yet still, yesterday as I was checking the boxes right next to my to-do-list, it felt like I’ve done nothing. So I drove to the biggest mall here in Tsukuba and picked up cardstocks and button fasteners and it didn’t take me a long time to compute the ridiculously priced stuff so I stepped out, and head straight to my favorite 100yen shop. There I bought more stickers, ribbons, blings, cutting boards, pens, craft scissors, origami paper etcetera… Now I have all these cluttered in my living room.


Hubby told me that I should have bought a craft drawer to fit in all these. Oh well.. I do hope scrapbooking will keep me “busy”.

So again, here comes the question...when are we truly busy?

Birthmonth meme

I initially made this blog to document my own making as a “wife”. Along the way, I ventured to a daily obento making and it is one of my fave craft that I intended to refine. It was fun posting it here and virtually sharing it too. However, lately the food blogging is taking much space and totally displaces lot of things I wanted to write about. So I decided to relocate the bento posts to our multiply site. After all I registered it to be our “family” site where our friends and families can connect with us and peek at our “homemaking” wherever we may be.

It may not have started with big bang and fireworks, yet I still foresee that 2008 will be a promising year for everybody and ME. The later by definition means never shelving notable nor trivial thoughts.

So here is a trivial something about ME. Needless to say I have one meme overdue where Saj tagged me.
Meme rules:
1. Pick your birth month.
2. Bold the 5-10 that best apply to you.
3. Copy to your own journal, with all twelve months (click this for the list).
4. Tag 12 people from your friends list.

Birth month: February
Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexy. Temperamental. Quiet, shy and humble. Honest and loyal. Determined to reach goals. Loves freedom. Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but does not show it. Dislikes unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Daring and stubborn. Ambitious. Realizes dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous. Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

That was just 9! Although I wanted to highlight sexy, haha! But nah, I had enough spills of pheromones I think the lid is now on. The darling word I was actually looking for is “closet deviant” which is why more than half trait of my birth month just doesn’t apply to me.

Speaking of deviant, i can only tag a few since i have a few on my list. Please join this bandwagon Ced, Bill, Karmi and Herb. :)

photo nicked from here

bento muli

Good morning. I woke up 5am today. At this time I’m supposed to be preparing or should have finished preparing our bento for today. Yet instead I turned my back at my kitchen and went to open my computer. I’m currently in a state of denial that for the first time ever I actually made a mistake in cooking pasta sauce. Okay. I said it. Now I want to run away from typing this too.

Argh. I’m not quite sure yet but I think the cream of mushroom leftover that I stirred in my red sauce mixture is already spoiled. I did check after opening but I didn’t smell anything off. And now I am about to blame my impaired olfaction. Shheeeesshh!

Whew! Scratch that. I went back to check if my suspicion was correct and it failed me. Thank heavens! My hormones are really raging bananas for some time now, and I give myself some credits for breathing in and out instead of going nuts.

So anyways I have the whole December obento backlog plus this week’s. I will try to post them all as soon as I can and I dearly dedicate my obentos to my old friends who recently got married, moved in with boyfriends, had a child, on the way, and of course to new friends who loves good food whether or not they have it on their plates on a dinner table or just munching on a cold pizza on their bed ;).

This was the one I was talking about.


And this is our bento today.

Easy macaroni with mushroom twist

Since I still have some leftover ingredients I used to make medya noche I decided to free more fridge space by combining it to make a macaroni sauce. I started with the basic sauté of onion, garlic, red bell pepper in butter (all minced). Add the ham and mushroom which was cut to tiny pieces. Next I poured in the canned chopped tomato and added salt, freshly grounded pepper and dried basil. When the mixture started to boil, turn down your stove fore and let simmer for 10 minutes. This will let all your ingredients to blend well and create that distinct taste. Then I stirred the campbell’s cream of mushroom, about half a cup of it. Adjust the taste with salt, pepper, sugar and parmesan. I used sugar to balance the sourness of the canned tomato. I also prefer to put the parmesan while simmering the sauce to enrich the flavor. Let cool and add your cooked macaroni.

Peanut butter sandwich

I initially thought of making a club but I have to cut short the prep time to blog this :P
Cut the bread loaf in desired shape, spread the peanut butter and arrange.