Easter dinner

Ticked off six of my Holy Week tasks, and the Nespresso machine broke. It’s over 6 years old so I guess it’s time to get a new one (which excites me).

But cooked rack of lamb for the first time and I surprised even myself as to how nearly perfect it turned out to be. My only nitpick was that I could’ve pared away more of the fat, but I didn’t really know I had to until we were eating it.

But for supermarket meat (yeah, FUCK YOU FARRO FRESH FOR FUCKING UP MY ORDER), it was superb. You just need to season it aggressively (I used salt, Moroccan spice rub and za’tar) and of course, cooking and resting times are crucial. I had thrown away the packet which indicated how much it weighed, so I just made an educated guess by eyeing the meat. I was guided by the universal advice, that the rarer the lamb the better. And it’s true- the texture is vastly different from beef.

The method is straightforward: sear; put into oven for 10 minutes at 180; take out, ‘paint’ with mustard before covering the surface with the duke; put back into the oven for 20 minutes; take and rest for 5.

Holy Week 2022

I have to admit, I miss the old traditions of Holy Week.

But that was a million years ago and even when I was last in the Philippines, much of how we celebrated it had already changed so much.

My homage to those days was practically doing nothing on Good Friday which I spent at Doyet’s. I started re-reading ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King; I took a long nap; I didn’t check my phone, muted all notifications; I didn’t even open my MacBook to watch anything. We had a nice Filipino dinner of sisig that I had made, boneless bangus and vegetables cooked in coconut milk. I went back to bed to continue reading.

By the time I decided to call it a night (just before midnight) I was more than half-way through the book, and fell into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

Breakfast was longganisa and scrambled eggs and Black Saturday was a perfect, crisply-cold but sunny autumn day.

I’m over trying to plan exhausting holidays that are anything but relaxing. Tradition tells you to relax and to genuflect, but then there’s also the Christian motto, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.

So I’m sure that God wouldn’t mind if I chose action over reflection; items on my list are..

  1. De-scaling the Nespresso machine

  2. Sorting out my clothes now that I would be spending more time at the office

  3. Sorting the garden patch and transplanting some of the cacti

  4. Finding a gym

  5. Updating my cameras and my drones

  6. Sorting out work-stuff for the next two-months

  7. Sorting out the kitchen and my drawers

  8. Finding stuff to put into the inorganic bin

Wednesday's salmon head sinigang

Doesn’t look appetising does it?

But it’s getting colder, slowly but surely, and soupy/brothy things both comfort and make you full really quickly.

Got the salmon heads at the Asian store. I was supposed to only get the (salmon) collars, but someone ahead of me on the queue was ordering literally kilos of it and I thought they would run out. The heads bin was just beside me so I got two just in case the greedy motherfucker in front of the line bought everything out (he didn’t).

I just use sinigang mix (with miso) and throw in several strips of ginger. Seasoning is just salt and pepper. Realised that the spinach in the crisper was too far gone to use but I still had a head of broccoli and it actually works with sinigang.

I grow weary

Fortunately, IOS is now considerate to your needs. When you have your bed-time set, it mutes things such as messages and notifications. Essentially, you go to sleep without knowing the world burned while you did, but then, WHO CARES??

Covid, Ukraine, Trump, Marcos, inflation, dying kids in Africa, melting glaciers, and disappearing Hawksbill turtles…mmmm. I need to vacuum the upstairs.

So how was your week?

  • Legs are the hardest to exercise. Ironically, they’re the easiest to develop. I’ve been persevering for a couple of weeks and I could feel a very noticeable tightness in my pants and shorts in the thigh area. This should compensate for not having substantial glutes.

  • Season 2 of Bridgerton celebrates love, and this is the thing. You’d be a fool if you believe in all of it, and you’re also a fool if you don’t.

  • Don’t underestimate the usefulness of the ‘walis tingting’.

  • There are people who love themselves by simply having a glass of wine at the end of the day, or who play sports to get that human connection. Leila and I create- it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad (nobody is judging as it is for ourselves). Creativity keeps our soul nourished.

  • I wish I could have lechon for my birthday

Weekend's Leche Flan

I’ve been craving for leche flan for literally years.

I’ve been mentioning making it for the last three Christmases, for my birthday and for someone else’s birthday. I think my trepidation was my belief that it was challenging to make.

In my mind having grown up with memories of getting other people to make it for any special occasion you can think of, preparing it had taken mythical proportions.

But at the end of the day, it’s basically eggs and milk baked in a bain marie. I separated a dozen yolks, dumped in a can of condensed milk and a cup of normal milk, a tablespoon of vanilla and used a whisk. To make the caramel, simply adjust the temperature of your pan as the sugar melts and its colour changes. Keeping the temperature high all through out will burn it. Keep stirring until there are no visible granules left and you have a silky, golden brown syrup.

I didn't even use those familiar small oval pans because I think they’re not commercially available.

I followed some random recipe online which got one detail wrong- it doesn’t cook in 30 minutes. It takes a little bit over an hour. Other than that, it was one of the easiest sweets I’ve ever made.

And it’s delicious as I’ve always remembered it..

Eating alone is a journey

Sam and Mary have started on the no-eating-anything-except-vegetables-or-air diet so I’ve been on my own as far as meals are concerned.

It was difficult doing my own thing at first which is funny because the whole process of preparing our meals was actually hard work:
1. you had to work with a fortnightly food budget of only $300
2. you need to make sure fresh ingredients are used before they go off
3. you need to use leftovers (which I loathe)
4. you need variety (important to me!)
5. you needed a healthy balance (even if given a choice, I’d have pork 6x a week)

It was easier during lockdown because I worked from home and I could start cooking at 4pm, but if I did go to the office on some days, I had about an hour to cook when I got home at 4:30, not that it mattered really if we ate late. But I wanted to get it done so I could exercise, or read or watch something.

But getting rid of the whole thing altogether (for now at least), was strangely freeing and unfamiliar. It makes you realize how much of meal preparation and meal-times are such rigid set-routines.

It goes all the way back to your childhood when you were called upon to eat and there were no buts around that. And that you couldn’t eat in bed (which I now do), or that if you were eating something expensive such as prawns or lobster, it had to be portioned. Or that you need to eat on time, or have three meals a day.

But ‘eating alone’ has thrown all the rules out the window, and now you can do anything:

1. …but not eat anything you want, like pork belly Tuesdays, fried chicken Wednesdays and Thursday night ribs. You just can’t. And I’m fine with that now.

2. I had pork ribs the other week though (St. Louis brand imported from the US) and the whole rack (about 1.5kgs) lasted me through two meals.

3. There’s such a thing as too many shrimps- especially when they’re frozen. Not as good as fresh.

4. I can’t have just toast for dinner. I tried and it’s stupid because I just get hungry after an hour. I’m working out constantly now that I can feel my energy ebbing when I don’t eat anything substantial.

5. There is something spare but beautiful in a plate of grilled salmon over ramen noodles.

6. Suddenly you have heaps of time to do stuff.

7. You save money

Lately I'm like...

..Waking up in the morning earlier than usual because the cat keeps waking us up at odd hours. I would make my usual coffee, esconce myself on the couch and do the daily Wordle. This has become a comforting ritual now; I share it with Leila who shares hers (either earlier before she goes to bed or after because she’s in the Philippines). And then with Sam, Mary & Ruth (Sam solving it later in the day as per usual).

And now we’ve added Quordle- which is a massive, nose-bleeding four-panel nightmare- but this is reserved for the end of the day, right before the horrible evening news. Because if you can get through the puzzle and get all four, nothing will faze you- not even the gory sight of Putin marching into Ukraine topless and frothing at the mouth.

Ugh. Should we care about Ukraine and Russia?? Should we care about the protests in Wellington?? Should we care about anti-vaxxers and the far-fucking-right spreading their poison all over the world??

I don’t care BECAUSE I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OF IT.

I’m gonna do just me for now.

I'm actually fine...

..but not inclined to write about it. And this is the thing- I don’t do that much writing anymore. Work is fulfilling. Work makes me happy, I’m good at it, I’m fast and efficient, and I get paid well. But it’s no longer just writing.

At the end of the day, I finish chores, get to work-out (and can see changes in my body that I like) and I need to rest and relax, and there’s Netflix, my reading list (Gabriel Garcia is next, ugh), Lily the cat.

And then I remember writing so I open a fresh page (I’m currently using Evernote) and then close my eyes. When I was younger, there was a whole different world to see when I opened them. Now, it’s just this ratchet real one that I see. It’s like, I’ve lost that access. And I’m stuck here, but then you know, it’s fine, I’m happy. But there’s always a but…

Both Sides Now

I watched the Apple TV + film Coda the other day and I cried and cried.

It also made me obsessed with the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now, which is the song highlight of the film that deals with a young girl- the only one who could hear in a hearing-impaired family- who loved singing. Don’t mind some familiar plot elements; the heart of this film is anchored by incredible performances by a cast who are actual deaf actors (including Oscar winner Marlee Matlin).

The movie today got Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (for deaf actor Troy Kotsure)