Back to my other home

It honestly didn’t feel like it had been over a month. We iMessaged and Facetimed nearly everyday. I think if I tried, I could have flown the drone over to Papakura.

Life goes on.

Max fail

How difficult is it to make fried chicken right? But trying this very popular recipe made me remember that I’ve never been really successful at making bone-in fried chicken. I’ve made tons of chicken karage, Korean inspired chicken-wings and chicken-wings/nibbles of every conceivable flavour, but have yet to achieve no-nonsense, really good bone-in fried chicken. I’ve followed the steps to the letter and it’s still pollo no bueno…

On one hand, maybe I don’t need to- I’m perfectly happy with KFC chicken and I’ll just stick to that.

One good thing though in making a side dish that should go with the chicken is discovering a fast and tasty way to cook kale. In everyday Philippine cooking, there seems to be just two ways to cook vegetables- boiling them (or adding them to stock) or ‘gisa’ (sautee) with tomatoes, garlic and onions and I picked the latter. Kale is tough and fast cooking actually translates to about 30 to 40 minutes of simmering the leaves in a broth until it softens to the texture of wilted spinach. I’ve done laing with silverbeet/chard twice now and I might do the next one with kale.

When you eat once a day...

..you obviously look forward to dinner.. and I do. I even plan 5 days ahead, having already absorbed what everyone’s like and dislikes are- no yolky dishes; chicken should be boneless (which I now prefer after nearly choking on a small bone); carbs are limited to potatoes and rice; fried stuff only once every fortnight; frozen vegetables cooked in butter.

There aren’t enough fresh vegetables though which I can count with two hands- carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, silverbeet, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce- and none of which are as interesting as splendidly bitter ampalaya or the weed-like papait; the perfect foil to beef and pork; fresh malunggay leaves to go with your free-range chicken; steamed okra for grilled bangus; camote and kangkong for pork-ribs sinigang; or spider beans cooked with tausi beans, tofu and asado pork-belly.

Ayyyyy…anyways, here’s what I plan to make in the next couple of days

Basic shortbread

It’s basic alright- didn't realise how basic it was until I looked up the recipe. In some British cookbook published in the early 20th century, classic shortbread contains just three ingredients, flour ("dried and sieved"), butter ("squeezed free of all water") and sugar ("fine caster").

I got the recipe from the NYTimes Food of course and this is the recipe by Melissa Clark:

240 grams all-purpose flour (2 cups)
36 grams rice flour (1/4 cup)
62 grams sugar (1/4 cup), more as needed
2 grams fine sea salt (1/2 teaspoon)
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 cup), melted and cooled

  • Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper.

  • In a bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar and salt. Stir in the butter. Press dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake until golden brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Sprinkle evenly with sugar while warm and slice; cool completely.

As most basic recipes, there are a million variations but I stuck to this one and It turned out to be what I expected it to be.

Baking notes:
1. Is there a way to ‘properly’ melt butter? I melted mine in the microwave but I felt that it ‘cooked’ it- does that affect the final product? It wasn’t as buttery as Melissa promised it was going to be.
2. Don’t over-bake it- stick to the allotted 30-40 minutes. I was looking for that golden surface, but look at the edges. If they’ve browned, alas, it has been over-cooked.
3. The right-sized pan makes the difference in how it cooks (obviously the cooking area). Could you believe I’ve only just now started to actually measure my pans??? I plan to go to the stores to buy pans and make sure I check the sizes first.

Today: 2kms

  1. What to do for winter? (more of a question whether I buy more clothes 😅)

  2. Courier blues; courier packages being dumped; massive delivery delays and internal snafus- been waiting for a package for over a week only to be told it had been returned to the retailer because of missed paperwork.

  3. Ordered KFC two days in advance - 😂- so we hope the delivery people don’t fuck it up.

Shopping

I have to admit, shopping was always on my mind since the whole lockdown started.

It felt like this whole period, I was in some form of rehab that weaned me off from buying. I don’t use credit cards anymore for these sorts of purchases (I save up for these as my mom has always advised us) so the chances of just buying anything I want are slim. But I still run the risk of not saving anything substantial if I keep making thoughtless purchases.

Just before the lockdown, I bought a pair of new Nikes which were okay; they were on sale for nearly half the original price, but I really wanted something else (moral: don’t settle) The last couple of years that I’ve been buying sneakers when Nike started shipping to New Zealand, the average price of my picks is $250 which is not cheap when you consider that when I started working here in 2008, that was almost half of my weekly wages after taxes. And of course on my birthday, I had to buy myself something nice so I got a new pair of jeans in grey, skinny fit (I normally get the slim fit ones, and these are Nudie jeans, my favourite denim label) and they’re perfect. I thought I was saving up money getting them from an Australian retailer advertising heaps of sales, but ended up paying nearly the same amount if I had bought them in New Zealand- still they were the perfect size, 30/30 for an average guy like me (waist measurement and length), which is a size option you rarely get. And these are not cheap denims either (start at $250).

And that was it- only two purchases.

And it’s been a challenge keeping it at just two.

I think I can hold off on the knits, the jackets and the shoes, but I’m having an eye-test soon and I’m eyeing a really nice Prada frame. I also have my eyes set on a pair of Tom Fords for years.

And then there’s the new iPad Pro with the new Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard- yes, without a doubt, I’ll be getting these this year (it pays to eat only once a day- THIS IS TRUE, I KID YOU NOT- you don’t get fat and you save heaps of money).

Day 33: The day you stop counting the days

When I was a teenager, I used to count the days before summer school break. I would make a list of things that were not things to do, but things to accomplish. I don’t remember now what those were, but I do remember what i didn't accomplish; learn French was on my list for two consecutive summers. I even stole a book on beginner’s French from our high-school library.

Today, I’m still counting and I’ve asked myself what’s the objective? Is there an end-game to this? Is it back to the normalcy we once knew? I said it back in February before we even had an inkling of how severe things were going to be “Just stay at home really and probably not spend too much money. Maybe we need this. Maybe this is the (soft) reset humanity needs to see exactly what its priorities are. And I believe these are mine, or at least something better to do than twiddling your thumbs..”

And I did save money
I exercised a bit
Wasn’t able to draw anything
I cooked a lot
Didn't get to learn how to drive
Didn't get to watch Godfather or a whole lot of shows either

I need to add more stuff to the list. I should also stop counting the days.

Day 32

The funny thing is that work-days spent at home are more satisfying than weekends when there’s really nothing to do. There’s no point waiting for the weekends to do laundry or to do chores which you can slot them in during the week. And I really hate sleeping in as it gives me a headache but it’s a struggle trying to wake up at 7:30am. I’ve been having intense dreams like everybody else and it gets harder to wake up when they go on and on.

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I’m a movie-fan really I am. Show me one still image and I can tell you right away what movie its from. But today, I virtually watched Rogue One all over again (without skipping the parts as I usually do with movies I’ve already seen) because for the life me, I couldn’t even remember it. But I’m sure I’ve watched it before. Anyhow, it’s sad isn’t it?. Really sad. Sadder than Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker which I watched last night, rented on Apple TV. I enjoyed it in spite of the much publicised negative reviews. But the thing is, I’m invested in how a movie entertains me on whatever level, and not on why it’s made or who made it. I won’t ever be that geek who does reaction videos on Star Wars teasers and weeps uncontrollably.

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So I get Martin Scorsese’s diss of Marvel movies because I would be too if I was a film-maker of his milieu. But I’m just a popular-culture consumer who can appreciate the high-brow and the low- like Marvel movies. After watching Rogue One I just had to fast-forward through Star Wars A New Hope just because I wanted to see the Death Star destroyed. In that sequence where Luke Skywalker flies through a corridor on the Death Star being pursued by his dad Darth Vader, I thought I saw something weird. So I paused it and took a photo and lo and behold it was this: Darth Vader’s eyes. For a moment I thought that it didn’t look like James Earl Jones then remembered that he only did the voice. The actor who played Darth Vader was English bodybuilder and character actor David Prowse.

Day 31: Anzac Day

It’s one of those holidays I politely celebrate by sleeping in or watching the festivities on the news. It’s by accident and choice that you live in New Zealand, but its history will never really be a part of you. Mary & Sam had grandfathers who fought in the 1st and 2nd world wars and they have the medals & memorabilia stored somewhere. My Tatay lived through the second-world war and my dad was born in 1942 in Japanese occupied Manila and all I have are stories that I don’t actually remember anymore.

But we all forgot that the stand-in-your-driveway commemoration that was asked of all New Zealanders early this morning and not that tMary & Sam would wake up for it anyway.

I would’ve if the two white people in the house led the way but we all got up at 10am which is the usual for a Saturday.

I decided to make Anzac biscuits though which is strange because I’ve never liked their inherent hardness. They’re similar to gingersnap cookies with that tough outer surface that gives way to a crumbly inside. I got the recipe from an email by Farro Foods which called for:

1 cup rolled oats
¾ cup desiccated coconut
1 cup flour (or use 1 cup almond meal and ½ cup gluten free cornflour)
¾ cup brown sugar
125g butter
2 Tbsp golden syrup
½ tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp boiling water
¾ cup cranberries, chopped dried apricots (soaked in hot water for 5 mins and drained) or chocolate chunks

I didn't have desiccated coconut, golden syrup and cranberries/apricots so I substituted them with crushed pecans, maple syrup and sultanas respectively in the same quantities. The rolled oats I used also had raspberry bits and coconut in it. You can find the full recipe here.

I ended up with nine balls of dough which I later realised was a mistake- the recipe called for balls the size of walnuts and in my mind walnuts were nearly the size of golf-balls 😂. With the cooking time estimated at 15-18 minutes, I thought that the large cookies would burn at the edges before the centres cooked.

But they didn’t- they were a bit crumbly though even after they’ve cooled, and were not at all, like the commercial store-bought Anzac cookies. And I think that 125 grams of butter was a lot and contributed to the cookie being a tad too moist/oily.

Day 30

So I pretty much gave up having a leave day because it is what it is. It would’ve been easier if you could go away- not that I leave my gadgets at home which I don’t- but it would’ve been easier to step away from the screen to do something else.

I did finish painting the cupboard doors in the garage which was on our bigger things-to-do; did laundry, planned dinner, and still finished heaps of work. But I never have issues with work or chores- it’s when I saw an online ad for Gordon & Harris (an art-supplies shop) that there was that faint spark of wanting to do something creative. But $29 for a 59ml tube of (Golden brand) acrylic paint? Uhm, okay.

I would think that it’s kinda pricey so says the person who buys $250 jeans. But maybe it’s like the kind of advice offered to you when you’re struggling to clean out your closet: throw out the stuff you’ve never worn because chances are, you’ll never wear them again.

So the essential question is, should I give up on art? If you’ve never really found the time for it, then maybe it’s not for you.

But cooking is, for sure. We just had home-made carrot and potato soup tonight and grilled chicken-nibbles, nothing worth photographing really, but I made pansit sotanghon yesterday and this is what it looks like. Funny thing is, Pacific Islanders call it ‘chopsuey’ and it’s just vermicelli cooked in stock (or water) and seasoned with dark soy-sauce. My dad would turn in his grave if he was served this- the gold standard of how he made the sotanghon of our dreams is one that has chicken and chicken liver, fatty pork, prawns and black fungus mushroom and NO fucking celery. Yup- i hate the taste of celery in pansit (we’ve swapped out the celery with coriander which is actually more off-putting for most people).

I can’t remember if Pacific Island vermicelli/chopsuey has ginger- didn't put any in this one- but it’s harder to get that fuller flavour (I used chicken cubes as well) that you’d only get with chicken meat and pork-fat.

But once the starch breaks down (I often make the mistake of undercooking it) and the noodles absorb the fat (I used rice-bran oil) and the soy which has caramelised a bit, it doesn’t taste too bad.

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Day 29: It pays to have 'two' birthdays

So the thing is, my actual legal birth certificate states that I was born on the 23rd of April when actually, I was born on the 22nd. It was a simple clerical error that my dad- a lawyer!!!- never bothered to change. And neither did I because I sure as hell didn't want to negotiate, er, navigate the processes and legalities necessary to change it.

So when it went onto my first passport, that was it- it’s the 23rd FOREVER. But I obviously try to celebrate on the actual date, so here we are- a two-day celebration.

I got these today from some co-worker friends- thanks Judy and Sarah!

Kinda touching that in spite of me not really trying to ‘make’ friends, I think I do have friends who know the things that I love, eat and use!

Kinda touching that in spite of me not really trying to ‘make’ friends, I think I do have friends who know the things that I love, eat and use!