Best and worst of 2012

2012 came and went, and the world didn't end! It seems that the end of the Mayan calendar only meant that it's time to buy a new calendar!

Here are my picks for the Best and Worst of 2012

Film

 
Best
The Cabin in the woods for completely surprising me. It starts out with a mundane scene inside a lab before you get a cheesy -looking title and then goes on  to tell a typical tale of teens who go to a cabin. So far, so boring right? Then it proceeds to turn your world upside -down because you just don't know what's going on till the end! It reminded me of how I felt when I saw Scream for the first time. The characters knew all about horror films but they still made dumb choices in their own movie!

Food finds in Makati

I discovered lots of new food outlets all around Makati this year which I shared on my facebook/instagram account but I'd also like to place them here. They're not new but I only recently experienced them and I hope you enjoy them vicariously!

Deco's Batchoy in Alphaland, Makati. It's said to be more authentic than Ted's batchoy though they both have a lot of MSG to me. Curious that there is no option to add an egg to the soup. Well, I bought an egg from the supermarket anyway. Prices range from P75 up. There is no difference between the regular, special or extra orders. The serving size just gets bigger.

Todos lost Santos

When I was a kid, we didn't have Halloween.

a trip to the National Museum

In a bid to get more Filpinos to visit the museum, the National Museum announced that they would waive the P100 entrance fee for the whole month of October!

When in Quezon

When in Quezon to visit family or anything else, do look around and enjoy what it has to offer. Don't treat it as just a stopover to Bicol and elsewhere.

 (I admit I wasn't a big fan of my home province before because it wasn't modern enough for my ignorant, city-bred ways or "provincial" enough like those bucolic peasant farm paintings... but thankfully, my eyes have been opened to its beauty.)

In Lucena City, Tayabas and Sariaya, check out the old houses that are still around. It's funny that we look for ancestral houses in Vigan and Bacolod, when so many of them are still in Quezon, if you just look around. Most of the well-preserved ones are in Sariaya and some of them are even open to the public! Kudos to the families who own these houses for not tearing down these heritage homes.

Cielin's Chocolate Cakes

I'm an avid follower of Anton Diaz's blog www.ourawesomeplanet.com so when I read his post about The battle of the "gasoline cakes" way back in 2006, I just had to try them out. I'm from the southern part of Metro Manila so I had already tasted Ms. Polly's chocolate cake. And lucky for me, the Caltex cake is on the way to where I work! So one day I bought one for the office. Too bad we didn't have camera phones then so I wasn't able to blog about it but it was a hit!

Simply seafood for Mama's birthday!

The plan was to eat at the dampa near the SM Mall of Asia with Twinx and family for Mama's birthday. But it was the first fiesta of our newly-formed parish of Padre Pio and Twinx's baby had a fever. So we didn't bother to buy our own seafood and went straight to Aling Tonya's to order from them.  The only problem with this is that you won't be able to choose your seafood and you won't know how much it costs until you get the bill. The only prices on the menu are how much their cooking fee is.

My hainanese chicken



P168 for the personal set. Looks small but is very filling.



Another post that got lost ...I had a hankering for Hainanese chicken on a rainy Tuesday and went to Wee Nam Kee for some roasted chicken. I have really been mesmerized by this dish. I never wanted to go to Singapore before but now I'm tempted to go only because they say the original store's version in the Lion city is even better!



Wee Nam Kee's steamed version

 Ever since I tried it out last year, I have loved hainanese chicken rice even though I didn't like how pale and uncooked it looked. I loved it so much I tried to duplicate it at home. I got some recipes online and while it looks deceptively simple, it is actually very time-consuming (almost 2 hours) and labor intensive.  First, you have to prepare the chicken by rubbing it with salt inside  and out. Then you stuff it with ginger, garlic and green onion before boiling it in water. Looking at the recipe, it actually reminds me of a deconstucted  tinola. The broth is separated from the meat and some of it is used to cook the rice. And some of it is used to make the chili sauce and ginger sauce!


My version

My father said it tasted even better than Wee Nam Kee's version (this may be biased) but for all that trouble, I would rather just order it instead.

Mojacko recommends: Original Savory Antipolo

I should have posted this way back in April! Apologies...
It was quite a pleasant surprise to find a branch of the Original Savory restaurant in Antipolo of all places! Someone decided to put up a mall beside the Antipolo church and while I'm not sure I like the idea , I sure am glad we tried out the resto.

Guernica's for ma and pa's anniversary

Happy Anniversary!

So we went to get a painting I made for Pagcor's painting competition (I didn't win) but we did get to pass by Sucat and Dr. Santos Avenue after a long time and we spotted Guernica's right beside Shopwise Sucat.