Realistic Breads!

I have developed a fascination towards fake food over the years. I don't know why, but there's something about fake food that makes me very interested. Nowadays, fake food is widely used for restaurant food displays. So instead of putting up real food which will definitely spoil at the end of the day, food shop owners are opting for plastic or whatever man-made material displays.

One day my mom enthusiastically showed these:

It's a small chocolate donut topped with strawberry cream! I was so amazed because it looked so real and smelled like the real thing, too! It smelled like frosted chocolate, really! And on the right, it's a stress ball that looked like a chocolate bun! Even the facial features smelled like chocolate syrup! It was too cute! Too cute that I even bought my own from the same store and here's what I bought:

More smiley choco buns! I also bought a fancy chocolate donut, it is glazed with dark chocolate, sprinkled with bittersweet chocolate bits and topped with whipped cream and peeled sweet oranges. The features are so detailed, anyone might mistake them for actual treats and eat it! Just look at the bottom part of the chocolate buns! It looks like the real thing!

And I also purchased those stuff above. That one is a purse. It looks like a tube of wasabi but if you squeeze the top part it will open and it has a lot of room for your small stuff like coins or whatever and no, you can't open the black cap. That's what I thought too when I first saw this. Good thing there was a helpful clerk to assist me when she saw me curiously tinkering this. Isn't it cute? And the last one is a box of Do-it-yourself cake. Yup, what you see pictured on the box is what it should look like after you finish sewing everything. Yup, you will sew! Inside the box are lots of fancy fabrics and cloths and other yarns you will need. Since I am so lazy, I let my brother do it. He is halfway through and I hope it will turn out right. How about you? do you like fake food , too?

Super China Bowl!

It has been almost a year since I last saw my Chinese friend, Jianya Tang. She is a classmate in college and we helped each other through some tough times. We perfectly understand each other amidst barriers brought about by culture and language. I learned a lot from her and I believe she also did from me.

After looking at some Japanese school for us to learn Nihongo, we decided to eat at Super China Bowl!

The menu is mostly dumplings, noodles, vegetables and meats served on rice and that includes:

Those are pork and chicken on rice, pork dumplings and noodles. I had the pork dumplings and I was so surprised about the size of it! It was bigger than the usual siomai that are served on the street or on any other restaurants I have been in. It was very meaty and chewy. My noodles had siomai and beef strips. The noodles are way too thin than I think it should be but I enjoyed eating it with a pair of chopsticks. Eating at Super Bowl China really gives an extraordinary and authentic food experience even if the food is pricey.

Reyes Barbecue

Do you love barbecue? I do! I love anything grilled! While scanning through my computer folders I ran into some pictures we took when me and my colleagues ate out for barbecue! We went to Reyes Barbecue in Greenbelt 1, Makati.

The menu is all about barbecued meats. There is Boneless Chicken Barbecue for 115 pesos, a stick of Pork Barbecue is 45 pesos, Grilled Pusit or Grilled Squid is 160 pesos, Liempo or Pork Cutlet is 150 pesos, Grilled Hamburger 95, Grilled Bangus (MilkFish) Belly is 105 pesos. Pretty much reasonable prices. By the way, 1 US dollar is roughly around 48 Philippine pesos.

It's so nice to eat out with friends! Our company doesn't impose strict rules when it comes to breaks so we took our time, but of course we don't abuse this privilege. We were all smiles when our orders came, just look at my Chinese colleague and "mentally-challenged" friend (just kidding! ^^) Jessie.

Aren't they in cloud nine? Haha!

From the top starting from the left pic, that's pork barbecue on a stick, grilled tuna, bangus, liempo and finally, chicken. Each meal is served with rice, pickled papaya and a dipping sauce - a combination of peanut sauce and soy sauce or worcestershire sauce, I am not sure about the actual mix but I can definitely taste peanuts! And oh, that's a mango shake, over there.

Barbecue is more enjoyable if shared with friends!

Pizza!

Everyone loves pizza! Who wouldn't? Specially me! I mentioned pizza here.

I took the day off and I baked my own version of pizza. Here are the ingredients I used:

2-Medium sized Pizza crust. Okay, I haven't tried making my own dough so for the meantime allow me to cheat a bit. I had some grated quick-melt cheese. These are indeed quick melt, I had to refrigerate it after grating. I also had some ground beef and Italian sausage boiled for 20 minutes or so. The ground pork clumped together during the process of boiling so I have to crumble it. I had some sliced longganisa, onions and a few minced garlic just to have a little twist to my pizza and spaghetti sauce! Yes, I like my pizza with spaghetti sauce. This one had mushroom bits in it so I don't need to buy mushrooms anymore.

I sliced the Italian sausage. I bought this one from the local grocery and it was expensive! But it looks fancy with all the peepers and herbs inside. I spread the crusts with the sauce. I made sure I didn't place too much. Most of the pizza chefs say so. Then I arranged the sliced onions and garlic. And after topping it up with meat. I came up with two different pizzas!

The left one is the Italian Sausage Supreme and the right one is the local version, the Pinoy Longganisa Supreme Pizza!

After placing them in the oven, I realized I had a few ingredients left. So I used them to make mini pizzas with white bread.

The result turned out really great! The cheese melted wonderfully! The longganisa pizza was sweet and juicy and the Italian sausage had a hint of spice in it. Wow! I was able to bake two totally different pizza! My aunt loved it so much she told me I could run my own pizza restaurant. LOL. Who knows, maybe I would, someday!

My Cousin's Debut

It was my cousin Beige's 18th birthday yesterday. And I am one of the emcees together with my other cousin Ieth. I am glad that I brought my camera, there was so much to see. When I arrived my cousins Red and friend Arch were busy with the last decoration. The theme was something like a luau and beach party combined.

The venue is at Kidz World. This is becoming the official venue for our family gatherings and other stuff. If you could remember we also had a celebration at this post. I was very disappointed actually because I wasn't able to feature the food at the buffet table because I need to do my job as the emcee. We had Kare-kare which was so delicious and the vegetables in it are perfectly steamed and the breaded tofu was so firm I almost thought it was breaded fish fillet. There are more and we even had lechon but unfortunately I had no time to take pictures of the. So I'll just dump these beautiful shots I took from the place.

And below is a 3-layered-cake. Each layer has a different flavor, give-aways (I think) and the 18 Candles.

Okay, there are no food features in this post, except for that cake, but it is worth a share. So please do check out my blog again for more!