Eating at the Office

I really thank God for having generous colleagues. If the alignment of stars are right, someone treats us for lunch. Like last time they bought these:

Pancit Palabok, Pizza and Chocolate Mousse cake. Pancit Palabok is a noodle dish topped with shrimp, a few small meat pieces, egg slices, chopped spring onions, toasted garlic, chicharon and a special sauce that is accountable for the yellowish color. There are a lot of variations, actually. The Pancit Palabok was from Goldilocks and it was drenched in sauce but I liked it so much! The sauce was light but flavorful. There's pizza of course. Everyone loves pizza. This one is from Pizza Hut. Bah! Shakey's, Yellow Cab, Greenwich, Mr. Mappy, etc. name it, for as long as it's pizza, I'll eat it. The last one is Chocolate Mousse Cake from Goldilocks again. It was soft and creamy but not too sweet. Someone divided it into several small slices so I took all the corner parts, haha!

Anyway, change topic.

I sometimes don't eat breakfast in the morning so upon arrival here in the office, I stop by a convenience store and I buy these:

Funloops mini donuts. Just chocolate covered, choco-centered donuts. I love munching on these and my favorite is the peanut butter variant. I also made a cup of coffee from our scary-looking coffee maker. Why scary, you ask? It sometimes operate on it's own and emits steamed milk! What more if it starts shooting coffee beans around. Anyway, the concoction turned out to be super bitter despite the fact that I already added two small packs of brown sugar. So I added a lot of milk so I had this:

Haha, looks weird. Change topic, again. We had our lunch out one day at Gerri's Grill so I'll just place these pictures here.

Sizzling Bangus (Milkfish), Hills of rice, Fish stew in Miso Soup, Fried Chicken and French Fries, Sizzling Sisig, and Iced Tea. All were delicious and filling. This is actually one of our favorite restaurants, we dine in big groups and have a good time laughing and taking pictures.

Hap Chan Chinese Food

The restaurant is called Hap Chan. After attending mass, we went here for lunch. A few minutes after our arrival there was a power power outage. We were already sitting comfortably when the waitress approached and told us that their machine used to cook food was not available since it runs on electricity, so we decided to wait 5 minutes and see if everything will return back to normal. In Chinese restaurants they serve tea before a meal so we sipped on some light tea. We already finished the whole teapot and still, lights were off so we told the waitress that we'll just look for another place and thanked her for the free tea. Of course it was just a joke ^^. Moments later, power went back so we went ahead and placed our orders..

The drinks came up first we had lemonade, soya milk, iced tea and four seasons. Their lemonade lacks zest but I liked their iced tea. Here in the Philippines, iced tea is like the fast food drink of almost all chains. Their version was very unique, I am a tea enthusiast and I can really say that their iced tea is brewed from real tea leaves not from powder and I like it.

The drinks were followed by these:

From the top, starting from the left picture - breaded shrimp, sweet and sour fish fried rice, pork steak, tofu with sesame seeds and garlic broccoli. The breaded shrimp was different but delicious, breading had no bread crumbs and the shrimp is steamed, not fried! I don't know how they did it but it was really good! The pork sweet and sour fish and pork steak were also a taste of heaven, what I like about most about Asian food is the fact that nothing goes to waste. Even the littlest vegetable garnish to the scoops of "food sauce", everything is edible! Their fried rice was yummy, I definitely tasted butter and egg in it. There were bits of carrots, peas, corn and bits of meat in it. The steamed tofu is a winner, it's almost hard to scoop it out for it was softened to perfection! I also enjoyed the garlic broccoli. I love the taste of garlic and I never imagined it would go well with broccoli! They were all so good that I had seconds, here is what my plate looked like including the "aftermath". Haha.

For dessert we had - Buchi!

Buchi is a local term which is an equivalent for Japan's mochi or rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. It is covered with sesame seeds and has a bean paste filling, this one had sweet yam paste. It's the best buchi I had so far! We liked it so much that we ordered another bunch for take out - which I end up eating most of them, haha.

Shawarma Trippin'

One good thing about being Asian is that I have a wide selection of food. Asia probably has the most diverse food due to various cultural influences among other continents. It's really fun to try out a new dish everyday! Like when we went to this restaurant. Sorry, but I don't have the photo of the resto, I also failed to get the name. Talk about being a responsible food blogger. I'll keep that in mind next time. Anyway, this restaurant in Malate, Manila offers Arabian food. I personally love Arabian food mainly because most of the meat recipes are grilled to perfection, elliminating some of the fats and they use olive oil which is good for the body. The na'an or flat bread is to die for! An order gives you a stack and it comes with a lot of dipping sauces, mostly made out of bean paste and olive oil, and in one dip I think I tasted parsley and sour cream.

After a few minutes, the kebab platter came. Mmmm... chicken and beef kebab with roasted tomatoes, onions and lettuce. There were pickled vegetables as well.

It was heaven I tell you. The meat is super tender, it will literally melt in your mouth! The chicken is nicely done, so soft and flavourful. I just can't stop filling my mouth with these kebabs. I also realized how tasty onions and tomatoes are when roasted really good and since I had a few more na'an bread I came up with the idea of making my own shawarma. Ok, for the first try:

Sorry for the flashy part, I am using an old digital camera and navigating the settings was a headache. Anyway, I took some beef kebab and sliced it into small parts, laid it in the middle of the bread, topped with roasted tomatoes and lettuce on the left side and arranged the layered onions on the right side and oh, I forgot to mention that I smothered the bread with some of the dips. After gulping the whole thing down I reached for another bread and made a second one.

And again I apologize for the flash fail. Phew, I need a new camera. In my second serving I place a long beef kebab in the center, this time the na'an bread was smothered with some sour cream dressing. Placed the veggies at the side and in one minute, I finished the whole thing. I was so stuffed that I could barely breathe out my stomach. After a while the eggplant rice came and a bunch of chicken and beef shawarma... ooohhhh... I could die now. I'm in Paradise! I've never enjoyed eggplant and rice this much and the shawarma was so delicious.

Pantry Check - Chews, Custards and Macaroons

Ah, the joys of food blogging. I just finished my post below and here I am again seeking more reasons to post food pictures. So I came up with the idea: "Pantry Check". I'll be posting random foo pictures I found in our pantry. So here they are:

Chewy chocolate bars topped with crunchy oatmeal bits. You have to bite in to go to the chocolatey center that melts in your mouth and the addition of crunchy oatmeal bits makes this treat a guilt-free snack.

These are soft and creamy custard cakes. Soft chiffon with a layer of creamy-goodness on top. This heaven is perfect with coffee.

Macaroons, macaroons, macaroons! Every bite is very nostalgic. I've been eating these since I was a child. Every bakery sells them and up to this date, I enjoy eating them.

How about you? Have you checked your pantry lately?

Sunday Family Celebration at Kidz World

Congratulations to the first registered nurse in the family, Sheery Red Tuazon! We are very proud of you. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Yesterday's celebration was also Tita Lyrie's, Ate Ieth's and Amraphael's birthday bash. The fun-filled event was held here at Kidz World! Here are a few pics of the resort.

I just love celebrations! Guess why - you got it right. If there's a party, there's definitely food! First off - Hamburger with fries. The Burger was nicely done. The patty is tender and flavorful. The fries were also great, they were crispy and I was glad they didn't put salt! Everytime I order fries at McDonald's I always ask for a saltless bunch. Moments later, lunch is served. I had "Chicken Inasal" served with Java rice and achara (pickled papaya). My cousins and brothers-in-law had sisig. My aunts had grilled fish and sinigang na hipon (prawns in tamarind soup) and for drinks, I had a sweet strawberry smoothie, it was so milky and refreshing. My brothers and cousins had beer. They ran out of San Miguel light so they had no choice but to go for pale pilsen. Nyahaha, tiisin nyu ang pait!!! ^^

After a hearty lunch we hit the waters. Although the sun was blazing hot, we had a good time chatting,playing and fooling around with each other. Look at my adorable nephew, Enzo here. You should've seen the hotdog disappear within seconds.

And for our afternoon snack we had pancit! It was believed that eating pancit makes your life longer, and that is what I want for my family, more years to come for more years of love and fun! Have a nice day everyone!