Trying to Grow Basil Again

I bought three plants while up in Baguio.  Basil, lemon pine and malaysian chili.   You know you are getting old when you start caring about plants.  As a second (actually third) attempt to grow my own basil, I will document what my plant first looked like, until I have successfully made a big bush out of the wee little thing.

 angle 1: leaves are nice and ever to green.  This pic was taken 7 days from purchase.  Hooray! Basil is still alive!  I am having trouble with something making holes in my leaves at the moment.  I had to pluck off some leaves.  I stuffed those leaves in the soil. Is that any good for fertilizing the plant?

 Angle 2

 My lemon pine.  

Please grow to 6 feet.

My Malaysian Chili plant.  Please be red soon!

Chocolate Cake Friday at Home

Baking in the oven

Kids love cake!

Frosting, check!

All warm and oozy

How to Make Boring pork Cubes Delish!

Tastes like a mix of barbeque sauce and Mexican/Mediterranean soft taco filling.

Ingredients: 

Boring pork cubes with some fat on them

Pick me up ingredients:

2 cloves garlic

2 pinches dried basil, be generous

dash toyo

1/2 C vegetable oil

dash cumin

2 Tbsp brown sugar

4 Tbsp Del monte Italian spaghetti sauce

salt

pepper

How to:

• Put pick me up ingredients in your Jamie Oliver flavor shaker. Shake.
• Cut up the pork cubes into small pieces, so that they cook quickly and evenly. 
• Pour the mix over the pork. Marinate while you cook some steamed rice.
• Fry the pork in oil until well cooked but still soft.  Remove from pan.  Pour the marinade in the pan and boil.  Mix in the pork again briefly to coat with sauce.
• Serve with homemade tortillas and rice.
• Maybe some cilantro...if you have it.

my version of cibo's beef with garlic and rosemary

Beef breakfast steak 400g or sukiyaki
Oil
2 cloves garlic
Toyo
Rock salt
Pepper
Rosemary

Cost approximately P200 vs Cibo's meal portion of p415, but this has 3x as much beef.

Cheap!

Make this sunday

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Hit of the month: Binagoongan

I know that this might not seem like a new recipe to Filipinos, but I personally haven't cooked binagoongan in my life, and it turned out to be a hit.  My version is spicy and has cripy pork instead of the usual soft pork.

Ingredients:
Pork liempo - cut in 1-inch cubes
onion
garlic
1 tomato, chopped
bagoong - 1 heaping tablespoon
sitaw
sinigang na sili - 2 pcs, seeds removed

Boil the pork in garlic, onion, salt and peper until softened, about 10 min.  Drain, then fry til crispy on the outside. Set aside.

Saute onion in 1 tbsp oil.  When the onion is translucent, add the garlic, tomato and bagoong (you can add as much as you want really).

Add in the sitaw and cover until cooked.

Add the cripy pork and chili last, and mix. You can add 1/2 cup water if you want there to be some sauce. Then cover for 5 min to let the flavors mix together.

Serve :)

Review: Nestle Butterfinger Ice cream

I recently wanted to try Nestle's Butterfinger ice cream.  I was craving the crunchy peanut taste of the Butterfinger bar, and since it was a hot afternoon I decided that this was the best way.  I bought the 800ml tub from Rustan's Supermarket at Forbes Village.

After taking it home, I immediately tried it, but then I was let down.  It was disappointing!  It tasted just like ordinary chocolate ice cream and nothing like Butterfinger. Satisfaction rating for this product is 2 out of 10.

Of course, I had to let Nestle know about this.  I send them some feedback, and I was pleasantly surprised when they responded almost right away.  They offered to replace it and also give me some gift certificates.  Now, who could say no to this?  It took less than a week for a Nestle employee to contact me, and for another to come to my house and replace the ice cream.  We also discovered that the ice cream was expired.  The marking on the bottom was July 2012, and I bought it in mid July from the supermarket.  I'll have to take it up with the supermarket for selling me an expired product, but that will be another story.

As a replacement, I got Nestle's Kitkat bites ice cream, and this time I am glad to say that I was very satisfied by the quality.  I also got P300 worth in gift certificates!

Thank you Nestle for your quick and excellent service.

Thank you Liz, and Jinky.