the things i do for love… of coffee

I heart coffee. Drinking it in the morning really perks me up. I’m one of those people who cannot function well when I haven’t had my morning fix yet. It really wakes me up. Once on a TV shoot on location in Pampanga, I asked our service van driver to accompany me in town to search for an open cafe around at 6.30am. We drove for minutes but we didn’t see anything there right outside Clark, bummer. So the next time we shoot out of Manila, I ask them to make a stopover at the highway stops first so I could buy my caffeine fix at the nearest Starbucks.

on the way to Bulacan for a TV shoot

Yes, I also love tasting different kinds of coffee grown in different regions of the world. I am ecstatic whenever friends give me sample bags from their travels. I am also excited whenever I travel to Baguio where I get my regular supply of mountain-grown coffee at the market there.

it's 80 pesos (US$1.75) a kilo, man. a kilo!

I am currently enjoying a Baguio brew thanks to a good friend who was kind enough to buy me a few bags. She also loves coffee from that region so the request was easily granted.

But here’s the exchange deal: I was to fetch the coffee from her in a Fitness First establishment…and I had to join her in a session of Body Combat, her favorite workout mode there. She has been asking me to join for months now, since I told her that I really want to get back in shape again after finishing my MA thesis last year. And this x-deal thing happened yesterday.

I went to Ortigas and met her for the coffee, then we proceeded to the gym. Since there was a hiphop class before the combat class, I asked her to join that first. And we did, and I enjoyed it, but she didn’t finish the session hehe. She says she’s not much of a dancer, but I am, so I really enjoyed that workout. I function in workouts better if they are designed in the form of a dance.   That’s why I joined sessions of bellydancing and Latin Aero before in my old office. That was really fun.

So after the class, I was a bit exhausted but still having fun. I tried that combat thing and it’s quite enjoyable, I discovered. It’s like a combination of dance plus some defense techniques from different “fight sports” mostly boxing. And since I took up boxing a long time ago which I thoroughly enjoyed, I thoroughly enjoyed this combat thing. Sadly, my knees were not yet up to it, so I had to rest them, and had to quit the class halfway. Fair enough x-deal.

So after that, I have my prized coffee beans… and some hurting biceps, triceps and upper back hehe. But it’s worth it. To give me an excuse to work out, food works! Strange, ain’t it? Heheh.

back to home-cooked

It’s a little before 1am as I type this, but it’s still yesterday’s night for me.

We went to the grocery earlier, the one that we treat as our neighborhood grocery, since it only takes about 7 minutes or so to walk to it. We prefer coming in the morning when the store is rather freshly opened and there are less people inside. Okay, a little past 9am (or after we wake up, whichever comes first) but it’s still like opening time.

This is how it typically looks like:

kitty scans the store...

kitty scans the chef's choices...

kitty and leaflens push the cart...

...as the chef awaits her chicken orders

Kitty is her pen, by the way hehe. Yes, we have a grocery list with us. We’re like that.

I don’t know, but there’s something pleasing, satisfying, comforting and therapeutic about grocery-shopping, either when done by yourself or with a loved one in tow.

no red onions for me.

I really like looking at the produce, and I really scan the shelves to look at the products — their design, their packaging, their content (as much as their packaging would allow, that is), their shapes/sizes/colors,  and yes, I compare prices. I am a smart shopper sometimes hehe. But my girlfriend is smarter. She’s the one who always reminds me that buying groceries and cooking food at home is cheaper than eating out, of course. Of course I knew that already, but the Taurean-Oxen in me just wants to try foodie places around the metro sometimes. Well okay, most times hehe. I’m a gourmand, what do I do! But yes, she’s right, of course, and that’s why I love her.

making things easier...

I don’t know, but whenever I go out of the country, I visit the groceries to check what’s there. And if my trip to the US pushes through next month, hmmmm, that would really be interesting, to look at their groceries.

rice to the occasion. chos.

the experimental gourmet: salade de tomate

I’m trying to see if posting here while I am posting in my other blog here at wordpress works. Well, I think it does hehe.

I am updating my CV and in the process updating my archiving of my Manila Times column entries as well. But while doing this, I got hungry and went looking for food in my nearly empty pantry. We haven’t gone to the grocery again since the beginning of this month so whatever we have in the ref are leftovers from eating out or mga pabaon ni Mommy hehe. That’s the good thing with living in the same city with your parents; the relief goods as my college buddy once called them hehe.

But alas, we ran out of both take-out fare and relief food fare. But I saw three eggs pa in the ref and I remembered I was planning to make my emergency easy-to-make foodstuff for when my girlfriend was supposed to start her call center training like last week yata sana. But since the training was postponed and she remained here, we ended up eating other things. Kaya itong plan kong salade de tomate ay postponed… until today.

I call it salade de tomate because I got the idea from Chez Leon ba iyon, ‘yung dating pangalan ng resto sa loob ng Alliance Francaise de Manille when it was still located along Buendia Ave. in Makati. Mura siya at masarap kaya minsang break ako sa aking French language lessons doon (this was like way back in 1996-97!), doon ako tumatambay to snack on a quiche or this tomato salad with egg nga. I just tried to jazz it up and tinker with its taste according to what I like hehe. Kasi nga when I started living alone or with friends as housemates, we also tried being experimental gourmets. This is one of the things I concocted during those days.

This is how it looks like:

salade de tomate bayli version

And this is how to make it:

- You need to hard-boil eggs; a couple will do. Then slice and dice them in a bowl.

- For every egg, I prepare two regular-sized native tomatoes. Slice and dice them. Alisin ang seeds para iwas sa uric acid (nakaka-arthritis ito noh). Ihalo sa eggs.

- Get some butter or margarine, whatever you like, and heat them up hanggang matunaw.Ihalo sa eggs and tomatoes.

- Get some garlic and super-dice them. Or garlic powder will do, like what I use. Tantyahan na ito, according to how you like garlic. Lagyan ang mixture.

- Get some mayo, the light or less fat variety if you’re kinda health conscious. Again, tantyahan na ito. Ihalo sa mixture.

- And this is the Pinoy touch, methinks: lagyan ang mixture ng patis. Or fish sauce. Or Rufina para sa mga Ilonggo riyan (I just learned that there’s no Ilonggo word for “patis” because they call patis “Rufina” there, ‘yung tatak ba). Again, tantyahan na pero regardless of how many egg-tomato ratio you put in there (1-2, 2-4, etc.), a tablespoon of patis would do.

Ayan na ‘yan. Haluin niyo na lang at good to go na iyan. Best served as is. Hindi ‘yata siya masarap kung chilled. Hindi rin naman patok kapag ininit.

Kung mag-isa ka sa bahay, madaling ihanda. Kung may kasama kang isa o dalawang tao, puwede nang panawid-gutom. Masarap siya teh, kahit di masyado kaaya-aya ang presentasyon hehe. Ikaw na bahala sa garnish-garnish drama.

naparami ang mayo sa earlier version na ito

‘Yung original niyan actually, hiniwa-hiwa into circles lang ang eggs at tomatoes, tapos alternate silang nakahilera na parang natumbang dominoes sa isang malaking flat plate na pabilog, tapos sa gitna, may garlic-butter sauce lang na ibubuhos mo sa portion na kukunin mo. Hm come to think of it, ako lang pala nag-innovate ng mayo. Kanina, iniisip kong budburan ng parmesan cheese para tikman kung ano magaganap, pero wit na. Solb na ko dito heheh.

Minsan puwede itong isabay sa ulam like a side dish talaga na salad, parang ‘yung potato salad o macaroni salad ba. Masarap siya ka-duet ng barbecued meat sometimes. Pero I like eating it like this, e. Ayus lang hehe.

If you try it, tell me what you think. At kung may maisip kang innovation dito, share mo naman sa amin ha.

Bon appetit!

happiness is a well-stocked pantry

It has been 23 days since Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana is its international name, I think) ravaged my hometown of Marikina City here in Metro Manila, so it took me a while to restore things back to normal in my modest abode. Not that it was flooded per se like most of the houses in the lower parts of the city (I live more than three floors up of a condo) but the barangay where I live was indeed submerged in more than 5-feet high of floodwater. Electricity and water supply and of course phone lines were all cut off and were restored slowly, one by one. But as of this writing, Globelines has yet to restore our landlines and broadband connection. In the meantime, I use this mobile internet usb things to connect.

And as I type this, it should be dinnertime, but my girlfriend is still out with her friends on a study session thing. As I wait for her, I munch on things we bought earlier at Parco, a big grocery a few barangays away (no working grocery is open as yet in our vicinity). And I am just happy because our pantry is well-stocked again. Imagine being caught in a typhoon, trapped in your own home, without cooking things to help you and food supplies to nourish you. That was what happened to us 23 days ago.

Most of my Ondoy narratives are posted in my original blog because I used it to update my relatives and friends abroad of our situation. But the food-related segue I want to narrate here in full.

Like I said, happiness is a well-stocked pantry, because if you know me, grocery-shopping has been a ritual in my family since I was small. As a family, we never liked going to church but we went to groceries religiously. Whenever we hear of a new grocery that opened somewhere (even as far away as Subic!), we check it out and see what goodies they have and if prices are cheaper there. Yes, my loving family is a grocery junkie one hehe. And we love it!

My father has this tendency to overbuy supplies. If he finds his favorite V8 vegetable juice drink in cans, he buys like a whole box of it instead of buying a few or a dozen. Isang box, galing Japan, teh! Pramis. His philosophy of overbuying is that we will never know what will happen tomorrow or it might take us a while to go back to the grocery again, so better stock up. He has a point there, although my mom just doesn’t like it when he overbuys stuff that she thinks is unnecessary. Whatever those things are, I really don’t know. Well, let them be; they’re parents, and they’re a couple, so they’re allowed to be idiosyncratic with each other that way.

When I had high-paying jobs in the past, I also brought that overbuying stocks habit with me when I moved out and lived on my own (or lived in with girlfriends). But now that I mostly function as a public school teacher and prices of commodities are just so high (damn this government!), I rarely overbuy stuff. Maybe I am also wiser as I grew older, and I have already determined how to be a smart consumer. But the Taurus in me sometimes wants to indulge, and hence I still have impulse buying behavior a bit.

But having supplies is indeed a necessity in this country. Not only is my father right in saying that he doesn’t want to run out of supplies of something he wants to particularly eat or drink, but I want to add to that that we will never really know what will happen tomorrow. Like Ondoy. Had I known that it would be a super-duper disaster storm, I would have gone to the grocery days before and stocked up. Sadly, when Ondoy did come, the streets were already flooded. My girlfriend was in the middle of frying spam when our supply of gasul ran out the day Ondoy came.  And the delivery people backed out because they said the streets were already flooded a bit by the time I called. So we were left with some un-fried spam which my girlfriend tried to cook in our small oven-toaster. By nighttime, we were afraid that the lights would be cut anytime soon, and I was ranting about how we could have cooked the four remaining packs of instant noodles if we still had gasul. Good thing my girlfriend said she could cook it using the rice cooker, so she did just that. That was the last time we had hot food in our home during the typhoons. I opened up our pantry to check what else we could cook and store for later, food which will not go stale or rot outside the ref. Sadly, even bread we ran out of. But we still had microwavable popcorn, and so I popped a bag. Hey, popcorn is still food!

The day after Ondoy, we didn’t have much left in our pantry and ref, so we decided to go down and check out the streets and the market which was just near our place. The floodwater has subsided already but there was mud all over, mud and puddles. If only mudpies could be eaten for real, no one would go hungry. Unfortunately, there were no stores or establishments open because all of them were damaged by the floods. It was rather disheartening to see my neighborhood food suppliers in disarray — our silog favorite Tapa King (which just reopened yesterday, yay!), my writing space Starbucks, our favorite fast foods Jollibee and McDo, even my cheese bread supplier Pan de Manila. Even the neighborhood Ministop was equally devastated.

However, at the market, the stall that sold goto (a kind of rice porridge meal with strips of pork insides) or the gotohan was miraculously open, and I was happy because we could have a bowl of satisfying hot goto for less than 20 pesos. But sadly, they weren’t selling goto, only those big orange balls which the name eludes me now (tokneneng is the smaller version, which are quail eggs; I often forget this!), balls  which are whole hard-boiled eggs dipped in an orange-colored batter and then deep-fried in super-hot oil, eaten with spicy or non-spicy vinegar. Hey, it was still hot food, so we bought two balls each and asked for extra vinegar, as I am a vinegar junkie. We still had leftover pancit canton from the night before and ate that as well. But my girlfriend wanted to eat real food na raw come Monday, so we packed our things and went to my parents’ house in a slightly higher part of Marikina where they only had like 4 inches of flood inside the house, and the electricity in their village was immediately installed back. That was our life for like 3 or 4 days, with some nights spent sleeping there at my parents’ because it was more comfortable there.

After Ondoy, another typhoon entered the country in less than a week, Pepeng. While we wanted to prepare for it, much of our life here was still in recovery mode, which means even the grocery stores are still closed (they still are, in my area, up to the Riverbanks Mall area). And even if I wanted to go to the grocery outside Marikina, it was hell getting out of the city, because the Marikina Bridge that passed the river was closed, and the only way in and out of the city is via Marcos Hi-way, a longer detour, which was always traffic those days because other jeeps were also rerouted out there, together with the regular jeeps that plied it daily, like the Angono, Cogeo, Antipolo and Cainta lines. We ended up eating in karinderyas that were already open in areas that were not badly hit, which were in inner Marikina. Sometimes we would also go back to my parents’ house to eat meals since the market where my mom shops was already opened, and she could already cook meals regularly.

So never again! I don’t want to be caught here at home without some bread, rice and canned goods. My pantry is now overflowing again, thanks mainly to a deluge of writers’ fees I collected in bulk only earlier. My girlfriend and I bought the basics, and we stocked up on our favorite snacks, too, or chi-cha as I like to call it, hers being her favorite cookies, jellies, candies and chips. Same here, plus I stocked up on some extras we could enjoy later, like canned soup, oatmeal and stuff. I’ll post photos of some of the more interesting of them in later posts, when my internet connection is back to normal and uploading photos would be easier. For now, words are fine.

So please don’t panic-buy, just buy supplies, okay? Works for us.

wait lang ha Greenwich

i’m not sure of its cuteness factor pero this is taking that “bromance” thing (brotherly romance for those who have been living under a rock lately) kinda towards the homoerotic level na. and i am ambivalent about it, because their tv ad somewhat treads that line between being comedic or homophobic.

picture this tvc: si friend na boy ay masasagasaan at dinamba ni john lloyd to the rescue and they land on the sidewalk, one on top of the other in missionary position (top is jl). cheesy music plays and magtititigan sila, at senti ang rescued bottom guy at magsasabi ng one-liner cinematic cheesy line about the rescue. all this to be broken by their barkada’s teasing na “ang cheesy niyo ha!” and the two guys realize that they are about to go beyond the bromance line kaya tatayo sila agad pa-macho at magpapagpag ng sarili. the end. buy the pizza.

and yes, this bothers me because i am gay. er, lesbian. i am a gay man trapped in a lesbian’s body. but that’s another blog post. in here, we stick to food.

this morning, my girlfriend had the brilliant idea of wanting to eating pasta, and she liked lasagna daw, kaya inisip namin saan may lasagna na may pizza rin para papa-deliver na lang kami since it was raining buckets this whole week in metro manila. greenwich came to mind kaya doon kami nag-order. naalala ko rin kasi na parang may 3-cheese pizza ek na sila ngayon so we checked out their flier to see. at meron nga, so we decided to try it. mas mura pa rin kasi ang pizza doon, and for a little less than 500 pesos, we get the big size variety. we didn’t have enough money for our favorite pizza-pasta home delivery tandem from shakey’s kasi we forgot to withdraw, so greenwich was okay.

when i was about to throw the pizza box, i saw this flier taped sa top ng box:

can you say ho-mo-e-rot-ic?

di ba lang? tapos si john lloyd pa ang main endorser, na may lalabas na gay flick this month rin with luis manzano and ate vi from star cinema. well, trabaho lang daw naman ‘yun, sabi niya. o sige. sabi niya e.

in fairness, masarap pala yung pizza na tinutukoy ko:

5-cheese pala, and garlic. win.

mukhang cheese ang newest tripping ng greenwich. marami silang new pizza gimmicks na cheese-centered. this one we ordered is somehow reminiscent of the ultimate cheese n’garlic pizza favorite of mine from shakey’s.  o sha, sige na nga. i won’t say ripoff. oops.

the pizza we ordered was the thick crust one and it’s delicious in its own way naman. the heavy mozzarella topping was great but once cooled, it kinda hardened a bit so i had to knife the slices pa because the cuts are no longer, er, easy to just pull out like that. as for the flavor, it has less of that garlic flavor na sobrang tangy at sometimes over naman sa shakey’s (something you either hate or love, and i love!) and this greenwich version mainly focused nga on the cheeses. but when you bite it, parang you can differentiate what types of cheeses they put in there as you chew on it. kumbaga, parang naghihiwa-hiwalay ang lasa at/o uri sa loob ng bibig mo na isa-isang malalasahan ng taste buds mo as if each cheese was a tease to test your taste buds’ working knowledge of cheese. taste test baga. hindi nag-merge ang iba’t ibang uri ng cheese. nagpapatalbugan sila sa lasa sa bibig mo, swear.

ayan silang mga keso.

but towards the crust area, okay na ang lahat. sumisipa na doon ang tomato sauce na evident na lang sa cracks in between the cheeses pagdating mo sa may edge ng crust. kasi nga di mo siya malalasahan early on dahil sa nagpapatalbugang limang keso.

overall, i’d still order this again. matino naman at for a medium-sized craving of a cheese pizza (for cheese pizza lovers like me) e puwede na ito. on a rainy day, it’s enough to be considered as a comfort food of sorts.

pero lay off the bromance ads na lang sana.

b-day ni bayli sa pugad d.

last april was my birthday.  in our family, it’s but natural to eat out and celebrate. it doesn’t have to be formal or a dress-up event or anything anal or high society like that. basta we feel like eating out, usually sa places na gusto ng celebrant, o sa lugar na alam naming masarap balikan, o kaya kung may new suggestion na susubukan namin,  susubukan talaga namin. that summer, we decided to try pugad dencio’s at riverbanks mall, marikina city.

dencio’s has always been around.  if i’m not mistaken, it is owned by actor dennis padilla yata, the son of comedian dencio padilla. sa kanya yata pinangalan ito. i’m not so sure but i remember someone telling me this before. please correct me if i’m wrong.

we live in marikina so it was natural for us to discover eateries in this city. besides, it’s best to stay in our city than traverse the quezon city traffic going anywhere in qc (or ever farther), which is like 20-40 minutes away from marikina’s bayan center. e kung sa riverbanks commercial area lang kami, it’s just near. so we decided to try the newly opened pugad dencio’s there, literally near the banks of the river sa more developed side where the mall is.

i found it cute that dencio’s incorporated one of my favorite local comics characters in their new branch, hence making it like a themed resto of sorts. the term “pugad” came from Pugad Baboy created by comics artist Pol Medina Jr. during the 1990s. i literally grew up with it kaya masaya siya. wala namang mascot or anything sa resto; you just see some familiar characters in their tarps, posters, menu, place mats and other designs.

i knew i already ate at dencio’s before this, but i just couldn’t seem to place when and which branch. i know i already had a date at dencio’s in araneta coliseum’s gateway area. and the original dencio’s (or at least one of the earliest branches) along katipunan avenue near blue ridge was a place i already visited eons ago. but that’s the thing; it doesn’t stick to you, this place. i really never gave much thought about it so we just indulged on the food as if it’s all our first time to eat here.

the cast of characters: L-R orfinada family relatives (cousin and tita, mom’s sister), my papa and mommy, me and my girlfriend goldstar. no, she doesn’t drink; props lang ‘yang beer kas akin ‘yan.

so okay, we started with some appetizers since my papa ordered beer not just for him but for me, too. my, my, an indication of his acknowledgment that i am finally an adult? after all, that was my 36th. hmm. but i digress…

i think i was the one who chose this. crispy crablets with vinegar dip. the big red chili peppers could just be garnishing but since i didn’t like spicy food, i left it alone. well, this was okay. crunchy, pampulutan, goes fine with any kind of beer (mainly san mig, theirs was pale, mine was light). puwede na. not bad, but not superb either. on to the next.

we ordered this usually stir-fried veggie mix called pinakbet. since my girlfriend and i were trying hard to bring me back to eating healthier food ( i have to lower my cholesterol chorva, bummer), there should be veggies at the table. the safest is this pinakbet, a mixture of my favorites squash and eggplant, with some string beans and maybe okra, my most hated ampalaya and the ginisa trio of bawang-sibuyas-kamatis. usually, it is flavored with bagoong or shrimp paste but i really couldn’t recall if this was cooked that way.

being one-fourth ilokano where pinakbet is a staple where ilokanos come from, i really didn’t find any oomph in this dish of theirs. pinakbet na nga, simple lang dapat, pero wala talaga siyang libog, teh. no life, no zest, no lust. it’s just…plain.

and since it was my birthday, i was immune to the once-a-month-pork-dish fare we were trying to implement, too, hehe. so of course the default pork dish would be this crispy pata, or deep-fried pork’s leg part. it’s a unique pinoy delicacy and it could be eaten with rice as a meal, or plain pica-pica to accompany beer as pulutan fare. this one was ulam fare.

sadly, it’s quite unfair how we were served this poor excuse of a crispy pata. most of the parts were so fried that they were already quite hard and hard to eat! gudlak kung naka-pustiso ka teh! tanggalan ever ang mga teeth mo. then the really yummy parts–or supposedly yummy–are not so yummy here. heck, the neighborhood crispy pata fare is cooked better than this! you can hardly eat anything from it.

hay, so pork fail. up next, let’s hope another pork fare will fare better: the sinigang soup.

sinigang is a tamarind-flavored soup that could come with pork or seafood (usually fish). this  could probably be considered as the pinoy tom yum because of the same sour flavor base, except that our sinigang is not too spicy like the thai’s tom yum mix. usually, it comes with many slices of pork. as you can see in the also-uninspired photo, it was more soup than, er, sahog. this was my girlfriend’s request because sinigang was hard to find in our neighborhood market eateries. that white floating thing was radish, the orange thingie slices of tomatoes, and the green thingie was kangkong leaves. and that psssh misty thingie at the sides was my interest in eating, slowly dissipating. chos.

but seriously, this had like only four slices of pork in it. four slices, mother! mother, what about our other dutiesss? chos. man, if you could remember that ad, then–like me–you’re ancient! hahaha! chos. hindi naman, super knowledgeable lang hehe. hm, maybe i could also blog about food advertisements here sometime. sige.

haay, o siya sige, back to healthy na lang since we had no luck with the sinful pork fare. so we decided to order another sinful dish — sizzling tiyan ng tuna, or tuna belly in a sizzling plate with some kinda gravy on it.

ayan siya. di mukhang masarap, ‘no? kasi hindi siya masarap!

pork fail na nga, fish fail pa. luz! i hope this is not some sort of portents of things to come in my life, since this was my birthday, and it was unnatural for me not to enjoy sinful food fare during my birthday. hay ewan. this dish naman had us all fooled. akala namin we could all share and partake of this dish. alas, sadly, it was only good for two people. with average appetites. unless sina mahal at mura iyon, iba ‘yun. hm i take that back, kasi baka malakas din nga pala kumain sina mahal at mura, malay natin…

kaya at the end of the day, ganito na ang fez ng lola niyo:

libaysilog

lovely, ain’t it? mas masarap pa ‘ata kung ‘yung mga nakalista sa shirt ko ang in-order namin. happy meals pa. at mura pa, kung sa neighborhood pares bibilhin.

luz.

o sha. ’til next year. good thing our family had two more summer birthdays that came up after mine. pambawi sa lafangan galore.

more of that next time.

and no, for the umpteenth time, that shirt is NOT for sale or barter or arbor! huwag mapilit!

it sucks to be… this?

naloka naman ako sa produktong ito teh!

chumu-chupa chups ka ba?

i love candies and since i was small, i love lollipops na. growing up, one of the classic brands is this imported one called Chupa Chups. but this is the first time i saw lollipop mimicking/spoofing cigarette packaging.

wala naman, nanibago lang ako. i guess the crazy wordings in the box didn’t help… well, i still sucked on the damn thingies, didn’t i?

kainan na!

[kainan na! - a filipino (tagalog) invite to eat]

suma-satay at krung thai’s

groan. not another blog, you might say. or not another photo blog. or not another food blog. whatever. if you don’t like what you read here, then the internet is an open information superhighway — traverse.

but to those who are actually interested, welcome. i am a writer by profession for those who don’t know me, and i love to eat. i love talking about what i eat so it’s but natural that one day, i will also like writing about what i eat. or something. basta. gets niyo na iyon.

i got the idea to do this food journal from my colleague in film school where i teach. she noticed that i like photographing what i eat, and she said i could start a food journal with my photos. but being a writer, i also like to talk about the stories depicted in those photos. hence, here we are.

sabagay, once upon a time (or 1998 to start from the very beginning, ‘ika nga ni maria sa Sound of Music), i used to freelance as a writer and one of the very first assignments given to me was to review a restaurant. that was for a freebie lifestyle magazine called The Cutting Edge. a little later, one of the very first local online lifestyle webzines tapped me to write eatery reviews, the real stuff and not fluff, as they said. and when my freelance writing career took off at the turn of the millennium, i wrote other reviews for a lot of publications as well, but of course the food reviews didn’t disappear, even if most of the food places (and eventually, publications) disappeared and ran its natural economic course or whatever. good thing we now have blogs so i continue that endeavor here.

that one above is me eating in a thai place in marikina city called krung thai. it’s a very simple eatery but it’s good for budget eaters. i’ll talk about that in a future post.

in the meantime, enjoy, and as the french say, bon appetit!

and the final is… me!

sige ito na ang pangalan na gagamitin ko. tignan natin.