Here's my bullshit recipe for Pancit Canton

Okay, wow, yeah, sorry guys, I totes forgot to write down the recipe of my mom's pancit because she was really giving me a cooking lesson in pancit, so I didn't have much time to write the recipe, so I'll just give a list of ingredients, and tell y'all what I did.

:::::INGREDIENTS:::::
Egg Noodles
Cabbage
Celery
Carrots
Snow Peas
Boiled Chicken Breasts (boiled in chicken stock)
Soy Sauce (We used Silver Swan brand, a Filipino Dark Soy Sauce: Kind of like a Japanese tamari, but not as strong, like in between regular soy sauce and dark soy sauce)
Sesame Oil (we used Kagoya)
Chinese-Styled sausage (it's a drier, sweet sausage that many are not accustomed to in America)
Chicken powdered bullion

::Garnish::
Chopped green onions(scallions)
Citrus juice (we used lemon, but its traditionally sprinkled with calamansi juice)

Uhh, and here are a few tricks my mom told me to do when cooking pancit (assuming you already kind of know how to cook pancit)

~Boil your chicken in chicken stock so that it develops a deeper flavor
~When cooking your veggies, put your soy sauce (shoyu) and sesame oil in to initiate the flavor palette of the pancit (this is where you'll cook your noodles in the future)
~Put a few drizzles of soy sauce around the pan, and about a scoopful of bullion into your cooking liquid. It'll taste really salty, but you will be cooking your noodles in here, so instead of having bland noodles and concentrated saltiness on top, you'll have fully flavored noodles with a well-developed flavor on the outside.
This picture is one I found on the internet, but it looks exactly like the one my mom makes, so naturally I used it.


Yeah, I'll put a more serious recipe up later, it's just really late and I'm really tired, so yeah.

Restaurant Review: Bravo Burgers

Bravo Burgers is a local chain of restaurants here in the Southern California area serving delicious Burgers and Mexican food. I've been here on many an occasion, sampling the plethora of burger choices, my favorite being the San Francisco Burger, served on Sourdough Cheese toast and avocado slices. But this time, I wanted to try one of their Mexican delicacies on display.

The decor of Bravo Burgers is like an upscale Fast Food joint, where you come up to order the food and to your side are fountain drink dispensers like your typical fast food restaurant, but with much higher quality food, and a nicer ambiance. The one in San Juan Capistrano has Mission-influenced interior decoration, with a palette of deep oranges and reds to enhance the dining experience. The complimentary Tortilla chips and salad bar is free for anyone who orders food. there is even outdoor patio seating, with a wall fountain.

I ordered their Bravo Chicken Bowl, a bowl of spanish-styled rice, refried beans, and Grilled chicken, topped with melted cheese, cilantro, and diced white onions. It wasn't my first choice, but I only had $6.17 with me, so I went with whatever would fill me up, taste great, and at a cheap price too.

With a medium sized drink (and don't forget the complimentary chips and salsa bar), my total came up to $5.75, a meager price for a great meal. I expected the bowl to be around the size of my morning cereal bowl, but was surprised to see a bowl of about 10 inches in diameter, something truly of greatness to a student who just got out of school. Hungry. (I had finals, so my school provided no lunch break)

The chicken was perfectly grilled, and the fresh flavor that the onions and cilantro provided contributed to a phantasmagorical orgy of sorts in my mouth. The rice was well to my liking (something very hard to accomplish, especially to an Asian), and beans were good too. Until the beans seemed to keep pixellating out of nowhere. Like seriously, there was A LOT of beans. Too much to my liking. I wish they had replaced a 1/3 of the beans for more rice, and it would have been perfect.
I enjoyed my beans and more beans bowl with a passion fruit tea (unsweetened, I might add), with about 4 packets of sugar. Yeah, I really think they oughtta invest in some sweetened tea. I hate having to wait for my sugar crystals to dissolve to my liking.

I sat there, enjoying my meal, waiting for a few friends I was supposed to be meeting, listening to my iPod, being a happy camper.

I will definitely come back to Bravo Burger, but maybe for one of their American food choices instead, or maybe a mexican combination plate.

I ended up waiting for my friends so I could satisfy my fried-food craving by eating seventeen too many of their french fries.

I give Bravo Burger an 8.5 out of 10 for great food at ridiculously affordable prices, a clean establishment, and for a relaxed, but contemporary ambiance.

Cooking adventures, here I come!

Yeah, sorry I haven't been posting a lot of recipes. But I'm planning to make this a "everything-related-about-food" blog as opposed to a "recipe" blog. Just so I have more reasons to updates his more.

So expect some restaurant reviews, recaps on parties involving a lot of food (they'll usually be Filipino foods if it falls within the party category...hehhe...) and other shenanigans dealing with the sustenance we all enjoy consuming.

And seeing how I only have one more day of school before Summer vacation, that may happen sooner than you think.

So future blog posts for the following summer:

~Tomorrow, June 23rd: Restaurant review for Bravo Burgers, a local burger and Mexican food joint here in the California area

~Thursday, June 24th: Recipe for my mama's pancit canton. I'm going to be making it for a friend's birthday party, and all throughout Eastern Asian Culture, noodles on your birthday means you'll live a long successful life ^^

~July 3rd: Housewarming party for my family's new house in Las Vegas. We're going to have family and friends over, so there will be food to talk about. It'll also be a test run for some catering food that my mother and I are going to be making.

~July 31st(or somewhere around that time): my Aunt's wedding. this is the catering job my mom and I will be practicing for in early July. Hey, I know we're not hired professionally, (more nepotistically) but any practice is good for the future

~Randomly sometime in the summer: Restaurant review for In-N-Out. Seeing as I'll spend a lot of time in Vegas this summer, chances are my Dad will have us stop at some In-N-Out, in one of the many in Las Vegas. Come to think of it, there is a brand new one opening up in my neighborhood in Vegas...

And yeah. More time at home means more possibility that I will cook at some point. Even though in my school district's shorter-than-the-American-average-length-of-summer, what with summer work for my three College Level courses in Advanced Placement, Driver's Ed and working to get my license, and shuttling between my home in California and our new home in Las Vegas, I doubt I'll have THAT much time to update this here blog...but we'll see, I mean there's already five new prospects for food-related blogs. So the future is looking rather bright.

So yeah, so long. Im'unna go update my other blog.

Sattvic Apple-Pear Crumble

It actually turned out pretty damn well! I was surprised people in my yoga class actually asked for the recipe. That was cool. However, my badass friend Amy and her group (made up of my other badass friends Emily and Alaia) made some pretty legit Margherita Pizza. It was voted best recipe in the class.

And really, I just made a crumble to make an Old Greg reference.

Oh right, recipe!

Uhm, yeah, this recipe is something that I kinda just created, and will be different in a few ways. This recipe contains no added sugar or bleached flours, so its a lot better for you too! I'm not too sure about the nutritional facts, but i'm pretty sure its healthier than that Malomar bar you are eating.

Don't you try and hide that from me. You vile person.

::INGREDIENTS::
- 3 overripe pears
- 2 large or 3 medium Apples of your choice
- 3 tbls. of honey
- 1 tbls. of Roasted Flax seed w/ blueberries (can be found at Trader Joe's or
your local health food store)
- 1/4 tsp. each of cinnamon and nutmeg, divided evenly among fruit filling and
crumb topping
- 1/4 teaspoon of Vanilla essence (no vanillin- only use the real stuff)
- 3/5 cups of Whole Wheat flour (1/2 cup plus then some)
- 1 single serving packet of regular instant oats (or about 1/3 cup of rolled oats)
- 1/4 cup of butter
- optional: chopped walnuts

::PROCEDURE::
1). Peel and slice your pears, then mash them until they are somewhat smooth, yet still chunky.
2). Place mashed pears on a sieve over a bowl, and let drain for 30 minutes.
3). Slice apples, leaving skins on or off according to your preference (yet leaving the skins on is healthier ^^")
4). Take mashed pear out of sieve and onto the bottom of a 8x8 or 9x9 pan.
5). Put sliced apples in bowl with drained pear juices. Drizzle honey on top of apples, sprinkle with half of the cinnamon, half of the nutmeg, and all of the vanilla essence, mix, and let flavors co-mingle for 15 minutes.
6). Put apple mixture on top of the mashed pears, and sprinkle with roasted flax.
7). Cut up butter into small pieces and put into a bowl. Fill with flour and oats, sprinkle the rest of the cinnamon and nutmeg, then cut the butter into the flour and oats until it resembles a biscuit dough. You may add more flax if you wish.
8). Spread crumb dough on top of fruit mixture, and top with walnuts if you prefer, and more roasted flax as well.
9). Bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

And of course, you may add sugar to your hearts content, but the point here is to try and be healthy! Besides, the drained pear juice form the overripe pears will bring enough natural sugars into the crumble, that you won't even need any additional sugars. Just the fruit and the honey does well on its own.

So yeah. Im'unna try and update this more often. Depends how often I can find time to cook. I have a Chemistry final in 5 days anyway, and nearing the end of school means finals, state standardized testing, yatta yatta yatta.

The yoga food class party was actually pretty successful. Everyone was creative didn't really make any bland-ass food. Except Nicole. But her hummus was ruined and needed something quick, so she made some granola.
Bless her heart...

I HAVE DECIDED WHAT I WANT TO MAKE!!!1!

Yeah, that was awkward...

But yeah. I'm going to make a fruit crumble. Mainly because I feel it would be awesome to get a good grade and say "I made a crumble. Teacher said mine was the best!"

And if you don't get that reference, go to youtube and search Old Greg. Some of the most hilarious shit to come from Britain since Fawlty Towers.

But yeah, its consisted of fruits, and a crumble topping made with whole wheat flour, butter, chopped walnuts, and blueberry flavored flax-seed. YUM.

Yeah, once I'm done creating it, I'll post the recipe of it.

Since we are nearing the end of the school year, this means I get to do more fun shit at home and with my friends, so I'll most likely blog more on both of my blogs in the near future.

Possibly one of the Hardest things I'm ever going to have to Cook

So in my Yoga class, we've recently been talking about food, like which ones are good and which ones are bad. There are three classes of foods. One of them is Tinnastic (sp?), which is the worst possible kind. It consists of frozen foods, heavily factory-made food, microwaves food, burnt food, and barbecued food. The other is Rajastic, which is stuff like meats, fish, eggs, sugar etc. The best possible kind is Sattvic, which consists purely of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, beans, and legumes.

My teacher wants us to make a recipe solely out of Sattvic foods.
Some of the restrictions are as follows:
NO garlic
NO onions
NO salt
NO Vinegar
NO Meat
(which completely throws out anything Filipino D:)
NO sugar
NO eggs
NO fats

You get the idea.

...YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS (for me, at least) TO COOK WITH NO GARLIC, ONIONS, PORK, OR FAT(s)?

I kind of want to make like an Asian Tofu stir-fry over soba noodles. But there's this one girl in my Yoga class completely OBSESSED with Japanese food, so I don't want to end up making the same thing. And another part of me wants to make a drink or a baked good, because I know no one would try to do something like that. And another part of me just want to do it easy and make Sago Gulaman.

I don't know. All the Sattvic recipes I found online are lame. I'll update when I figure out what I'm going to do.

MULTICULTURAL FAIR TOMORROW!!

It's gonna be fun :D
I made my afghan biscuits, packed them in twos to sell for a dollar. The rest of the food for sale is going to be cupcakes in the shape of sheep, since apparently there are a lot of sheep in New Zealand, and Ginger Ale. Since we clearly cannot sell Ginger Beer to High School Students. Dad kept buggering me about the cookies, asking if he could have some. I told him if there were any leftovers, then yeah. But I enjoy my recent cooking ramblings, I feel like cooking something this weekend. Oh, and Saturday I'm making something Asian with my mom so I can bring something to my friend's Disney Party. Its just going to be me and my closest friends watching Disney movies on Saturday, so I'll probably be cooking with my mom tomorrow night, Friday.
Yeah, I spend my Friday nights cooking with my mom. Wanna mess?