Hokkaido Ramen Santouka (December 23, 2014)

I blame my lack of ramen-house savvy to the sheer amount of work I need to do. If I'm not doing schoolwork, I'm busy beauty blogging. If not both, I'm busy cleaning up a mess in the house or busy making stuff for my clay art business or beading. I really like going out and all, but with the kind of schedule I have, I can't afford to live like the people who go out weekly and eat out almost daily. 

So this is why in all the years, months, or whatever time frame Hokkaido Ramen Santouka has been open in TriNoma, I have never gotten to eat at the place yet. 

We spent a good time looking at the set menu and all, but we decided that we'd prolly be better off with the lunch special as these set menus have too much stuff that if we ordered two sets it'd be waaaaayyy too much food for three people. 

Ilog Maria Field Trip

One of the things I remember about my childhood is visiting Ilog Maria. I think it was almost 15 years ago when a friend went with us on a Tagaytay roadtrip and showed us this place. 

Ever since we knew about this place, we have fondly been coming back whenever we visit Tagaytay, or whenever we run out of bee-based products. 

This is more of a bee farm that has items for sale, and not a legit commerical shop. The bees can only produce so much each year which is why they don't advertise heavily-- there's no use creating such a demand when you know you won't be able to supply enough. 

Bulalo and Egg Pudding (July 2, 2014)

Hooray for a yummy breakfast! 

One of the things I love about eating out is that I get to have the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. We went to Leslie's the day before I took this photo which is why there's bulalo in my breakfast. I just love their bulalo, or in general, I love bulalo. 

 I also love how breakfast is an excuse to have dessert without a full blown meal. Or wait, I have dessert whenever I want, regardless of the circumstance hahaha. 

And the perks of breakfast include eggs, regardless of how they're done. Even these dessert pudding eggs count, if you ask me. 

My Cup of Tea

I think you've already seen in my previous posts as to how addicted I am to tea. I think I can actually liken my tea addiction to my makeup addiction--- I already know that I have too much, but I still can't stop getting new stuff. 

Sometimes, I pair my tea with actual teatime items. But meh, most of the time, I just gulp the tea without any thought. 

My Not So Usual Breakfast (June 29, 2014)

This is what you call a late upload! 

I love breakfasts wherein there's something homemade and something store bought. 

Drip Coffee Mornings

I don't always drink coffee. 

And that's the exact reason why at the times that I do drink coffee, I want the moment to be extra special. 

Okay, I can settle for instant 3-in-1 coffee, but I drink coffee from the grounds so rarely that it's so time consuming to set up a coffee maker only to keep it afterwards. This is why I love the concept of drip coffee. All you just need is to have filter paper, some coffee grounds, and you just pour hot water on this thing and wait for it to drip, hence the name drip coffee. 

Mama's Pork Chops and Casserole

If anything, I think I got my penchant for food experimentation from my mom. While she's the one who makes dinner most of the time, there was this one time she got so bored that she wanted to try something new. 

These chops are her usual baked pork chops. 

But this casserole is her experiment. She doesn't like bathing potato casseroles in cream and cheese, which is why she only added in a minimal amount of cheese, and to make the thing still taste creamy, she used starch and coconut milk to make it more creamy. 

Milk and Butter Dumplings

I once dined at the restaurant at the basement of Sogo Hong Kong, and I was amused that this ramen restaurant had a ramen called the Hokkaido 3.6 ramen. It was apparently one of their bestsellers, and to my surprise, it's not something you see everyday. 

Because Hokkaido 3.6 is a brand of milk, and they have a ramen with milk as its soup base. I tried it, and it was amusing because it was creamy, but at the same time the taste was light as it was only salt and butter that were with the milk. It's definitely far from the usual tonkotsu, or the usual lard based broth you see in ramen. 

I was so lazy one night that I decided to have milk based soup for dinner. 

Hogalbi Late Night Dinner

We went to the annual Crocs sale last night expecting that we'd probably just check out the items, and bring home at most one pair for my mom. We were soooo wrong as the items were so cheaply priced that it was impossible to walk out of the sale withut getting anything, especially for someone like me who has really big feet that stores rarely stock up on my size. 

We were so exhausted from the sale that despite having a light dinner, we were super hungry after we paid for our shoes. Initially my mom thought that this place must be a shady bar as it was still open at 9PM, but thankfully, it's actually quite a family friendly place. 

This is formerly Buma restaurant, and I'm not sure if someone else bought the property and made another restaurant or the owners of Buma repackaged their business and turned it into Korean food instead of Japanese seafood, but meh, whatever. I care about the kimchi more. 

Harney & Sons Japanese Sencha Tea

I love tea. As in so much that my dentist has already seen tea stains on my teeth during my last dental visit! 

Harney and Sons tea is a new brand I've recently encountered. I haven't seen this in stores yet, and it's probably because I live in a rock. 

I love this flavor in particular because it's rare to see sencha in teabags this small! I mean I have had sencha, but usually they're in loose leaf, and they're really bulky when steeped in water. I was actually amused that this didn't blow up with expanding pieces of rice, but taste wise, you can taste more of the green tea rather than the roasted rice which is why the teabag can be that small and flat. 

Exploits in Photography (June 22, 2014)

I love the filters Canon 70D has. A lot of people tell me how lucky I am that technology has afforded me to not buy physical filters anymore as a lot of effects and filters are already built in the camera. 

For my beauty shots, I like the soft focus and the fish eye functions. I use the soft focus to blur out imperfections and all, and fish eye for lip swatches to magnify the lips for my readers. 

For nature and landscapes, though, I like to use the grainy black and white function. 

I also like to use the watercolor filter. 

My Not So Usual Breakfast (June 19, 2014)

Hooray for a Krispy Kreme-ey breakfast! 

This is Krispy Kreme's baked creations. 

And their salted caramel doughnut. 

Tampay sa Sinagtala, Orani, Bataan

To those who are looking for a bed and breakfast that gives free flowing Starbucks brewed coffee, this is it.

Well, the statement above is true, but at least I got your attention now. My godmother really does provide free flowing Starbucks brand brewed coffee to parties who'll book for 10 or more people in her bed and breakfast. 

Welcome to Tampay sa Sinagtala. This is one of the six bed and breakfast houses in Sinagtala resort in Orani, Bataan. This house in specific can accommodate up to thirty people, has cable TV, and has five bedrooms available for bookings. 

The name Tampay comes from the Tagalog word for serenity. And given how peaceful and quiet it is here, the name is a fitting name. 

Sinagtala, Orani, Bataan

Field trip time! Last Sunday I paid a visit to a really really really remote place in Bataan. It's a resort/retreat house/bed and breakfast complex called Sinagtala. It's so remote in the sense that from Bulacan it took us 1.5 hours to get here, and the signage you see below is a signage leading to a mountain, and on the end of the mountain is where the resort is. 

But I guess this is exactly why people come here. It's so remote that it's like you feel this sense of safety from the stress of city life. It really is a good place for a retreat because it's got a good view of the mountains, has a lot of mini-farms and plantations, and there's a chapel. And the trip getting there is already relaxing as it is because you'd be cruising along roads srewn in the middle of the mountains, the valleys, and the other gifts of nature. 

 This is one of those chapels where it doesn't feel hot despite having no air conditioning. The place is surrounded by so many trees that even in June's turbulent heat-rain weather, the weather here is cool and windy.

And they have a multi purpose hall so they can host weddings and all that. 

Pepper Lunch and Some Adventures (June 16, 2014)

I just love Pepper Lunch. I remember years back when we had this in Singapore. It was about 6 years ago that there still weren't any outlets here in the Philippines. We loved the concept so much that we were really pleased when we found out months later that they were already setting up shop here in the Philippines. 

Whatever I order from them, I always end up happy. 

Recent Choto Stop Haul

You may have seen my post about Choto Stop recently, so today I'm going to share our haul from the place.

Tim Ho Wan for Breakfast (June 17, 2014)

I was just so happy when my brother came home the other night with a Tim Ho Wan bag in tow. It's undeniably the 'it' restaurant right now and I was extremely curious to find out about how their food tasted like.  

He brought home what seems to be their take on asado buns. I was actually surprised because given the exterior of these buns I thought they were dessert. 

My Not So Usual Breakfast (June 15, 2014)

It's not unusual for me to have breakfast, but since this isn't oatmeal, it's considered as an unusual breakfast overall. 

Lotus Cookie Butter

I don't like eating bread, and I'll onlu eat bread when I'm super hungry or when it can be paired with something too good that I can't eat alone. One of those 'something too good' things is cookie butter. 

I remember when in the middle of last year a relative from the US gifted us with Cookie Butter that was Trader Joe brand. They even narrated to us that they made their family member go to the store everyday because there's a limit to the number of jars you can hoard, and probably if you look Pinoy they'd even have more stares targeted at you because I think Trader Joe's and the rest of the cookie butter manufacturers know how there is a demand for the stuff here. 

We have a friend who is based right now in the depths of Kalibo and she was hysterically laughing when she shared to us that there was only one kind of cheese there, no canned mushrooms, no fridge, and virtually no gourmet food, and yet you can find cookie butter everywhere in their area.

When I was reading the label of the Trader Joe's cookie butter we got, I was actually laughing because the description says something like 'all you need to do is to try it to find out how it tastes,' and honestly, it's true because I had a really hard time describing the taste to a saleslady at Puregold. 

The only way I could describe all cookie butters in general is that they taste like a warmer and spicier (as in more cinnamon feel) version of cookie batter, or for those who have eaten at Auntie Anne's pretzels, it's like the almond flavored pretzels turned into a crunchy spread. 

Mama's Munggo Stew and Beef Soup

Munggo stew is something that our family has loved for a very very long time, and very recently mama decided to give it a try. All these years we've been eating munggo stews from restaurants and turo-turo stores that it was about time we made it ourselves. 

So this is a hearty bowl of mama's stew, filled with munggo, okra, and love. 

And usually we're also very excited whenever we see this crock pot because it just means that mama is about to prepare her beloved beef soup. She gets a big bag of giniling and puts it into a crock pot with herbs and spices and leaves it to cook for like 6 hours. The end result is a really tasty broth and tender beef bits.