Tres Leche Cake

Sometime ago, a high school classmate of mine asked if I knew how to make a Tres Leche Cake. That was the first time I ever heard of such a cake. So again, I researched on the internet how to make the cake. It appears it is a yellow sponge cake that is then drenched with mixture consisting of evaporated milk, condensed milk and heavy cream in equal proportions. The cake is then refrigerated so that the milk mixture thickness somewhat. Just before serving, top the cake with whipped cream or Cool Whip together with some fruit. I've since learned there are easy ways to make this cake. Buying a ready made chiffon cake, and then drenching it with the milk mixture is the easiest and quickest way to do it. You can also use a yellow cake made from a cake mix. The key is to make sure that the cake soaked in the milk mixture is refrigerated for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight, in the refrigerator. The cake must be in some sort of container so that it has a chance to sit in the milk mixture and soak it up. If you make the cake from scratch or a mix, use a 13x9 rectangular pan, preferably the pyrex dish. To help the milk mixture penetrate into the cake, poke holes all over the cake using the fork, toothpick, or bamboo skewer.  Among the fruits I like to use are strawberry, kiwi, or even frozen raspberries. I normally put this directly above the cake, and then place the whipped cream topping. When I use fruits, I normally put a tablespoon of a liqueur in the milk mixture. For fruits like those I've mentioned, I normally put Grand Marnier or Bailey's Irish Creme both in the mixture as well as the whipped topping. If fruits are not available, I normally put semi-sweet cholocate on the whipped topping, and flavor the milk mixture with Kahlua. Recently, I brought this cake to a christmas pot luck dinner for international students hosted by my church. The pot luck spread is shown in the accompanying picture. I had barely eaten when one of my churchmates told me that my cake was a hit. By the time I had reached the pot luck table, the cake, crumbs and all, had evaporated (maybe because of the evaporated milk used in making the cake). I guess that is a testimony to how good this cake is. I do hope of you out there would try it.

Paella!

Paella is a rice dish believed to have originated from Valencia, Spain in the 19th century. It gets its name from the Paellera, a round shallow metal pan with two handles. Over the years, it has evolved into a dish that typically uses short-grained rice; together with meats such chicken, rabbit meat, and snails; combined together with an assortment of beans; and colored with saffron. In the Philippines, seafoods such as shrimps, crabs, and squid, and chorizo de Bilbao sausage is generally added when making paella. For years, our maid used to make paella on a regular basis. However, when my mother passed away, the maid left and there was no one to cook the paella. Yesterday, I decided to learn how to make Paella. I research the process over the internet, and bought the ingredients from the market. Because I did not have an honest to goodness paellera, I used a turkey roaster with a lid in which to cook the paella. I posted the experience on my FaceBook wall, and recieved many comments ranging from "Why did I not attend a pot luck and bring Paella", to "That look's so good! I would like to taste it." Many of you out there wrote to ask for the recipe. So the main purpose of this blog entry is to give the recipe and also encourage people to tryout the recipe. Paella is really easy to make and is a good one dish meal. You can make lots of it and it keeps well. The paella made last night heated up very well for today's lunch. So here is the procedure:

In a frying pan, sautee 4 springs of green onion chopped up, 2 large red bell pepers cut into strips, 4 large tomatoes chopped up, 5 cloves of garlic chopped up. Add 2 teaspons of Spanish Paprika, a few strands of saffron, 4 cups of short grained rice, a cup of green peas and 8 cups of boiling chicken stock. I adjusted the seasoning by adding some salt and peper to the broth. You an also add some chicken buoillon cubes for added flavor. Transfer this mixture to a paellera, or some container that in which you can cook the paella in the over (a large flat Pyrex cooking dish works well for this). Arrange chicken (I used skinless chicken thighs cut up in to pieces), seafood (I used squid cut up into rings and large shrimps un-shelled), a four pieces of chorizo de bilbao cut up into bite-sized pieces on the top and bake at 300F for 40 minutes, or at least until the rice is cooked. You may have to taste it during the cooking process to determine if the rice is cooked.

Hope you enjoy eating this as much as I did. Bon Appetit!

Happy Birthday DocZ!

Those were the messages that greeted me at 4:00 am last tuesday morning when I woke up and checked my inbox. Similarly, my cell phone's inbox was also full of birthday greetings coming from relatives, friends, colleagues, and former students. Going through these message I couldn't help but be reminded of the 45 other birthdays that had previously gone by, some memorable; some forgettable; and one particularly miserable, and wonder how this birthday would be.

My most memorable birthday was my 10th which happened in 1973. This was the one and only birthday that was televised and watched by the whole nation. At the time, Pepe Pimentel hosted a children's program called "Clubhouse 9". The program had a contest aimed at teaching children how to save money in a bank account, in which a child was chosen from among those who had an active bank account in Republic Bank to celebrate his/her birthday on the saturday episode of Clubhouse 9. At the time, I had a bank account in Republic bank in which I deposited all the monetary chrismas and birthday gifts I had recieved. My birthday for that year also fell on a saturday which made me an ideal candidate for the birthday celebrant of the week. Two weeks prior my birthday, my mother recieved a call from Pepe Pimentel himself saying that I was the chosen birthday celebrant for the week. I was given a complete wardrobe make-over Syvels Department Store in Makati. Also, my face was flashed on TV from Monday to Friday of the week of my birthday announcing that I would be celebrating my birthday on Clubhouse 9 that saturday. On my birthday, a large bus brought all my friends and family, which included members of the UP Cherubim, to what is currently the ABS-CBN studio along Bohol Avenue. I was given a gigantic cake which took almost 2 weeks and 50 people not including my guests to finish. That is not to mention mountain of wonderful gifts I received. Of all these gifts, the one I have carefully kept and still exists today is a BobseyTwins book given by a freind whom I will simply refer to as the "Munting Paraluman (Little Muse)". Many a boy dreams of celebrating his birthday on TV, and I was truly blessed to experience such. In constrast, my most miserable birthday happened last year. Just before my 41st birthday in 2004, my mother was diagnosed to have stage IIIB lung cancer. The next four years were a constant downhill battle with the disease. Everytime my birthday came, we really could not celebrate because my mother was ill, and wanted us to be frugal given the huge medical bills we were saddled with. In September 2008, my mothers condition progressed to the point where me and my younger brother could not properly care for her by ourselves and had to bring her to Iloilo so that her siblings could better care for her. On the morning of my 45th birthday I recieved a call from my uncle informing me that my mother only had 2 to 3 months to live. It was the worst birthday present I could have recieved. I spent the rest of the day coming to grips with the reality that my mother would soon be gone. We ate an early dinner which I had to cook, because our maid had to go home to Iloilo because her father had just died. After dinner, my brother went to the grocery to buy some ice cream. Waiting for him to comeback, I sat at the porch crying while looking at the starry night sky and wished my life would end because I did not know if I could deal with my mother's passing away. Thankfully, Timmy had some foresight, and arranged a surprise party. My cousins suddenly showed up at the gate with food and we celebrated, and I soon forgot the circumstances that I was in. My mother eventually passed away February 9 of the following year. And by God's grace and the support of those He placed around me during the time, I was able face very painful process of the passing away of my mother.

This experience taught me you never know what life may bring you. That is why this year, I made a promise to myself to celebrate the life God has given me. My birthday began with my entering a class that I thought was mine, lecturing for 20 minutes, only to find out that this class belonged to some other teacher. Good for me, as I need to make additional preparations for the birthday lunch party. I celebrated lunch with a KFC meal shared with my collegues from the Institute of Civil Engineering. In the afternoon, students from ACES and Aggregates came upon my invitation joined me in the GWEG office for a simple snack of cookies and juice. The remants of this, I latter brought to an ES 12 coordination meeting. Looking back, this birthday will go down in history as one of the most meaningful birthdays I ever had. Because now I realized what I would have missed had my life ended a year ago.

Today is Part 2 of the celebration. My cousins are coming for a party this evening so I better prepare. Thank you to all those of you who greeted me on my birthday, and also to all those of you who celebrated with me. Here's to life.

Hello World! Here I am.

I have always wanted to put on record all the events in this so called life of mine. Very often in the past, I would start a diary hoping to accomplish this. However, always I would never get past a few entries. Maybe because I was disorganized, lazy, simply lost interest, or all of the above. Besides this, I've never been a person who expresses himself well through writing. Rather, I always believed in the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words." I guess this is because of my background in engineering. In this day and age, this may be more true given that you can easily post not only pictures, but video and audio files as well as applets on the net. This is why I have decided to try again once more, but this time through blogging. Hopefully, I will be successful in documenting my so called life and thoughts; and even share these with all those of you out there in cyberspace.

The idea to set up a blog came as a natural result of my joining FaceBook. Through the pictures I've shared, and the chats I've had, I realized how rich in experiences my life was and is. Given the FaceBook exprience, many of my friends suggested I set up my own blog. So I went through the process of due diligence like any engineer would do. I did the research, determined how to do it, what it would entail in terms of time, effort and resources. I look through several blogs; I was inspired by what was written in many of these blogs; and I said to myself "I can do that!"

So here I go! On a new and exciting journey that I hope will not be just another passing fancy. It's been said that a journey starts with a first step. So my first step is this entry into my blog. My first step ever into the new world of blogging. I really don't know where all this blogging will take me. But I do know it is worth the risk, as well as the time and effort I will need to invest in it. So to all of those out there in cyberspace, join me as I embank on my journey.