Conversation that I heard!

January 9, 2014 by feyma

Conversation that I heard!

It’s really nice now that we decided to ride jeepneys in going anywhere here in the city area. On one of our jeepney routes, me and my niece overheard a very interesting conversation of 2 old friends. One of the ladies might be in her mid 50′s and the other one might be a little younger than me. I am just estimating their ages. The route was a bit longer because of the traffic accident. So even with the traffic I was not agitated because of the delay, just thankful of the interesting conversation I’ve heard inside the jeepney. As the minutes went on, their conversations got intense. Both of them shared each other stories about their friends or close friends rendezvous. I will share their conversation here, some readers here might know of similar stories happens to their friends or relatives. Feel free to share here. I will make 2 post from the lady’s chitchat.

Overheard on the Jeepney

As I gathered with their conversation, both ladies used to be neighbors. They were just in that jeepney together accidentally. When the older lady converse about the wedding of I think her close family member. She was asked to be the godmother (ninang) of the couples to be. She was happy to do it. She was even helping the couple in the wedding preparation. Just by listening I could tell that the wedding was a success. The godmother said that the guy, a foreigner from the States, was a bit older than the lady. I guess the guy had money and was getting a big pension. As I was hearing the conversation, the bride was a lavish spender. Bought stuff that’s not even necessary. They had a really nice wedding. Which was understandable since she was just married once, so why not have a fancy wedding? She bought stuff for their house and of course the typical thing partied almost every night, drinking beer and liquor.

The guy wants to live here in the Philippines because he has the money to live here comfortably. The lady really insisted before the wedding that they had to live in America. So the guy agreed to the wishes of the girl because he really loved the girl so much. Thinking about it, it might also good for the lady to live in the States for a few years for her to learn American culture and that she will get her US citizenship and after that they will settle back here in the Philippines for good.

Well, after the wedding when they should have the honeymoon somewhere. The girl postponed it and said that she’s not up to it going somewhere, because she was really exhausted with the prep of the wedding. So she just wants to go to the hotel and sleep. The godmother saw the reason for her not going with the honeymoon somewhere. The bride already had an affair with her ex two days after the wedding. Instead of spending time with her husband she was in bed with her ex. The husband was alone in his hotel room. He thinks his wife spends time with her parents. That really shocked the people that saw her and the ex especially the godmother.

So the godmother was fuming. She told the bride to end the relationship with the ex or she will tell the husband immediately, she said not tomorrow, its going to be today. She told the bride that if she ever do that again that she will never want to get involve with the family because she will never tolerate that kind of behavior. She also added that from now on she will monitor the bride and if theirs something she notice that’s not appropriate to the marriage, she will tell the husband and the church. Hmm. Shocking.. It worked though, because she said the bride really straighten up and behave like a wife after their talk. Just by listening I was hoping too for the happy ending of the new couple.

So I guess you better get godparents that are really close to the family. At the end it will help out both husband and wife. I’m just glad that the godmother really stood her ground and gave her piece to the new bride. I think the parents were also giving advice to the bride to stick with the husband because not just he had the money but also they could tell that the husband will be there for their daughter until the end. They know that the ex will just be there while he can dig in money from their daughter. Plus morally they know that their daughter was already married. They bride was still processing her papers to go to the States. Hoping for the best for the husband and wife while living in the States. Good luck to them.

Watch out next week for the other story. If the story rings a bell to you feel free to comment. Have a great day!!!

December 26, 2013 by feyma

My homemade pumpkin-kalabasa pie!

I am giving you now the recipe for my pumpkin-kalabasa pie, Feyma’s style. It’s really a simple recipe. You also just need another local ingredients here in the Philippines. The main ingredients would be the kalabasa (a local squash). You can buy the Kalabasa in any malls here. Of course a good and cheap kalabasa can be found in the palengke (public market). At least there you can really choose the size of the kalabasa that you want. We are so choosy with ours. We want it the outside will be on the almost orange side. It means the kalabasa is ripe and good to cook for the purpose of making pie.

Pumpkin Pie in the Philippines

My niece Glenda is the expert of choosing ripe kalabasa, since her parents, they had a whole farm of it. She’s trained by her parents to harvest and choose the ripe one. So when it comes to buying our kalabasa here, I am sending her. Now our helper is good too. But I am learning in that department. I’m kind of good on doing that now too. I’ve seen butternut squash here in some of our malls. But I am not using that for my pie. It’s more money than the kalabasa. So for sure we will never use butternut squash.

“First job before making the pie is to make the squash (kalabasa) puree”:

Pies galore

To boil the squash:

1 whole ripe squash (kalabasa) – cut into cubes
Pinch of salt
Brown sugar

Procedures:

Wash the kalabasa and peel off the skin. Make sure to not leave any of the skin and the seeds and the stringy fibers before cutting into cubes. If skin not properly remove it might give a bitter taste. And it will ruin the taste of your pie.
Put water to a big pot and put a pinch of salt and bring to a boil.
Add the kalabasa to the boiling water and cook for about 40 minutes or until its tender when pierced with a fork.
Puree the kalabasa in a blender, or food processor or in a food mill or with a hand held blender or potato masher or by hand. Giving you too many options there. LOL
Let it cool. Save the extra for kalabasa bread, cookies or a pancake.

***** Kalabasa (squash) – Pumpkin Pie *****

Thanksgiving fun isn’t complete without pumpkin pie

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups pureed kalabasa
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 egg, beaten
1 cup evaporated milk (Alaska, Alpine & Angel brand or other brand is good too)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A pinch of allspice
A pinch of ground cloves
A pinch of ground ginger
A pinch of nutmeg
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).
In a mixer: combine the squash, brown sugar, cornstarch, egg, milk, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Mix until combined and smooth (might have to use strainer to make sure it’s not lumpy).
Pour into the unbaked pie shell.
Bake in a preheated oven for an hour or more, or until when you insert in the middle of the pie with toothpick it comes out clean.

Let it cool before serving. When serve put whip cream on top. Yummy for your tummy.

Have fun eating. Maybe you will make kalabasa pie for your Noche Buena.

Merry Christmas To All Of You LIP Family/Reader!!!

December 19, 2013 by feyma

My homemade yams!

Another recipe that we made here in the house during Thanksgiving, using local ingredients is Yams. In the States they use sweet potatoes for the yams. Here in the Philippines we use the camote (similar looks to the sweet potato in the USA). Growing up here in the Philippines, we cooked the camote in lots of ways. Like slicing the camote into round sort of thin slice, maybe like around quarter of an inch, fry it until tender then add sugar. Other ways is just by boiling it and it can be substitute as a rice, eat with fish kinilaw (similar to sashimi). Really good to have that dish eating in the beach. Other ways of cooking is by boiling and mashed it and add sugar and wrapped it with lumpia wrapper and fry. All the dishes that I mentioned were really good but the yams is really something else. Its so good.

The holiday table

Feel free to share here some of your sweet potato/camote recipe.

***** Homemade Yams (Sweet Potato) Recipe *****

Ingredients:

2 lbs camote
2+ cups brown sugar (Keep tasting until it comes to the sweetness you desire)
2 cups marshmallow
pinch of salt
3/4 – 1 cup of butter (eyeball if needed more)

Yams at left, and other holiday food

Procedures:

Peel and quartered the potatoes. Boiled water in a large pot and add a pinch of salt. Boil the camote for 20 minutes or so, or until the camote are no longer crunchy; when its cooked. Drain just a little of the water. Not all to avoid dryness. Mash it with the potato masher and add the butter and the sugar. Keep tasting and add more sugar and butter if needed. Put like 1/2 cup of the marshmallow and mix to the mixture.
Butter the bottom of the 8 x 8 Pyrex oven dish. Pour the camote mixture to the dish. And put the rest of the marshmallow on top of the mixture.
Bake at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or until brown. Really keep an eye for not to get burn.

***** Wondering if marshmallow is readily available here in the Philippines? Definitely yes. Almost all the malls carry it. If one mall is out, usually the other mall has it. Here in Davao one place that you will always see marshmallow is at Baker’s Basket, along Mabini Street, Davao City. Not far from Central Bank. Just near MacArthur Highway. S & R carries them too. *****

We do cook yams not just during Thanksgiving. Sometimes on some other occasions too. We are addicted to yams I guess. Ha ha ha.

Have fun eating you guys. Happy Holidays!!!

December 5, 2013 by feyma

Christmas is giving to the less fortunate here!

Well Thanksgiving is over. Time for us to think now of the Christmas shopping. We are so lucky that we can buy even just a few presents for our kids and give some to our friends and family. Living here now for 13+ years, I’ve seen people – too many people here struggling to buy food for their Noche Buena for their family. It’s really sad but that’s the reality here. Noche Buena – A Filipino tradition for midnight dinner for the whole family on Christmas Eve.

I think you probably read here how we started the first Martin family tradition of giving away. We were just sitting on our office in our house one Christmas eve many years ago. Bob said to me that “Hon, I don’t feel the Christmas spirit here because I think I don’t feel the cold weather“. We kind of just smile to each other. Then after awhile he told me what if we will buy something like burgers from McDonalds and cookies and juices and candies from the grocery stores for the homeless people here in the city. So I called up McDonalds if they can provide me with 200 burgers and I will be picking it up in a few hours. I told them of my purpose for the burgers. They were so happy and so helpful that they said yes they will get it ready for me. They told me too that they will get some of the burgers from there other branches of McDonald here in the city. They also provided me with plastic bags so that I can put some of the other goodies in it. So we headed out to town and found homeless people in the city.

Then later we the headed towards Diversion Road and found so many beggars on the road. My goodness our burgers were gone immediately. But it was really fun giving away to them, since they’re not expecting it. We did it for a few years from our very own money. Of course it’s just limited since the funds were only ours and not so big. Until later when LiP was born. Bob started asking here from you guys our readers if you guys can pitch-in. And you guys did without questions. Now we got the LiP DRIVE. So really thankful that you guys did. We can now give out a lot and so many less fortunate people can put a smile on their faces.

I’ve encountered too many events during our giving away. A few of them really remains in my heart and it really humbles me. And it also taught more lessons to my kids. One of the events that stuck in my head was this event: A few years ago when we were giving out near BUDA (the Davao/Bukidnon border). On the way, we stop by at the road side because we saw an older lady, with her I think her daughter or a grand daughter. It’s really hard to say, she might just be looking older because of harder life. She’s getting ready to ride her horse, we stopped and and said hi to her and the little girl. We greeted her Merry Christmas and started handing her some food for the Noche Buena and some goodies for the little girl. She was shocked and didn’t know what to think, she just started crying and she said that “you guys are the angels sent from above” because she said she was praying for miracle because she didn’t know if they will have food for that night. You know what, tears were rolling my eyes and I know Bob too upon hearing her say that. Our kids saw it and I could see their sadness for the lady’s struggles but happy that at least they had food for the holidays. To be honest, It even brought tears to my eyes until now when remembering that day. Really we hear too many stories similar to that lady when we went out giving. Our kids really enjoyed doing it. They like to go to a little remote area and give there because those people never expect somebody like us to go there and just give. It’s good to give to people you don’t know and they are not expecting to get anything from anybody that day. The smiles and the sparkles of their eyes are priceless.

It’s been a good thing that we did give each year here. Our kids really know that too many poor people live here. I could tell by just watching them that they really care also for the poor people here. Our kids always look forward on every giveaway. They help out packing the stuff. It’s really a team effort by all of us. If you can help again this year, please send an email to: [email protected] and you will get full instructions on how to donate. Thanks to all of you that contribute.

We give 100% of all your donations to the less fortunate people here. I know that all of us struggles with the hard economy right now, but if you have some extra money, that amount can really feed to one of the poor family here in the Philippines. We are so grateful for your sacrifices too. More people will contribute, more people will have food for their Noche Buena. We can put a smile to the faces of the people here, the children especially.

From the bottom of my heart “THANK YOU SO MUCH” for helping our cause. To our LIP Family, I’m forever thankful to God for you guys.

A Merry Christmas to you all!!!

November 28, 2013 by feyma

Happy Thanksgiving Day USA!

It’s that time of the year again for a Thanksgiving holiday celebration in America. Today, I am writing about the way we celebrate our Thanksgiving day in our house here in the Philippines, and the food that we prepare.

Thanksgiving is celebrated every fourth Thursday of the month of November. Here at our house we celebrate our Thanksgiving on a Saturday, since during Thursday our kids has school (Thanksgiving is not a holiday in the Philippines). We want our kids to enjoy and can stay up later than bedtime, so we decided to move our celebration to Saturday then. We also want our kids to remember the reason we are celebrating Thanksgiving. We want them to remember the way Bob’s family celebrated the holiday tradition when he was a kid.

Decor to highlight the season

It was really a fun learning experience for me the first time celebrating with Bob’s family and the whole time I was living there in the US. I learned all about the Thanksgiving celebration and the cooking with the help of Bob and his mom. It was really a fun experience for me. Living now here in the Philippines, we celebrate the Thanksgiving the way the Martin family did with a little of my style in it. We are intending to keep it that way till Bob and I pass on.

The food that we are preparing will be the typical food in America during Thanksgiving Day. Me and my niece Glenda usually prepare everything, I mean the cooking and the table decorations and arrangements. But now with Jean taking off from school for a year like AJ, she’ll definitely help with the cooking too. She’s really a big help for me. She’s in-charge with one of the pies. We always do our pies a few days before Thanksgiving. We bake different kinds of pies. But of course the main pie that we will be making is the pumpkin pie. She will help me and Glenda on the pumpkin, but she’s in-charge with the chocolate chess pie and the pecan pie will be new for us this year to make.

Celebrating with friends and family

Living here in the Philippines, finding ingredients sometimes can be a challenge. Thank goodness for the sprouting malls for the past years. Not so hard to find ingredients, “sometimes I guess”. Well to make it easier for us I will just substitute it with the ingredients that can be easily find here. I am not going to wait few months or never before the next shipment of the items to come here in Davao. Sigh. LOL. I will give you details of the ingredients that I will be using for the menu during Thanksgiving that can be a bit harder to find sometimes or the mall might be out of it.

Making Pumpkin Pie with local ingredients

One of the menu is the pumpkin pie. Sure you can buy pumpkin pie in the restaurant. A few years ago we did order at one of the restaurants here. But it’s too expensive. We paid like 600-700 pesos per pie if I remember on that. And you know in my household 1 pie ain’t enough here. We have boys that can eat pretty well. So I have to order at least 2 or 3 (just one kind of pie) to satisfy all of us. So that got me thinking, if I don’t do anything, a big chunk of my budget will just go to the pie from the resto. So that’s when Bob told me that “I think you can cook the pumpkin hon, homemade”. He really had confidence in me. Thanks Honey. So I tried to research it and viola got the recipe and I tried it and it worked. At that time I was really using the pumpkin in a can (imported). So then, I realized that sometimes the mall doesn’t have shipment of the pumpkin in a can, I had to do something. I research again and invented a recipe of how to make pumpkin pie out from Kalabasa (squash that’s what we have here). Guess what it worked really good too. Bob and the kids love it. So it’s been 5 or more years now that I’ve been using the kalabasa for my pie. Way cheaper than before. I guess with the S & R now here in Davao, they are selling pumpkin pie for 300 pesos plus, you can purchase from there. But I’m just sticking with my kalabasa “pumpkin” pie. I can’t be so sure if S & R will have it when I go there the day before Thanksgiving. They might run out.

Table Setting

Another menu in mind that I’m using substitute: “Yams”, I found sweet potatoes in a can here before. It’s one of those thing, that the mall order it and will have at their shelves if they felt like having it. It’s not so popular with the Filipino families. So why stock when they are not sure they will sell the items as quickly as they want to. In our household, Thanksgiving won’t be complete without yams. So I had to do the thinking and researching again. Sweet potato in the US, I compared that to “camote”. At first I tried to bake the camote and do some tweaking to be so close to the taste the way my mother-in-law cooked there. With the bake camote, it’s not even close. It’s to dry, even I put lots of butter. It didn’t work. So that got me thinking, with the dryness what if I boil the camote and put some sugar to make it sticky a little and to sweeten a little bit before baking. I will just add more sugar as the cooking goes along. And you know what it work. I had it boiled and bake it later with marshmallow and wow it really work and it taste good. Even my mother-in-law was impressed when she was here spending the Thanksgiving with us.

You guys probably wonder where in the world will we get the turkey (Butterball) here. Iv’e heard people saying that they can’t find turkey here. People of the world – we have turkey here in the Philippines in nearly every mall in fact, and its year round too you guys. So turkey for Thanksgiving is not extinct here in the Philippines. Aside from all the malls here in Davao, you will see turkey at the deli shops here too like Swiss Deli and Gourmet Deli shop in Chimes. They even have turkey ham. With the S & R now in the Philippines, they have plenty of turkey there. Also they are selling turkey breast and turkey legs. The only thing that’s different here the turkey here are smaller than the turkey in the States. But I’m okay with that.

In the Thanksgiving spirit

Cooking the turkey

How do you guys cook your turkey here? Well, for us, we used to roast the turkey in the oven. You can even buy the turkey bags where you can put your turkey inside the bag before you put in the oven to make it stay moist. For us now we cook our turkey roasted outside in the rotisserie (lechon style). After I cleaned the turkey I rub butter and salt and peeper in the turkey inside and out. Then I stuffed the turkey with the typical stuffing with sausage. Then seal and tie the turkey after putting to the rotisserie rod. We use charcoal for roasting the turkey. Really keep an eye of how much fire under the turkey. Use a thermometer to check if the turkey is cooked or not. That way you really know.

What about stuffing?

Another menu item we have: ” The Stuffing”. I am making homemade stuffing. I used french bread for croutons. I buy the bread few days before Thanksgiving. Then I will cut the bread into cubes (bite size), just leave in the cookie sheet over night. Then like few hours before cooking for stuffing put it in the oven to brown. Keep an eye to not burn. Let it cool before mixing it to the other ingredients for the stuffing. Cooking the stuffing with the homemade breakfast sausage, onions, celery, chicken stock, thyme and salt and pepper and mix the croutons. Eyeball the mixture with the wetness of the croutons and the stock. Let if cool before stuffing the turkey.

Our food that we will have during Thanksgiving:

Turkey – While turkey was cooking at the rotisserie, it’s stuffed inside with the croutons and sausage mixture. The extra stuffing that won’t fit inside the turkey, bake it in the oven maybe with the turkey neck or legs on top to have the turkey taste.
Mashed potato – Boil the potato until it’s soft when poke with a fork. Put butter, milk and salt and pepper and mashed it. Eye ball with the consistency you want.
Stuffing – Cooked croutons and sausage that was stuffed inside the turkey or the one that was cooked in the oven.
Beans – Cook beans and put butter (just keep an eye of how much you want to put), onions sliced into cubes, bacon (fried to almost crispy-save the grease for your future use) and salt & pepper to taste.
Rice – Of course don’t ever forget to serve the rice to the Fil-Am family.
Yams – The cooked yams and bake in the oven with marshmallows.
Gravy – Home made gravy either from the turkey drippings or if lechon turkey just cook other parts of the turkey and use the drippings for the gravy.
Pies – We will have “pumpkin pie”, “chocolate chess pie” and “pecan pie”, sounds so good to me.
Eggnog – Our homemade eggnog here in the house.

We prepare our table somewhat the formal way. With our good china and good silverware. Our kids were already used to that. They want it that way. They told me that everything has to be nice because we are thanking God for whatever we have that He gave. So even with the hard times that the Philippines experienced right now, still we are thankful that we are alive and did our share of helping them there (The Visayas people). It’s so unfortunate that too many people lost their lives over there. I know people think they just help out a little but because a lot of the people help out, still it makes a difference to someone’s lives over there. It’s not an easy year here in the Philippines, it’s going to be hard for a lot of our kababayans from the Visayas. We will just continue praying for them for the years to come that they can rebuild and move on with their lives.

Coming up next it’s Christmas

What about you, how would you celebrate your thanksgiving? Feel free to share here. We will be happy to hear from you.

HAPPY GOBBLE, GOBBLE DAY AMERICA!