It's a Beautiful World

This light and airy bread is delicious to eat for breakfast or as a snack. Ingredients: 1/2 cup milk 4 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 teaspoon sugar 1 cup lukewarm water 1 cup butter 1 teaspoon salt 8 egg yolks 6 cups all-purpose flour Sugar for dusting Grated Edam or cheddar cheese (optional) Procedure Scald milk on top of a saucepan of a double boiler. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water and sugar. To the scalded milk, add 1/2 of the butter, sugar, and salt. Stir until sugar is dissolved and butter melted. Cool mixture to lukewarm. Beat egg yolks lightly and add to lukewarm milk mixture. Add yeast to milk and egg mixture. Add flour and beat until well blended.  Knead on a floured board surface until smooth. Place dough on a greased bowl and brush with butter. Let rise until double in size in a warm place for 1 hour. When doubled in size, punch down and knead once more. In a greased surface, roll out small portion until paper-thin; brush the surface of dough with re

What's a better way of celebrating Mother's Day than remembering your mother and paying a tribute to all her unconditional love, sacrifices, unselfish and caring ways, together with your loved ones (not all of them) on this special day. Now that I have children of my own, I have come to realize that she was not an ordinary mother; she was a supermom. Looking back, I am amazed at how she was able to juggle her time between her work and her devotion to her kids when we were growing up. She became a widow at the age of 41, her second and last marriage (her first husband was a casualty of war). She remained unmarried until the day she died, unconcerned for the attention quite a few gentlemen had given her. Instead, her time was spent religiously on her obligations to raise her three daughters, and managed to send them to one of the best private schools in the country at that time. On her spare time, she volunteered to teach impoverished young women on home economics, f

Photos Taken by Ann Lodolini This year, my birthday was spent at home with good friends and family feasted omdeliciously made Mexican Tamales. There were different kinds: pork, chicken, beef, and sweet tamales with three kinds of sauces and condiments to compliment the very appetizing little sacks of filled "maize masa". The little sacks made of corn husks with different fillings complimented the "Horchata", a rice flour drink and the "Tamarindo", a tamarind based drink. I am grateful and thankful to God for a good year, for good friends and family, for good health and for the numerous blessings. *Note: The birthday cake you see above was a gift from my nephew, Elijah Sugay. He actually gave two cakes, the Moisty Chocolate Cake (with photo above) and a Sans Rival Cake (no photo).

Don't ask me how much green onions or cilantro to use when I am making my bed of greens to lay my precious, fresh fish on top to steam, or how many tablespoons of chinese rice wine to put on top of my fish before it gets a steam bath, quickstyle. Because honestly, I do not know. I see cooking as an art. When I go to my playground (my kitchen) to cook our meals, I have no quaint idea of what I am going to cook. I open the freezer, check the pantry, check what vegetables are available, and I try to concoct a dish from what I have. The more variety of food I have in my hands, the more room for expansion. The next question I ask myself is, should I fry, bake, grill, steam, boil, saute, broil, barbecue, roast, or toast. I also make it a point not to repeat a dish for a while. Repeat performance is never welcome with my children unless it is a delicious moisty cake made out of chocolate. Everything is unknown before I start playing in my playground until I start to cook. Things s

                                                    Photos Taken by Christina Kho It was a surprise when my daughter came home at noon today. Normally she comes home late in the evening staying at the school lab working on her projects. Looking starved and tired ( she has been sick with a bad cold), I offered to cook her a meal. Lately, the weather was getting colder at night, so I made sure we have soup for dinner when they all come home. There's always leftover food from the night before, which I sometimes eat for lunch the next day. My daughter must be really starved, for she reheated the pot of soup from the night before while I was preparing the ingredients of what I have decided to cook. I decided to cook the easiest meal I could make, which was Sugar Snap Beans with Shrimps . Took out the shrimps in a ziploc, open and run the warm water to defrost them, washed the snap peas and removed the endtips, heat my wok, put some oil, brown the garlic, add shrimps, snap pe

Photos Taken by Ann Lodolini Another surprise on a friday night. Friday nights are my free nights not to cook dinner. My children know this. We either eat dinner out, or if they don't get an invitation from me, they cook their own dinner. Tonight my son, and his girlfriend, came home early and started playing in my kitchen. From my office where I was working, I could hear them planning for dinner. Is it the prawns (big shrimps) or the calamare (squid). The calamare won for I could hear the sizzling sound of the little guys with tentacles gettng deep fried in the fryer. When I went out of my office to check on what they were up to, Ann was dredging the slices of squids with flour with her bare hands and Bernard was deep frying the battered squid pieces in the fryer being careful not to over overcook them. Giving my share of the labor (of love), I made the sauce for the calamare dip out of soy sauce, sugar, honey, minced garlic, chopped cilantro, oyster sauce, worcester

As I am writing this blog, it's about 7:50 in the evening of Halloween night 2007, a time for little kids and grownups trekking the night in the dark, parents chaperoning their little tots from house to house, getting their share of fun, camaraderie, and of course, candies.    I did my last minute shopping to buy the goodies for the trick or treat trekkers, and I was surprised to come home seeing my daughter's old friend from grade school, Christopher Wisniewski, dressed like a penguin man or, as my nephew, Elijah Sugay said, "he is a character from a movie." From what he told me when I asked him what he was dressed like, he casually replied that he just wore the beak mask and a cream-colored coat and people can figure out who they want him to be. Hmmmmm......    Most of the children and parents weren't sure if he was for real, or just a prop until he moved his index finger up. My little porch got crowded with curious onlookers, mostly kids who got intimat

My sister, Ene , who lives in Los Angeles, sent me a pic of the cake she's been wanting to bake for their Thanksgiving dinner, the Blitz Torte . Today, she spent the afternoon baking the cake. I could not make the picture any bigger. I believe the pic was taken from a camera phone and was texted to my cell phone, which in turn, I sent to my email, so I could post it online. Anyway, here's the picture of the cake (above). Happy Thanksgiving in advance my dear sis, in case I get so busy on thanksgiving day and I forget to greet you (like I always do). Regards to Scott (my bro-in-law), Sunshine and Alan Malapitan with their two sons, AJ (a talented musician) and John (the whiz kid), to Millette (how's the doctor?), and to Den-Den (sassy lady) and hubby Sal , and her beautiful daughter, Misha . Happy thanksgiving to brothers Eddie Enriquez (from Manila) and JJ Enriquez (From Sydney), who are currently in L. A. visiting their bother, Scott and his family.

Ann Lodolini Whenever I get a chance, I try to teach myself new things. Today, I tinkered with photoshop. The photo (at the bottom) above was taken two weeks ago when Bernard and Ann were dressing up for the wedding of Nick Peruzzaro's (Bernard's best friend) brother, Dominic Peruzzaro and his fiancee, Paola. The two top photos were taken at Laguna Beach, California at the beautiful residence of Drs. Freddie and Bien Cruz.

Not everyone likes to eat broccoli. The only way I can make my children eat this highly nutritious veggie is by making it palatable to their taste. Steamed broccoli bathe in Hollandaise Sauce is a favorite, but the braised broccoli with thinly sliced sirloin beef is a winner. Today's lunch was a healthy dish that everyone enjoyed. If you like to see the recipe, go to my other site:www.cookingenthusiast.blogspot.com.

School's over. A lot of kids will be joining some camps, swimming lessons, dance lessons, self-defense classes, arts and crafts, softball, baseball, and many activities the community offers its residents to enroll their children this summer. As for my granddaughter, I offered to teach her how to bake this summer. We started our baking last week by making Chocolate cupcakes. Samantha was so interested to participate in this one on one lessons in what it takes to make a cake from setting the temperature of the oven , familliaring her with the different kinds of cake pans, different measuring cups, spoons, how flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and other ingredients look like. She can read. And that helped a great deal in teaching her. She is also a fast learner and remembers everything you tell her. Today she made her first cake, a Pound Cake , with her grandma's supervision, of course. The whole process didn't take long, about 20 to 30 minutes. The

We have to pause here to let the dough rise for two hours. I will post some pics again for the finished products. Hope you like the pics of the finished products above. I cannot find the words how excited and motivated Sam was while we were making these breads. At first, she was going all over the place without direction and when I taught her how to knead the dough, she easily got it. She had so much energy and she really proved me her talent. The pan de sal turned out to be so good. You don't even have to put anything on them. They're filling and they taste really good.

A photo of my mom (lady in black with fan) with the then President Ramon Magsaysay ( tall gentleman on right) at the Malacanang Palace with the Delegation to Malacanang, Adult and Vocational Classes, L.W.V.P. - 4th Congressional District , Manila, Philippines, Circa 1956. The Adult Vocational Classes L.W.V.P. - 4th Congressional District in Manila was one of the administration's programs to help adult women learn a skill to do business.. My Aunt Julie Pobre (on the farthest right with a big smile) and my mom, Cristeta Soriano Abad, were heading the the mission of helping adult women learn home economics, specifically cooking and sewing classes, and other arts and crafts.