van.nurse@gmail.com – Page 37 – The Adventures of a Calamari Queen

Pike Place Market (again!)

Hello friends! Sorry I haven’t posted for the last couple of weeks. Life has been a little busy here, but rest assured we’re still having fun and eating yummy food. Last Saturday we went to Pike Place market in Seattle, it was so much fun as usual! We had Piroshky (if you visit the market, this place is a must). Don’t be too intimidated with the long lines because they are pretty quick in taking orders. We had some mini donuts too, it was a food trip basically. The day after Thanksgiving we will be back again in Seattle because it’s been a family tradition and Seattle is such a festive place to be especially as we welcome the Holiday season. Enjoy!

What We Ate Lately / Menu Planning

Hello friends! I hope you’re having a good Monday. I’ve been menu planning for the last couple of months now and it’s been a positive thing for me as a homemaker. No reason for me not to do this because I don’t work outside the home. Saves me time and money, that’s always a good thing right? Here’s my meal plan this week:

M: Left overs (Pizza, Filipino Chicken soup/tinola)

T: Tuna Steaks,veggies,rice

W: Chicken wings,salad

T: Frozen meal for me (maybe tomato soup); Zach will have a dinner at his Office

F: Mushroom Risotto;salad

S/S (weekends): Eat out/take out/left overs

I don’t include Breakfast/lunches in my menu planning because we always have the same thing most of the time. We typically have cereals, oatmeal,yogurt,eggs,toast,fruits,coffee:)

Here’s some of our dinners lately:

Grilled Hamachi Collar

Braised Pork shoulder

Sautéed baby squid

Potato hash with eggs/bacon

Sushi dinner when we visited my Sis In Law in her place!

Beef teriyaki (from my fave Vietnamese place)

Chinese take out from Safeway (Zach was out of town last week for 4 days; I wanted cheap chinese food:)

Stir fried beef and veggies while the Hubs was out of town!

Dried fish,eggs,rice (perfect brunch!)

Grilled Halibut,rice,veggies

A special treat! King crab legs and steak last Friday (when we had my In laws for dinner)

Saturday night: Pizza and salad

Sunday dinner: sushi from Uwajimaya

Happy cooking and eating friends!

Halloween Weekend!

Hello Friends! Yesterday was Halloween here in the states and this is the first time that we didn’t have that many trick or treaters. The weather was mainly to be blame because it was just so bad. Raining and windy is not an ideal time for cute kids to be out and about ( we had a blackout Saturday morning that lasted 2 hours). Kudos to the brave parents though because they were still out there last night! The Hubs and I don’t really do anything during this time of year. We make sure we have candies though because we live in a neighborhood with lots of kids:) We watched the world series (Go ROYALS!) and NBA games, football (me specially, the hubs is not that into watching sports). Friday evening my In laws had dinner with us because our local seafood market had fresh King crabs legs (FRESH, flown from Alaska Friday morning) so we took the opportunity to have some because it’s very rare to get fresh king crab. It was such a special treat. It was so GOOD! We also had steak to go with it. Have a great week friends!

How cute is my Mom In Law?hehe

Crabby fights!

So GOOD!

Beechers cheese bread!

Thank You Generator for the 2 hours of electricity!

Napping every weekend is his fave!

Weekend Fun!

Hello Friends! How was your weekend? Ours was busy and fun in a good way. The weathers been rainy and windy, so our activities were mostly indoors. Saturday, we watched the movie “Bridges of Spies” starring Tom Hanks and the movie was great. I highly recommend it (I will not be surprised if it will get some Oscars). After the movie we had dinner at the RAM (it’s a sports bar).

Dinner and Movie with my In Laws is always a good time!

Sunday, my In laws gave us tickets to watch a musical show “Snapshots” in our local “broadway” theater. We really enjoyed it and were grateful for the tickets, otherwise we would have missed a great show. We had some Chinese food after the play.

Me and my Hubs dorky hat (while waiting for the play to start)

Of course lots of napping this weekend too!

Have a great rest of your week friends!

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

Hello Everyone! I finally used all of my tomatoes (the ripe ones) that I harvested from my yard and put them to good use. I don’t eat fresh tomatoes but I do like it when they are roasted. They are so full of flavor when prepared that way. Tonight I made Ina Garten’s roasted tomato basil soup and it’s so good. It was a really simple recipe, but I did use my Vitamix instead of the food mill that Ina recommended. Fall is just perfect for this kind of soup.

I added parmesan cheese because I like cheesy tomato soup:)

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup (Ina Garten/Foodnetwork.com)

Ingredients:

3 pounds ripe plum tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 (28-ounce) canned plum tomatoes, with their juice
4 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 quart chicken stock or water

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toss together the tomatoes, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread the tomatoes in 1 layer on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes.

In an 8-quart stockpot over medium heat, saute the onions and garlic with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the butter, and red pepper flakes for 10 minutes, until the onions start to brown. Add the canned tomatoes, basil, thyme, and chicken stock. Add the oven-roasted tomatoes, including the liquid on the baking sheet. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 40 minutes. Pass through a food mill fitted with the coarsest blade. Taste for seasonings. Serve hot or cold.

Menu Plan!

Hello Friends! I hope you had a great weekend. We had non stop rain and crazy wind this weekend, so we spent most of our weekends at home (watching Netflix). The only time we went out was when we had dinner at my fave Pho place and did our grocery shopping after. I wanted to share my menu plan this week just because, and hopefully I can stick to this since we have all of the ingredients and this will surely help us save money (no longer having to do last minute grocery shopping). I only listed our dinners because for breakfast and lunch, we usually just have the basics like eggs, toast, and cereals. Our lunches tend to be left-overs and sandwiches.

M: Gingered Chicken Wings, Broccolini, rice

T: Beef Bulgogi,Kimchi,Rice

W: Tomato Soup,grilled cheese sandwich

T: Grilled Hamachi collar,veggies

F: Pulled Pork and Rice

S:Take our or Dinner out

S:Left Overs or Freezer meal

Last week ‘s meals were:

Chicken in lemon and Caper sauce, grilled brussels sprout, steak

Clams with white wine!

Bitter melon (ampalaya)

Salad with Pizza

Meatballs and spaghetti (for a quick dinner)

Chicken adobo wings

Junk food from Jack in the Box

Chili

Lobster

Eggplant and Pinakbet (filipino veggie dish)

Cheese Tortellini

Sunday dinner:sushi from an asian market

Dinner tonight:Gingered chicken wings,broccolini

SARSA

Hello Friends! One of the restaurants we wanted to try during our Vacation in Manila was the SARSA Kitchen (+Bar). Chef JP (I guess one of the owners too) is always a guest on KrisTV (one of my favorite morning shows!) and his recipes always look so good. So when my family finalized our Philippines trip, dining at Sarsa was a must! I was looking forward to it! The place was big and full, luckily we didn’t have to wait for a long time. Before we we’re even seated, the receptionist already asked us if we can order ahead because cooking and preparation time can be 20-30 minutes. The service was great! You can really tell that the waiters and staff are attentive to their customers and the service was quick ( so rare in most Philippine restaurants, based on our experience). I can’t say that about their food though. Honestly, I was disappointed with the majority of what we ordered. Their mango shake was another story! Oh My! The hubs and myself wanted a mango shake and were looking forward to having a fresh, sweet mango shake to enjoy with our lunch. The mango tasted like it was from a bottle of mango juice (maybe Gina brand) and they put in a blender, and there you go, your Shake! I can’t believe Chef JP would allow that to be in his restaurant. Oh Well! Anyways, it was still a good time with my family. We will probably still go back and try their other dishes, although we ordered most of their “best in town” type of food, so we’ll see.

SARSA (MOA)

Their Famous sisig (this was good)

Sinuglaw (a big disappointment); look at how tiny their pork belly is.

Big disappointment in their mango shake (The yellow one), the green mango was OK!

Kinilaw

The Pinakbet, another disappointing dish (I think they just blanch or steam the veggies then coated it with sauce). The veggies we’re not full of pinakbet flavor!

Tortang talong with kesong puti(too much breading)

Kare-kare sauce

Kare-kare

Crispy pata

Another sisig

Sizzling Kansi (this was good)

Hyatt City of Dreams Manila

Hi Friends! After our HK trip my family decided to stay 5 days in Manila just to relax for a bit. Our HK trip was very busy, with something always going on everyday. So we were all looking forward to this time because there’s no “agenda”. We planned to just swim, eat, relax and bond as a family. With this in mind, my family decided to check in at the Hyatt City of Dreams Manila Hotel. It’s a luxurious 5 star hotel (I think). It just opened last year so everything was still new. The rooms were spacious, free wifi, staff was helpful and friendly. It’s a hotel casino (so you can gamble if you want but I never went in the casino area). The pool is what we liked the most (so relaxing). My nephews loved every second swimming in the pool. What I like about this hotel is the location too. It was close enough to the airport and Mall Of Asia (largest mall/retail place in the Philippines) so we’re able to try restaurants like SARSA. Zach and my sisters had a chance to eat at some of the hotel’s restaurants but they thought the food was OK, and nothing to rave about. I wasn’t able to take a lot of pictures in the hotel because to be honest the family was just lounging at the pool most of the time (obviously with the amount of pool pics I put here), then we ate out or spent time at the mall. If my family will return to Manila we will for sure stay at the Hyatt or one of its sister hotels again.

Hi Kram!

Tita Chack, Krammy, Eboy enjoying the pool!

Kuya!

Hello that’s me!

Sisters and our nephews

Relaxing sisters

Tita Till and nephews

Tita Kiss and nephews kram and crev

Mom and her grandkids

We had the pool to ourselves most of the time!

Crevy and Krammy (I asked them to jump at the same time and this is what happened! lol

Another try!

EBoy loved the pool! He said it’s his favorite part of the hotel.

I’m not sure what EBoy is trying to do here!HA

Someone is ready to go back to the hotel room!

One afternoon we skipped the pool and watched the UAAP game between Ateneo blue eagles vs NU bulldogs! The game was so crazy, with two overtimes. Our team won so that made us happy! GO BLUE EAGLES!

On the way to get a ride to Smart Araneta Coliseum

Bad photo of my brother and the boys!

What We Ate: HK edition!

Hello Friends! I just wanted to post what we ate on our vacation in Hong Kong. This is mostly pictures because I love food pictures, and also I don’t understand the Chinese/mandarin language so there’s no way I can translate food descriptions. To be honest, we encountered quite the language barrier during our trip too so ordering was kinda difficult, but the food was great! For the first time in my life, I had fried frogs! It was flavorful (similar to chicken) but kinda boney in my opinion. My sisters tried it too but they didn’t like it. One thing I like to do when traveling is try new food that we can’t get at home.

Plane food!

I didn’t care so much for our food during our 12 hour flight.

Fresh fruits on the streets of Hong KONG

Braised Pork Belly that Zach finds really tasty!

Deep Fried Snapper with bitter melon!

Pork Ribs!

Vietnamese Pork Chop style..Everybody loved this dish

Starbucks and Dimsum! We had Starbucks everyday on this Vacation:) I love me some starbucks!

Zach assembling our take out Chinese food! This is for the whole family (not just for the two of us).

Deep Fried fish and Braised pork belly (one of my fave meal during the vacation)

After Dinner Pic outside the restaurant!

Meat galore just outside on the street!

This meal right here made Zach sick because of the price! Rice and beef stew (of some sort) was close to US $25..HA

Roaming around the night market!

After checking out their night market, we got hungry so off to one of the restaurants that served seafood. I don’t remember the name of the place but it was crowded and we thought it must be good. The food was great, the service not so much.

Krammy not impressed..hehe

Fried Frog!

Ate and I at a restaurant at the Peak!

DisneyLand Lunch

Lunch at IFC mall! The place was really good too.

Disneyland, Hong Kong

Disneyland was the main reason why we wanted to visit Hong Kong. We wanted to bring my nephews there. They’re at the age where they can appreciate theme parks. My sisters and I have been to Disneyland HK 10 years ago, the first year they opened. It was the first Disneyland I’ve been to. It was such a magical experience for us. In my opinion, your first Disney trip will always be special:) After being here in the States for almost 8 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some theme parks, Disney CA included, and I can say that Disneyland HK is my least favorite one (I’ve never been to Disney Paris / Tokyo) so far from my experience. The castle was so small in comparison to other Disney parks. The food was OK (close to terrible IMO). The shows were not as good as Disney CA (especially the Lion King; it was disappointing). We even skipped the Frozen show because we prioritized the Mystic Manor ride (which was worth it for us). The rides were great! We loved Space Mountain, Mystic Manor, RC Racer, and everybody’s favorite the Grizzly Gulch (except my mom, she opted out). My nephews enjoyed the Go Cart thing but had to wait for an hour just to get in. Both the parades and the fireworks didn’t disappoint! It was a tiring day for everybody but seeing the faces of our nephews made it all worth while:) Personally, I have no desire to go back to this Disney park, but for my nephews I would gladly do it again!