Tales of a Wananabe Kitchen Goddess

About a month ago, I was watching as a make-up artist layered eye shadow on my discipler Ate Carol's eyes in the music room. I was trying to figure out how she (the make-up artist) was making Ate Carol's chinky eyes look bigger and more dramatic when my discipler suddenly asked me, "Is it true that you're good at cooking?"
That question hit me like one of the wicked curveballs Victoria bragged about in "Twilight." Me? Cook? That was easily one of the funniest questions everyone had ever asked me simply because as much as I love to sink my teeth into anything edible and cater to my gastric juices' every whim, my cooking skills are, unfortunately, (grossly) inversely proportional to my appetite. As if to further bolster my culinary insecurities, I have come to realize that I could possibly forever banner the title "Kitchen God's Daughter/Grand Daughter" as my father and both my grandfathers are real geniuses in front of a pan and stove.
So as to rightfully deem myself worthy of every spoon I reach for, I decided to start with desserts and pasta about a year ago because they seem easy enough (and because they're two of my favorite food items). And it seems like when I eat whatever I make, it all tastes pretty good even if I know it lacks a bit of something here and there.
On Sundays, my mom gives our house help the day off so we don't eat lunch and dinner at home. We usually eat out or have food delivered. Tonight, my mom decided to try a new paste recipe which she clipped from a magazine. It was called Vongole Pasta with Prawns. Like me, my mom and my sister both lack serious culinary skills but the adventure of trying something new and actually making it yourself was all together appealing. My mother and I went off to the supermarket to buy the needed ingredients which included white wine, clams and prawns. Our previous pasta projects were topped off with either red sauce or creamy white sauce but we have always been fans of pasta drowning in olive oil. But then again, we have never tried mixing olive oil with white wine so it should be worth the try. Shallots were not available in the supermarket so we just went for small onions. There were also no lemons in the fruit stall so we opted to use calamansi. We didn't know wat lemon zest was so we left that out and since there was also no dried chili flakes on the shelves, I grabbed some chilli powder. We also used canned clams since there were no fresh clams available.
We brought the groceries home and the three of us started work on what would be our dinner. Mom added more wine than we thought was needed and my sister was trying to shield me from adding more chili powder. Later on, we started laughing so hard because the mixture did taste more of wine than anything else. Dad checked us out from the window and I started to wonder if he was contemplating on calling for food delivery. So we added more oil and butter just to counter the taste and I would sneak in more chili powder when my sister wasn't looking.

Finally, we added the pasta to the sauce and then piled everything into a huge serving bowl. Call it a case of "sariling luto, sariling puri" but it was actually pretty good, if I may say so. Even our house help thought so! I think we turned the heat on too high or something so much of the sauce evaporated so it would have been better if there was more sauce. If I had my way, I would have added more chili and more pepper. I really liked how the sweetness from the wine blended with the spicy tinge from the chili. I had one too any helpings and in the end, my plate could really tell you how our entire culinary adventure ended.

If any of you want to try it for yourself, I'll post the recipe just as soon as I find it.

Dreading a White Christmas

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know..."

And so goes the song. Well, in my Christmas book, white does not seem to be the best color for the holiday season this year...and a white Christmas is not exactly the Christmas I have come to know.
On my way home from the airport, I found myself in the middle of what appeared to be the Filipino version of a white Christmas. My home province was one of the places ravaged by Typhoon Frank in the middle of 2008 and though our house was among the few which remained untouched by the flood, a huge part of the city and the outlying towns were practically under water. After the flood, mud caked the streets and eventually, the mud dried to become dust. And now, as cars and jeepneys sped past the streets, dust would be stirred up into tropical versions of snowflakes.
As I stared at the specks of dust which clouded my windowsill, I began dreading what could possibly be my first white Christmas.
Normally, my parents took on the tradition of fetching me or my sister from the airport and driving either of us home. This time around, my cousin Ramboy and my grandparents' driver Tok did the fetching and that was not the only thing differen about coming home this time of the year. Instead of being driven home, I was to land myself - and my luggage - in the hospital.
So there I found myself taking the elevator (good thing Tok volunteered to bring my luggage home for me) with an elevator operator in his white pants, doctors in their white coats, nurses in their white uniforms and caps and a stretcher with white linen. And as if the sight of white were not enough as I walked the whitewashed walls, I was greeted by my grandfather as he lay huddled underneath his white blankie. I couldn't stand the white blinds so I pulled them up and was at least comforted by the sunlight streaming through the windows.
My gwampa had been in the hospital for about four days prior to my arrival because of complications due to urinary tract infection. He was also bugged relentlessly by pain somewhere in his back which the doctors had difficulty diagnosing. Their theories ranged from fusion of his vertebral bones to hydronephrosis and even "rayuma." The pain pretty much came and went like Santa Claus down a chimney - at any given time. It was difficult watching him jerk his legs because of the pain. My gwampa has a very high, almost superhuman tolerance (believe it or not) for anything painful or uncomfortable so once he starts complaining that something hurts...it really does hurt a whole lot. Throughout his stay, I began to wonder how Sue endured through a number Christmases in a hospital room with her grandfather before he passed away. I made a mental reminder to ask her next time.
Throughout his almost two week stay in the company of the white walls, white linen, white-uniformed people and white tiled floors, it wasn't all bad though. We watched "Eagle Eye" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" and he laughed his socks off whenever Johnny Depp came up onscreen. Sometimes he'd sing and once gave his physical therapist a fright when he feigned an injury during a rehab session. He particularly got a kick out of teasing everybody, especially playing matchmaker with his nurse and the office messenger who came in daily to give him reports to sign. We also thoroughly enjoyed praying with him in the morning and reading my old, "NIV for teenagers" Bible together which, according to him, was nice because the print was huge.

It was not just the prospect of spending Christmas in a hospital which I was not particularly looking forward to. I could spend Christmas in Timbuktu without really caring as long as I had my family with me. It was just that I was not used to having someone sick and the rest of the family worrying to bits during the happiest time of the year. It would be all right to have a different Christmas every so often but a change as drastic as this was just right about unwelcome.
The white Christmas I so dreaded never came though. Lolo was discharged on the 23rd under the conditions that he keep his catheter on, that he should be confined to his wheelchair and that if he does want to walk, he should do so with crutches. That was enough for us and for Lolo who was itching to get out of his hospital room. I guess white Christmases, for now, are not really in our palettes for the colors of the season. But then again, the same thought must have run through the minds of the people left behind in the company of those white-washed walls, white linen, white uniformed people and white tiled floors.

My gwampa's looking all too happy to have
his IV off and his discharge slip signed right
before Christmas Eve.

Home for Christmas

"Make sure you're home before dinnertime."
I have lost count of the number of summer mornings when my mom would give me that same reminder over and over and over again as I would leave the house after breakfast to go on my imaginary Don Quixote adventures outdoors with my older cousins. I really did not quite understand that as a child but now, when I am living more than a quarter of my life (or more if I die before I'm a hundred), it now seems reminiscent to a shepherd counting the sheep in his fold by dusk. After all, everything has to come full circle at the end of every day, whether the means be figurative or, in this case, quite literal.
On Wednesday, December 17 at 3 a.m., my sister shook me awake. My head was spinning as I had been asleep for less than two hours. As I splash water into my face, I blamed my late night date with Em and Banana in Glorietta which saw me home by half an hour past midnight. With school taking up most of my time, I was glad to get Tuesday night off to at least meet with them for a couple of hours in Makati. A little while later, as I drove my sister to the airport for her 5:30 a.m. flight, the car literally flew over a road hump which I swear I didn't see. That got my sister seriously contemplating about getting a taxi somewhere. When we finally reached the airport, she pulled out her luggage from the backseat and told me, "See you later at home." Now that was surreal.
I crawled back to my bed by 4 a.m. and woke up with a start at 8 a.m., realizing that I had loads of other things to do before my own flight home later in the afternoon, including packing my luggage! I had to meet Kuya Jojo in church to hand over some music sheets for safe-keeping and to pick up my peanut butter bottles. On the way, I got stuck in traffic and ended up being 20 minutes late, much to my embarrassment. It was 11 a.m. and I had errands to run, a car that badly needed cleaning and a stomach that was growling its way into an ulcer.
Thanks to traffic, I got back home at a quarter past 12 just in time to pick up the ringing phone and talk to my mother who asked me three different variants of "Where were you?" I immediately told her I had to go when I espied my half-empty luggage at the foot of my bed with its lid hanging open like a kid having his mouth examined. Yikes! I spent the next hour or so running around with books, papers, clothes and Christmas gifts, trying to stuff them into my bag.
As I lived quite near the airport, I got to the terminal a good 90 minutes before my flight. The airport was teeming with people even if PAL had the terminal all to itself unlike last year. Of course there was pushing and jostling but, hey! It's Christmas so that I chose to ignore all that in the name of the jolliest time of the year.
The flight was smooth and I slept all the way, although I did wake up once in a while because the toddler seated behind me kept on kicking my chair. The plane landed according to schedule and as I was seated in the plane's rear portion, I had to wait for my turn to get out of my chair. So I busied myself with texting my mother and my aunt, telling them that I had arrived safely and in one-piece. Finally when it was my turn to leave the plane, I pulled out my backpack and laptop and reached for a paperbag in the stowage bin holding about 12 paperback novels. As I was pulling the paperbag out of the bin, this taller and bigger guy was making his way against the tide of people leaving the plane. Apparently, he had left something and I thought he was going to wait just until I was able to retrieve my things. However he forced himself between the what tiny space was left between me the aisle seats and in the process, he hit my arm and made me lose my balance. My paperbag flew out of my hands and rippped apart, spilling my books on the aisle and the seats. So I held up traffic inside the plane as I picked up my books on the floor and cradled them in my arms as the paperbag had gone from being bag to being just paper in a matter of seconds...all while waiting for an apology which never came.
I was still muttering when I got to the luggage carousel until I met my younger cousin. I did not know how he managed to get himself into an area restricted to passengers only but I was only too thankful when he reached out to carry my books for me and later pulled my heavy bag from the carousel. As we drove home, I looked at my watch and realized it was past 5 in the afternoon. We passed by bayi-bayi stands, Biscocho House's newest shop, Julie's house, Christ the King cemetery and later SM all under a sunset I had missed seeing in this part of the country.
I asked to be dropped off at the hospital because my grandfather was sick yet again. My mom later brought me home and called me to dinner just after I had washed up. It was still all a little surreal for me as I started the day all alone in a dining table miles away from home and now, I was seated in my usual position in the dining table with my family with our two dogs yapping at each other in the background. No matter what my seven-year old self would say, it was actually good to be home by dinner time.

From Book to Movie: Twilight

"I'd never given much thought to how I would die — though I'd had reason enough in the last few months — but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something."

Amidst mist, mountains and Bella's somber narration, "Twilight" became the movie which used to be a mere visualization confined to the corners of my imagination. Perhaps becuase of my previously doomed love affairs with books-turned-movies (like The Lost World, For One More Day, A Walk to Remember and The Da Vinci Code, just to name a few), I have learned not to raise my expectations to levels as high as Emmett Cullen's leaps and bounds through a dimly lit forest. That mindset, together with a generally good cast and an ear-worthy soundtrack, made the movie version of the popular Stephenie Meyer novel good enough for my ratings scale.

What I noted about reviewers who deadpanned "Twilight" into butcher fodder was the aversion for the new, unfamiliar portrayal of vampires as pale creatures with a conscience, an alternative diet, Sweet Valley sappiness and a passion for supersonic baseball. These are elements of the plot which are not to be taken against the movie because, after all, they were all merely channelled from the book...and the book was a hit. What the movie sorely lacked though was the book's subtle hints at depth, such as the underlying theme of an endlesss search for redemption, which were overlooked all in the name of Bella and Edward's love story about a vampire who has sworn off human blood but falls for a human whose scent was, in his words, just his "brand of heroin."

The reel Edward (Robert Pattinson) is not as dreamy as Bella's description of him in the book but then again, Bella is all of seventeen and, just like any other teenager, very prone to exaggeration. He is not as horrid as some fans have initially described but he has just the right combination of "good," "lethal" and "dangerous" to his looks. Add that with pretty impressive acting chops and brooding eyes, it becomes a no-brainer as to why Pattinson is teenage world's newest poster boy. He perfectly captures Edward's dual personality of being both Debussy-sensitive and racecar driver-edgy. He does channel images of James Dean and River Phoenix in some angles, especially in the scene where he stepped out of his now-famous Volvo with Bella in his side and sunglasses over his eyes. Sighing then does become inevitable.

In the book, Bella was not whiny or frilly. Neither was she grungy nor rebellious. She always seemed grounded and balanced, characteristics which Kristen Stewart puts forward rather well in the movie. Emily Browning (The Spiderwick Chronicles), one of the early favorites for the role of Bella, was not an odd choice but she certainly looked a bit too exotic for the Bella I imagined who seemed to be straddling that gray area between plain and pretty. Stewart is far from plain but neither is she movie star gorgeous so she did fit the role pretty well. Her deep voice gives Bella strength, character and maturity which set her apart from her peers in the book. This was perfectly illustrated in one scene where Bella had to pretend to be sick with living with her father in Forks so that she could escape from the nomadic vampire James who was hunting her down. She was pulling clothes off her closet and stuffing them into her suitcase without the usual drama and high-pitched yelling just like Bella in the book - a young girl forced into maturity a little too early.

Central to the movie's plot was Pattinson and Stewart's chemistry which bubbled, frothed and simmered like a fairytale witch's cauldron. I admit to holding my breath more than just a couple of times in the entire duration of the movie, like in scenes where Bella and Edward danced to Iron & Wine in the prom gazebo, furtively swapped microscope slides in lab or talked to each while standing on tree branches way above ground level. However, some scenes were a disappointment, like the famous meadow scene which seemed a bit dated and wanting. Another scene which almost got me wrenching my armrests off the chair was the part where Edward said one of Twilight's most quoted lines: "So the lion fell inlove with the lamb." It was bordering on cheesy and corny that I found myself cringing with embarrassment. Conspicuously absent was Bella and Edward's verbal banter as they picked each other's brains, something I looked forward to as I turned every page of the book. True, Bella was always ranting about how "beautiful" Edward was physically, but I think what brought them together was not really the oggling but the verbal exchange.

Other letdowns included Edward's "sparkle scene," when he stepped out into the sunlight to show Bella what vampire skin would look like uncovered. I did hope for a bit more sparkle, the kind which does not let the audience go looking for it and then end with an "Oh there it is!" The sparkle effect was too subtle for comfort. I also had a problem with some actor choices for the roles. For instance, Rosalie Hale (Nikki Reed) was described as the most beautiful person in the world and honestly, she just did not measure up to it physically. As a matter of fact, I found Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) a lot prettier than her (I don't think I am biased just because I do love Alice in the book). The movie also started a tad bit too slow for me for the first 1/3 but after that, the pacing did pick up rather well. The speed effects also seemed dated and were reminiscent of a slightly improved version of "Charmed." They also have to work on the makeup blending. The faces of the actors are too white compared to their necks and I vividly remember the very first scene where Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli) appears in the hospital right after Edward saves Bella from being flattened by Tyler's van. The minute he pushed the doors open and walked into the ER, I almost regurgitated my dinner as his face looked as white as the hospital walls. Snorts and snickers then resounded all over the theater. I mean, if a doctor who treated me looked as white as that, I'd have no doubts that he were indeed undead!

Surprises came in the form of Taylor Lautner (the Quileuete Jacob Black) and Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Hale). Jasper had a hidden charm which surfaced as he kicked around a baseball bat in my favorite baseball scene and Lautner proved that he was more than just a pesky kid. I was actually concerned about having Lautner play Jacob since he was a central character in "New Moon" and his relationship with Bella was a prime mover in the second book's plot. Apparently he and Stewart also have a certain charm together which could be good enough for the next movie installment and I could see a lot of Jacob's dry humor in him.

With all that in place and a definitely bigger budget to boost production, 2010's New Moon definitely has to be a movie that the saga's fans can really sink their teeth into. For the meantime, I'll be busying myself with overtaking all the Volvos I meet on the road just to check out if the driver looks a little too pale for comfort.