Sauteed Spinach with Feta Cheese

Jazz up your regular sauteed spinach with some feta cheese - this was something I learned when we ate at a Greek restaurant ages ago. Sun dried tomatoes also goes well with this dish.

- Saute some garlic in olive oil

- Add the spinach and toss until spinach is cooked / wilted

- Put on serving plate and sprinkle some crumbled feta cheese on top just before serving.

Szechuan Eggplant and Pork

I found a pack of Ajinomoto Szechuan Eggplant mix while cleaning out my food pantry and decided that it was high time we tried this out. The timing was great because I had a pack of ground pork thawing in the refrigerator and we had fresh eggplant and peppers in the refrigerator.

This is another one of those nice & easy meals that can readily be prepared for dinner.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb ground pork

- 1 eggplant

- 1 green bell pepper

- 1 carrot

- Ajinomoto Szechuan Minced Pork with Eggplant mix

Pan fried wontons

We recently tried our local chinese takeout place's Pan Fried Wontons.

It wasn't what I was expecting but I was pleasantly surprised when I started eating and realized that the chewy texture and the taste reminded me so much of my favorite fishballs from home - even the sauce vaguely tastes like the sweet fishball sauce of those street carts I used to get my fishball fix from at university.

Happy.

Halo halo

I had just finished expressing milk for Swe-cha's afternoon bottle at the daycare tomorrow and was thinking about going to bed when I heard some scraping sounds.

Puzzled, I looked around and saw hubby with the ice shaver.

He looks at me and asks, "bowl or cup ?".

"Bowl," I replied. And it was only after I said it when I realized what he was doing - halo-halo!

How's that for a midnight snack ? We may not go out much but we do have fun at home, I tell ya.

While feasting on our bowls of halo-halo, our conversation included the following statements:
"Ang galing ng nag-imbento ng halo-halo, no ?"
"Mas magaling yung nag-imbento ng kaong!"
"e etong nata-de-coco ? Magaling rin no ? [brings up wikipedia...] Huwaw! Pilipino pala ang nag-imbento ng nata-de-coco!"

Obvious bang amazed na amazed kami ? at medyo mababaw?

*smile*

Pork and Scallop Congee

Ang saya. This was a spur of the moment dish. No recipe, no plans.

Mommy asked me to prepare congee for hubby (still having wisdom tooth issues). I thought about preparing arroz-caldo but the chicken I meant to use for arroz-caldo had to be defrosted before I could pry the pieces apart (they had frozen together).

I had a piece of pork that seemed the right portion so I threw that in a pot and started boiling. I let it boil, added the rice and remembered the dried scallops in the ref so I let them rehydrate in some water and threw that in the pot as well. Later, I remembered some kasubha (saffron ?) that I still had in my spice cabinet so I threw some in as well.... I put in some chicken powder and a dash of patis for a bit of flavor and this turned out great.

I served it topped with crunchy fried onions.

Ingredients:

pork shoulder

dried scallops

rice

salt

patis

chicken powder

fried onions and fried garlic (toppings)

Almondigas

Hubby has been having wisdom teeth issues since last weekend and it has worsened to the point that now, he can only eat [slurp] soft foods.

We're going to have a lot of soft noodles and congee dishes in the next few days. This also means that Swe-cha can get a taste of more home-cooked meals this week, I hope that he gains his appetite back soon (he is currently not feeling well).

This dish is an experiment, I really have no idea how Almondigas is supposed to taste like or what's supposed to be in it. I just needed to prepare something quick and did not have time to check our recipes over the internet or even prepare the ingredients.

Meatballs:

1 lb ground pork

minced spring onions

salt & pepper

sugar

Soup:

Misua

1 can chicken broth (lite, sodium free)

water

3 cloves minced garlic

1 onion, minced

patis (fish sauce)

1. Prepared the meatballs by mixing pork, spring onions, salt, pepper and sugar. Formed the mixture into balls and lightly browned them in oil (I remember seeing my friend, Kay, do this before .. or maybe not, it was so long ago!).

2. Saute garlic and onion in a saucepan and add the broth and water when cooked. Let this boil and then add the browned meatballs. When the meatballs are fully cooked, add miswa.

It gets tricky when adding the miswa as I had no idea how much to put in. Tantya lang.

Deep fried stuffed tofu

This is yet another dish in our "quest for the ultimate tofu dish" series.

The filling came out dry. Need to adjust that some more. If the filling were moist, that would've contrasted nicely with the crispness of the tofu.