The Elusive Test-Less Week(s)

Is upon me! I can’t believe it!

It’s almost the end of the semester and I can’t believe that I have 2 weeks coming up which won’t have exams in them. I’m really happy, but I still have to read a bunch of things for my Radiology, Canine & Feline Medicine, Zoonoses and Equine Medicine Courses. As much as it seems like I have tons of time on my hands since I only have class most days for a few hours, the exams are extremely difficult. So difficult in fact, that I’m not really taking my chances with the ones coming up since it’s the last few before finals week. Gotta make it count!

This past Friday I had an amazing experience going on my Poultry junior clinic duty. I usually don’t have an affinity for poultry… I mean, I don’t mind working with them, but I don’t see myself being in the poultry business in the future, so I was kind of disinterested in going to clinics and not expecting anything. We were scheduled to go to a few gamefowl farms (farms that raise chickens for cockfighting, which is still legal here in the Philippines) and so definitely was not very enthralled at the idea.

But take a look at this!

Look at THAT!

And this!

The 1st farm we visited. Pretty different layouts, huh?

Got to see a bit of this too…

What a beautiful coc... err... rooster!

And this…

They keep the chicks on the top part of the mountain since it's cooler and so older bird fecal matter won't affect them at the top.

You can tell that I was pleasantly surprised.

I love this place! The view was amazing!

Anyway, the pictures really say a lot. The farms we went to were 12 and 7 hectacres respectively. Both in Lucban in Quezon Province which is 1 1/2 hours by car from our college. We left at around 7:30am and got back at around 5pm. It was a long day but it was totally worth it. Got to learn that poultry (especially the gamefowl industry) has a lot of things that go into it. The production, the different birds, the profits made and the raising and selling of them were all pretty intricate. I learned a lot and this trip just made me realize that I am still surprised at how fascinated I am by some things in the animal world.

Guess this is why I decided to study veterinary medicine, eh?

Artistic, isn't it?

Besides that, this weekend I got to go back to Fort Bonifacio and then was able to meet up with some friends to go salsa dancing and clubbing a bit. I’m really starting to get into salsa, and I’m thinking of taking some lessons. It’s a great way to meet people and get talking. I met some really cool people this weekend and hope that I get to do more mingling with people soon.

Anyway, that’s all I have to update for now. Let’s hope the near future has some more cool experiences in store for me!

Ddeokbokki – A simple Korean snack meal

Now it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything related to food, but this one is so amazingly simple that I thought many of you would enjoy it. This past weekend I went out with my friend Kamille and she took me to a Korean chicken restaurant called BBQ Chicken. I’ve wanted to go there before since it’s endorsed by my favorite Korean girl-group the Wonder Girls, and so we took a trip over to Makati and ate there.

They had some pretty good fried chicken but we also got to try their rice cake dish called ddeokbokki. Ddeokbokki is essentially a dish that consists of glutinous rice cakes, spring onion, gochujang sauce (which is a spicy Korean pepper paste) and typically fish cakes. It was amazingly spicy, but still amazingly good so I sought out the ingredients to make it before I came back to Los Banos.

The recipe I used was from MyKoreanKitchen.com and can be found here. Although you can read what the author has told you I’ll just list the recipe here as well.

For a serving that will accommodate 2 people here’s what you’ll need:

- 300g of rice cake
- 2 sheets of fish cake
- 1/2 an onion, cut into medium sized pieces
- 1 stalk of spring onion, thinly sliced
- 2 leaves of cabbage, cut into medium sized pieces
- 1/3 cup of water
- Seasoning sauce (mix the following well in a bowl): Gochujang (2 tbsp), sugar (2 tbsp, I used brown sugar for this recipe), chili powder (1/2 tsp), and some garlic cloves that have been squashed (1 tsp)

Here’s a tip if you’re using frozen rice cakes instead of freshly made ones. Put the frozen rice cakes into a bowl of water for 30 minutes. This will help thaw them out. Many people say that you should put these in cold water, but I found that since the rice cakes are already frozen, the water will automatically become really cold once you put them into a container of water. Make sure the water covers all the rice cakes completely. After 30 minutes you should be able to pull the rice cakes apart easily, which is what you’ll need for later.

As for cooking the dish, follow the directions below:

1. Preheat the wok for 10 seconds.
2. Add some oil and add the onion. Stir for a bit.
3. Add the cabbage and stir it as well.
4. Add the rice cakes, fish cakes, sauce and water. Stir all the ingredients together.
5. Add the spring onion and stir again.
6. Once all the vegetables have been cooked, serve the meal as desired.

And there you have it. A simply made, but delicious Korean snack dish, ddeokbokki.

Here’s how mine turned out.

I didn’t have any fish cakes with me, so I decided to substitute some spam. I made double this recipe (so I could save some for later), so I used an entire can of spam. It was the right amount and went with the meal well. I suggest you do the same if you want to have some kind of meat in the dish if you don’t have any fish cakes to spare. I also added some red pepper slices because I like spicy food. But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to.

Simply put this had enough kick to make me sweat, but it was definitely delicious. You have to try this one at least once. I think many of you would enjoy it!

Lunar New Year and BBQ Chicken

So… this past week on February 4th, was Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year as some of you may call it). In the midst of my week which admittedly was not so bad in terms of exams and classes, we decided to get together at my place and have some great food and watch some TV and movies. We had a great time and watched a movie called 200 Pound Beauty. It’s basically a story about a very obese woman who sings very well and falls in love with her producer. She basically is the voice behind an actual idol who performs and can’t sing. And then she gets inspired to lose weight, and well… I don’t want to spoil it for you, so just go out and see it. You can check out some info about that here.

Here’s a picture of my vet rotationmates about to dig into the food we’ve all prepared.

Lunar New Year With My Rotationmates

I made some samgyupsal (unmarinated pork belly sliced almost like canadian bacon that is simply grilled). Alongside that I made some green onion salad with sesame oil, salt and pepper.

A lot of food for Lunar New Year!

This weekend I headed to Manila–mainly in Taguig (For Bonifacio) and Makati City. I met up with my friend Kamille and we headed around to find some of those small little Korean markets and other stores along P. Burgos Street and near Jupiter Street. I would’ve never imagined that there were Korean stores around the area, but thanks to Kam we found them!

Kam eventually took me to BBQ Chicken, which is a Korean BBQ Chicken restaurant which is endorsed by the Wonder Girls (and if you didn’t already know this about me, I’m a HUGE fan of them).

This is SunYe, the leader of the Wonder Girls, giving the thumbs up along with a few of the other members.

This is SunYe of the Wonder Girls, giving a thumbs up to the food!

Had some ddeokbokki as well, which is a snack meal that’s popular in Korea. I’ve had this before in Singapore, but it was good to see how a Korean BBQ place handled it.

This is ddeokbokki, a spicy rice cake dish from Korea.

It was extremely spicy, but I was willing to endure it since it was so good! I really enjoyed it, although I was sweating a lot and drinking all the water the restaurant gave me. I actually picked up the ingredients to make this at a local market, so I will be making this soon.

Also got to try their famous fried chicken. I actually wanted to order more, but Kam and I had a lot to eat that day… we had already gone to a Japanese place for lunch and then got some Korean ice cream at the local markets around Makati. By the time we went to this place I was kinda stuffed.

Had to try their fried chicken--especially since that's what they were known for.

But I guess that just means I’ll have to come back again.

We ended the meal with some rice cakes that Kam had bought at one of the local Korean markets we visited that day. These were yummy and even had a little burst of juicy flavor inside. A good end to a good meal.

Yummy rice cakes, from a local market.

I really wanted to eat more, but I couldn’t. These last few months I’ve found that my appetite has been decreasing a bit, or that I just can’t eat as much during one sitting.

Thanks to Kam for amazing meal, but dude I was totally stuffed!

And also, we did have a lot of food previously so we decided to head to our next stop: The Myth of the Human Body exhibit in Taguig.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures there, but here’s some info for those of you near the area who wants to visit it.

The exhibit was pretty interesting. I had been to two similar exhibits in the last few years, in NY and Philadelphia, but this was one of the nicest ones. This was actually an exhibit from South Korea and will be in Taguig until April and it only costs 350Php per ticket, which is much less expensive than the ones in America. I highly recommend going there if you have the time.

I then headed to the Fort where I had to say good-bye to Kam. I then hung out and had some drinks with friends at a few bars.

Now I’m home and trying to rest up. I have to assist in an ovariohysterectomy of our goat tomorrow, so I need to read up and get some sleep.

I hope you had a great weekend guys. I sure did!