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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

My Trip To Caliraya… and a sandwich hut.

So remember that I told you guys that I was an honorary member of the Lady Veterinarian (LV) organization at UPLB? (You may think that’s weird, but hey, the ladies love me… haha, joke :P ). Well they were nice enough to have a gathering today in Caliraya, Laguna. It’s about an hour and a half away from here in Los Banos, so the girls chartered a jeep and by 9:30 this morning we were off to have some fun.

My physiology teachers Dr. Amie Estacio and Dr. Rina de Luna are the advisers for LV and they helped set up this trip. The organization set up a place in Caliraya where we could spend the day to relax, eat lunch, go kayaking and fly some kites. I was the only guy on the trip besides the ones Doc Amie had with her (not sure if they’re her nephews or something), but regardless, I always feel comfortable with these girls. They’re a really nice bunch, and very warm and welcoming. I was honored to be asked if I could be one of their honorary members last year. I thought it was cool before, but it gets even better because I get to go to these LV-exclusive events. Lots of fun indeed.

Once we got there we set up camp… Doc Amie and Doc Rina had two tents we could set up so they made me in charge of setting them up and they assigned me LV minions to help me. Lots of them were very helpful actually… but of course they made me do all the hammering of the pegs. When I asked why I had to do it, Doc Rina said it was because I was a guy and that’s what guys are for. That kind of made me laugh.

After that some of the girls set up a grill to make some grilled liempo (which is basically pork chops with fat) and we had some salted eggs, rice, soy sauce with chopped onions and tomatoes and some grilled eggplant. We didn’t have enough forks and spoons so we just all ate with our hands. Really felt like we were living in the outdoors… But the food was delicious, let me tell you that. Good job to the girls who cooked it. :)

Shortly after the meal we washed up, got into our bathing suits and then tested out the beach. It was a little muddy, but a good temperature so we jumped right in. Eventually, the kids set up 2 kites which we played with for awhile and then we got a 2-person kayak to go around the lake. At the same time some of us also ventured around the area to see the scenery.

We did this until around 4pm and then we started to head home. We did a lot today and so many of us fell asleep on the jeep ride. I almost missed my stop actually!

Tonight I decided to try out a new place for dinner. In LB Square (a place where many bars and cafes are here in Los Banos), a new sandwich place popped up called the Submarine Sandwich Hut. They serve good quality Italian sausages and great sardine sandwiches (which is something I tried tonight). Pam, one of the owners, was someone I talked to tonight. It seems that the place is attracting a lot of foreigners since sandwich places are a staple in American culture. Heck, it’s the same reason why I decided to try it out. So if you happen to be in Los Banos and are near LB Square, I suggest that you try this place out. :)

Okay, I’m off to catch up with some friends before hitting the sack. I’ve got a lot of things to do tomorrow, as usual.

So I’ll catch you guys soon. See you later ya’ll!

BBQ Galore!

So yesterday was Monday here in Los Banos. The college was not open because it was the day they recognized All Souls Day (which takes place the day after Halloween), so there was not much to do. I woke up, did my morning routine and then by early afternoon I said to myself, “I need to do something! I’m bored.”

I called my friend Jae up and said, “Let’s barbeque!” and he immediately told me, “Why not?” And that was how this whole BBQ journey started.

I’m going to warn you all that this post will mostly be about food and me cooking it. So if you don’t want to hear about me cooking you should probably stop now. But if you like that kind of thing great!

Jae and I went to the grocery store around 5:00pm. I took my friend Belle with me (you’ve seen her in many previous posts of mine) and shopped at South Super Market. I picked up 2 kilos of pork, tons of fresh vegetables, some skewers, milk, salad dressing, condiments, pasta, drinks and even some more cooking utensils. I spent the most that day shopping than I had ever done before in the Philippines, but I was determined to make some good BBQ and some good side dishes to compliment that BBQ. Before going shopping I did some research on some well known BBQ recipes and also some good dishes to accompany them. So I came up with three things I wanted to do: Filipino style pork BBQ on skewers, fresh potato salad, and another pasta salad with fresh vegetables that my friend Elsie from Singapore recommended. For dessert I decided to go with more of Elsie’s suggestions, by roasting over the fire some bananas (to be topped with chocolate sauce later on) as well as sweet potatoes. And thus, that is what I did.

I went home and Belle and I immediately got to work on prepping. Jae had to step out and help his girlfriend Emma, since she had just come back from Batangas and found out that her apartment was totally flooded. They spent some time cleaning it out before coming over. I first prepared the marinade for the 2 kilos of pork that I had bought. It consisted of 2 cups of soy sauce, a whole head of garlic, 2 minced onions, 1 cup of Sprite, a cup of chili sauce and some sugar and salt and pepper to taste. It was supposed to be a very quick marinade, since we didn’t have much time to do so before actually starting up the grill. After that, we dumped the pork in it and set it in the refrigerator to soak while we got the other dishes ready.

The next dish we started to work on was the potato salad. I was going to make this from scratch, so I had bought 5 pounds of potatoes for the recipe. Belle and I boiled the potatoes until they became tender and then we went about cooling them off and peeling them and cutting them into cubes. Belle is more efficient at prepping and cutting than me, I found out, so she took care of most of the peeling and cutting (what an angel!). Meanwhile, I cut up some onions and prepared the dressing for the potato salad. It consisted of about 1 cup of mayonnaise, 1/2 cup of Miracle Whip salad dressing, 2 tablespoons of yellow mustard, and a 1/2 cup of milk with salt and pepper. After mixing this all until it was smooth it came out to a slightly thin consistency, which was perfect for the potato salad. While the potatoes were cooling Belle managed to boil 6 eggs until they were hard-cooked in my small portable water boiler. The eggs would later on be cut into cubes and put on top of the potato salad as an additional topping.

After that was done, we packed it away and set it in the fridge to chill. By that time, Jae and Elma had come over and had already started up the charcoal grill (which he had brought to my place). Elma and Belle helped each other in skewering the meat that had been marinating and Jae took care of the grilling while I was working on the final recipe. For the final recipe, I decided to work on Elsie’s quick pasta salad recipe. Belle and I cut up and diced 3 onions, 6 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers to mix into the salad. I cooked 16 ounces of spiral pasta (that’s right, a full pound) with some olive oil and salt. After that was all done I took out my biggest plastic container and Belle mixed in all the vegetables we had cut up as well as 2 full containers of Italian salad dressing. I added some salt and pepper to taste, as well as some basil, oregano and thyme and it all came together. That recipe turned out to be my biggest one and I didn’t realize it until I had it sitting in front of me. I think I’ll be eating that salad for a very long time until it runs out… hahaha.

After that, Jae and Elma had cooked all of the BBQ and so we sat down to start eating. I set the bananas and sweet potatoes which I had wrapped in foil beforehand onto the grill which was now starting to die down and let them sit until we were done eating. Jae, Elma and Belle tested out the recipes that I had chosen and everything was a big hit! They really enjoyed the meal and I was happy to say that everything was satisfied. There was way too much food for us to finish though. As a matter of fact, there still is. My fridge is packed to the brim with BBQ stuff today. If anyone wants to come over and help me finish things then let me know! I might even send you home with a doggy bag.

After dinner, which totally filled all of us up, we ended up watching funny videos and inevitably some Wonder Girls videos. (So sue me! Haha, I’m too big of a fan.) We tried out the bananas with chocolate sauce and the kamote (sweet potato) we had grilled and they were super yummy. Jae and Elma also had brought some marshmallows to put over the fire and I have to say, if done over a slow fire and not totally burnt, marshmallows that have lightly been roasted are really tasty. Thanks Jae for bringing them over!

We continued talking, eating and relaxing until around 2am. Jae and Elma eventually said good-bye, but Rosebelle decided to stay over. We both watched 3 episodes of Arrested Development before calling it a night. I took the couch while I gave Belle the bed… and that was the end of the BBQ party.

This morning I got up, and that leads to another story all together. I will talk about that later.

For now, I hope you guys all enjoyed my story! Being on semester break is ultra fun and with some good friends, things just get better. Thanks to Jae, Elma, Belle and Elsie (for the great, simple recipes!) for helping me make this BBQ a success!