Mister Donut chocolate cake donuts

The 7-Eleven across the street has this promo where you can get three donuts for Php. 30 between the hours of 9 PM and midnight.

Timely, as I've been having the strangest overpowering snack food cravings. So, tonight I went for three of the chocolate cake ones.

The choco peanut just tasted breaded and greasy. I wouldn't have that again. The peanut bit (because I only saw the flavor after I ate it) maybe explains the greasiness.

Choco butternut is my favorite of the three, despite it not tasting like butter, nut, or squash (if butternut is a variety of squash.)

The Dutch choco crunch flavor is not crunchy, and not all that chocolatey.

Also, none of these are actually all that chocolatey, or maybe that's just because I also expect chocolate to be quite sweet (and maybe not everybody has as much of a sweet tooth as I do,) but if I want something to chew on then they're all right with a tetra pack of milk or a bit of whatever flavor tea.

(Not) Arroz a la Cubana

Oddly, since switching to saba as a staple, I've been craving arroz a la cubana, which is fried yellow plantain with minced beef (or minced pork and beef) and garlic rice.

I just had a skin-steamed saba with spicy bopis and an egg instead (those last two from the canteen down the street), and it actually hit the spot well enough. The banana was thoroughly green, though, so there wasn't that bit of sweetness--which I think suited the dish just fine.

I can't get over how much like a potato that skin-steamed green saba tastes, with the convenience of not having to scrub the skin, and much easier peeling.

Next up (probably, sometime): green saba and cream of mushroom soup! Or, mashed green saba with bacon bits (or corned beef) and cabbage!

No-bake Fruit Root Crisp

Ingredients

- quick-cook or instant oatmeal (dry)
- yellow bananas
- Lily's homestyle peanut butter (I like this brand because it's runny)
- singkamas, raw and sliced
- raisins

Directions

1. Slice bananas, or in this case I toasted them and then peeled and sliced them because they're yellow saba bananas.

2. Peel and slice singkamas. Why is this usually a savory root crop? Am I the only one who's bitten into a raw one and realized that it tastes sweet? It's the perfect cheap and local substitute for apple or pear. In this recipe, of course, sliced apple or pear will do but then it will be more like Fruit Fruit Crisp. Who invited Fruit Fruit??

3. Pour quick-cook or instant oatmeal in a bowl. Technically, it's already cooked and only needs water to become oatmeal porridge, which we shall not do.

4. Add peanut butter.

5. Add raisins, banana slices, singkamas slices, more raisins, and top with peanut butter.

6. Mix it all up.

7. Got milk?

Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal

Clockwise from top-right: Cinnamon, oatmeal, ginger root, pumpkin, nutmeg, and a white sugar.

Note to future self: brown sugar would have been better.

Sugar and spice is all added to taste, so I couldn't be bothered to write up the measurements.

Basically, I chopped the pumpkin in half and left both halves in the rice cooker (skin sides, or rounded sides, up) until the whole vegetable was soft enough to use a spoon and scoop the vegetable from the skin.

Added to a bowl of cooked oatmeal, raw ginger then grated over it, dusted with cinnmon and nutmeg, and sugar added. Then, mashed the whole thing together.

In the future, I think that I would cut the pumpkin sideways so that it would become more like a bowl, and maybe serve the sugar-and-spice oatmeal in the pumpkin. However, these small pumpkins are mostly air and seeds inside, and since I don't know how to roast pumpkin seeds into nuts... I think I'll stick with the big wedges of kalabasa from now on.

Barbecue Deviled Eggs

Deviling an egg is the process of taking an egg, boiling it, slicing it in half, scooping out the cooked yolk, and replacing the empty part of the egg whites with something else (usually the yolk mixed with something like mustard, or bacon bits, or something.)

About three months back, I wrote about a simple barbecue sauce recipe that only mixed ketchup with pure molasses.

It tasted like ketchup mixed with molasses. Not so much like barbecue sauce. Adding Worchestershire sauce for a little more complexity was not a good idea.

The way to get it tasting like barbecue was actually a whole lot simpler.

Black pepper and white pepper both come from the tiny, round, berry-like fruit of the Piper nigrum, not to be confused with capsicum peppers or chili peppers. White pepper is made when the black pepper berries are soaked to remove the skin, so black pepper is technically both black and white pepper. White pepper consequently has more of a lift in its flavor.

I can imagine that ground black and white pepper added to the ketchup-molasses mix would make it taste like barbecue sauce. Personally, I like the texture and homestyle look that the coarse grains of black peppermill give.

The above egg has been deviled, having the yellow egg yolks mixed with the ketchup, pure molasses, and finished off with a dash of black peppermill.

Barbecue deviled eggs!

I'd have these more often, but it has no escaped my notice that there's been a recent spike in the price of eggs.

A dozen regular used to be 63, and right now they're over 70. The ones pictured above, of course, I sort of have to go, "Seriously?" I love the earth and am gullible enough to believe that those would be more nutritious, but still, at the time that photo was taken, each of those organic eggs would be double the price of a regular one of the same non-brand brand.

Staple Foods

I have been cooking, I have been eating, and I have even been taking pictures of all that. I just haven't felt like writing about any of it, which is my bad.

Some entries that I look forward to making:

• My disasterous attempt at Ginataan Halo-Halo (also known as Ginataan Bilo-Bilo), which was the dish that got my culinary muses bothering me in the first place because my family's cook, Minda, made just the best version of it. My version was... such a disaster!
• A comparison of San Marino canned tuna paella to Century canned tuna paella, but okay, I can give it away in one sentence: San Marino's tastes like it has pandan in it, which might be weird, but both are okay.
  
• Pumpkin spice!!! I love pumpkin spice. I'd flavor everything with pumpkin spice if I could, and I did...or, I tried to.



• Sibot soup with misua noodles and catfish.



• I compared two different kinds of patola, which even the grocer got confused with, "Wait, they're both patola? They don't look the same. Let me call my manager because the produce code must be wrong..."



• A restaurant review! Health Break. Z-Compound, 33A Malingap St., Teachers' Village, Quezon City. I had the golden-brown coconut-oil fried cream dory with potato wedges dusted with cheese. It was good. I shall post a real entry sometime.



• Macaroni pudding: macaroni boiled in milk with raisins, orange rind, spices and sugar (and an optional splash of brandy, but I used white wine instead because...)



• Comparison between mock and cheese (cheeseless macaroni and cheese, because I was broke then), a real macaroni and cheese that's sort of a cross between carbonara and hollandaise sauce (because I was up for cheap experimentation then), and a victorious final recipe to show how far I've come (macaroni and fondue cheese, with cheddar, emmental, white wine and cayenne pepper... because I was reckless then.)

But first: getting back to basics.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization defines a staple food as a food that is eaten routinely, and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet in a given population, supplying a large fraction of the needs for energy-rich materials and generally a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well.

Most people live on a diet based on just a small number of staples.

Most of the time, I trust my body. It will express its need for iron by giving me a craving for a burger, for example. At other times, something like corn on the cob will make my hyperacidity act up, and I know this, but if I followed my craving for corn then I'd eat as much as I possibly can in one sitting--which makes me think that my body actually does not know what's good for us.

I try to develop better judgment by reading up on nutrition and seeing what's the best option that I can follow when I crave so-and-so food, or what's best to fill it while I'm hungry.

From my extensive research (meaning, Google and random health blogs)--everything is bad to eat. Everything. Every staple food.

White rice is pure carbohydrates that become indistinguishable to the body after digestion to just pure sugar. Not-white rice has phylates and lechtins that cause cramps and toxins to form in the body. Pasta has gluten, which even those without Coeliac's disease can suffer the effects of. Bread has gluten and is the same empty sugar-calories as rice and pasta that lead to sugar crashes and poor growth, healing, and organ development. Rice and wheat noodles have the same problem as rice and bread. Egg noodles, which at least have some protein, are more expensive. Oatmeal has been my default lately, although that's also relatively expensive and my godmother told me that they have something unhealthy that I forgot what exactly it was.

While I would usually conclude that we must have evolved by now to be tolerant of most aspects of stuff that keeps us alive, I did wonder what I would turn to if I listened to every dietary or culinary alarmist.

That's why lately, I've been having saba bananas.

My preferred method is to just wash them and stick them in a rice cooker with their skins still on. I used to peel them green and raw and slice them and fry them in oil, but I didn't like getting the raw sap on my hands. The sap turns black and sticks to the rice cooker pot, making for a lot of scrubbing later on, but overall I find this easier.

Note that the ones in the photo are already yellowing. When the saba bananas are very green, then they must be cooked thoroughly so that they can be eaten. Very green bananas have the taste and texture of a white kamote. Yellow saba bananas can technically be eaten raw because they're ripe, but I prefer just a little toastiness to them, and they can be slightly sweet to very sweet. A slight sweetness can add some interest to traditional dishes such as sliced, fried saba banana with sunny-side-up egg and garlic rice.

I prefer them either very, very green or decidedly yellow instead of something in-between, most of the time.

They turn black in the cooker pot. I turn them over after the rice cooker clicks, and wait until the cooker will let me set it to "cook" mode again. With the very green ones, I repeat the above process about four times so each "side" of the banana gets exposed to two cook cycles of heat, and then I keep them all on "warm" for about twenty minutes. Yellow saba bananas have a much shorter cooking time than the very green ones, maybe only needing two "cook" cycle repeats and no "warm" leaving.

Now to peel them! First, I begin by sticking a fork into the tip of the banana and prying the peel back:

Next, I pinch the stem and push the fruit out of the peel. If properly cooked, this should be very easy. Note that I do this all while they're still hot, because if I leave them to cool then they shrink a little like prunes or raisins, the fruit inside becomes slightly stiff, and more difficult to remove from the skins.

Because these bananas were yellow, I can eat them on their own. When they are very green, I can have them with blocks of commercial cheese, or peanut butter and raisins. Whatever goes with something starchy and bland.

Breakfast Jolly Sandwiches: Pancake Sandwich

My body clock has been nocturnal, lately. It gets that way sometimes. I try alarm clocks, make sure to get out and catch some sun so that my body is reminded that daytime exists, but sometimes it just doesn't work.

That's unfortunate, when my favorite meal is breakfast.

It's just the sorts of food that people have collectively agreed are for that time of the day, usually. I can't even say so much that it's because they're sweet or salty or starchy or whatever. They make the dawn break in my tummy. So, when I'm up early enough--or stay up late enough that it's early--then I like to go out and have breakfast.

Or I make my own.

But there's a lot of people out there that just make better food than I do and--

--Jollibee is one of them. There's their poster for Breakfast Jolly Sandwiches, a breakfast burger yum (or is that a sausage?) with bacon and egg, for Php. 70 (with a drink) and a pancake sandwich for Php. 60 (with a drink, Php. 50 solo order.)

Pancake sandwiches are intriguing. So, I had that.

Look at the size of that thing.

It's tiny. Like, four bites.

A pancake is actually a regional thing. These golden-brown American pancakes are known in England as drop scones or pikelets and tend to be smaller. I'd say that this is a pikelet sandwich. What English people call pancakes, too, I would call a fried eggy crepe--or, "that's what I made by accident when trying to make American pancakes but greased the pan too much".

The bacon and eggs are welded to the center of the pikelets with melted cheese. I do like cheese. A pity that the egg was overdone, but then again overcooking eggs is just safer if you're running a restaurant.

Overall, interesting concept, but I think I'd rather make this myself from now on.