Corn Rice

My aunt and I used to be really curious about what makes rice really yellow when it's served at Chinese restaurants, or, in my case, Indonesian festivals.

Egg yolks don't do that, at least not without sticking to every grain and changing the shape so that it looks lumpier.

Butter doesn't do that. Margarine doesn't do that without making it taste like margarine, which it didn't.

As it turns out, making a rice pilaf with turmeric spice or, if you can afford it then saffron, is what gives white rice a vivid yellow coloring.

Also, feeding genetically-modified golden rice to Chinese kids without telling their parents. But hey, it worked! Vitamin A for every body!

And now there's corn disguised as rice.

I've seen risoni pasta that's shaped like grains of rice, but corn is new.

Rico corn rice goes for about Php. 70 per kilogram, it does expand (just not as much as rice), and it cooks pretty speedy-quick. The instructions at the back of the pack say to wait for the water to boil first, then pour in the corn rice.

It doesn't taste very much like corn, which is too bad because I really do like the taste of corn even though it makes my stomach acids act up...and, I think corn rice kind of makes my stomach acids act up. Not as badly as actual corn, which gives me water brash, but just that I digest corn rice much faster and get hungry again after a couple of hours.

For that reason, I wouldn't change my staple to this, but it's an interesting ingredient to work with...

Here's me stuffing cabbages with corn rice...

The directions on the pack say that, unlike with real rice, it's better to wait until the water is boiling and then add the corn rice.

So, as the rice cooks below, the cabbage leaves get steamed up top...

I've been having a tactile food craving. I've been wanting to wrap something, like a tortilla or a crepe or something. Cabbage leaves would do, but I wondered how to get them to stay rolled. A tortilla, I could stick with some melted cheese or even cornstarch and water.

But as it turns out, cooked cabbage is very pliable. Once it's rolled into a wrap, it sticks to itself.

I thought the recommended amount of water on the pack, per cup of corn rice, actually left it quite dry. I overestimated the water the next time, and came out with a porridge.

So, I thought that I'd make it into champurrado. Not champorado, but champurrado substituting corn rice for corn meal, adding chocolate and cinnamon sugar.

Maybe I should specify...

- 1 cup corn rice
- 3 cups water
- 2 star anise...things...
- 2 Tbsp brown sugar
- 1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder
- dash of cinnamon

Although, I don't recommend this recipe that I made up because this was actually pretty intensely flavored. I steeped the star anises in the water, and kept them in there when the water boiled and I added the corn rice. When about halfway done, and the water had turned cloudy with what I supposed was corn starch, I plucked out both anise seeds. The corn rice retained the tangy numbing flavor.

...I still prefer the sticky rice version. While cornstarch is one effective thickener, corn rice doesn't seem to have any left after processing, so it was like ordinary rice dumped in hot chocolate.

I might have put too much anise, since the lift it gave to the dish was a little intense...

Also, the recipe I based this off mentioned star anise as a possible spice, but stuck with cinnamon. Good call, I think, since cinnamon in the chocolate did give it a very woodsy sort of groundedness. Both together...intense, is all I can say. Maybe if I'd doubled the amount of corn rice...because these are flavors that, though new to me in combination, I do think all worked really well together.


But I've thought up of other recipes to use corn rice in, which I'll write more on later.

Oatmeal and Soya Milk

The weather continues to be chilly and damp, and while I still have my sweet tooth I'm getting bored of rice porridge. Although I really want to make an entry on sibot chicken soup sometime soon.

Here's something much quicker:

Vitamilk is my favorite brand of soy milk right now. It's from Thailand, comes in 10-ounce/300mL glass bottles at about 25 Php a pop, with a very creamy consistency for something that doesn't actually contain dairy, and it's quite a bit sweeter than other brands of soya milk (which I can guess is probably from lots of sugar and that makes it bad for me, even though the soya bean is probably one of the first break-out stars of healthy-alternative foodstuff and so soya milk can't be unhealthy...Sugar! So much sugar!)

As of the time of this writing, Vitamilk comes in four flavors: plain (that is to say, sweetened), chocolate, double chocolate, and my favorite (pictured above)...black cereal, or "Vitamilk: Energy" as it's branded.

The black cereal flavor contains black sesame, black rice, and brown rice. While "cereal" is more of an agricultural term than a botanical classification, there is some cerealness (cereality?) to the flavor. If my body went by flavor cues alone, a bottle of that would hack my body into thinking it's had a full bowl of corn flakes.

Today, though, I want something to actually chew--that'll stick to the walls of my stomach.

Hence, quick-cook oatmeal.

Oats, scientific name Avena sativa, is a grain grown in temperate climates and some geographically elevated parts of India that can imitate a temperate climate. Oat groats and steel-cut oats, which are the least processed for human consumption, go rancid fairly quickly and must be pre-soaked before cooking, then cooked for half an hour at least, and the oatmeal made from groats tends to be difficult to chew. (According to Wikipedia. I've never eaten less processed groats myself.)

When oat groats are de-husked, steamed, toasted, rolled into flat flakes, and then left to dry, then they are called "rolled oats". Rolled oats have a longer shelf life and shorter cooking time compared to the oat groats, although are less nutritious after husk removal.

Quick-cook and instant oatmeal are essentially the same as rolled oats, the difference being that they are rolled much thinner--quick-cook being rolled thinner than rolled oats, and instant rolled even thinner than quick-cook oats so it rehydrates faster. I say "rehydrates" because they are technically already cooked and only need to be rehydrated. However, knowing this, I have experimented with rehydrating instant oatmeal in cold water and room-temperate water, and I can say that hot water is really the best way to develop the gluten and soften the oats right away.

In this case, I mean...hot soya milk. Why add the soya milk afterwards, to water-boiled oats? That'll just dilute the flavor, and it's not as if soya milk curdles or gets a skin on top of it like dairy milk would.


That's for the ingredients, now for the directions:

I pour the soy milk out into a saucepan, bring it to the slightest of simmers, sprinkle in one cup of quick-cook oatmeal, take it off the heat and cover for about five minutes.


While quick-cook oatmeal instructions advise a ratio of three cups of liquid to one cup of oats, I prefer my oatmeal to be much much thicker, about 1.5-2 cups of liquid to one cup of oats.

I won't post a picture of the finished product in a bowl because I accidentally ate it all again even if I could be bothered to set up better lighting to take a good picture, it just doesn't look appetizing. It's a gray mulch. Still, I think it smells really good and is perfect to start a dreary, gray, damp, chilly morning!

I topped it with some banana slices, too--the banana was too sweet, the slices wilted in the heat of the porridge, and it just didn't mesh well. Since it was a dessert banana variety (lacatan), I might have better luck with a milder-tasting banana such as a cavendish, or a cooking banana such as saba. Or I could just eat the banana separately.

I'm also tempted to make a sort of egg-drop oatmeal. Maybe next time. With the double chocolate Vitamilk.

Internet (Indonesian instant food)

...Well, semi-instant.

From left to right: a pack of Indo Mie (that is, Indonesian instant noodles), an egg, and a pack of Swift's Carne Norte (Philippine brand).

Internet as a food is a result of a word-mash of Indo Mie, telur (which means "egg" in Bahasa), and kornet daging (which means "corned beef/meat" in Bahasa).

I'm so glad that Indo Mie brand noodles can get exported to Philippine grocery stores now. I grew up in Indonesia, and that did some strange things to my tastes.

Even eggs were different there, I remember. Upon moving to Indonesia, my mother requested, in the little Bahasa that she knew at the beginning, for her room to be painted eggshell--which was supposed to be a shade of white. The workers painted it terracotta. My mother didn't understand what went wrong until she did the groceries. Even the best-stocked supermarkets had no white eggs anywhere. They were terracotta-colored, small, as angular as an egg can possibly be, and thick-shelled. When my family moved back to the Philippines, I had to practice working with white, plump, large (even when they were graded as small), thin-shelled eggs and get used to them again. My omelets were disasters, for months.

What on earth is Carne Norte? Yes, that's Spanish for "meat (of the) north" but according to the Internet (as in, the technology with the software and all the information) this means "corned beef" in the Philippines. Uhh...no it doesn't! Swift also has a corned beef packet labeled corned beef! If Carne Norte is corned beef then that's just confusing.

I've accidentally eaten wet dog food with a more appetizing flavor and texture than Swift's corned beef, by the way. Maybe it's because I followed the directions written on the packet and kept the packet in a bowl of scalding hot water, instead of making it like I prefer to make corned beef, which is pan-fried until the oil dries and leaves meat with the consistency of a crispy potato hash brown.

But maybe not, because I've eaten PureFood's corned beef straight from the can and that did not taste anything like wet dog food, that tasted like real meat and has always been my favorite brand.

I like to try new things, though, and I'll give Swift another chance... Here's hoping that their Carne Norte is better.

So...How do you corn beef, anyway? Are the cows fed corn? Is it because the meat is shredded into striated rows, like corn? The latter one was the explanation that one of my science teachers gave me, but it turns out to be that "corning" of meat refers to leaving it in a brine with large grains of salt. These grains of salt are called kernels, or corns.

Mi goreng means "noodles (that are) fried" which is a lie with these instant noodles because the noodles are immersed in hot water until cooked and then are mixed with a flavor pack to make it taste as if it's fried when it's not. Sneaky.

Bumbu (flavor powder), is mixed with minyak (oil), kecap manis ("ketchup that is sweet"--the "c" in written Bahsa is pronounced like "ch"), and cambal (chili sauce).

I was a picky eater as a child, but spicy food was the worst to me. When I moved to Indonesia, I had to get used to the flavor or else I'd starve to death. Indo Mie instant noodles was almost the only thing I ate during the transition, because at least I had the option of leaving the chili sauce out.

Nowadays, though, I miss a little kick. After some hesitation pictured above, I included the chili sauce.

I like a little more kecap manis than was shown, but was too hungry to take the trouble to make my own by boiling soy sauce and sugar into a syrup.

Incidentally, if you boil soy sauce, sugar, sake (rice wine), and mirin (rice wine vinegar) into a syrup, then you get Japanese tonkatsu sauce. I was supposed to do that last weekend when I met up with my friend, Angel, who gave me the Indo Mie pack--thank you, Angel! We'll get around to making those rice burgers some day.

The noodles are mixed in with the flavoring and topped with the packet of bawang goreng (fried garlic chips--"bawang" also means "onion" in Bahasa, but in the packet--and in Tagalog--bawang means garlic). Add the corn beef, and the egg.

Mmm!

The Carne Norte wasn't bad. It didn't get as crispy as PureFood's corned beef, but I might have just gotten impatient. Swift's Carne Norte tastes a lot like blood with a hint of liver somewhere in all that beef, which must be the stew referred to in the corner ("Guisado na!") And it does taste mostly like corned beef--so, I still count this dish as Internet.

PureFoods corned beef remains my favorite brand, though--and my definition of corned beef, as juicy with short strings and ability to crisp up to a meat hash or even up to beef bacon floss. In Indonesia, the corned beef was usually overly spiced, came out of unwieldly key-and-roll cans, and had the consistency of clay--which I thought was just wrong, but apparently that's the corned beef that the rest of the world is used to.

I wonder if PureFoods corned beef got imported to Indonesian grocery stores by now.

Anyway, good Internet today--PureFoods corned beef might even have been too salty to mesh with the other ingredients, so I can be comfortable in declaring that this had the best of both worlds.

Dairy Barn (Zesto) and Lil'Orbits

New things I got to try the other day: Dairy Barn chocolate milk by Zesto, which the man running one of the neighborhood general stores that I bought this at told me this tasted exactly like a candy that was discontinued before I was born but always gets him nostalgic. That got me curious, although I can say now that this wasn't wasted on me.

That is chocolatey.

I declare that it has replaced the chocolate truffle Magnum bar as my go-to premenstrual treat, it is so chocolatey, and more affordable.

From a kiosk at the Cubao LRT, I tried out Lil'Orbit mini-donuts. One advantage that this could have over the more prominently-branded Dunkin' Donuts or Mister Donut is that you get to watch them fry along a conveyor-like belt of oil, and they're served piping hot. Six for Php. 21 sure beats the munchkins! They get a dry, cakey texture pretty quick, though, but even then I'd say they aren't bad... especially dunked in Dairy Barn chocolate milk. The flavorings dusted on Lil'Orbit mini-donuts range from cinnamon sugar, cheese, cookies and cream, strawberry, and a few more that I can't remember.

Ho-Land Hopia Baboy

I used to think that hopia was just all right. These tiny cakes are sold at every other side street bakery. It's affordable, sticks to your insides and sometimes leaves an aftertaste of shortening, has a crust like fossilized phyllo wraps, and fillings that were boiled to the point of sometimes being unidentifiably although, for the most part, inoffensively sweet.

One exception to this, to me, is hopia baboy. It's identifiable, and...off, not offensive, but off--at most, off-full.

It's awful. I know that sweetened meats can still work well, especially pork, but hopia baboy just usually tasted to me like an identity crisis. It was like an empanada put it up for adoption and it went to a nice hopia family but the community still heavily stigmatized adoption and it had begun to ideate some seriously antisocial behavior. That's what it tastes like.

Otherwise, hopia was ehh...okay.

That was my general attitude until my wonderful extended family, adventurous foodies and especially my uncle who knows all the best Chinese restaurants, introduced me to Ho-Land.

Ho-Land has elevated hopia to an art form. You can get a rolled pack of five hopia pieces for anywhere between Php 40 - Php 45, and the experience is priceless. The golden-brown crusts are never too oily, and the fillings burst with flavor: monggo of various colors, ube, some with gummy cubes of tikoy added, versions with different oils used, versions that are made light and creamy like custard, all of them delicious.

Or are they?

Spoilers: Yes, yes they are. Ho-Land is a triumph of culinary artistry, and their hopia baboy is no exception.

Side-note, here, in that hopia baboy basically translates to cake (of) pig. But pig isn't even the main ingredient, not pork, not any named pig body part... It's wintermelon, or wax gourd as the package insists on calling it.

There is very little oink in a hopia baboy, really, and almost certainly no meat. It's called so because one of the ingredients is lard, which this doesn't even seem to have in the ingredients list.

Not that I missed lard, or anything.

When I opened the pack, I was surprised to see each cake coated with sesame seeds.

Then I bit into one.

It's like a festival in my mouth. It has so many more textures than Ho-Land's other flavors have. The candied wintermelon crunches like frost, the filling is creamy at some parts, and jellied at other parts, it has a crisp lift to it grounded by the nuttiness from the sesame seed coating, and then with another bite there would be just a hint of the identity-crisis granting umami--in this symphony of complementary flavors, the umami actually works.

That said, I've got a major sweet tooth, and this is definitely one of the sweetest flavors that Ho-Land has to offer, if not the sweetest. It might not be for everyone.

Hopia baboy used to be my least favorite hopia flavor. I was curious about how well Ho-Land could do it, and I certainly didn't expect this to become my favorite. Hooray for Ho-Land exceeding expectations.

BBQ Sauce Substitute

I've been reading some strange things about how to make your own barbecue sauce if you don't have any.

Ketchup and Coca Cola, Pepsi, or root beer.
Ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.
Ketchup and molasses.

There's even a sauce out there, though I don't know if it's for barbecue, that mixes up a bottle of ketchup with a bottle of grape jelly.

Tonight, I went for molasses.

It might show better in this next picture, where I've actually added the ketchup to the molasses, but the spoon end of this handy cooking chopstick has a tiny groove to measure 2.5 cc (cubic centimeters of volume) inside the spoon that itself measures 5 cc. I never use that cooking measurement and have no idea how to convert that into milliliters or culinary spoons/cups, but I think it's neat.

When I blended them gently together with a fork and gave it a taste, well... It tasted like ketchup mixed with molasses. When I changed the ratio, though, to add much much more molasses with just a hint of ketchup, then it was more like barbecue sauce but I still couldn't mistake it for anything but ketchup and molasses. I doubt salt would help, since ketchup had so much of that already. Maybe a drop of Worcestershire sauce and some tabasco would give it the complexity it needs.

While I shouldn't knock it 'til I try it, I really won't go for the ketchup-and-soda. The ketchup-and-grape-jelly? Maybe...one day.

For tonight: molasses-ketchup mushrooms with red rice.

Avocado and Coconut Cream

After turning a pudding into a porridge yesterday, I found that I had an open can of coconut milk...and no refrigerator.

Fortunately, I had a perfectly ripe avocado, and had already discovered that a sour-bitter fatty fruit that I don't usually like to eat on its own, and another sour-bitter fatty fruit that I don't usually like to eat on its own, can combine to make something that I actually quite enjoy.

With sugar. Lots of sugar. Okay, not lots, actually but...some.

"Sour" and "bitter" aren't quite the words for what I don't like about these fruits, though. There's something...carbonated about the flavor, and not in a good fizzy drinks sort of way. There's a taste similar to how the exhaust pipe of a car smells, that sort of carbon, that I guess I'm just sensitive to.

When that can be counteracted or covered up by other ingredients, though, avocado has a great texture and versatile subtle and slightly sweet flavor, and coconut just has that sweet sort of groundedness that I was surprised to find present in a lot of my favorite snacks: suman, bibingka, and almost every kind of puto. I say that this is surprising because I'm usually averse to coconut on principle.

I actually skimmed the top of the coconut milk with my spoon, and coconut cream itself really isn't half bad.

Then I made the mistake of stirring it, to get the translucent juice up from where it'd settled below the cream and--URGH yes there it is, that's what flavors it badly.

Strangely, I'm in a mood to drink coconut juice or coconut water sometimes and have no problem with that particular aspect of the flavor when it's kept low-key, maybe by the freshness of the juice or something?



There's a new diet fad going around called the Paleo diet that makes a staple food out of coconut, because that's what Cave People ate or something and they were healthier (supposed to be) than modern humans for all our modern conveniences. It's likely that people on a Paleo diet know and care more about the nutritional value of coconut than I could, because I just get it for the flavor, which I sometimes (or some aspects of which) I just don't like.

Avocado has more potassium than a banana, Vitamin K which is needed for blood clotting, several kinds of B-vitamins, Vitamin C, and Vitamin E. I have fewer recipes for that, although I'm generally more tolerant of avocado's carbon-y sort of taste for some reason, even though this fruit is usually more up-front about that aspect. The same smokiness in coconut tends to be sneakier.

Champorado, Bikorado, Bumbongorado

While the weather forecast lately says that no major storms have entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility, it has been drearily overcast and I've even gotten surprise attacks from squalls.

No, that would be too cool.

Personally, my immune systems is so terrible that I get sick with the flu for a fortnight if you so much as whistle at me. You know what always helps stave it off, though? A hot, comforting bowl of sweet rice porridge. For some reason sweet rice is one of the English translations for glutinous rice that isn't necessarily sweet, but I mean glutinous rice that is also sweet in flavor.

Champorado

Yes, I'm talking about champorado, or it should be spelled tsamporado except that it's originally champurrado...at that last point, though, it becomes something else.

Chocolate, or at least the cacao beans that serve as the basis for chocolate--is a New World plant, which Spanish conquistadors brought from Meso-America to the Philippines.

In its country of origin, champurrado was a chocolate drink that was thickened with cornmeal meal and spices, sweetened to suit European tastes, and when this treat reached the Philippines we left off the chili peppers and replaced the corn with rice. We also grow our own chocolate, which has its own distinct "lift" in its flavor.

Health note: Despite its name, glutinous rice that champorado is made with does not actually contain gluten, and is therefore safe for consumption for those afflicted with Celiac's.

Nowadays, we can get pre-packaged quick cook champorado. I wanted to make my own, and was surprised to find that champorado actually already is very quick to cook. Step one--

Uh... oh, sorry, I was supposed to show how to cook it but I accidentally ate the whole thing before I could do so.


Ingredients:

- 2 cups of glutinous rice
- 8 cups of water, give or take a cup depending on how thick or runny you want it
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup sugar (if cocoa powder is unsweetened)

Since I couldn't find tablea chocolates at the grocery store, I just used ordinary cocoa powder and it just tasted like it was missing something--but obviously I just kept on eating, because it was still chocolate and chocolate is still good.

I didn't soak the glutinous rice overnight or anything, I just washed it and left it to boil in the rice cooker with the water. Instead of just leaving it there, though, I'd give it a good stirring once in a while, to prevent the bottom from burning, and also to taste-test whether or not the grains are cooked all the way through.

The rice cooker will detect if the rice is done because when the rice has absorbed all the water, or the water has evaporated into steam, then the temperature in the rice cooker pot will rise suddenly and that will be the rice cooker's cue to click from "cook" mode to "keep warm" mode.

However, this is a rice porridge, so I would advise against depending on that flip-switch cue because if all the water has been absorbed or evaporated then it's no longer a porridge. When the rice is soft to the tooth and of the consistency you want when you stir it (maybe slightly more runny, because it will congeal as it cools) then it's ready.

Then again, when it was done I just added the cocoa powder and sugar into the rice cooker pot, which the manual sort of advises against...

YOU DO NOT COMMAND ME!!!!!

I used a mix of brown sugar and pure molasses.

Health note: Pure molasses, also known as blackstrap molasses, is a syrup made from sugar cane or sugar beets that is far less processed than sugar and therefore retains the nutrients of the plants. It is high in minerals, iron, calcium, magnesium, and potassium... and it also tastes terrible.

Mixed with brown sugar, though, it tastes a little bit to me like muscovado sugar, which is unrefined sugar that actually tastes pretty good.


A bit of evaporated milk and/or salty dried fish brings out the best of chocolate rice champorado, although I'd like to try that champurrado out some day.

Bikorado

Today, I tried out another kitchen experiment. Biko is a sticky rice pudding made with a coconut milk and sugar syrup. I figured I'd take what I learned from making champorado, and transfer those flavors over to a porridge version.

Ingredients:

- a handful of ginger, sliced
- a large pinch of calamansi (or lime) rind*
- 5 cups of water
- 1 cup glutinous rice
- 1 cup brown sugar
- a dash of iodized table salt
- pure molasses
- coconut milk to taste

* not available to me at the time of this kitchen experiment

While the pudding biko usually steams the rice to then cook in the coconut milk to absorb the flavor, I figured that this porridge biko could take the flavor in easily enough if added later. Besides, I didn't want burnt coconut at the bottom of the cooker pot.

This being an experiment, I only used one cup of glutinous rice to four cups of water, with an extra thrown in because I'd be making ginger tea first. I basically boiled half a root of ginger (sliced) in the pot until I could smell ginger in the steam. The steeping of flavor can go on for a long while because ginger doesn't have tannin to release if it's over-boiled to turn the water too bitter, but some people don't like ginger to be too strong. When staving off the cold, though, I use a lot and get as much ginger flavor out of it as I can.

Remove the ginger root slices from the water when the water is adequately flavored. If I had grated calamansi rind, I'd add that in between removing the ginger and putting in the rice.

After washing the rice, I just throw it into the pot with the ginger tea to boil until soft.

Once the rice is soft, mix in the salt, sugar, a couple spoonfuls of molasses, and a swirly stream of coconut milk.

I consider this experiment a success.

Bumbongorado

Lately, I've been seeing Jordan Farms' Tapol de Oro brand of glutinous purple rice at the grocery store, and have been very tempted to run a similar experiment.

I'd like to make a porridge version of puto bumbong, which is sausage-shaped violet sticky rice, that my research (by "research" I mean "Google" and "Wikipedia") has told me used to be made out of flour ground out of purple rice. Nowadays, it's white glutinous rice flour mixed with purple yam powder. It's usually served slathered in butter and dipped in muscovado sugar and/or grated coconut (also burnt coconut drippings, which in Luzon is called latik.)

Of course, if I make it into a porridge, then I can't call it puto or bumbong.

But... just brainstorming here... if I managed to find a pack of heirloom purple or black glutinous rice that wasn't a full 800 kilgrams, then I'd cook it into a porridge, add some purple potato powder, dollop butter into the bowl I was going to add it in, and then top it with butter because the puto bumbong that I know of tends to be served positively slathered in butter... and then add sugarcane sweet and/or grated coconut.


White puto porridge would have white sugar (1/2 cup of that to one cup rice and 4 cups water, I'm guessing), coconut milk (one cup), butter (tablespoon) and an egg, maybe even some quickmelt cheese to top it at the end. The egg and butter make mixing it in evenly rather tricky, since this wouldn't be a flour gruel where the flour would emulsify it. I'd go with the trick of mixing the egg and butter in a bowl, then pouring some cooked porridge into it from the main pot, then pouring it back into the main pot to mix with the rest of the porridge. For once, I might not just change the form of the food for the sake of it, and just enjoy a solid puto!

First Post

First of all, I really want to thank my godmother for the money she gave me last month that allowed me to get stuff for cooking with, and without whom I would still be plagued by "recipe muses" that can never be until I am driven insane...r; I would be eating the same convenient, costly, and unhealthy foods every day when I do get around to eating at all, and this blog would not be possible.

Pictured above:

• Matrix MX-RC1680 rice cooker with double boiler, bought secondhand from OLX Php. 300
• miniature saucepot and lid from Daiso Php. 176
• stainless steel sieve from Daiso Php. 88
• white plastic pink silicon-tipped cooking chopsticks from Color Life via Daiso Php. 44
• soft chopping board from Color Life via Daiso Php. 88