Author: Yelly

Taking each day one smile at a time!
Yelly Writes

21-12-2012

Yelly

I spent quality time with the document scanner in the office today.  I had what seemed to be a shedload of documents to put into the system!  I spent the better part of 2 hours sitting in front of the document scanner feeding document after document.  How exciting is my life!

There was a lot of discussion about what the Mayans predicted to be the end of the world.  Some people interpreted the end of the Mayan calendar to be a prediction that the Mayans made–that the world would end at 11:11AM on 21 December 2012.  Someone at work was genuinely worrying about it being the end of the world.  I don’t know the details of the prediction but there was talk that a black comet would come and strike the earth, but that no one would be able to track this particular comet because it couldn’t be seen because it was black.  There was were several news bits about this town in southern France that was supposedly safe from destruction because of the presence of aliens underneath!

I had a good giggle about it because, well, it all seemed a bit silly to me.  People were worried about the world ending, and instead of living their life as it was their last day on earth, making every second count, some people were petrified and not doing anything at all.  Now, if today was your last day on Earth and you did nothing because you were afraid, wouldn’t you want your last day to count?

I wrote to my mom tonight and told her about the Mayan prediction and was slightly surprised that she didn’t know about it.  I guess it wasn’t as featured on the news in Manila as it was here in the UK.  I said that I went on with my day, knowing that we wouldn’t know when end of times is coming.  Only God does and when that happens, I know where I’m going.  But that until then, we needed to live a life pleasing to our God.  That was what matters.

I admit, it would be good to know when the end of days is so that you are able to tie loose ends, do what you want to do, tick off things from your bucket list, tell loved ones how much they matter and all the other things you do to “prepare for the end.”  I think what we need to remember is that these are things we should be doing this everyday.  But we don’t know when the world will end or how it’ll end.  It’ll come “life a thief in the night.”  Everything is just conjecture.  All you just do is live each day to the fullest, making sure that everything you do counts.

11:11AM

Yelly Eats

Food for the gods, a Filipino tradition

Yelly

I grew up enjoying food for the gods during Christmas and I always thought that it would be such a complicated recipe because, well, at the time, you couldn’t exactly buy the ingredients from your local supermarket.  It was such a treat when people gave us a box of these lovely sweet treats and I remember when we were handed one each after dinner so that we could make it last.  This was before my Lolo Ani opened a bakery and started baking these in huge quantities and we had food for the gods on tap every Christmas!

Food for the gods are really date and walnut bars.  I don’t really know why they’re called food for the gods, maybe because they are scrummy and so wonderfully to eat!  I’ve tried several recipes and after a few tweaking exercises, I may have cracked it.

I brought this to work today so that I could share it with my officemates.  I am merely continuing the Filipino tradition of giving away food for the gods at Christmas!

Here’s my recipe:Food for the gods aka date bars

Ingredients:

150g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
225g brown sugar
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g walnuts, coarsely chopped
150g dates, coarsley chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 175°C.
  2. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder together with a balloon whisk until well combined.  Add walnuts and dates and mix with a spatula until the dates and nuts are well-covered with the flour mixture and well-distributed within the flour mixture.  Doing this will ensure that the dates and the nuts do not sink to the bottom of the mixture.
  3. In a mixing bowl (am using a free standing mixer but you can also do this by hand with a balloon whisk), combine melted butter and sugars and beat until the mixture is smooth and almost creamy.  Add the eggs one at a time, making sure that the egg is well-combined before adding the next one.  Add the flour-date-nut mixture in quarters.  Mix until everything is well-distributed and you cannot see any flour.
  4. Spread mixture in a greased 17.5cm x 26.5cm (or thereabouts) pan lined with baking parchment (I learned that lining the baking pan with parchment is good because it makes it easy to release the cake from the pan) and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  This recipe makes up to 24 squares.
Yelly Eats

Chocolate bark

Yelly

I saw Ina Garten make this in one of her shows and I thought, “Wow that looks really easy!”

And believe me, it was really easy!  All you have to do is melt chocolate of your choice (I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate to balance the bitterness of the chocolate) in a heatproof bowl over boiling water, making sure that the boiling water didn’t touch the bowl.  The process might be slow but the chocolate comes out really beautiful and shiny.

Then you spread the chocolate over wax or parchment paper and sprinkle your choice of nuts and dried fruit and let it cool and become solid.  It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t put the cooling chocolate into the fridge.  Doing this will cause the chocolate to lose its sheen.  Also, if you intend to use dark chocolate (60% or higher), it might be a good idea to temper the chocolate with a heaping teaspoon of icing sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla paste so that the bitter taste is calmed down.

Chocolate bark cooling

Once the chocolate has cooled and hardened, you can either use a sharp knife to slice the chocolate into shapes or break them apart with your hands.  I prefer the knife option though, because if you break the chocolate up with your hands, the natural heat of your hands will make you leave finger prints all over the chocolate.

You can vary the sprinkles, depending on who this is for.  I placed salted cashews, dried apricots, dried berries and dried cranberries.  This makes for a tasty goodie bag item, which I learned, is also called a “hostess giveaway”

Chocolate bark

Yelly Snaps

Frosty!

Yelly

It was quite the frosty morning this morning and Jack Frost was quite the busy boy!  It is such a trial walking to the train station in cold weather and it does take its toll on my nails and cuticles.  But as the train was passing through the frosted trees bare of their leaves and the undisturbed meadows, I couldn’t help but wonder at the beauty of it all!

When everything is undisturbed, quite and pristine, everything seems to be right in the world.

Frosted holly

Yelly Snaps

Snow

Yelly

Tonight is a night for accentuating the positives!  And I am determined to do just that.

While it did snow today and the snow created a lot of upheaval for the commuting public, the snow does look very pretty when it lays.

Snow!

Yelly Writes

Musings on the train

Yelly

On Friday, I was reading an email from Emerald Street about the Twitter folk that they follow.  One of the people they follow and they recommend their readers follow, apparently, tweets “witty and oh-so-true observations”.  So I followed the person and then read through the tweets that they had posted previously.

While reading the tweets, I sat there thinking, “Awww, I say these things too!  Why don’t I have two thousand odd followers?  I make witty-slash-pithy comments too.  Why don’t people find my comments funny and oh-so-true?”  A little voice replied to my mental whining and said, “Maybe it’s because you whine and don’t really say things matter-of-factly?”

I think I’m fairly normal and I have a fairly normal amount of self-confidence.  I like to think I have a realistic idea of how capable I am.  I think when I was younger, I used to think I was the bees’ knees.  I used to think I could do everything: sing, dance, write, speak properly publicly, perform on stage and be, generally, amazing.  I was raised to believe in myself and my abilities.  I was raised to know how to carry myself in public.  I think I was blessed to have parents who raised me in an environment that encouraged realistic self-confidence.  But there are days when I think back to when I was younger and wondered whether I thought I was better than I was?

I mean, if I was truly witty and funny (I was about two or three years old when I had a funny conversation with my grandfather.  I said to him “I love you Lolo!”–Lolo is grandfather in Filipino–to which he replied “I love you too!”  Apparently, to my grandfather’s delight, I replied “I love you three!”  He apparently thought that was very smart!), why don’t more people follow me on Twitter or follow my blog?  I made the same observations as that woman Emerald Street recommended their readers follow (albeit in a whiny and maybe annoying tone).  How come they didn’t notice me?

After this realisation, I’ve just realised that I do want attention, despite the protestations otherwise!  I love the attention I get on Twitter when people reply to or retweet my tweets.  My heart does a little dance when people follow me (and you cannot believe the crash when I realise that the person following me is a spam bot!).  I love it when people read my blog.  I smile when I see how many people follow my blog or like my blog post or even visit my blog.

I am still disappointed that not a lot of people post comments on my blog.  I sometimes still wonder why my blog doesn’t get more comments or visits?  Mind you, as soon as I start going down this narcissistic road, I tell myself, quite sternly that there are over 7 billion people in the world and there are tens of millions of bloggers out there.  I am only one drop in an ocean of bloggers and I write about the most common of blog topics: food, books and family.  I like to think I have an amazing writing style because I write like I talk and in my head I sound interesting.  But then again, that’s me, and I have a healthy sense of self appreciation (I think we should all have a healthy dose of self-respect and self-confidence, otherwise we’d all be wringing our hands pathetically all the time!).  The truth is, I may not really sound amazing or my writing style might really, really suck (oh dear!).

I think sometimes when a person is highly adaptable and seems to thrive in different environments, one forgets that adaptability doesn’t necessarily mean that when one adapts, one is amazing.  I sometimes forget that I’ve moved to England and while I speak English better than most people, I don’t necessarily converse in English in quite the same way!  I forget that my expressions aren’t necessarily British.  I may speak English but not necessarily British English, with the same nuances and the same colloquialisms.

I think I crave the attention because, like everyone else, I want validation.  Validation that my thoughts, my ideas and my values matter.  We all want that.  Validation that we matter.  I think that’s why social media has the effect that it does.  Humans want validation, however they get it.  People want to know that someone, somewhere in the world thinks the same way.

I think we forget that the people who give us the most validation are the people who love us, who care about us.  Because they listen to us, give us the time of day and even if they don’t agree with every single word that comes out of our mouths, they still respect us because what we say comes from who we are.  And they respect who we are.

I am thankful for the 229 followers that I have because somehow they provide validation (even if they might be bots or spammers anyway!) that I crave.  But the end of the day, what I appreciate the most are the people in my life who love me for me, my faults and my frailties.  They provide the validation that I need.  They make me feel that I matter.  A lot.

Yelly Reads

College Orientation

Yelly

I haven’t blogged in a while and I think it’s quite fitting that my next post is about family.

A little family book promotion can’t be bad, can it?  My cousin Karen Bendersky has written a book with Catherine Chastain-Elliot called College Orientation.  It’s available on Amazon on to pre-order and the release date is 01 January 2013.  Amazon describes the book as:

College Orientation targets freshmen entering four-year institutions and is designed for use from college orientation programs until graduation day and beyond. It provides a roadmap for campus staff and faculty offering orientation programs to facilitate behaviors that increase retention, improve four-year graduation rates, and ultimately, reduce student loan debt. Students receive the information they need to adapt to college life and stay on track towards a degree–all the while learning behaviors that promote achievement after graduation. This comprehensive reference tool is written from an insider’s point of view and has a distinct focus on promoting appropriate college conduct. It covers a multitude of topics that help students navigate the university system while learning how to adapt this information to their future workplace.

If you’ve got someone prepping for college or, as they say in the UK, uni, this book might come in handy!

College Orientation by Karen Bendersky

Yelly Eats

Scones!

Yelly

I’ve been wanting to bake scones since I saw this Gary Rhodes show on TV.  He made making scones look so easy.  Mind you, I’ve always believed these experienced chefs always make everything look so easy to make!

So I started looking up scone recipes.  I started with opening Paul Hollywood’s book.  The recipe was quite interesting because it used bread flour instead of regular flour.  I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t taste like the scones that I’d loved so much from The Delaunay counter.   So I decided to look through Mary Berry’s  Baking Bible.  I looked at Mary’s recipe and thought this was going to taste more traditionally scone-y.

Mary’s Baking Bible is lovely because the instructions are straightforward and not formidable at all.  It tells you what to do and if you do it, then it’ll come out wonderful.  The recipe said it would make 20 small scones and it made 21.  I probably made a couple of scones too thin, which made it possible to make an extra scone.

When the scones came out the came out soooooo lovely and golden brown!

I couldn’t not have scones, clotted cream and jam.  I’d been having quite the sickly week as there is a bug making its rounds at work, so I thought I deserved a tiny bit of a treat.  Because I was feeling a bit blecchy, I was worried about how the scones would turn out.  It was definitely a comforting treat.  The next time I do Mary’s scones, I’ll put a bit of fruit in it!  Should make for lovely fruity scones!

 

Yelly Eats

Fajita night!

Yelly

I am a wannabe domestic goddess (you wouldn’t think so if you saw what my front room looked like!  Martha Stewart I definitely am not!) and I have illusions of joining the Great British Bake Off.  I say illusions because I am in no way, shape or form ready to bake at that level just yet!  I say “just yet” because it is the great dream…and I am slowly self-training my way into readiness.

I love to cook and I adore my tiny kitchen.  But there are days when I really don’t want to spend to much time in it.  Tuesdays, more often than not, are days when I don’t really want to cook.  It’s my I’m-so-tired-I-could-cry day for some reason.  So on a Tuesday night, I will usually find myself sitting on the train hoping there are leftovers in the fridge, or me buying a ready meal from the supermarket to pop in the oven when I get home or there is the phoning-takeaway-of-choice  route.

Tonight however, is different.  Tonight is fajita night!  While I cheated yet again tonight (I bought a fajita spice packet from the supermarket!), here’s a fajita spice mix recipe that I know works really well:

Ingredients:

Spice Mix
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1-2 teaspoons chili powder (or go without, this really depends on how hot you want it to be!)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika (sweet variety, or if you can find the smoked variety, that will work too)
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon crushed chicken bouillon cube
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon cumin

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
650g chicken thighs, diced (I use chicken thighs because they don’t dry out as much as chicken breasts)
1 medium sized white onion, sliced thinly
1 red, 1 green and 1 yellow bell pepper, julienned (pepper colours can be changed, of course, depending on what’s available)

Directions

  1. Mix together all the spice mix ingredients.  In a metal or glass bowl (only because the spice mix will stain plastic bowls), mix chicken, vegetable oil and the spice mix together until the chicken is well coated.
  2. Making sure the pan (I used a non-stick pan) is very hot, brown the chicken and cook for about 10 minutes.  Add the onions and the bell pepper and cook for a further 5 minutes.
  3. Serve in warm soft tortillas with sour cream, salsa and guacamole.

And there you go!  A meal that’s quick, easy and surprisingly healthy (especially if you go easy on the condiments!).

Yelly Eats

Pan de sal at last!

Yelly

I’ve been looking for a pan de sal recipe that I can work with and I have think I may have found it.

Pan de sal is a Filipino bread roll that is sold at very nearly every corner bakery shop in the Philippines.  I’ve missed it so much that I’ve told myself it’s necessary for me to learn how to make it.  This is the third adaptation of a recipe that I’ve seen online.  As usual, I read and reread the recipe to make sure I could follow the steps without reading through the recipe over and over (even if I had the iPad open on the recipe anyway!).  I always worry when I’m making bread because I’m never sure it’s going to turn out right.  But there was something right about how the dough looked while it was being kneaded in the Kenwood.  I kneaded the dough by hand and the dough felt right then too.  When I oiled the dough to prepare it for proofing, it looked right.  Ha!  Listen to me waxing philosophical about bread dough!

After following the baking instructions and making the bread rolls, I must admit, I was a bit worried again.  It might’ve have looked right as proofing dough but I always worry that I’m too heavy handed with anything I bake!  With a lot of whispered prayers I popped the trays into to oven and waited (impatiently) for 15 minutes until the timer pinged to tell me the rolls were ready.  They looked gorgeous and they tasted even better.  They finally tasted like the pan de sal I remember from the Philippines!

And, yes, I am very, very please!