See, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to finish work before the Captain Awesome and Little HRH are home from school. That means, I should not be blogging at this hour. But, my blogger friend, Ces, shared this video of 25 Ways to Wear a Scarf last night and I find it really, uhm, informative. Consider it public service.

You’re welcome.

Scarf: EMU Australia Bussleton

So, how are you wearing your scarf today?

Ingredients:

(I have to note that these measurements are just approximations. As I do when I cook, a lot of this is just eyeballing. Not the same when I bake though. Also, this serves a lot as I made it in a 4 quart saucepan.)

5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup chopped onions

4 cloves chopped garlic

5 cups white rice

1 can of tomato sauce

1 1/2 cup chopped carrots

1 1/2 cup peas

4 tablespoons chicken bouillon

1 tablespoon butter

How to do it:

1. Using a large strainer, give the white rice a rinse. For the life of me, I cannot believe I’ve been doing the rinsing-in-the-rice-cooker-attachment-and-dumping-the-water-then-repeat-3-times technique since I learned how to make rice. Using a strainer is actually so much more efficient! I learned this from my husband and apparently all of Mexico does it this way.

2. Start heating your oil in your saucepan. Once oil is heated, brown the onions and garlic.

3. Add in the rice and toss around. Do your best to coat and sauté / toast the rice grains as much as possible. To me, the indication was the toasted smell. Remember to keep mixing so that the grains won’t burn.

4. Add the can of tomato sauce. For this, if you prefer your rice to have a more powerful tomato flavor, feel free to add another half of a can or one whole can. It’s up to you. One can will be enough to coat the grains, but the flavors would be more subtle.
5. For good measure, Chef likes to add chicken bouillon. If we had chicken broth at this time, that’s what I would’ve used.

6. Add the peas and carrots, and again, toss it around, evenly distributing them.

7. Add about 5 cups of water. This would be your initial water addition to boil. At this point, you’re cooking your rice like you would in a rice cooker. You’ll need to watch it to see if you’ll need to add more water later. We ended up adding another cup and a half to achieve Chef’s description of al dente. Make sure you don’t over add water too because it will end up mushy, or risotto-like.

8. Top it off with some butter. This is not necessary but Chef said they just do this at their house. I like it. I’d never say no to butter.

We are launching Mirror, Mirror as a new channel for our Le Critique series to showcase our reviews on beauty vanity products. We are not particularly experts in these, but we’ll try our best. 

Like many other unfortunate souls, I suffered from horrible acne breakout in my teenage years. I tried quite a number of facial products to lessen, if not to eliminate, the breakout, but nothing really worked. As a matter of fact, I made matters worse. Apparently, the problem was, not only the inevitable puberty acne drama (or the heavily polluted streets of Metro Manila), but that I also had (and still have) highly sensitive skin. I would know right away if a certain product had strong chemical ingredients as my face would react instantly.

I did find one particular Philippine brand that carries a line of facial cleanser products that are great to my skin, and I have been an avid user of that brand ever since. While I am a huge advocate of Philippine products, hoarding facial cleansers every time I or a family member go to the Philippines for a visit is probably not the most normal thing to do. Thankfully, I have finally found an alternative that I can easily purchase here in the US, Sibu Beauty Balancing Facial Cleanser!

Like all of Sibu Beauty‘s products, the Balancing Facial Cleanser contains one unique ingredient: sea buckthorn. I, honestly, have no idea what sea buckthorn was until I saw it on the Sibu Beauty box, so I checked out their website to find out what it is all about.

For healthy and beautiful hair, skin and nails

High in the Tibetan Himalayas (12,000 feet above sea level) grows a tiny but resilient fruit that resists the harsh weather conditions and high altitudes. The sea buckthorn berry fortifies itself against the elements by producing an array of powerful nutrients. With over 190 bioactive compounds, sea buckthorn is an unsurpassed source of Omegas 3, 6, and 9. And it’s a rich source of the elusive essential fatty acid, Omega-7, an essential fatty acid vital to collagen production and healthy skin, hair and nails.

1300 years of beauty

Sea buckthorn is a natural product with 1300 years of traditional uses with the modern scientific research to back it up. Our superior processing techniques and our premium and exclusive source of sea buckthorn allow us to create a revolutionary group of beauty products.

As soon as I squirted a small amount of the cleanser in my palm, I was immediately captivated by the sweet and refreshing fruity scent. It honest-to-goodness smells like real orange and I knew then that the cleanser is, indeed, made of nothing but natural ingredients. I really feel that my face is getting cleansed off of impurities every single time I use it, thanks to the exfoliating micro-particles!

The holiday season just wrapped up and I could not even begin to express how glad I am to have started using the Sibu Beauty Sea Buckthorn Balancing Facial Cleanser during this time. With holiday gatherings that called for heavy make-up here and there, I am glad that I have a reliable exfoliating cleanser that is kind to my skin. Try it out!

Sibu Beauty products are available for purchase online.

Photo Source: SibuBeauty.com

Disclosure: The product/s mentioned above have been given free of charge by the company/PR firm in exchange for a review. The views expressed are my own. No other compensation was given for this post.

Anyhoo…

Ever since B told me about Ideeli, it’s become a habit of mine to check out the site’s featured sales before doing anything in my to-do list. Quite honestly, I’ve actually signed up to various sites for sample sales, but it’s Ideeli that really got me hooked. It must be the layout or the easy navigation that had me. After all, shopping should not be a chore.

I’ve purchased a number of pairs of shoes from Ideeli in the course of just two months (do NOT tell my husband!); so when the Christmas air started to seep in, I knew exactly where I could score amazing gifts that will show loved ones how much thought we put in on their presents (without having to pay full price).

Here are some of the gifts we sent out:

DIESEL Unisex Snowtime Snowball

for Captain Awesome

Dollhouse V-neck Sweater Dress

for Little HRH

UMA ENTERPRISES INC. Wood and Metal Wine Holder

for Um’s Aunt

(We spent Christmas Eve at Um’s Aunt’s house and this was a perfect fit!)

Waterford Robert Mondavi Decanter

for Um’s Uncle and Wife

(I was so tempted to keep this for myself and get them something else, but Um brought me back to my senses. LOL)

Okay. I tried. I really, really tried. But Ideeli really makes it hard for me not to buy anything for myself. So, I got these Diane von Furstenberg sunnies for me. Hey, I haven’t bought a pair since early 2010. So, I’m due, right?

DVF Eggplant Square Frames

Enjoy the rest of the holidays, everyone! I wish you all a Happy New Year. BTW, what are your resolutions?

Yes, yes, my greeting, along with blogposts, are a tad bit delayed. Nonetheless, it’s never too late for a good dessert recipe.

There’s actually quite a story behind my Russian Tea Cake mini obsession. Three years ago, I took an interim position at another department and met a funny group of people who have now become good friends. For every season, we decorated what we called our bullpen. Naturally, for Christmas, we decorated and hung stockings on our door. This was completely for decoration, but we found that some good-spirited stranger left us some treats in our stockings. They were these cookies covered with powdered sugar. It took us a good 30 seconds to debate AND decide that we should eat treats coming from a stranger.

Who doesn’t love anything that’s covered in powdered sugar? Perhaps only Ms. C. It certainly is an easy sell for me. So, for a month or so following that Christmas that we received these treats, I searched and searched on what this goody could possibly be called. I Googled almond, nut, and powdered sugar. And, I found it under different names. These Russian Tea Cakes are traditional Christmas desserts but they’re also apparently Mexican wedding cakes. Now there’s two cultures that couldn’t be further from each other, but seemed to have a united dessert. I’m sure the moniker Almond Snowballs was it’s American version.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoy each bite of mine

Ingredients:

2 cups of all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons of powdered sugar (but just for good measure, I’d recommend adding an extra tablespoon)

2 cups chopped almonds or walnuts

1 cup butter (make sure you have this at room temperature – soft but not oily. In a cold winter day, I took the butter out to soften for 6 hours.)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

And a bowl of powdered sugar for coating.

This measurement makes about 3 dozens of bite size Russian tea cakes.

How to do it:

1. Preheat oven at 350 degrees F.

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour and powdered sugar.

3. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter with vanilla extract by mixing it in medium speed.

4. Add the flour and powdered sugar mixture to the butter and continue to mix at medium speed. So at this point, it looks dry and I actually thought I was doing it all wrong. But, that is how it’s supposed to look.

5. Add the chopped nuts to the mix. This is when the oils of the nuts make the mixture moist.

6. When the mixture is evenly blended, roll them up into 1 inch balls. (Just a note for the calorie conscious, these bite sizes can be dangerous as you may grab more pieces than you can afford to be guilty for. )

7. Place them on a cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. I filled up 3 cookie sheets for this.

8. Bake the cakes for 12 – 17 minutes. So, I tried 12 minutes first and it was more crumbly than it should be. I put it back in the oven for 4 minutes more. Basically, the cakes have to of course hold its form when you grab it, but crumbly enough when you bite into it.

9. Let them cool for a while, and once it does, roll each one in the bowl of powdered sugar. Coat as much as you want.

Hope you enjoy them! Happy holidays!! (On a personal note, I actually preferred them after a couple of hours that it’s been sitting. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the oils of the nuts that’s seeped into the flour.)

Serves 3 people

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: up to 30 minutes

3 tablespoons cooking oil

2/3 cup chopped onions

2/3 cup seeded and chopped tomatoes

2 teaspoons minced garlic

5 tablespoons bagoong alamang (sauteed shrimp paste)

1/2 cup water

salt, pepper and sugar to taste

300 grams pork strips

oil for deep-frying

optional side dish: 

chopped grilled eggplant, tomatoes and onions

1. Fry pork strips until crisp and golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

For the bagoong sauce:

2. Heat oil in a pan then saute onions until transluscent.

3. Add tomatoes and cook until soft.

4. Add garlic and saute until fragrant.

5. Add bagoong and saute for a few seconds.

6. Pour in water and cover.

7. Simmer until tomatoes are very soft and the liquid has reduced by half.

8. Season with salt, pepper and sugar.

Optional: 

9. Add chopped bird’s eye chili and mix well. 

Post Processed with Instagram for iPhone

Arrange pork tapa on a serving plate and top with bagoong sauce.

Photo Source: Macys.com

Needless to say, the action takes place at street level, but there are those that would rather watch the parade from  a comfortable and warm hotel room offering the best views. These rooms are so in-demand and come at insanely overpriced nightly rates. If you plan on joining the Thanksgiving festivities without having to battle the crowd, here are your top 10 hotel options:

Post Processed with Instagram for iPhone

1. Mandarin Oriental New York

80 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10023

212-805-8800

2. Doubletree Guest Suites Time Square

1568 Broadway, New York, NY 10036

800-222-TREE (8733)

3. New York Marriott Marquis

1535 Broadway, New York, NY 10036

212-765-7676

4. Park Central New York

870 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019

800-346-1359

5. Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel

2 Times Square 714 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10036

212-765-7676

6. Wellington Hotel New York City

871 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019

800-652-1212

7. Sheraton Manhattan Hotel

790 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019

212-581-3300

8. Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers

811 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019

212-581-1000

9. The Michaelangelo New York

152 West 51st St., New York, NY 10019

800-237-0990; 212-765-0505

10. Trump International Hotel and Tower

1 Central Park West, New York, NY 10023

888-703-6559

It is business as usual for the restaurants located in these streets and offices in buildings along the route opened its doors for their employees and their families. Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle is one of the structures that offered a prime high-perched spot for viewing.

Post Processed with Instagram for iPhone

Here we go, 1 2 3 4

There’s nothing left to hide
You can see it in my eyes
Oh I’ve tried to be who I thought you wanted

And if it’s all a lie
The truth’s not far behind
We could try to live right for the moment

Ramona
Ramona
Ramona

If only I had known
It’s less than what I felt
Why should I have nothing to fear from?

Ramona
Ramona
Ramona

Ramona
Ramona
Ramona
Ramona
Ramona
Ramona

Grilled cheese. American classic. So utterly simple. Get  someone like Jonathan Kaplan, founder of the Flip camera, to complicate it and make it simple all over again. This guy made several hundreds of millions of dollars when he sold Flip to Cisco. The camera may now be long gone but Kaplan has reinvesting his bounty. On what? The classic grilled cheese, simply called The Melt.

Grilled cheese is grilled cheese, right. Slice of cheese between two pieces of bread, warmed, sliced diagonally, and voila, a simple tasty snack, or meal if you please. Being a tech guy, this is basically grilled cheese with techy pizzazz. The experience begins with how you place your order – online through their website and via The Melt app. Don’t be alarmed, the traditional way of ordering food by way of walking up to a counter and picking your choices from a menu board is still available. If you do order online, order, payment and all, you will get a QR code which you will then take to any The Melt establishment (I hear Kaplan is planning on opening 500 of them nationwide in the next couple of months). They have a code reader wherein you’ll scan in your order, and that’s the only time they will prep your food.

The tech application follows with the way your grilled cheese is made. After your sandwich is assembled, they cook it in this custom machine that Kaplan designed, which according to the server at New Montgomery was about $5,000 a pop. This feat of engineering toasts your bread and melts your cheese in about 2 minutes. In truth I didn’t think making grilled cheese takes me that long anyway, but I’m all for anything that can make our lives more efficient. I imagine this would help when it’s really busy. At New Montgomery, they have 3 of these, which apparently can cook 4 sandwiches at a time. However, one should not discount the human factor of this process, which is the assembly of the sandwiches before you end up with The Melt. You’re only as fast as your slowest factor, so it doesn’t matter how quick your machine can cook your food to perfection if your workers have so many to assemble. When your food is ready, they call you by your initials, which I think is an unnecessary way to be different. It’s impractical, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

The techy piece pretty much ends there. Everything else is all about the product. The menu is very simple. Five types of bread, five types of cheeses, and five types of soups. They have set melts with specific breads to cheeses, but I was told you can mix and match however way you want. Of course, right, because why shouldn’t you be able to since they’re assembling things there and then anyway. Not to mention, they’re all the same price. Each melt costs $5.75, with the combo of melt and soup costing $8.75. The price tag is a bit hefty for a simple grilled cheese, I believe. Perhaps to pay for the custom bull clips they hand with every take-out order. However, it’s not like it disappoints for the price. It’s actually really good. My favorite is the Jalapeño Jack on Sourdough bread. This I ordered with tomatoes and bacon, which is free to add (yey!). Just the spicy flavor with the fresh tomatoes were such a good balance. I must note, however, that the bread was a little bit on the salty side, which I think is sad because I heard there’s a Melt-Salt secret ingredient they add that’s parmesan based. I’m thinking they could go a little easy on that.

I must talk about design, of course. Once again, the simplicity continues. Just with the name, The Melt. When you add “the” to anything, it becomes the one, even if it’s not the only. I love the orange and white them, because last thing I’d like to see is an overwhelming yellow. They brought in the organic brown/beige of breads and paper bag both in the website and at the store. I love how the menu is posted but seems to have been held on by a magnet. Easy thing to replace when needed. The design is screaming simplicity to translate its product, and to me, it works fabulously well.

All in all, try it once, have it once in a while, don’t make it your daily meal.

Captain Awesome and Little HRH absolutely love pizza bagels for an after school snack. Thankfully, it is pretty easy to make. Here is what you will need:

Bagels – The kids prefer the plain mini ones.

Shredded cheese – Feel free to choose your type of cheese. We prefer the five Italian cheese: provolone, mozzarella, asiago, parmesan and romano.

Pizza sauce – I use Ragu’s traditional pizza sauce.

Toppings – You can actually use your personal preferences for the toppings: ham, bacon, mushrooms, olives… Go nuts!

So, here is what you need to do:

1. Preheat oven 400.

2. This step is crucial: others recommend that you toast the bagels for five minutes before spreading all the ingredients. I, on the other hand, recommend it is better to heat the bagels in the microwave for 20 seconds instead. This will make your bagel crispy on the outside, soft in the inside a la pan de sal. 

3. Spread Ragu pizza sauce.

4. Sprinkle shredded cheese. Feel free to put as much as you can!

5. Arrange all your toppings on the bagels.

6. Bake the bagels at 400F for 12 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Note: Layer the pan with foil or baking sheet. Scraping off melted cheese and pizza sauce on the pan is not fun at all. 

Enjoy!