Archive for 2012

When it seems there are days that really don't seem to end, I pull out one of my most feel-good treasures from the freezer - tuyo. Tuyo is a salted dried fish (Herring) so common in the Philippines. Usually paired with garlic rice & tomatoes, I just learned that some of my friends have never tried it with champorado, a chocolate rice porridge. The fusion of salty & sweet is curiously ambrosial to the taste. At least for some who are born to this particular flavor. One of our French colleagues was so sure he can handle Asian dried fish after trying one from Thailand, actually gave up on our very own tuyo. Even after he soaked it in milk overnight.

Exotic food such as the tuyo, or any other form that is dried or fermented, is a craving that needs a plan. A method that can cover its reeking smell once you drop it in a pan of drizzling hot oil. Especially if you happen to live beside a Manhattan Convent who apparently sued a Filipino couple for cooking it. A friend who lives in Rome have switched to the bottled Gourmet Tuyo, ready to eat without the possibility of being charged as a potential health risk to others. As much as I want to keep my butt out of court, I still prefer the good old stinking dried ones. It is also making a culinary surprise with recipes such as tuyo pasta or salad with tuyo. Afterall, it is our version of anchovies.

"I cannot fry those darn fish in my kitchen again!" My friend sweared. She's one of the many Filipinos who gave up on this heavenly taste of home just because we live outside of the country. Everytime I tell them how my husband, or my neighbors, never smell the odor of carcasses when he comes home from work, my method actually makes them laugh. Or they're simply too overwhelmed with the effort that comes with eating it. For those of you who still have the taste of tuyo in their blood, there are just a few rules & simple ways to feel home away from home.

How I cook Tuyo scot-free in France:

1. I light about 2 incense by the stove, another 2 by the open windows, and another 2 where I eat. You won't cover the smell if you light them after you cook & eat tuyo.

2. I add extra candles in all those places, plus a bowl of vinegar. My mother said it can absorb foul odors & I've proven it true. Our coconut vinegar is better.

3. I heat the oil as hot as it can so I can only fry the fish for about 5 minutes. Covered & beside the incense, candle & a bowl of vinegar.

4. I run hot water right away after cooking & leave it with water & soap.

5. I bring the bowl of vinegar to where I eat, together with another set of incense & candle.

6. I throw what's left of the fish right away in a plastic bag & seal it. Wash the pan & plate then I throw the palstic bag directly to the public trash can.

7. I will again light a pair of incense & candles by the stove, the open windows & the dining area. I will use about 15 incense, 6 candles & a bowl of vinegar.

8. Don't eat tuyo every week.

9. Try not to eat tuyo during winters. I tried once & the smell takes longer to disappear.

10. It is always better to have the stink inside your house than to share it with your neighbors. Never fry it outside your window or terrace.

A post about tuyo...because it's all worth it.

"Petra!" Twinkle eyeing my husband. "Wadi rum!" He sighs & gives me the eye. "Baptismal pools?" As much as I wanted to celebrate my 40th birthday with something big & different like the natural wonders of Jordan, the tension that is happening around the country doesn't appeal to my husband. Even if I told him that Angelina Jolie was there to aid Syrian refugees. Although Jordan is Jordan & might be relatively safe, donkey back riding to Petra would just have to go back to the bucket list.

We decided on the islands of the Scottish Highlands, to my delight of having the chance to see the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis. Booking last minute plane tickets, hotels & routing our week holiday, we were finally ready to go to what seems to be almost at the top of the world. Maybe not top enough for the Northern Lights because the sky was dancing in Iceland, Norway & Sweden during the nights I was hoping for one. We were a week late for it when it lighted the sky in Scotland, but it was on the day of my birthday!

Scotland's weather is incredibly erratic & it made it a challenge to capture good photos. One minute you have blue skies, the next minute you have winds that can whisk away one's toupee, then after you're drenched in rain in the cold. The Scots were saying it's even no surprise if hail or snow falls. Bothered but I was reminded this is Scotland & despite of the fickle skies, the locals are amazingly welcoming & pleasant. In the first hour we arrived Inverness, looking for a place to satisfy our grumbling bellies, an old couple happily asked us if we needed directions. No better time for kindness when you have an emtpy stomach & we were not disappointed with the restaurant.

No Scotland visit will be complete without a whisky distillery tour. The Speyside region has a Malt Whisky Trail & as a personal favorite of my husband, we caught the last tour of the day of The Glenlivet. I never tried whisky & after learning more, tasted a 12 & 15 year old, I'm still not a drinker of whisky. Even peaches or raspberries soaked in it.

Inverness is also the home of Loch Ness. I read about Nessie in the Reader's Digest Strange Stories & Amazing Facts when I was 12 & I was still blown away being in front of this ordinary but mysterious lake. My childhood imagination still lurks somewhere.

A three hour drive from Inverness brings us to Gills Bay to catch our ferry to the islands of Orkney. My husband was already reluctant about driving during his holidays, let alone driving on the left. But in the end, he really enjoyed the scenery & the diverse landscapes that he wanted to stop at every photo-worthy spot. We have forgotten that life on the island starts early & ends early that looking for a place to eat at 9pm was difficult especially if the centre town is deserted. Luckily we were guided to the only one open, an Indian restaurant and we already wanted to try one. I loved the papadums & naan.

Even if we didn't see the Northern lights, the islands of Orkney is a World Heritage Site so rich in history & by history I mean 5000 years. Back to the Stone Age & stories of Vikings. The Standing Stones of Stenness were said to be erected around 3300 BC, with the highest stone standing at 5.7m tall. The Ring of Brodgar is a wide circle of standing stones & believed to be a site of spiritual rituals around 2500 BC. Yet, nobody really knows what the standing stones are really for.

The centre of Kirkwall, one of the biggest towns of the island, has cobble stone streets & a magnificent 12th century cathedral of St. Magnus built with local red sandstones & yellow Eday stone. These stones really made the building impressive & nothing I've seen anywhere. If only I took 10 minutes to take a peek inside the cathedral in between running up & down the main street looking for the tourist office & post cards.

The Skara Brae, northern Europe's best preserved Neolithic village. A glimpse into the everyday stone age life! I can't get over how small they were. The stone bed boxes, the doors & pathways. It is located by the sea & when we visited, the wind was howling with sand. I can't imagine how they got through the harsh weather while here I am already complaining about a little sand storm.

There sits a banal looking hill, the Maes Howe, actually an ancient tomb from about 5000 BC. The enormous sandstone blocks brought from several miles away are amazing. The vikings came crashing into the tomb looking for treasure & destroyed the roof of the tomb. It's the only part that is not authentic & they let you know by painting the whole ceiling white. They didn't really find anything in the tomb, only viking graffitis that says, "Ottarfila was here," or "Thorni bedded Helgi". As they say, nothing has changed through time. There were engravings of a crusador cross & a dragon. And around the winter solstice, the setting sun shines on the entrance passage to the back wall. The sun sets behind the mountain just aligned to the entrance. Again, nobody knows what the tomb really is for & the tour guides are open for your personal theories. There's a live feed webcam for you to watch the sun creep into the tomb when winter comes. Note that the two photos are within an hour - blue skies then comes the gray & rain!

Going back to the mainland, all we had was rain. Passing by the Castle of Mey, was the summer house of the Queen Mother Elizabeth. Beautiful stone building, it's like a sand castle! We passed by the most northern part of the British mainland, the Dunnet Head to end our Scotland trip. Not without a wonderful fresh haddock fish & chips on our last night in Thurso. Scotland is wonderful with its breathtaking landscapes & having 2 or 3 seasons in a day, there'll always be a rainbow. I have never seen so many of it in one day.

Just the way I wanted my 40th & a wonderful celebration of our 12th year. A new place, first times & a wow from the wonders of the world.

Merci, mon mari! Tchin tchin!

Every year we spend our summers at home. Away from the concentrated two month holiday action (read crowded) happening everywhere. We have the privilege to start our holidays very late in August until September. When rates are lower, when places are less crammed & when the weather is just a little less warm. While I'm still waiting for our holidays to start, and my husband to come back from an emergency call for work somewhere in Africa, our summer was far from boring.

Old friends visited all the way from Amsterdam, Rome & Ticino. Revisiting places with an eye of a tourist is likewise a rediscovery of everyday, ordinary landscape and people. Since it's the first time I had our car broken into, literally with a shattered window that we had to drive 200km with, I was surprised on how people are sincerely concerned with the incident. Or how one of them marvels at the beauty of the beach of Cannes with the boulevard & tall buildings as backdrop. Or when one happily appreciates the singing of the cicadas. Which I learned is not typical everywhere like in Ticino. However, the most essential thing they made me see is how friendly the French are. That's because, my dear friends, everything changes once you speak French. And words sound sweeter in French.

"You're still the same!" or "You haven't changed a bit!" The famous welcome greeting of long time friends who haven't seen each other for a significant amount of time. This can go beyond mere pleasantry and it makes you wonder if it's a good thing. We had an amazing Facetime session with a friend whom we haven't seen nor had any contact with after 23 years. I was even hesitant at first & when I told her about it, she just said, "Hello, this is still me!" But there are friends who literally didn't change that you don't have that kind of energy to relive the happier days with them. I guess the best part of seeing old friends that go way back 20+ years, and yes, that made me feel old, is that estranged familiarity. That after a bottle of wine, or after eating comfort food, it brings out our essence. We all change. We just need a little poke here & there and the you, the person we all know, is still surely there. Maybe after the kids are in bed.

Our best visitor yet is this baby hedgehog who wandered in our garden one night. Vidar didn't even bother. But I think he already tried.

It was a cactus. The first plant I bought when we moved to our new apartment in Carry le Rouet. It died after a few months probably of too much water, lack of sun or a broken heart. Even then, I still get an occasional plant to bring a little nature in the house & actually being forced to take care of one when friends give them as gifts. Afterall, I grew up with a mother where flowers bloom on the path she walks on. So I thought plants just grow like that. Until my cactus died & realized despite of growing up with 20 different orchids & plants, it doesn't make you a green thumb.

Every plant I brought in the house has wilted & died. This never made me get fake flowers & plants because there is really something about growing plants that soothes me. And I'm not just quoting that from any book. I can't live without any plants inside our house so, I started with tropical plants. They stuck with me & gave me hope. I still have my 7 year old Scindapsus, one of the first plants that survived me.

Ever since we moved house, I got to kill tens of plants in our garden. I experimented with varieties & with seasons. Afterall, there's fun in plowing & digging in the dirt. Am I so happy to move into a garden that is pretty much manicured, although some of them are misplaced. Some of them are so old & established that I might be the end of them but so far, they seem to like me. There are four varieties of roses with different colors. There are two old grapevines. A relatively young apricot tree who gave us seven fruits last year & five this year. Two just rotted on the tree, one disappeared and we saved two. A very old lavander plant and every year, three tulips just appear on our plant box.

My star plant is my Calamondin or Calamansi. I think I already tried five pots & this year, I finally found the champion. Not by luck but by research. Like using the good soil, using garden marbles for a correct drainage (they hate wet feet), and actually speaking to it. I kept it inside the house since I bought it late last year & my mother told me that once I put it out in the sun, it will start blooming. And it surely did, just a few weeks after. It has new sprouts of growth, the first time since it arrived. I've been dreaming to have a nice glass of Calamansi juice.

Gardening, like in life, can teach virtues, as simple as it may seem.

I am fighting against slimey slugs & snails who has been eating my strawberries, a little of my parsley leaves, and the flowers of my Cymbidium, who after six years it was given to me by my aunts, finally bloomed for the first time. Those tiny green worms who are residing in some of my tomatoes, and Vidar who sleeps on my ground cover plants. The joys of gardening. A little more training & I'm moving to seed planting.

It has always been a different skyblue here. The moment you get out, the intense heat embraces your face. Street children peeking through your car window. A splash to clean your windshield for a few coins. You're thinking how traffic has gotten better & agreeing that the streets are cleaner. You see the familiar uniforms that adorn the streets. More high-rise buildings & colorful billboards. The eternally crazy jeepneys. It's so vibrant, so alive. I'm home.

If an odor can be described as time freezing, our house has this exact smell. Seems so unfamiliar at first but when you start placing everything in the house that has been unmoved since you first left, the scent becomes your childhood memories. The home cooked food pig out, the story telling, the noise. Amidst all that, the recognition that when our house has remained absolutely the same, my nieces & nephews have grown. My mother wonderfully adding more years, probably something a daughter would have never imagined - that our parents can actually get old. I'm getting older. I have been called ma'am countless times.

Walking around where my husband lived for almost two years, he wondered where all the Filipinos have gone. "What do you mean?" I asked confused while I looked around me & saw nothing but Filipinos dining & shopping in all of Greenbelt's 1 to 5. "That part there," and he pointed at Greenbelt 4, "It's like a museum." So we marched & marched where locals can be found. Reaching Greenbelt 1, he excitedly said, "Now, this is the Philippines!" We had Razon's yummy Halo halo here & continued to be amazed with Manila's ever growing super malls.

As I finished packing for our week trip to Sipalay, I phoned my sister-in-law & asked her about my handcarry for the plane. She didn't reply & I asked her if she's at home so I can call her landline. "And you, where are you?" she asked laughing. I said I was at home & she shouted, "Sol, today's your flight to Sipalay!" I darted to the room to tell my husband that we missed the morning flight. Then darting to my mom's room & told her the same thing. Darting all around the house for new plane tickets & a lost day. I cancelled my hour & half massage that night.

Everytime I go back to the Philippines, I have this plan of doing the things I never got to do the last time I went. You'd think that after the numerous back & forths, you'd be an expert planner. Of course it never happens & it just keeps adding up. And it's a good thing. Coming home always has surprises. I just hope I still have the time to tick off the undone things on my list with the people who matter the most. While people complain about being in the Philippines as I groan as much for being in France, I had the wonderful pleasure of actually having two entirely different homes. It is amazing how going back to where you come from actually makes you more grounded on wherever you choose to be now.


If they just looked it up a little more... a shop inside Terminal 3 Airport

It was just a week ago when I was bragging about our wonderful spring weather in January. Loving my daisy blooms then the gray clouds came, never left for five whole days & voila, our little barrio on a carpet of immaculate white snow. It started with sleet then finally it turned into snow pouring entirely the whole day yesterday & all through the night. It were the biggest, most wonderful snowflakes I have ever seen. This magnificent downpour of snow cost us our power supply the whole night enough for our thick walls to withstand the freezing temperatures.

This landscape is not an ordinary sight here in the south of France that the panic & chaos on the road is obliged. But even in the midst of non-stop snow, I still went to my appointment with the dentist. I have been trying to see her since we moved here & it would be a good opportunity to have her check my teeth before I get my dental crown in Manila. I didn't really intend to tell her about this plan but it seemed to me she was ready for the x-rays & for a temporary crown. I already know the exorbitant cost of dental care in France & it is normal protocol for them to present you your choices & especially the cost, which didn't look like her protocol at all. With that, I blurted my plan & the dentist's face changed dramatically.

It's obvious that I shouldn't have but a dental crown here costs 610€ each, and I don't urgently need just one but three. In total, my bill would be 2,640€, with only 480€ reimbursement from the Social Security (which totals to 2,100€). I continued telling her that the prices are really steep & that a lot of French are resorting to seeing university students or even traveling to Spain or Italy for their dental work. To which she disagreed saying that if these teeth needed care, she wouldn't even accept the patient. She then added that this price is not even expensive if you think about it.

At first I felt so ashamed for not having tact & ethics but after replaying it in my head, maybe I really wanted her to know how outrageous this price is for a crown (300€ for a crown is still painful but at least more affordable). I even asked her if I could still come back to see her for the rest of my dental work even if I decide not to do the crowns with her. Although the air was so damp with awkwardness, she still managed to say yes & making sure to let me know that she is not happy. I guess I need a new dentist (again) & in the end, I thought her approach of not even proposing her dental fees before anything else & not accepting patients with teeth she didn't do, seems like business to me. I'll take my chances on paying double if necessary. How could fake teeth cost so much?

Like I said, we're going to pay for our wonderful winter weather but I don't mind twice or thrice a year of snow, especially when you wake up with a view like that. Snow is still magic.

With January almost over, we’re having such a wonderful winter. It's so wonderful that even my plants are confused. My daisies are in full bloom & my strawberries are pushing new baby leaves. We use the sunlight that beams in the house so we rarely have the heaters on during the day. Not that I'm complaining but it is a bit scary to have spring weather during winter. Like spoiled brats with a tab to pay later.

So, New Year. As if it was just yesterday I talked about the year that passed. It's either I have really nothing to blog about anymore or time is just so speed that I keep on forgetting to blog about things that seem to matter.

The very first thing I did on the second day of the year was to get an empty gas bottle for our stove. We always empty it on a sunday. While paying for the said bottle in a gas station, I noticed a man who just couldn't resist staring at me from afar while he puts gas on his car. I would have loved being viewed at if it was a yummy jeune homme. But it happened to be an old guy with a bobbing pony tail & cowboy boots. He even stopped & stared one last time just in front of me before he drove away. And we say that we pinoys stare a lot when we see white skin or blonde hair. They do stare a lot too. And they're likewise not even the slightest embarassed to do so.

I believe this is the year I heard people talk about "New Year's Resolution" the least. Never really made one. Any other day is as good to begin anew. What I wanted to do is to try something new for 30 days (thank you Chesca for sharing this). It is like a 30 day challenge to do something you've always wanted by starting with small, attainable projects. It is said 30 days is about the right amount to form or subtract a habit. I loved the idea that I came up with a list of new things I wanted to try, or habits I wanted to form & take out of my life. So, I thought of starting my 30 day challenge with procrastinating less by starting with the littlest everyday things. But yes, I still do have to start the challenge.

Every year that ends & begins, I become more & more grateful for so many blessings, even with a difficult & trying past year. The more we hope for good health. To worry less & laugh more. To complain a lot less & appreciate much more. To care less & live more. I have not been productive for such a long time - literally & biologically - I'll start with doing a lot less of those & more of the rest. So much to look forward to but not looking too far because if there's one thing that keeps biting me in the ass is change. Making each day count with the things that really matter the most. And sometimes this is how we see the world differently.

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