Weekend

French Toast Fix

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Around two years ago (maybe more, but I don’t specifically remember), Alfred and I took to eating regularly at Petruss. In fact I’ve dug up two posts from the past where I mentioned the cafe (haha!), they are here and here. Petruss was a small cafe located right across our office building and we loved having brunch there after work. One of the lighter meals we’d order would be french toast, but then we’d go too for their yummy mango crepes. Hmmm I can almost smell the yummy rice meals we would order too, what were they again babe?

Another food joint we’d frequent at the time would be the Pancake House along E. Rodriguez, right beside St. Luke’s Medical Center. This one’s just walking distance from the house. Of course my favorite to order are their chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter, but we also love their potato salad and their french toast as well. Ooh their club house sandwich isn’t so bad, and the boyfriend would order all sorts of other heavier meals – most are yummy too.

(Now you get the picture why we don’t have a lot of savings? Haha. We eat too much, and not at (cheap) fast foods all the time!)

Anyway, Petruss has moved out and Ministop (a convenience store) now occupies that space (so sad), and we don’t go to the Pancake House anymore (I can’t even remember when the last time was?)

On Friday night I started fasting so I could finally get the blood work done that the doctor ordered. Last meal was at 930 in the evening. I got a very good night’s sleep (surprisingly because I had fully intended to stay up all night), and got up before 8am. I was in the hospital before 830 on Saturday morning. I thought, like all the blood work I had done in the past, that it would only take a few minutes. Boy was I wrong. I needed to wait a full two hours because of a specific test (the OGTT which I am not in the mood to discuss).

The unfortunate thing about it, is that I could neither eat nor walk around during the intervals of the blood drawing (I had to be pricked thrice). At the end of the first hour, I was already dreaming up french toasts.  Since I was already at the St. Luke’s, I decided to go for a quick brunch (with Vanilla Milkshake, another indulgence – at least it wasn’t extra thick chocolate) at Pancake House en route to the nearest drug store where I picked up my prescriptions (from the neurologist whom I visited on Friday morning).

Mind you, I intended to go for a long walk and take some photos at the same time. But the darn blood work took up more than two hours of my time and it was nearly noon when I finished. It was too hot to take a leisurely walk! I did have to do some legwork to the drugstore, and then heading home. I didn’t get to visit the camera shop though, maybe I’d just pick up UV filters after work sometime this week.

I did get to take some photos of the Pancake House window (how pathetic am I?), while I experimented with apertures. Check these out – variations of a theme, hehe:

pancake house window

S 1/2500 | A f/1.8 | ISO 200 | Focal length 50mm

S 1/2500 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

S 1/2500 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

S 1/1600 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

S 1/1600 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

S 1/3200 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

S 1/3200 | A f/2.2 | ISO 400

Did you notice the differences between the shots? Too bad if you don’t, but that’s just me playing 🙂

Apart from the food, it is usually the feel of the place or the ambiance that keeps us coming back. I don’t need candlelight, nor candle sconces on the wall (though those would be a really nice touch) but comfortable seating and a bright and open area is something I appreciate in a restaurant. Having big open windows is also a very big plus for me. Of course if the view was something better than E.Rodriguez, that would be wonderful!

Anyway, have you been to your old favorites lately?

Walk home, Vera

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Finally, I have done it.

Walk home from work, that is. 🙂

Lord knows how many times I had thought of stopping and hailing a cab to take me the rest of the way home, but I had to push myself to plod on. That it would be so worth it, in time. It must have taken 3000 steps or so. It doesn’t sound much, I know. But that is a good way to start me off on having any physical activity incorporated into my day.

Why’d I do it?

Because on Saturday morning, Alfred and I walked from ABS-CBN to Morato. That isn’t too far, but we both broke a sweat. For overweight people like us whose physical activity consists only of walking to the cab, from the cab, in and out and up and down the house, that was already a lot of walking. We hadn’t had breakfast when we did that, so we were quite hungry too. We passed by several breakfast places and considered stopping right there but we didn’t. We agreed that we would walk all the way to Kopi Roti, break fast there, then walk the remaining distance home (Kopi Roti was probably half or a third of the way through).

So I had coffee, two slices of french toast and shared a Kopi Bun with the boyfriend, while he ordered hot choco and toast. I’d already consider that light breakfast. It was there that we decided to see a movie, but not after walking a bit more. We left the cafe at around 9AM and walked around the Scout area. I snapped a few photos too, and I even tripped (ouch!). We hailed a cab upon reaching Scout Reyes and went on our way to Greenhills. Yucky right? We didn’t even go back home to change out of our sweaty clothes? To be quite frank, we didn’t sweat all that much, we started very early so there was hardly any sun, and there was a cool wind blowing too. We sweated, but we didn’t stink. Haha.

Besides, to go home would just break the momentum 🙂

Another good thing that came out from Saturday’s walk was that it gave us another way to bond with each other. You can never have too much bonding naman right? Now, if I can just convince the boyfriend on the benefits of doing this more regularly…

Here’s a photo from Google Earth of the route we took from ELJ to Kopi Roti:

eljroti

Checkout the few photos I snapped from Saturday, over at my new photo blog!

Anyhoo, today, I took a slightly different route today. I went through Scout Borromeo, Timog, and then Scout Tobias. I even passed by the intersection where I tripped on Saturday!

My legs weren’t sore when I finally arrived home. But they were too hot, I was wearing jeans see. I don’t think I’d be up to taking a huge bag of clothes to change into everyday. One step at a time.

If I keep up with this, I can lose weight without spending any additional money on weight loss products. I also wouldn’t need to be on the never ending search for diet pills that work. In fact, I can save at least 55 pesos for the fare I would have paid a cabbie to take me home!

Cinnies 2

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Finally, here are the photos of my second (and successful) attempt at making cinnamon rolls! I made these last night, and there are only about three or four pieces left. These really were perfect. The bread was soft and tasty too.

The first step was to warm the milk, sugar and vegetable oil mixture. Last week, I think I overdid this part and there was some curdling going on so I made sure I watched it closely and transferred it to a bowl to cool:

cinnies1

Alfred was with me at that point, but he was already growing impatient and wouldn’t agree to wait 45mins to an hour for the mixture to cool down. Next step is to mix in the yeast, and then to add in flour after a minute or so. This is how the dough looked after leaving the dough to rise for about an hour:

cinnies2

Doesn’t look much does it? That’s because I only made half the original recipe .

Flash back to my attempt last week. Here’s how the dough looked after mixing, and after an hour:

cinnas1 cinnas3

At that point I’d already punched it down and mixed it a bit. But take a closer look and you’ll know that the dough overflowed!

cinnas2

Next was a bit of kneading and then rolling out the dough. This is a challenge because we don’t have a decent countertop for this purpose. This turned out to be my work area:

cinnies3

I used a cookie sheet. This turned out okay but I couldn’t roll the dough thin enough because the rolling pin handles would hit the sides of the pan. Which explains why my first try is quite thick:

cinnies4

I knew at this point that it was a success. First time I tried this, it didn’t look this way. It was too soggy then!

cinnies5

Here they are before going into the oven, having had about 30-45 minutes time to rise. There were two more trays after this batch.

cinnies6

Here they are, straight from the oven. I had already glazed these with the coffee flavored frosting leftover from last week’s attempt. I didn’t drown them with it though.  Let’s take a closer look shall we?

cinnies7

cinnies8

If you can’t imagine how this tastes, imagine how heavenly the smell was in our kitchen. 🙂 I’d make these everyday if I could!

Omakase lunch

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When I decided to get the Elba, I told myself I was not going to spend on anything else for photography. That meant not signing up for photography workshops, and not getting additional gear. If I wanted to get anything camera/photography related, I’d have to earn from either baking or blogging to get the money for it.

Well yesterday, I went against that decision.

Jo mentioned earlier this week how she wanted to checkout a camera shop that is said to have Hidalgo prices – without having to actually go to Quiapo. I looked up their Multiply site and went gaga at so many things. So we set a date for Saturday afternoon. I asked my friend Edsel to be there too – we need to be sure we’re buying the right stuff and not just be swayed by the sales people right?

So off to the camera shop we went, and I ended up getting a UV CPL filter/polarizer, and a +10 macro filter. Jo ended up not getting a filter, but she did go home with a tripod.

There were other things I would have wanted to take home but I had to stop somewhere.

The original plan was to go home in the morning after my shift, and meet with everyone at Il Terrazo at Morato extension where the FotoHub was located.  But I didn’t finish my work as early as intended, so I ended up staying there til 12. Alfred came by, and we went to lunch at Omakase (also at Il Terrazo) and waited there for both Jo and Edsel (who arrived separately of course).


Of course we ordered my favorite salmon sashimi, but we also ordered a couple of other things:

omakase

The American Dream

omakase 2

Rising Sun

omakase-jap potato salad

Japanese Potato Salad

The only one I didn’t really like was the Japanese Potato Salad. It tasted more like french fries/potato wedges than salad. 🙁 It was a full meal though, we were stuffed even though these don’t look much.

I feel bad though that I couldn’t ask Jo to spend the afternoon shooting around with our D60’s.  I was just so sleepy already! 🙁

Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Nature Center – Part 2

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(Read the first part of this series on our Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife experience here)

Apart from being a park where families can go to relax, unwind, have a picnic and enjoy nature in the middle of a bustling city, the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife is also a Nature Center.  What this means is that rescued animals are nursed here until they can be set free again.  For those who can no longer be brought back to their natural habitat, they stay in the center and those are the animals that people like us can visit.

I have memories of entering an aviary as a young girl.  A big one where you can see the birds flying around you.  I still can’t be quite sure if this is a memory from a trip to the Wildlife or to Nayong Pilipino ( is there an aviary there?).  I don’t know how many species of birds can be found at the Wildlife, I can’t even name the birds that we were able to see.  The cages are not properly labeled you see.  

I was quite frustrated though that the cages completely ruin your chances of a good shot.  The animals are in cages, then there are railings that keep you more than an arm’s length away from the cage itself.  For a frustrated photographer like me, there’s just too many challenges to think of. Haha 🙂 Nevertheless, blogging about our day at the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife will not be complete without showing photos of the animals we were there to see.

beautiful-birds-wildlife

Sheesh please do not ask me what these birds are called. I’d just tell you that they look like African lovebirds to me. You don’t agree? Well here they are kissing!

kissing-at-cage-27-wildlife

There you go, kissing scandal at Cage 27.  See, no labels at all to tell you what you’re looking at!  So even if I wanted to educate Esban on what birds these are, I couldn’t!

According to the boyfriend (who wanted to become a veterinarian, if not for his fear of blood), the birds on this next set are sea hawks.  The last one I’m sure is a hornbill. Or something. 🙂

[svgallery name=”sea hawk”]

peacock-framed-wildlife

Now this majestic peacock was kind enough to hold his pose for me.  But what caught our attention more than his magnificent stance and the beauty of his feathers, was the fact that he shares his cage with turtles.  Ya don’t believe me? Well see for yourself! We even photographed one turtle struggling to get out of his water bath 🙂

peacock-shares-the-cage-with-turtles-wildlife

[svgallery name=”turtles”]

Didja see it? 😉

Stay tuned for Part 3 🙂

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