MyParty. Finds. A Home.

My family and I have been making Tagaytay our weekend getaway place. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been there in the past months that we’ve been here in the Philippines. You can just imagine what our auto insurance quotes would be like when the agent sees our odometer.

We love it there - the food, the climate, the views - Tagaytay is just spectacular!

Anyway, one of the meriendas we looooove to stop for is Abundant Place’s Palitaw Roll. I learned about this via my friend Emmie, who frequents tagaytay more than we do, haha!

Their recipes are made with all organic ingredients.

I didn’t even have to ask my daughter twice to pose. She loves their palitaw roll so she’s all willing to make the endorsement, haha!

Presenting…

Flattened sticky rice balls cooked in hot water until they float. Thus, palitaw.

Instead of the usual sugar and sesame seed toppings, they give you some organic chocolate to dip your palitaw in. Super yummy. Each serving is P40, but if you get the combo - palitaw roll and hot chocolate - its P70. The ambiance inside the restaurant is pretty calming too, especially if you need a good rest from a long drive. Abundant Place can be found in Silang, Cavite, along Aguinaldo Highway around 15 minutes from Tagaytay.

Education is one of the things that parents really have to save up for, if they want their children to have a shot at a successful future. Unfortunately, some of the best schools are also some of the most expensive. The good thing, though, is schools like Western Governors University (WGU) make it accessible and affordable for everyone to pursue a college degree without sacrificing quality or student experience. With their online mba, earning a master’s degree to help you beef up your business or move up in the corporate world is now achievable.

Also, their online university is fully accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) and the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) so every student knows that what they are getting for the tuition is a stamp of recognition for the school’s level of quality and reputation.

So don’t let financial limitations set you back. Get that degree now.

It is a tradition, or more like a superstition, to always have something round at hand when the new year comes around. This year, aside from our polka dotted attire, we also had round (and almost round) fruits served on the table.

Apples, oranges, pears, lanzones, strawberries, honeydew, melon, mangoes, watermelons, and even guavas, were happily put on display for good luck. I’m sure our bodies would be happy to consume all of these fruits, too - after having mightily feasted on oily, fatty, porky, yummy dishes. Perhaps theses fruits would act like a pvc shrink tube to insulate the cholesterol from our bodily wires, hehe!

How was your media noche?

Happy New Year!

New year, new posts. But first, let me share with you what exploded in front of our home.

This fearless cuteness!

At first, I thought that the fireworks would scare her to bits but it turned out that she’s a brave as she can be! She really enjoyed the mini-fireworks show that the neighbors put together. It’s a good thing they don’t put asbestos on those things or else everyone in the neighborhood would need mesothelioma treatments, haha!

From my family to yours, a prosperous 2010!

I am a fan of Northwestern College, not just for their excellent sports program (of course!), but mainly for its pursuit of providing quality education these past many decades. Their programs are professionally-relevant and their services go well beyond what is expected.

For instance, they now offer online programs for people like me who want a Northwestern education but can’t be physically present in the campus. They offer three online associate’s degree (AAS) programs - Business Administration, Criminal Justice, Health Information Technology - all of which are attuned to the needs of the times.

As for me, I am really interested in pursuing a career in criminal justice, particularly in government or the not-for-profit sector and I know that criminal justice degrees from reputable schools such as Northwestern would hold the key to my success.

My girl turned six last week. I got this cake for her on the 26th, which is her exact birthday. After this, I got her two more cakes - one for her small celebration in school and another for her big party celebration. So all in all, we had three cakes stuck in the refrigerator, hehe! The next logical question is: where is the fat burner? Haha!

So anyway, since we did have a lot of cakes this past weekend, we decided to just share the cakes with our neighbors and friends. This one in the picture is the only cake we kept at home, mainly because it’s the one we lit on her actual birthday and also because it’s the yummiest, hehe!

Happy birthday, Ninna! May your days be not as dark as a black forest but instead as sweet and fluffy and as this cake - with cherries on top, too. Love you!

Its my first time to join Foodtrip Friday. On a Wednesday, haha! Oh well, I’m sure Willa won’t mind. After all, readers can either look at this in two ways - I’m early or late.

For me, food tripping is usually equated with eating out. Firstly, because I’m not much of a cook so nobody can ever trip on my food, hehe! Secondly, when I get the craving to eat something in particular, it doesn’t matter where or how long it will take me, I will take a trip to find it. And lastly, where’s the fun in eating what’s familiar? Discovery, that’s the key. Plus a powerful typhoid vaccine shot, hehe.

So what’s the first food on the list as soon as we landed in Manila?

Chickenjoy!

Actually, this picture was taken by my daughter. She knows that if I eat something that I liked, I would take a picture of it and post it on my blog. One bite and my daughter has become a chickenjoy fan. She loves it so much that even if a piece of chicken falls on the floor tiles, she’ll readily fish it out, dust it, and eat it, haha! On this particular occasion, she rummaged in my bag for my camera and deftly took a shot of her chicken.

And so, here is my Ninna food tripping.

Being in the Philippines, there’s no way anybody can make me whip up a homemade four-hour sans rival, especially since I can get yummy, ready-to-eat ones from my favorite coffee shop. Like this one, for example. Its a contemporary twist to the old cashew flavor - pistachio. Although this particular nut is said to be great vitamins for hair and all that, and although it does taste good (and looks way better than my concoction), I don’t know - I still prefer the original flavor. I grew up with cashews on my sans rival, so I guess I would always love it that way.

Somebody is celebrating her birthday soon! Somebody is going to have a couple of fab parties, lots of gifts, and yummy stuff to eat like cakes, pastas, chicken, and ice cream. And a particular someone is going to be stuck with lots of leftovers. Uh-oh. I’d better prepare my refrigerator now and start making some space, as well as change the filter (filter #4396841, by the way) because if the cakes for the party would taste like the one above (compliments of Hyatt Hotel for my mom’s birthday last month), I don’t want any spoilage happening!

Anyway…

Somebody is celebrating her birthday soon!

We celebrated my mom’s birthday at Gumbo at Robinson’s Place in Manila. No wrinkle creams needed for this young lady! Happy birthday mom!

A must on our order list was the Seafood Jambalaya, mostly because the theme of the restaurant was “A Taste of New Orleans”, and a jambalaya is a signature dish from the area. I suppose, it would have been better had they named this dish “paella” instead of jambalaya, because it didn’t really look very jambala-ey, hehe! To be fair, and because we were in a celebratory mood, the jambalaya was pretty tasty and it was a good-sized portion perfect for sharing. Anyway, the ambiance was pretty festive (especially when they did that happy birthday jig for my mom), which was also quite perfect to make our small birthday dinner a memorable one.