My father, who makes a living building – among other more utilitarian things – beautifully crafted decks and garden structures, has been recruited (by yours truly) to build my Xmas present. My hen house! I’m not sure what thrills me more – finally being able to purchase my chicken babies or having something that my father designed and hammered and sweated over. I’m kinda hoping he puts a big red bow on it! Here is the first pic that he sent me.

It will be able to slide out for cleaning and each divider lifts out! I squealed when I saw this!

Por que todos los mortales tenemos que aguantar toda esta fiebre de twilight? a mi nunca me preguntaron si queria ver todos los dias las caras de hippies del Roberto Pattinson y de la Kristen Stweart, ok, esta cosa es todo un fenomeno para las millones de adolescentes obesas pero hay personas que todavia utilizamos el cerebro y que ya estamos hasta el tope de estos vampiros simples, hasta Taylor Lautner cansa con su nariz rara y sus poses “sexys”… ojala que un caza vampiro aparezca y elimine a toda esta bola de engendros, comenzado con la creadora de tan maravillosa “historia” Stephanie “la gorda” Meyer

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Asi es fanaticas de twilight Taylor Lautner, el ahora deseo de la mayoria de adolescentes obesas y con acne engalana la portada de la revista Rolling Stone en su edicion de estados unidos, lastima para sus seguidoras que no mostro por lo unico que es famoso, su abdomen, solo en una de todas las pics lo enseña, esto para que lo vean como un actor “serio”, aja, al rato que nadie lo contrate se volvera a quitar la camisa mas rapido que en lo que dicen: “quidditch”

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It has been some time since I posted something here, so apologies to my friends who’ve been expecting something from me for a while. Anyway, the last time I wrote something, I gave the lunch menu for my 25th birthday.  It looked daunting when I first planned it, but I was ecstatic to actually have pulled it off.

My concept was a Filipino tasting menu since I always had difficulty explaining Philippine cuisine to my friends. The best definition I could give them was “Think Southeast Asian, but not too spicy and with Chinese and Spanish influences.” That only puzzles them further.  (I knew I should have brought Ma’s copy of the Kulinarya cookbook with me.)

I spent a week planning my menu and got everything I needed from the Tiger and Dragon Food Store which had a really impressive collection of Asian ingredients.  Every Filipino ingredient I could think of was there.  Note that in the latter dishes I will mention, everything was prepared from scratch. Yes, they even had fresh pandan leaves, powdered ube root, and coconut milk!

I did the meal twice: the first time for my PhD student friends, and the second time for my research group.  So that it would be easy for me, I made sure there were no more than seven guests at a time.  Also I thought it would be more practical (ie. cheaper) and impressive to just serve the food in portions and course by course.

The first time I did it, one of my guests came a few minutes early and watched me in the kitchen.  I was preparing the lumpia (Philippine spring rolls) when she arrived and she was excited to learn how to prepare the peanut sauce served with it. What really made me happy was how she thought that I looked professional and asked if I studied cooking somewhere. I told her I never took formal lessons, but I’ve helped out my mom in the kitchen since I was a little kid and I enjoyed reading cookbooks, watching cooking shows & competitions, and eating in all kinds of restaurants.

She then complimented my chopping skills, which I was thankful for again. You see, as a birthday present to myself, I had bought a professional Wüsthof chef’s knife before I even secured all the ingredients just so I would have a more fun prep period.

Since I served the meal course by course I was able to explain to them what each dish was.  They listened intently as I explained when these dishes were usually prepared and what their influences were.

This was the menu:

I had to serve this in small bites since I just wanted an appetizer.  Sisig is usually prepared with boiled and grilled pork (pig face to be exact), but I used tofu for easy prep and a healtier alternative.  As an amuse, it was good that the sisig packed a punch with the salt and spices.  Since I couldn’t find quail eggs the day before, I decided to just drizzle heated egg yolk and cook the egg white with the sisig.  The “pork rind” was a cheap German snack which looked like chicharon, but tasted like a Philippine snack called Fritos Ring. Really nice alternative since real pork rind was expensive and sold only in large bags.

I thought of pairing the sisig with SMB (San Miguel Beer) for them to taste the most famous beer in the Philippines.  However, since SMB was expensive (about 3x as expensive as German beers), I decided to do shots of it. Most of them really liked the lightness and fruity tones of SMB. One of them who didn’t drink beer a lot really liked it as well.  An Indian friend commented that I should just cook this dish and we should have a beer party with it. Great suggestion. I mean the Germans love grilled food, pork, onions, vinegar, and beer. Why wouldn’t they love sisig, right?

Salad
Lumpiang sariwa
Philippine fresh vegetable roll with egg net
served with peanut sauce
Origin/Influence: Chinese, Southeast Asian

Salad with the amuse

For the lumpia, I originally wanted to use ubod / hearts of palm, but the only available ones were canned and really expensive. I decided to just use carrots, togue/mungbean sprouts, and preserved bamboo shoots. It turned out to be really tasty, especially with the sweet-salty peanut garlic sauce. Since I wanted it to look pretty as well, I made the lumpia wrapper into a net instead of a plain crepe. Got great reviews on the taste and presentation of this one. Some of them couldn’t stop eating the sauce!

Entrée
Pansit Canton at Kropek
Philippine style lo mein noodles and shrimp crackers
Origin/Influence: Chinese

Since it’s tradition to eat pansit on one’s birthday (for long life), I decided to have this as the prelude to the main course.  I used dried pancit canton, various fresh veggies, and an oyster-based sauce for this. This was the only dish I cooked from scratch on the actual party day. Got the kropek from my favorite Chinese restaurant in Bismarckplatz.

Main course
Dalawang luto sa karne: Adobo at Kaldereta
Duo of Philippine meat dishes:
Chicken & Pork Adobo* and
Lamb & Pork Caldereta
Origin/Influence: Adobo-Native, Caldereta-Spanish
(Served with steamed jasmine rice)
*also as vegetarian option with tofu and mushrooms

The adobo was the star of the lunch. Everyone kept raving about it. I prepared it the night before and let the meat absorb the oil and sauce. Then, just before serving it, I seared the skin to almost crisp and drizzled the sauce on it on the serving platter.  The kaldereta was stewed for three hours the day before as well. It cooked for so long that the lamb cubes just melted in one’s mouth.  The meat dishes went well with the red wine that my roommate bought for the occasion. For the adobo, I had to try it out as a vegitarian option as well since one of my labmates was vegitarian.

Dessert
Samu’t saring minatamis:
Ube puto, turon, buko-pandan
Sampler platter of sweets:
Purple yam rice cake with coconut toffee and coco-butterscotch sauce
Mini-banana eggrolls
Coconut-pandan sherbet
Origin/Influence: Puto-Native, Coconut desserts-Native and Malay, Eggroll-Chinese

For dessert, I had so many things in mind I ended up with a tasting platter. For the frozen dessert, I originally planned to make a buko-pandan gelatin salad. Unfortunately, my pandan jello did not set so I just mashed it together with the cream and made some kind of sherbet that still had the refreshing taste of pandan.  They really liked the taste of pandan and kept on asking about it. The rice cake / puto turned out well and I was surprised since it was the first time I made it.

In the end everyone enjoyed the lunch and thanked me for the meal. They all agreed they had a blast on the “culinary adventure”.  My boss even commented that I should already extend my Ph.D. to seven years, haha.  My friends now call me “Chef.”  Not really, but why not?  Well, if things don’t go well with my Ph.D. at least I know I have a fallback!  A Filipino restaurant in Europe would really be something interesting, wouldn’t it?  I’m sure the folk here in Heidelberg would welcome it.

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I’ve done my research, I’ve Googled the breeds, I’ve recruited my skilled father to build me a beautiful coop for Xmas, I’ve read far too many chicken books for one who doesn’t actually own a chicken yet. Sigh. Why can’t I find a chicken?

Living in Florida, as I am apt to do most days since I live here and all, I don’t take things like “winter” and “cold” and “snow” into consideration when planning my projects. Apparently most hatcheries do not have chicks available during the winter! How can this be?? Nearly every site I visit won’t ship chicks until February or March! That is just too far away for an impatient person such as myself!

There are very few hatcheries that ship less than 25 chicks. I only want three!

Marrying both shipping dates and minimum order is turning out to be a HUGE basket to fill.

I actually made a spreadsheet on my Bento App (what came first, the iPhone or the Bento App? Probably the phone, but damn if I don’t love my Bento!) organizing the pros and cons of the hatcheries that appeared in the first three search pages of Google. After a long afternoon of micro-organizational-happy-madness, only one hatchery remained standing, offering both winter ship dates as well as small orders – Ideal Poultry.

The only downside is that I had my heart set on three breeds (one of each, please?): Ameraucanas, Barnevelder and Faverolles. Ideal Poultry only has Ameraucanas available over the winter. So, I can wait until after the New Year and order my special breeds, or I can be anxious and impatient and order three Ameracaunas.

Patience is just not my virtue. Politeness, maybe. Sexiness, definitely! But not patience.

In the meantime, meet Tug, our farm cat. We actually have EIGHT cats! Three of them spend a lot of their time outside, by their own choosing. We call Tug our farm cat because once she got a whiff of outdoor air she never looked back. She looks like she would be content as a purring kitten to perch atop a henhouse, doesn’t she?

As it stands this day, I am 29 years old. I have been 29 for just under a month and am already feeling the heavy burden of that looming 30. But I digress…

When I was a child, let’s say 11 years old or so, I heard a phrase that stuck with me for years – decades, even: “Mon Petite Chou”. A friend, whose name did not stand the decay of time, was called such by her mother. In French, it is a term of endearment spoken by a parent to a child that translates to “My Little Cabbage”. Through all my years, this has been lurking in my head and I have always remembered it as one of the sweetest, memorable and most endearing things I have ever heard.

I knew I wanted to start a blog that chronicled my creation of the life I envision. It had to be called something special and fantastic, of course. I brainstormed many lukewarm ideas with the following words: art, creative, garden, craft, something that ended in –ology would be cool, I thought.

And then, out of the depths of my mind, it surfaced. That phrase I heard long ago, “Mon Petit Chou”.  I looked up the phrase online, just to be sure I was accurate. I was! THE CREATIVE PETIT CHOU was born! As it would translate, I suppose, “The Creative Little Cabbage” encompasses everything I dream. Art. Family. Garden.

In our growing sunflower patch: Sidney Quinn, Mon Petit Chou.

Por si alguien no sabe o no se acuerda quien es este hottie no los culpo, ya que ultimamente no ha tenido ni una sola pelicula exitosa y esta a punto de caer de la lista C a la D lo que significa series de television XD, por eso el buen Ryan (tal vez lo recuerden en peliculas como “juegos sexuales” o “se lo que hicieron el verano pasado”) y como el ex de Reese Whiterspoon decido llamar un poco la atencion y mostrarle a todo el mundo que todavia esta muy hot!! looking good babe, por cierto DILF = Dads(s) I(‘d) like to fuck XD

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El actor del show del momento Glee, fue captado mientras muy mono el iba  a comprarse un cafe al starbucks para soportar el frio, minutos despues acudio a un evento llamado The Annual National Toque Campaign for Raising The Roof at Yonge-Dundas, en compañia del magnate de Virgin Richard Branson. El actor de 27 años hizo su donacion y le dieron el gorrito ese, alentando a todos sus fans a que apoyen esta campaña que ayuda a los jovenes adolescentes de Canada, yay por Cory!!

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Debido a que no pude actualizar tan seguido aqui les dejo las fotos de Taylor Lautner en Nueva York; Tay firmando autografos antes de entrar al show de Jay Leno, haciendo unas compritas en las tiendas mas fashion del lugar, y en el today show, fanaticas de Taylor Lobo Lautner disfruten!

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Para todas las fanaticas obesas de la porqueria Luna Nueva, les dejo estas fotos de los actores por los que ustedes babean y se mojan XD, Kellan Lutz, Robert Apestoso Patterson y el que los reina a todos Taylor Lautner, fanatic@s babeen sus teclados y disfruten!

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Esto nos demuestra que la desesperacion lleva a los “artistas” cuando su carrera esta en el hoyo a la busqueda de los reflectores y de la atencion, Enrique Iglesias tan X como lo ha sido en toda su carrera intento filmar su pelicula porno con una profesional y con David Lachapelle como director, el resultado un grito desesperado por decir “hey se acuerdan de mi, sigo vivo y lo que mas importa, estoy muy bueno joder”!… juzguen ustedes mismos

Oh really!?, en serio no se quien este a cargo de hacer los conteos en la revista People, porque año con año eligen a los candidatos menos pensados, por ejemplo Matt Damon ocupo el lugar de honor y este se lo dieron a Jhonny Deep… claro el tipo es un gran actor y muchas mujeres estan tras de el, pero no entiendo porque esa mania de buscar al mas sexy solo en estados unidos, digo en el resto del mundo no hay mas hombres que se lo merezcan, la cereza en el pastel es esa fotografia espantosa de la portada, fue lo mejor que pudieron hacer??!! EPIC FAIL!

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Aunque no muchos la conozcan la actriz Claire Danes tiene una carrera muy larga en hollywood, y si, casi todas sus peliculas han fracasado, razon por la cual no quiso pasar desapercibida en la premiere en Londres de su nueva pelicula “Me and Orson Wells”, por lo que decidio dejar al aire sus encantos… mas que encantos parecen un par de limones con chipotes, pero bueno al menos hizo que toda la atencion girara en torno a su falta de bobbies y sus pezones, ese que ven ahi es Gay Efron, coprotagonista de la Claire en dicha cinta… aburrido!!

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Ok, tal vez muchos de ustedes no sepan quien es el douche de las fotos ni mucho menos que responde al nombre de Levi Johnston, no los culpo, este jackass lo que hizo fue embarazar a una de las hijas de Sarah “Sexy” Palin, la mensa que buscaba un hueso en las elecciones pasadas de estados unidos. Pues bien, Levi tuvo la brillante idea de posar para la revista Play Girl, destinada segun a las mujeres aunque su publico sea homosexual, pues sintiendose todo un rockstar ya anda en cuanto evento lo invitan y hasta da autografos, este tipo de estupideces solo pasan en hollywood…

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Gayfron llego a Londres para promocionar su nueva pelicula “Me and Orson Wells” en donde intenta demostrar que sabe actuar, el problema es que nadie le cree, como sea los paparazzis lo captaron en el aeropuerto luciendo muy gay y fashion como de costumbre.

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Continuando con la promocion de la pelicula mas odiada “mas esperada” Taylor Lautner (aka Jacob Black) aparecio en el programa de Jay Leno hablando de nada interesante, solo casi al final Tay tay se quito su saco para ponerse a lanzar unos pases con el jugador Jerry Rice, y vaya que el lobito lo hace muy bien!!

La pregunta que miles de adolescentes obesas se hacen estuvo a punto de ser contestada, de no ser por una publicista, resulta que el dia de ayer en la premiere de Luna Nueva, Ryan Seacrest (conductor de radio “famoso” en los Angeles) tuvo una pequeña entrevista con Robert Pattinson y sin mas le dijo que aclarara los rumores, anda o no con la Kristen Bella Stewart, cuando de repente la publicista de Rob salta y cancela la entrevista, el “pobre” Rob nada mas sonrio y dijo “vayan a ver New Moon esta genial”… el que nada debe nada teme o no??!!

XD no puedo creer como a estas alturas Zac “no soy gay” Efron no admite que le gusta la salchicha y el arroz con popote!, solo hay que ver las caras que pone, aqui lo vemos muy happy en un juego de los lakers, a Gayfron le cayo el balon y el muy contento lo lanzo de vuelta, you go girl!

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Continuando con la promocion  para la porqueria mas esperada por cualquier adolescente y mujeres treitonas quedadas, se llevo a cabo la premiere en Los Angeles de New Moon, o Luna Nueva en español, contando con la presencia de algunas celebridades y la mayor parte del elenco de esta “saga”, sinceramente espero que sea de lo ultimo que haga un post… y que los 15 minutos de estas estrellitas incluida la escritora se terminen, ya!

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Ya les pase las fotos de las personalides del año (click aqui) segun la revista GQ, ahora los dejo con las portadas del mes de diciembre en donde aparecen los mencionados, Chris Pine como la revelacion y hottie del año, Tom Brady como la ama de casa que todos quieren y el elenco de the hangover como los comediantes del año.

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En la edicion del mes de diciembre de la revista GQ de estados unidos viene un especial con los mejores entretenedores del año, en musica, deportes, cine, television y politica, disfruten de este mega post, recuerden:

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El hottie del año: Chris Pine

El “trailblazer” del año Neil Patrick Harris

Cast: The Hangover

El hermano de todos: Paul Rudd

El ama de casa ideal: Tom Brady

El crossover de diseñador a director: Tom Ford

El actor nuevo: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

El Lider: Barack Obama

El villano (de pelicula): Christoph Waltz

Cast: Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper

Los vampiros de True Blood

Chris Pine

Y no precisamente por que este hot, lo digo por el mega fuego que le salio en el labio, ven, esto demuestra que tambien es humano aunque no lo parezca, para la otra habra que decirle que cuando haga un blow job (sexo oral) se cuide o por lo menos lo haga con alguien limpio, porque ahora le salio un fuego, para la otra sera herpes o algo peor… XD

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Para todas las seguidoras de este actor, deleiten su vista una vez mas, disfruten.

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