MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH KAKANIN

I love native kakanin!! My chilhood memories are filled with them because my grandmother on my mother's side made them for a living. Biko, puto, kuchinta, sapin-sapin, palitaw, bibingka, suman and a lot of other yummy stuff!!! I remember her making two big bilao's everytime, one for selling, and the other one to divide among her many apo's. My Nanay told stories about them walking long distances (from the now Valenzuela to Sta. Maria, Bulacan) just to sell my grandmother's kakanin especially during fiestas.

Mateo Family, no one in the family knew of this photo's
existence until a few years ago when my Tito Totoy
visited a relative of ours, and this photo was given to him.

I bet you don't know that there are many tpes of suman... among them are: antala (malagkit with coconut milk best eaten with minatamis), maruecos (the purple ones made from pinipig with latik in the middle, one of my favorites!), kamoteng kahoy (looks similar to maruecos but uses cassava instead of pinipig), suman sa ibus (like the ones sold in Antipolo), suman sa lihiya (the ones wrapped in dark green banana leaves and served with grated coconut and sugar on top (another one of my favorites!!) and many others.

Another one of my favorites is the kalamay. But... I am not too particularly fond of the ones sold in Antipolo (sorry!). What I love is the kalamay sold during fiestas and Christmas in our place and coincidentally made by our lola's. They're very thin and laid flat on banana leaves, so chewy and a bit sweet topped with a bit of latik and comes with a small packet of budbud (pan-roasted grated coconut) that you sprinkle on top just before eating... arrggghhh!! I miss that sooo much!! All the Lola's who used to make them are now gone, and I guess they were not able to pass the recipe on to their children :(

MATEO FAMILY
FRONT ROW: Mommy Celing, Inang Regina, Tata Bestre, Nanay Lilay
BACK ROW: Kuya Isaac, Tita Dela, Tito Nato, Tita Ete and Tito Totoy

I also love love love puto bumbong!! That purple elongated kakanin brushed with butter or margarine, with grated coconut and sugar mixed with toasted sesame seeds on top... yum!!!! It's one of the things I missed so much last Christmas because for the life of me I cannot find puto bumbong anywhere here in Oregon :( . I remember my Nanay and I going to Meycauayan (we live in Valenzuela which is about 2 jeepney rides away) just to be able to buy some puto bumbong near the big church there. I was never into drinking tea but somehow I loved having it with my puto bumbong. My Nanay told me that in the old times they did not use food coloring for puto bumbong, rather they use a dark-colored sticky rice called pirurutong. 

I have here a recipe for Bibingkang Malagkit that reminds me so much of the bibingka that my lola used to make that's why I named this after her.  INANG REGINA'S BIBINGKANG MALAGKIT:

INGREDIENTS:

FOR THE BIKO:
2 cups malagkit (glutinous rice or sweet sticky rice)
2 1/2 cups kakang gata or thick coconut milk
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup brown sugar
3 pcs. pandan leaves (screwpine leaves)

FOR THE TOPPING:
1 1/2  cups thick coconut milk
1 cup brown sugar

SCHOOL LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES (BREADED PORK CHOPS - FEATURED VIDEO)

My kids went to the same school I went to when I was in high school, so they're in fact 2nd generation Louisians. My two eldest went to JOLCA for Junior Kinder, then transferred to SLCV. Having 3 kids in private school is no laughing matter, and with only my husband working in the family (I stopped working after giving birth to my 2nd child), it was really hard managing our finances. But my husband and I made a commitment to try and give our kids the best education we could afford so we enrolled them in a private school.

All my kids are gifted (in my opinion, but don't we all!!! LOL...) My eldest has always excelled in academics (he was the salutatorian when he graduated in 6th grade), he was at the top of his class when left for the USA last year, and has always participated and won in interschool Math and academic competitions. My 2nd may not be as academically gifted as my eldest (she's doing good in school too) but she is exceptionally good in arts. She loves to draw (most especially anime) and the drawing she submitted recently to her school's literary magazine made it to the front covers. The youngest, though not as brilliant as her Kuya either (she's an honor student too) is a good writer and a voracious reader. They were also into taekwondo when we were still in the Philippines. Lance is a 1st grade brown belt (which meant he's just 1 promotion away from being a black belter), Bea in 2nd grade brown belt, and Kaye is a 4th grade red belt, and they also competed and won in tkd tournaments back home.I (or my angel at home) usually bring lunch to my kids every school day. Why you ask? Because they never got used to eating cold food. There was a time when I let them bring their lunch in the morning and they would come home in the afternoon with their lunch boxes still full, complaining that the rice is cold. So I decided from then on to will bring their lunches to them every single day so they'll eat it (their school was 1 jeepney ride from our house, about 5 minutes away without traffic, 30 to 45 minutes with traffic.)

I take them to school every morning, riding the jeepey (they have a jeep service to take them back home in the afternoon), all 3 of them, with their big bags full of books (8 or 9 textbooks, notebooks, pencils, 

pens, etc,), their snack for recess, umbrellas (when it is raining) and other things that they needed to bring to school, and they had to be in school at 6:45 at the latest. After dropping them off to school, I rush to the talipapa (mini market) near our house to buy ingredients for lunch, then rush home afterwards to start cooking. I had to be in school by 10:30 am, their lunches ready. It was that way every school day, except on Fridays because they come home at 12 noon. I bring them piping hot rice, hot soup (they love sinigang) or other ulam, fruit and juice. And the breaded porkchops shown in the video is a favorite among our  kids.

One day after coming home from school, my eldest asked me "Mom, why can't we be just like the other kids in school?" I thought why, on earth is my son asking me this question? Am I doing something wrong? So I asked him what he meant by that, and he told me "why can't we be like other kids in school who eats rice and hotdog for lunch everyday? Hahaha!!! There I was, knocking my head off thinking about what to prepare for lunch everyday and all that my son wants is rice and hotdog!!! That made me remember this funny comic strip Pugad Baboy by PM Jr. On once scene, the son of one of the characters was complaining to his Dad:

son: "Tay, araw araw nalang hotdog ang baon ko sa lunch, pwede bang bukas iba naman? nagsasawa na ko sa hotdog eh."

Tatay: "sya sige bukas frankfurters naman"

son: "Yan!!!"

After that, I let them have hotdog and rice for lunch once in a while, just so they'd feel like "normal kids" hehehe...

Now they're here in the USA, my eldest is in 12th grade, the second in 10th grade and the youngest in 7th grade. My son buys his lunch at school (or he goes to Mc Donalds or some other place after school, yeah he's complaining again about school food), the girls bring their lunches with them in the morning, and that means... I am less stressed now than before yay!!!

And on that note i'm sharing with you my recipe for breaded pork chops. This is a favorite among our kids. It is easy to prepare and requires just a few ingredients, you may also prepare this ahead of time (say the evening before) then just fry it in the morning before the kids leave for school.

 INGREDIENTS:

1 kilo (or less) PORK CHOPS
4 eggs
a little water
panko bread crumbs (available in supermarkets)
salt and pepper
oil for frying

DIP/SAUCE
sweet chili sauce, catsup or tonkatsu sauce

Do check out  Pinay Cooking Lessons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pinay-Cooking-Lessons/112827652083017?ref=hl

And watch our videos on Nanaynikikay (Pinay Cooking Lessons) channel on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/nanaynikikay?feature=mhee

STARTING TO BLOG (AGAIN)

First of all let me introduce myself. I'm  Tes Fajardo-Baldridge, a wife and a stay-at-home mom with 3 wonderful kids (2 are teenagers, Kikay, the youngest, almost a teenager)

I am the administrator of Pinay Cooking Lessons (PCL) on Facebook and the hands and voice (yun lang kasi ang makikita sa akin sa mga videos na ginagawa ko) behind all the the videos on NANAYNIKIKAY (PINAY COOKING LESSONS) channel on youtube.  

Pinay Cooking Lessons  started when I posted a photo of the cupcakes that I made for my youngest daughter's birthday.  My friends asked me how I decorated them and I made a video  showing them how (ang hirap kasing iexplain through words lang). I uploaded it here on facebook, they seem to like it (or were they just being polite? :D),  asked me to make more videos, which I did, and after making a few more videos, I decided to make a page so that I would be able to share them with others who are not on my friend's list too, and presto!! Pinay Cooking Lessons was born!!! I was afraid that no one else aside from my friends would like PCL, but then one after the other friends came (that's what I call those who like PCL, I'm not comfortable calling them as Fans) and now PCL  have 7364  friends and still counting!  Yay!!

Nanay and I, circa 1968

Sino nga ba si Pinay sa Pinay Cooking Lessons and the Nanay in Nanaynikikay?  My  real name is Maria Teresa.  (If you're curious who Kikay is, she  is your youngest child who's real name is Charlize Kaye whom we fondly call  Kikay, thus...Nanaynikikay) actually, i'm a nobody, hehehe, just a simple stay-at-home wife with 3 wonderful kids who all love to eat. I didn't take up culinary arts, (I have a degree in Foreign Service though, ang layo ano?) I'm not a chef or a cook in any restaurant or turo-turo, just an average person who happens to love cooking.

My family and I have been living here in the USA for 3 years now, but  I am originally  from Maysan, Valenzuela City,  I was born and raised there, and my family is what you call "taal na taga-Valenzuela", because even my  mother and my grandmother were born and raised there. Almost everyone in my famiy cooks, my grandmother and my mother, tita's, cousins.... Making kakanin and minatamis was a family business. I learned how to cook from my Nanay, and one of my fondest childhood memories was going to the market in Meycauayan, Bulacan  on Sunday mornings with her. She would haggle with vendors down to the last 50 centavos and it would exasperate me when they don't agree with the price because that means we have to go to the next tindera and start the whole process all over  again... 

Nanay did all the cooking back then, and I don't really recall helping her, but maybe I was watching and learning unconsciously. The first time I cooked was when my Tatay (who worked in London for 32 years, an OFW even before the term was invented) asked me to make an omelette for him (you know, the one with onions in it?) I was maybe in grade school at that time, and I didn't know how to make that, so what I did was I sliced the onions, beat the eggs, mixed them together, and placed them in a frying pan with a little oil in it. I'm not sure if I put salt in it, but when it was done, it looked good and I was quite pleased with myself. I served it to him and my younger brother, and was so proud of myself when he said that it was the best omelette he had ever tasted...until my brother told me that it tasted bad, and I think it did, now knowing that the onions should have caramelized first before adding the egg... hahaha!!!  I started to bake when I was I high school, my friend Jho and I would bake cakes out of ready-made cake mixes and we had a blast!!

Then I got married, had 3 kids, and at one point  both my hubby and I became jobless. What we did was we set up a makeshift halo-halo stand in front of our house and sold what else but... halo-halo!!  At 10 pesos per glass  it had everything...sago, gulaman, monggo, beans, kaong, nata de coco, langka, saging na saba, camote, leche flan and ube halaya. Everything was made from scratch, and we sold a lot, up to 180 glasses per day (which explains why my hubby's left arm is more muscular that his right (he's a leftie) :D). We added fishballs and squidballs to that, then moved on to other things like pancit, mami, pizza, tapsilog, and ulam.  We didn't really have a restaurant or turo-turo, what we did was  post signs on our gate saying "we sell...." or "... available" and people would come and buy from us. And it was great!!

my family (Rex, Lance, Bea, Kaye (Kikay) and I

From having that makeshift halo-halo stand, my family has come a long way... now we're here in the United States. Hubby has a nice job, the kids are doing great in school, and I do a little catering here and there... life is good, God has been very generous to us. I never really ask for anything from Him, but He gives us a lot. By sharing my videos with you, I feel like i'm giving back to Him a little of what He has given us. We are not rich, we don't have money to give away, but we do help others as much as we can. Lagi kong sinasabi na di mo kailangang maging politiko or maging isang kilalang tao para makatulong ka sa kapwa mo. And this, I guess is my way of helping others, my way of paying forward God's generous blessings to me and family.

I hope that through this (my litany) you were able to know a little more about me... thanks po for reading.

Do check out  Pinay Cooking Lessons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pinay-Cooking-Lessons/112827652083017?ref=hl

And watch our videos on Nanaynikikay (Pinay Cooking Lessons) channel on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/nanaynikikay?feature=mhee

As a preview of the videos that I make, I'm sharing with you of my most cherished recipes, and this is my special  CASSAVA CAKE, everyone who has tried it LOVES it, do try it please and let me know how kung nagustuhan ba ninyo. 

INGREDIENTS:

1 kilo grated cassava also called yucca or manioc (I use frozen grated cassava available in Asian supermarkets, but you may use fresh grated cassava)
2 cups sugar
4 cups thick coconut milk
1/4 cup melted butter (plus additional  for greasing pans)
2 eggs

Optional ingredient: egg yellow food color


INGREDIENTS FOR THE TOPPING:

1 cup thin coconut milk
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 can condensed milk

PREHEAT OVEN TO 340 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT