Lazy Sunday Breakfast

My babies and I slept in this morning – a sort of Sunday luxury we all like to indulge in. A lazy Sunday breakfast is of course always called for and so I asked them what they wanted. What I got was one of those episodes of confirmation about how individual my kids are.

Holden: “Rice with Chinese sausage!”
Mikee: “Pancake with chocolate syrup!”

Am I a restaurant? Haha! But oh well, I was away for a while, can I really refuse such simple and sweet requests? I am powerless.

❖

Fried Rice with Pork Sausage

This is a quick recipe that’s a complete meal on its own. Fried rice is a really versatile dish in that you can mix in whatever you and your kids like, which is really also a good way to sneak in vegetables that they would otherwise ‘recognize’.

• 2 cups of steamed white rice
• 1 piece Kwong Bee Chinese pork sausage, chopped
• 1 egg, seasoned and pre-scrambled
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• spring onions
• a pinch of celery seed
• black pepper, to taste
• salt, to taste

Procedure:

1. Sauté garlic and chopped sausage in high heat.
2. Add eggs, rice and spring onions. Mix well in low heat.
3. Add celery seed. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Serve with favorite noodles.

❖ Serves 2. Fiber and vitamins bump: Add chopped carrots and green peas. “Grown Up” variation – add hot sauce during Step 3 and mix through.

Fried Rice with oriental flat noodles

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The Making of PinayWorkingMom.com

Hi mommies! I just got back from a much-needed vacation. And how did I spend a week of free time?

Food lessons.

Yes, that’s right. I went to school. (Yeah, what a geek.)

Well actually, not school, school. More like salimpusa at the regular classes of the Philippine School of Culinary Arts. I just dropped by for a few days to bug their chefs and instructors with some questions about quick and healthy cooking.

It was great to be in a place where people are everything but utilitarian about food. I mean, of course, food is fuel to humans – but it is also so much more than that to me and to every person in the PSCA kitchen. It was simply awesome to be where food is treated as a science as much as an art.

Here are some photos of the day I got to bug chef Nick about fermentation in bread-making:

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Not in an Urn

I was at the necrological service for a friend and mentor, Dyndyn Sagliba. We lost her at 38 to breast cancer – she was a free spirit who remains an inspiration to those who knew her.

Merely a student to her, and her a teacher to me, this changed when she asked me to be MC at the poetry-reading, Revolt Against (Hy)Men – a celebration of feminism. I felt like I did not live up to the confidence she had in my abilities, but she was very kind and encouraging, profusely thanking me for what I thought was a performance below mediocre. She sent me a message this year, still thanking me even after all these years and asking that we do a similar event again. I was set to meet her this Saturday..but she left sooner, leaving with me a lesson – a lesson that marks deep – as deeply as that hollow sensation that could only be the feeling of loss. The lesson that for making people happy, there is no better time than now.

The service last night was of eulogies and poetry in her honor. I have not written anything creative in years, yet in the last week, I have written 3 drafts of meager attempts at going back to writing poetry. Even in death, she has such power to stir people..to stir me.

This one below is what I write for myself, after reading Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep and listening to Ithaca at the service.

Not in an Urn

a third over the city
a third over the mountains
the remainder over the sea

to be among you
yet walk in the wild
with whales swimming with me

to hear the buzz
of cars and bees
and the wind – raw and free

the mind to the city
the heart to the mountains
and my soul over the sea.

And this is what I wrote for Dyn:

Our last interactions…