Bedridden on Valentines 2016

I did something really thoughtless yesterday that had me bedridden for nearly most of the day. Thank goodness, I managed to prepare a simple fare for my indoor v-day date.

This is wagyu burger (baked with mozarella cheese) and a side salad. Actually...it looks more like a salad with a siding of wagyu burger, haha!

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Gamified apps for weight loss, no crash dieting.

I have blogged several times about shedding December fat and so far, this is probably my healthiest tweak on my routine.  Just to summarize, I have had a knee injury since 2012 and would develop a foot injury called plantar fasciitis every time I go 5 pounds beyond my normal weight. In the previous years, I have done intermittent fasting and sticking to carbs with low glycemic index.

I had lived a relatively unhealthy 2015 so my December 2014 weight actually stuck around and then gained some. By Christmas 2015, I was 4 pounds overweight (at 125.6 lbs) and my feet were literally killing me. So I started losing weight again by January 1.

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Oats Arroz Caldo

I started using MyFitnessPal at the start of the year 2016 but I won't be blogging about that until I've gotten the results I wanted. One of the things I like about it, though, is the fact that it gives me a rough estimate of the nutritional value of the things I cook. So now I know what kind of nutrients are inside this Oats Arroz Caldo that I made for breakfast.

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My version of French Toast

I actually don't really like French toast because I normally find it too greasy, but since I love my ceramic pan, I gave it a go.

This recipe is for a highly acidic person like me. I try to avoid a lot of things that could trigger an ulcer attack so I have replaced many ingredients that are normally used for French toast.

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Homemade Hot and Sour Soup

Last weekend, I was sick for about three days and had a craving for hot and sour soup. Unfortunately, my favorite Knorr hot and sour soup doesn't seem to be available in the market now, so I opened up YouTube and looked for the recipe closest to how I remembered it. (I don't eat pork so I avoided channels that had pork in their recipe.)

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Valentines means having fun at home.

It's typical for teenagers to be so fascinated by Valentines' so it wasn't a surprise when my students asked me about it before our class started.

Students: Doc B, how are you spending your Valentines?
Me: Working in front of my computer.
Students: But shouldn't you be spending it with the one you love?
Me: Exactly.

But that's a joke. I normally do not want to go out of my cave, and especially not on V-Day, where every pair of lovebirds will be occupying every commercial corner that offers romantic discounts.

The first thing I did today was this:

I'm sure everyone knows about the #PaintTheirHandBack campaign that has been trending all over the internet. The hands I pasted on this photo were actually bosses in one of my upcoming games. These were drawn by my former OJT (Eunice Gatdula) and I simply reused them for this purpose. ^_^

Buuut anyway, I always celebrate V-Day indoors by cooking.

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Board Game Testing: Sweet Sabotage

My favorite couple (a team of programmer/game designer and artist), Charles Cue and Ellie Licuanan of White Ravens, came up with a board game that will be due for release on February 2015 and they're currently on Indiegogo for crowdfunding. Just to give you an idea what the board game is all about, here's a YouTube video:

So Charles and Ellie contacted me and our former colleagues and set up a playtesting session at Tobey's Game Café.

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Staycation: The Picasso Boutique Serviced Residences

This wasn't my first visit to The Picasso. I attended an art exhibit at this hotel last year, and also had dinner at their Brasserie Boheme on the same day. It was, however, my first time to stay in.

Pictured above is a photo of their facade.

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Finally found that Spam Tocino

I had been looking for Spam Tocino for quite sometime now, after I saw a photo of it go viral on the internet. I couldn't find it in my favorite grocery, Rustan's in the Alphaland building behind Ayala Columns. It says on the can that this is a "Limited Edition" variant, but I was happy to have found it in Waltermart, Chino Roces.

A friend of mine (Imee, haha) was wondering why I'd spend money on a nitrate and sugar filled meat, especially knowing how health conscious I can get. Well...part of it was curiosity.

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Lucky 2nd Anniversary Dinner at Holiday Inn Flavors

The boyfriend and I had been so caught up with work (he in game development, me in both part-time teaching and game development) that finding a nice place for our 2nd year anniversary dinner was sort of a last minute thing. In fact, I had only drawn up Holiday Inn's Flavors restaurant on the internet when I got home last night, just before dinner.

Mind you, he was very insistent on us celebrating during the day itself. I was thinking we could celebrate on a weekend, when the work load was not that bad, but no. It had to be on the day itself. He was adamant about it.

Our table, facing nifty decor

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Healing Injury Part 1: Losing 13 Pounds in Weeks

I did mention several posts ago that I am currently suffering from plantar fasciitis and creaking knees. And man, the former has been taking months to heal. It was annoying in the first few months (I'd wake up limping in the morning due to pain), but by December (coincidentally the month I pigged out) the pain had become extremely unbearable. By that time, both my feet would be in excruciating pain upon waking up.

I knew what I needed to do then:

1. Lose weight.
2. Change shoes.

For this post, I will be talking about how I lost 13 pounds in a span of 3 weeks. I'll save the shoes for Part II.

You'll notice from the photos above how my jawline disappeared as the year progressed? LOL. Photo on the extreme right was my most recent picture (during my students' graduation), after I got my jawline back.

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Meltique Steak for Valentines 2014

It's now almost tradition for me and the boyfriend to home cook steak during Valentines because we don't really want to have to deal with traffic and crowds. Especially today, since it's Pay Day Friday as well. Can you just imagine how packed every restaurant is going to be?

It just so happened that while we were planning what to do for our Vday date, we chanced upon Meltique beef at Waltermart. I've heard about this from my room mate Aileen. It's not quite Wagyu (and it comes from Australia) but there's a lot of marbling in the meat so you can actually enjoy good meat for less.

This pair of striploin costs about P560. If I ordered something like this from a restaurant, we'd be spending probably 4x as much.

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Black Rice: The New Brown?

Last December, while spending the holidays with my parents and sibs, my mom and I came across a bag of black rice at the grocery. I had been curious about this for a long time now so we picked it up. Here's the thing I understand about my siblings -- and many others for that matter: they hate brown rice. In fact, one of the things I don't like about going to my parents' is that they either only have white rice or cook only a very small amount of brown rice for my mom.

Imagine my surprise when the helpers cooked this and suddenly, my mom was not the only person who became my kaagaw. My siblings *gasp* ate the black rice!

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First Korean barbecue experience at Bornga

The boyfriend and I accidentally discovered this place (a week after new year) when we saw that the building behind Ayala Columns already had restaurants open despite being under construction. We ended up going in and exploring what the place had to offer.

Ok, I never knew that Koreans could eat so much meat and vegetables. We had two orders of those thinly sliced beef called Woo Samgyup (at around P450 each), thinking, "How heavy can it be?" We didn't know that the beef came with a TON of veggies, some soup starters and dessert. Let me just give you sample photos of our table.

First came the vegetable tray and the side dishes. I felt my stomach go into shock just at the sight of that refillable vegetable tray.

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Best of 2013

Because my goals are pretty much set (well, I could actually blog about them much later when I've decided on what I want to do), I'd rather talk about the things I discovered in 2013 that will probably affect my activities for 2014. Some of these I actually didn't want to blog about because I was feeling selfish, haha!

Anyway, without further ado, my top 10. Not in any particular order, of course:

Juju Eats

Dear Juju Eats, please move somewhere near Makati CBD. Every time I struggle to think about what I'd eat at night -- especially now that I've decided to forgo rice in the evenings -- I think about you. Please please please please move near me.

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Delicious healthy meals at Juju Eats

One jeepney ride away from my condo is this healthy restaurant called Juju Eats. If you are familiar with Juju Cleanse, which I first heard about from my friend Ro of Animetric, this resto is basically owned by the same group.

I first saw the photos of yummy looking salad wraps on my Facebook newsfeed and upon finding out that it's just along Chino Roces, and that it's so near another friend's exhibit venue, I grabbed the chance to visit it.

Above is cucumber juice with Greek salad in wheat wrapping. It's basically feta cheese, black olives, sun dried tomatoes, red onions, cucumbers, and balsamic dressing. My first bite: heavenly.

I actually love that you eat it like a burrito but since it doesn't have rice, you don't get that guilty feeling of not being able to finish the entire thing.

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FaBurrito: Fresh Mexican Grill

I noticed that ever since I gained more than the weight I was planning to gain (from 109lbs, I'm now 120lbs, but I am actually well-balanced at 112-115lbs), I noticed I've been craving for burritos lately. On an almost daily basis. I also noticed that I have difficulty finishing off one regular burrito even though I used to eat large ones when I was younger.

FaBurrito's fish burrito

This was why I was so happy to discover FaBurrito, which sits right at the ground floor of Ayala Columns (right in front of RCBC Building). It's walking distance from where I live so getting there and going home gives me a bit of an exercise.

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Experimental Creamy Shiitake Mushroom Pasta

There are times, whenever I do grocery, that I'd just grab something interesting from the shelf even without knowing what to do with it. Like this pack of dried shiitake mushrooms at SM Hypermarket. I actually had no idea what I could use shiitake mushrooms for so I ended up checking the shelves for other leftover ingredients that I might use.

This is what I learned about dried shiitake mushrooms: they're difficult to chew but they're perfect with soups because they absorb water and become oh-so soft and delicious.

Anyway, for this recipe, you'll need:

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Chicken and ginger soup recipe for the sick

This morning, I woke up with a very bad case of sore throat -- as if a cheese grater had run repeatedly through it -- and allergic rhinitis. I wanted to make something soothing. I hit the internet by checking out the best ways to relieve the kind of pain I was in and a few suggestions about chicken soup came up. This recipe is pretty simple. It had to be simple because my hands were shaking with hunger when I was making this.

 What you need:

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Yummy sweets by Tasty Pastry

There's a new bakery biz that got into my radar recently and it's mostly because it's my room mate Kei's mom that bakes these treats. I really love it whenever Kei arrives from Biñan and she brings in kakanin (like ube halaya and my favorite palitaw) that her mom makes. I thought it was a wonderful idea when they suddenly decided to put up a bake shop called Tasty Pastry.

My first order came in the form of one of my favorite cakes: Brazo de Mercedes. Aaand yeah...I kinda like eating the ends.

On my first bite, I noticed that there's a kick of saltiness (just a liiiiittle bit) in the white area that counteracted the sweetness of the yellow area. I kind of liked that because it prevented the dessert from becoming sickeningly sweet.

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