I said it’s not a cake!

On Thursday afternoon, I was sitting on a dining chair taking the photo below when Speedy walked into the front door with a bag of bread.

He set the bread on the kitchen island then sat down two chairs away from me. I asked him if he wanted a mid-afternoon snack.

“A sandwich?” I asked.

“What kind?” he said.

“Meat loaf. Here,” and I pushed towards him the plate that you see in the photo.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “I thought that was a cake for tonight’s dessert.”

So, I explained that I cooked the meat loaf in a silicone bundt pan because I figured it would look more interesting, meat loaf being a rather plain dish. And the too-dark edges? Well, see, after putting the thing in the oven, I went back upstairs because I was monitoring the server to make sure it was stable. I didn’t want any more downtimes for the blogs. I checked the oven after 45 minutes and the meat loaf still wasn’t done. So, I told one of the house helpers to turn the oven off after 15 minutes, at “two quarter”. Well, she turned it off at 15 minutes before three or “quarter-to-three.” The thing with silicone pans is that food cooks faster in them. So, the extra 30 minutes in the oven resulted in a more than moderately browned meat loaf.

So, anyway, at about that moment, Alex came down from her bedroom and sat down on the chair between her dad and me. I turned to her and asked, “Want a sandwich?”

“No,” she said.

I then proceeded to slice the meat loaf to take a photo of the cross section.

Alex, who was watching, said, “Oh, I thought that was a cake!” So, I started to explain all over again.

A few minutes later, Speedy and I were on our way to the supermarket. We shopped for the coming week’s food and non-food supply and were on our way home when there was a text message from Sam.

She had been out with her classmates buying underwater plants for an aquarium project in school. They were done, were in McDonald’s and she needed a ride home. We turned around, drove to McDonald’s, called her on her cell twice before she came out and we were finally on our way home to dinner.

I had the table set for dinner. The meat loaf, its inside visible from where I cut a slice to take a photo of, was already on the table.

“What’s for dinner?” asked Sam.

“Meat loaf,” I said, pointing to the plate of meat loaf.

“Oh, I thought that was a cake!”

Duh, they’re not very discerning, are they?

But that’s not all.

Last night, I cooked nilagang baka, a total of 1.75 kilos, divided the cooked nilaga into three portions and reserved the third portion for today’s lunch. A little before noon, I told the house helper to reheat the reserved nilaga and asked if there were other leftovers in the fridge that could be reheated.

“Ay, ma’am, mayroon pa nung parang bibingka!”

GGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

P.S. For non-Filipinos: Ay, ma’am, mayroon pa nung parang bibingka! translates to Oh, ma’am there’s still that thing like a rice cake!

In the archive

• My daughter, my husband, a cell phone and a can of…
• The Sunday burrito story
• Once upon a time, she wanted to be a chef
• Cooking instructions
• Lights, colors, shutter speed and aperture value
• The day I stop enjoying life is the day I start to grow old
• All-Filipino menu
• So, how did you spend the Halloween weekend?
• Beyond my baking skills
• The shy child and the cactus