Leftovers from last night’s dinner at Vieux Chalet was today’s breakfast. There’s some roast chicken, osso buco and rosti… for me — liver pate, butter and toasted whole wheat bread.

Liver? Isn’t liver fatty? Actually, you can trim all visible fat from liver. And making your own pate gives you more control over the amount of fat that goes into your body. Ergo, home made liver pate, or pate from a source you can trust, is healthier than eating canned liver spread or frozen liver sausage both of which contain a lot of fat.

If you’ve read the UPCAT story, this is the sequel.

Last night, Sam finally frosted enough cupcakes to make her arm ache. I bought two boxes of disposable pastry bags last week. I baked the cupcakes late yesterday afternoon. I prepared the cream cheese frosting a few hours later. Sam was excitedly waiting for the cupcakes to cool so she could frost them but Alex and I were starving and we each ate one sans frosting. Sam screamed at us but, hey, she still had 12 cupcakes left. By the time she was done, there was dried red, blue and yellow food color running down her arms. And on her lips too.

She experimented with the different tips…

… didn’t like the first few ones she did and she leveled the frosting with the back of a spoon. But by the time she was into her fourth cupcake…

I hope the two-toned frosting is discernible. For someone who never attended baking classes, well, I really think she ought to rethink her dream of becoming a chef before she decided she was going to be a professional photographer.

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The world’s buzzing with swimmer Michael Phelps’ breakfast. From The New York Post:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase “Breakfast of Champions” by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

A 4,000-calorie breakfast, no less. Well, I’m no athlete and I’m certainly not on a quest for an Olympic gold but if there were Olympic Games for cooking, I’d enter this dish and be hopeful for a gold.

What is it? Let’s just say it’s a cross between an omelet, a pudding and French toast — a happy marriage between Elise’s as-you-like-it breakfast casserole and Ree’s sleepin’-in omelet.

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Jojo Robles’ column yesterday was about two e-mails that had been circulating around for the past couple of days. I received the first e-mail four days ago from Ben Razon to whom it had been forwarded by someone else. Let me quote the text in full.

This happened to my sister-in-law just this morning at the ateneo campus. Alarming and I thought you would be wary too of this kind of people, especially driving mothers (like me). Wala tayong kalaban-laban sa mga lalaking ganito! Kilala nyo ba siya kaya?…

Hi Ette, Something scary happened to me today at around 11:30 a.m. at the Ateneo parking area along the alternate road leading to Gate3. I arrived at the area at around 9:00 a.m. The parking area was already full. However, I noticed that some cars were parked far apart from each other and that their drivers can be requested to move closer to each other to accommodate my small Honda City. I approached the owner of a gray Toyota Camry with plate number UNY 220. He was sleeping inside his car so I tapped lightly and apologetically requested him to move his car. He refused to move, asserting that I cannot fit into the space. He told me to bother the driver beside him instead. I left him alone because I did not want to be a nuisance. The other vehicle was a van driven by a family driver. He was also sleeping, mind you, but he graciously moved his van. I was finally able to park but it was a very tight fit. If the owner of the Camry had moved as well, it would have been perfect.

However, I did not want to bother the man who was clearly irritated. At 11:30 a.m., I arrived at my car with the two boys in tow. I was so shocked to find the man owning the Camry to be waiting for me. As I approached, he opened his window and said, “PUTANG INA MO!” in front of my two kids and his son who was seated at the back of his car covering his ears. He continued his assault and said, “You don’t wake up people and manipulate them.” I told him in a calm voice that I apologized to him and left him alone because he didn’t want to be bothered. He kept on accusing me of being manipulative (I don’t even know why? It was just a request). And this is where it gets scary. He threatened me and said that IT IS PEOPLE LIKE ME HE PUTS A GUN TO THE HEAD TO. I asked him if he was connected to the military and he said, “E ikaw, sino ka ba?” I said I was just a simple housewife. He then proceeded to call me stupid over and over again. I just let it pass because I didn’t want to provoke him. He has a PPSA (Philippine Practical Shooting Association) sticker at the back and he just might make good his threat.

Luckily, I still had enough wits about and was able to get his plate number and his picture through my cellphone camera. I immediately reported this incident to Mr. Leoncio D. Miralao, Administrator of the ADMU Physical Plant. This person is highly volatile and I don’t want my boys, or any other child for that matter, anywhere near him. He might start shooting people if he gets into another altercation. What shocks me is that he is an Ateneo parent (a parent!) who should be reinforcing the Ignatian values that the Ateneo has been diligently drilling into our children. Furthermore, I’m sure the PPSA espouses responsible gun ownership and will certainly frown upon this member’s behavior. Attached is his picture and you should be well-advised to steer clear of him if ever you see him around Ateneo!

The e-mail had an attachment — a photo of the male driver that the woman was complaining about. First impression? Well……

When I received the e-mail, it had apparently been forwarded several times already. One of the comments among the earlier recipients was “Any friendly broadsheets out there?” But I did not even forward the e-mail, much less write a column about it. Anyone can make up a story and considering people’s penchant for intrigue, on the internet especially, it’s easy to start and spread rumors. I did ask Ben, however, if the woman was willing to execute an affidavit and to provide proof that she reported the matter to the Ateneo authorities. You know, because without credible evidence, it’s a recipe for libel. I was not sticking my neck out for someone I don’t even know and for a story that I could not verify.

Anyway, later that night, I asked Speedy to look at the photo. Speedy is a member of PPSA and ARMSCOR (and we do have a PPSA sticker on the car) and he might know the guy. He didn’t.

A day later, the guy’s story came out and Ben forwarded the e-mail. The full text follows. [click to continue...]

Not, not a hidden Mickey. A hidden egg. There’s an egg under the cheese in each of these two slices of bread.

Traditionally, a poached egg is used to make this breakfast dish. The poached egg is placed on a piece of toasted bread and topped with a slice of cheese. A few minutes under the grill to melt the cheese and the result is a tantalizing breakfast that takes the boredom of out plain bread, egg and cheese. Honestly, there’s so much that a cheese can do to transform an ordinary dish. In fact, add cheese to just about anything and the most picky child will likely declare it to be yummy.

But isn’t cheese loaded with fat? Check this article in High Beam Encyclopedia for the nutritional content of different types of cheese. Even hard cheeses, normally higher in fat content, need not be off limits if consumed in moderation.

In an earlier entry about “pikot”, Jon commented:

My wife sometimes asked me if I would’ve married her had she been a fling or a one-night stand. My answer was “of course not!”

Marriage is reserved for people worth marrying. Anything less is a broken family in the making.

I asked him to define what he meant by “people worth marrying” and he said, “People who are capable of sustaining relationships + have some sense of responsibility. I know the ‘wife/husband material’ is a lousy stereotype, but somehow such people do exist.”

I’ve asked the same question to a lot of male friends in the past (mostly, over bottles of beer in college — I so enjoyed drunken debates with boys) and the most common answer was “a decent girl” by which they meant NOT fast girls or girls with a “reputation”. One of them had a girlfriend of six years and it was a cut-and-dried path for them — wedding bells after law school (for him) and med school (for her). She was a pretty girl, intelligent, soft-spoken and, you know, Nice with a capital N. When she went abroad to grad school, he met the love of his life. But he wouldn’t marry the girl (I never got a chance to meet her) because she was no longer a virgin when they met. He married the doctor a few years after graduation. It led me to conclude that, contrary to popular belief, quite a lot of U.P. guys were not always progressive thinkers. They might raise their fists to protest against social issues but when it came to choosing a wife, they were feudal as feudal could be.

Not all of my male friends thought alike though. There was one who, when asked if the girl’s virginity mattered to him, said, “It depends.” If she loved the previous boyfriend, he saw nothing wrong with her not being a virgin. But if she had been casually hopping from one bed to another, then she wouldn’t be acceptable.

That was early to mid 1980s when things reeked badly of double standards. I don’t know how today’s young men feel about those things. But I’m still intrigued about the concept of a “decent girl.”

Who is a “decent girl” worth marrying? [click to continue...]

I wanted a shallow glazed pot with miniature bamboo for the coffee table. I haven’t found the pot of my dreams yet so, for the meantime, Sam’s collection of cacti has that place of honor. Three small pots look good together but they needed something to define them as a group. Last week, I found some square bamboo mats at Gourdo’s.

Bamboo and terra cotta look perfect together.

The mats are 16″x16″ and they are just right because both the coffee table and the side tables are square.

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We were snuggled in bed when Speedy took my face between his hands, looked at me and said, “You’re still beautiful, you know.”

“I know.”

He pushed me away and said, “What kind of response is that?”

“I’m confirming your statement; you want me to object instead?”

“Puñeta, you’re supposed to say thank you!”

“But that’s false modesty! I look in the mirror everyday, you know. So, I know!”

“Oh, go make coffee.”

Back in the old house, a malunggay tree growing in an adjacent property was visible from our backyard. And I would covet that three, wishing it was growing in MY backyard instead. See, I love malunggay leaves. I love adding them to fish soup with lots of ginger and garlic.

A few days ago, my wish to have a malunggay tree of my own finally came true. One of our house helpers has an aunt who lives in another part of town and it was from her that we got cuttings from mature malunggay trees. We planted them directly into the ground, near the gazebo.

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