Really we have pumpkin here in a can, imported from the States. And it costs a fortune to buy it. Since Bob doesn’t really like to eat food coming out from the can, I have to be inventive to make the recipe of what we have here in the Philippines. It worked out most of the time. I have to find what’s the best substitute from it that we could find here in the Philippines.

Bob saw a recipe on the internet about how to make a pumpkin pancake. As you all know we don’t grow pumpkins here in the Philippines. Instead we got so much squash growing here at any places from the 3 islands of the P.I. My sister and my brother-in-law grows squash at their farm too. That’s where Chris got started eating squash. He likes it a lot.  So when Bob saw that we still had some left over squash puree on our fridge he then search on the net of a good recipe for squash puree aside from pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. Really its an easy recipe to make.

Here is a video of the original recipe that Bob saw on the Internet:

Here are some pictures of my cooking process, the recipe is below the pictures.  Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Here’s the recipe that we use below:

Ingredients: (Mix all dry ingredients in a separate bowl)

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground all spice
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp white sugar

Mix all liquid ingredients in a separate bowl:

• 1/2 cup squash/pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil (canola will do too)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp grated lemon zest (sometimes i don’t use it and it still taste good)

Procedures:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients well.
2. Whisk all liquid ingredients, then when its smoothed put the dry ingredients and continue to whisk. If you want thinner pancake just add a little milk. Just eyeball it.
3. Heat a frying pan (griddle) on medium high heat with olive oil, canola oil or vegetable oil. When the pan is hot put a ladle of that squash batter on the hot pan and let it cook for like 3 minutes on each side or until the bubbles form on the pancake and it is brown on the side. While the pancake is cooking try to lower the heat of the stove so that the pancake will not get burn right away.
4. You can put butter on top with jelly, maple syrup, or cinnamon sugar. Or any toppings you want.
5. If you want to make it into waffles, just don’t add any additional milk to the batter. You can put any toppings you want too.

Well, I hope you will try the recipe and let me know what you think. We’ve been making squash pie over Thanksgiving. It’s super yummy. We’ve been letting friends taste it and they liked it a lot. Hey, we paid P600 per order of pie before like 4 years ago. Now we are making our own. Loving it.

Hope you guys have a good and fruitful New Year! Stay safe!

I decided to decorate the house early for Christmas this year. I started decorating like around the middle of November. I decided to decorate the whole house instead of just the Christmas tree only. It was fun for the kids helping me out putting the decors. I am still trying to finish up putting up my Dickens Village which is almost done. I am just trying to change the bulbs of the houses and putting the snow, then I’m done. My wreaths are all up, one on our living room the big one and one on our entrance door. My Santa pictures are up on the wall already and the Santa throw was already put on our living room couch.The monks were up too on the chicken hutch.  Hmm, guess we are just waiting now for the party.

Happy Thanksgiving to all LiP Readers!

It was fun showing it to our maid all the decor though. It was her first time seeing lots of decor and with some story with some of my decorations. It is also her first time getting gifts. So its really going to be fun. She’s really amazed of the stockings that we have put near our tree, since we don’t have fireplace here. It really is amazing seeing her face when my niece Nicole told her that Santa will come here in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.  She asked me then if its true. Hey, what can I say when my 7 year old niece right in front of me. Big SIGH and SMILE… lol…

It’s going to be a good Thanksgiving. A lot to be thankful for from God for: Having good and loving family and stays in good health all throughout the year. Having  friends and meeting new friends and distant relatives here on LIP/Facebook and our other sites. Also our LIP drive keeps growing and stronger.

It’s going to be a good and busy Christmas too. We are looking forward already for our LIP drive. Pretty soon we will prepare the stuff for the poor. Now I am starting to feel the spirit of Christmas. We really are excited to give to our less fortunate people here. Thanks to you guys for your help, at least we can make some people happy during the holidays. It’s really a good feeling to give. I thank you all for helping our less fortunate people here. It’s really highly appreciated by us and those poor people. God will shower more blessings to you and your family.  If you can help bring a smile to a poor Filipino family this year, why don’t you consider making a donation, big or small, to our LiP drive by using the “donate” button at the left.  All donations will go 100% toward giving food and gifts to poor families here in Mindanao.  We appreciate all assistance on this.

HAPPY GOBBLE, GOBBLE DAY EVERYONE! GOD BLESS!

PEACE!!!

Bob likes meringue a lot and so does our youngest son Jared. I made this meringue like a pie. Unlike the other meringue that we’ve made before that it looked like a small cupcake that swirl inside. Honestly it is not a difficult recipe to make. Maybe the hard part was just separating the egg whites and the yolks. It should be that no yellow mix in on the egg whites. The good thing the ingredients is easy to find in the pantry and fridge. It’s really a common ingredients even the sari-sari store has it always.

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs (white only)
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• a dash of salt

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beat the egg white with the blender, put the cornstarch and the salt. Slowly pour the sugar, keep beating until it is smooth. Really until the all sugar dissolve. When its ready, put in the grease cookie sheet and cook for about 25-30 minutes. Until the top of the meringue turn brown.

Have fun eating you guys!

So, below is my recipe for chicken pot pies.  These use only ingredients readily available in the Philippines. Cook up, and enjoy!

Ingredients

Pot Pies for Chris AJ and Bob

• 4-5 tbsp butter
• 3 pieces. chicken breast
• 3 pieces chicken thighs
• 2 medium size onions dice
• 2 stalk celery dice
• 1-2 carrots
• 1/2-1 cup corn
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1/4 cup whine wine
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• 3 cups chicken stock (chicken cubes)
• thyme
• parsley

For the pastry:

• 1 stick butter or 1 cup butter (chilled)
• 1/4 lard (chilled)
• 3-4 tbsp really cold water
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Beaten egg to brush on top the pot pie before putting in the oven:

Procedure

First put the butter and the lard on the freezer for about 10-15 minutes. While waiting for the butter and lard to be cold, start cutting the other ingredients. Dice the onions, celery and the carrots. Cut up the meat too and set aside. The bones from the meat you make chicken stock from it. Stock can be used later.

Preparation for the pastry. Put the flour in a bowl or food processor, cut up the chilled butter and lard into cube and dumped in the flour. In the processor try to pulse like 5 time, when using hand try to knead until the butter and lard mix with the flour, see bits and pieces of the butter and lard. Then slowly add the cold water until the flour fully mixed in with the butter and lard. Put in a cling wrap and put in the fridge for about 15-20 minutes.

While the pastry was in the fridge start cooking for the filling then. Put skillet on the stove on a medium high heat . Put the 3 tbsp butter add a drop of olive oil to prevent from the butter being burn. Add the sliced onions and the celery, when the onions becomes translucent add the carrots until its tender maybe like 5 minutes. Then add the 1/2 cup flour keep stirring until the flour became brown. Then add the stocks keep stirring, add the milk and the cream still keep stirring. Lower the heat.  Just eyeball if needed more chicken stock. I did add like half a cup more. But if you like thicker filling not adding half a cup probably is good already. Cooked the chicken on a different skillet. Just put 2 tbsp oil on the skillet and when its hot add the cut up chicken breast and thighs. Keep stirring for about 5 minutes, then drain, then add to the cooking filling pie. Then add the wine, corn, parsley, peas, the thyme and salt & pepper. Really you can put potato in the pie too. I just didn’t put it for our pot pie this time.

Lastly prepare your ramekin, brush it with oil or butter on the bottom. Flatten the dough with your rolling pin and put the dough at the bottom of the ramekin, then fill it up with the pie filling, then cover again with the flattened dough on top of the ramekin. Poke the top of the dough a few times with the fork.  Bake in a 375 degrees Fahrenheit  pre-heated oven for about 20-25 minutes. Really until the dough turns golden brown. Yummy!

You can also share your chicken pot pies recipe here too. Have a good eat you guys!

Cheers!

Just to make them comfortable, I moved a bit further. I just can’t resist it, I had to talk to these people. The kids were really cute. So I was asking them how many kids do they have? And what part of town they are from? They told me that they are from somewhere in Mati. I told them I’ve been there and I liked the place. I asked them what part of town they are from here in Davao, and it must not a long ways since it would be hard to be pushing the cart. The wife then said that they didn’t have any house here and that they are homeless. Watching the kids and them my heart just sank and I almost cried.I was gonna ask them why not go home to the province and live there with simple life. At least they can plant something and have some animals to sell and for food. I don’t really know the real story why they left the province, I don’t really want to pry with their lives. I was a stranger to them.

Homeless People in Davao

I should have figured it out why they have with them the empty boxes and the pots and pans. I should have known better than that. It was hard hearing from the people what they are doing especially with kids involved though. I really wanted to help these people out. But my gosh, we’ve got so many people that we are trying to help out too.  We can’t afford to be helping more. Its always difficult seeing something like that. Just then the person that I was going to meet showed up. Before I went to the meeting I gave some money to this people and told them to get some food. Really not that much, but at least to fill up their stomachs for the day.

Homeless man carrying his belongings

Another homeless couple that I really noticed here was living in the downtown area here in the city. These people were sleeping outside the building. I did notice them before like 2 years ago. I just didn’t think about it because I’ve seen a bunch of them sleeping at the sidewalk or the walkway of some buildings. But early this year I notice a hammock hanging at one of the tree outside the building. So I ask my niece and nephew if they noticed that before. They told me that those homeless there now had a baby. At first I thought they were just resting there for the day. But, I noticed every time we passed by there, that hammock had a baby in it and the father or the mother swinging it.Can you imagine during rainy days when its pouring down here in the city. They just had like boxes for the bed and a blanket. They could get wet. I felt sorry for the baby.

When we went back to take the pictures. It’s not just one couple there now living outside the building. Another couple was there too with a kid. Oh boy, whats going on with these people. I don’t really know what to think of it anymore. I wished they really used some protection for not having a baby. But on the other hand they might want to have a baby with them, so that its easy for people to dig into their pockets for change by seeing a baby there.

Geez, are we just sucked into our feelings here. Can’t help it though, I felt for the baby.

Big Sigh!!!

Ian Curley of Conviction Kitchen

It’s a week or two ago that Bob downloaded this show about convicted people given a second chance. The name of the show and the restaurant was “CONVICTION KITCHEN”. The owner, his name is Curley, was a felon over 30 years ago. He made himself better and became a rich guy. Now he wants to give another chance to these other convicted people. He had over a dozen convicts who came for a screening/audition.  Curley and his assistant, Lisa, chose who is good in working with him in the kitchen, then Lisa chose who will help her in the front of the house. It was really a tough decision for them. They both want all of contestants, but they have to chose 2 at the end I think. Right now they have 11 people and they will chop them until it will get down to the 2 best and really learned from the training. Even if one person be eliminated every week at least that person already had some knowledge in the kitchen and front of the house. And hey, the trainer was one of the best chefs in Australia. Somebody will hire them.

Australia seems like a friendly place

On the last episode we watched, Lisa brought the people she chooses for a make over. And as you know some people from prison just look rugged and just a bit dirty looking, with the piercing all over the place. Lisa told the person, before accepting him that she will remove his piercings to make himself presentable to the customer. He agreed and he had to sacrifice his piercing, and he did it as he promised to Lisa that he will agree.  So at the make over they had to follow what the expert wanted to do with changing a little of their look,  and they did, they all looked amazing. They were trained for 2 weeks before the opening of the restaurant. The front of the house was trained by Lisa on how to set the table and how to handle the customers.

The ones in the kitchen were trained by Curley on cooking veggies, meat and seafood. They had some notes to study to bring home. They had to learn what to be put in the salad. They tried, some were a bit frustrated and Curley would talk to them and he tried to be patient with them. When the restaurant finally opened to the public, people did come and supported the place.

The customers were just so happy to see these convicts try to work to make their life better. The convicts even gave some advice to the kids, to not do bad things so that you will not end up in jail. Which is good. Some other customers said that their friends had some reservations if they would come to the restaurant, scared to come I guess.  I can understand the reservation too.

All in all it was a good show. I really wonder if other countries will imitate that show. I wonder what would happened? I wonder if we will have that show here, would the people go to the restaurant and support. I wonder would the TV stations here be interested to have like that kind of show. It might be interesting to see how the people here react.  What do you think guys? Would you guys go to that restaurant with those convict around you?

A few weeks ago I saw a cooking show of Jaime Oliver cooking a pizza in just 30 minutes. Wow, that sounds great and quick too. As I was watching I told Bob we can do that. It was a simple recipe. Almost all of the ingredients were readily available here. The only ingredients I am having a hard time finding was the self rising flour. I went to every mall and baker’s shop here in Davao. Well it well worked with flour and the yeast anyway. For now I got a solution for my dough I have our bread machine to do all of that. I just slap all the ingredients in the bread machine and in no time I have my dough ready to go. Before rolling the dough turn your oven all the way and turn down the temperature a little before putting the pizza inside.

Jamie Oliver

When the dough was ready, just roll it with the rolling pin and make the shape that will fit in a frying pan. Drizzle a small amount of  olive oil in the pan, then put the pizza dough in the pan. Put pizza sauce (I use del monte pizza pre made sauce already, if you have sauce of your own you can use that)  on top of your dough, then put chunks of mozzarilla cheese, fresh basil leaves, anise seeds, salami, ham and grated parmesan cheese and drizzle a small amount of olive oil.  Turn on your stove in medium heat and put the pan with your pizza. Let it cook until the dough turn brown on the bottom, and put in the oven with the pan and cook more  until the cheese and the  crust turned brown. When the pizza were cooked already it  will shaped like the pan. The crust was so crunchy and yummy.

Pizza

The pizza really is a big hit in our household. The kids will not mind to have pizza 3-4 times a week. They love it. They also like to help out on putting the toppings too. With the kids pizza, basil was not included. They just don’t like the tastes of it. But with our pizza we like to put basil and anise seeds on top.  The one with the breakfast sausage, salami and ham really did taste very good.  I had to make few batches with our oven I will just put 2 pans inside. Really I can put more pan but the cooking  will take longer. Its a time consuming.

You can share your pizza recipe here. We will gladly try your recipe.

Have fun eating!

Last night Roger was cooking chicken with coconut. He used grated coconut with bread crumbs to coat with the chicken. Right before he started cooking, he was saying what he was going to cook and they showed a preview of what he was cooking. When they showed the preview of the cooked chicken our mouth just about dropped just looking at the oh so yummy coconut chicken.

Yummy Dinner all Ready

In this episode Roger was also cooking salad that goes with the chicken. The salad consisted of bowtie pasta, red and green onions, olive oil, white wine vinegar, cayenne pepper, parsley and toasted shredded coconut. I made the salad, but Bob and I felt that it need something to make it zing. I’m not sure what, we used dried parsley might made a big difference with the taste compared to the fresh one. It was good already, but just wanted more taste to it.

Article continues below pictures

I didn’t put the mint sauce with the chicken. Both Bob and I we’re not in to mint sauce. But overall I will still make this recipe and will play around with some herbs and spice in it. As always good to cook a good recipe when the ingredients are readily available here in the Philippines. At least I don’t have to be scrambling around the web to look for the substitute for the unknown ingredients. Put a big smile into my face.

I’m definitely watching Roger and the rest of the gang on the TLC network for more cooking lessons.

I’m almost done with my work here at the house decorating. So pretty soon, time to be playing around with new recipes in my new kitchen. I’m excited also because our barbecue grill is almost ready too. Jun Jun just had to put the bricks and some concrete underneath and its good to go. Jun Jun had it made now that we can bring along with us our new barbecue grill whenever we move. So its more convenient and cheaper for us too. It’s a bit heavy but he said 4 people can carry it. He made an island for my kitchen before when we first moved to the Philippines. Its removable too. We always have it with us every houses we moved in. And its still good until now.

Anyway, I hope you will try Roger Mooking’s recipe. Have fun eating!

For ground beef for us here in Davao and General Santos area we are lucky we have Lisa’s Meat. They have ground lean meat on the package already. They really have the best ground meat that I know so far. I tried Monterey Meat but their ground meat has so much fat in it. Whenever you cook you are not happy with the end result. One option too is getting the meat at your public market. Really know someone there that will give you a good meat. Get a good lean pork and let them ground the meat for you.

Gosh, the McCormick people will really love me. In my pantry you will find almost a hundred McCormick spices there. I think I almost have every spice they have in the grocery store. I am not bragging guys I just like to have it because we use it anyway. In my pantry we have so much ground or stick cinnamon. You know the reason for that, we used it for potpourri just in case we are cooking some Filipino dish that its not smelling good here. You know what I mean?

Homemade sausage and biscuits!

Breakfast Sausage Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground pork (lean ground meat-luckily we have Lisa’s meat here)
• 1/2 tbsp iodized salt (I used Kosher salt)
• 1/2 tsp ground sage
• 1/3 tsp savory (I used oregano & thyme)
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2/3 tsp ground marjoram
• 1/3 tsp freshly ground pepper

Procedures:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Stuff into casings or make patties. For us here at the house I just make into patties. Freeze some for future use.

Biscuits and Gravy

Good Biscuits:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tbsp sugar (or use Splenda)
• 5 tbsp melted butter
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/3 milk ( maybe add a little more)
• a dash of salt

Procedure:

*** Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Brush the baking sheets with melted butter. ***

Mix all the ingredients together.  I used my hand to mix everything. Then the batter separately apart in the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until some edge of the biscuits turn brown. Take out from the cookie sheet cut in half and put butter and jelly and serve with breakfast sausage or bacon or with ham . Biscuits and breakfast sausage with gravy too. Yummy

More recipe to dig into my cupboard to share with you guys. I hope you like this recipe. Please let me know if you ever try it. Have fun cooking and have fun eating.

Cheers!