Paella & popcorn shrimp: with my little touch in it!

February 26, 2015 by feyma

Paella & popcorn shrimp: with my little touch in it!

Just a few days ago we celebrated Bob’s birthday. As a tradition in our household we would ask the celebrant what would they want to eat for dinner. Bob told me that he will think for a few minutes, then he remembered the recipe he really likes that we saw on MKR (My Kitchen Rules Australia) show. Well, he then decided that he wants paella, we saw one of the contestant there cooked seafood paella. I had to make other food too because some of my kids would not eat seafood.

Bob, asked me if I think it would be easy to make paella. The recipe in the MKR was a little bit complicated. So I told him I will look it up in the internet for the recipe and let him know. I then told my daughter Jean and my niece Glenda that it’s Paella and popcorn shrimp for dinner. Jean is not really into seafood that much too. But since Dad wants that menu she’s happy to help me out.

Paella

I found a few good seafood paella recipe in the internet. I cooked the one that I know the chef. Good thing most of his ingredients I can find it locally. Few ingredients that I was lucking was the saffron and the Spanish rice. I’ve seen saffron on some stores here but they don’t have this time. My niece went all over the place and can’t find it. Maybe the “No shipment” and “The no stocks” is here again for sure. For the rice I just substitute with Japanese rice. It works out good too. For the clams I used mussels instead, since that’s what Bob preferred. Since it’s hard to get lobster in the market, plus its a bit expensive, I just put more of the prawns then. The calls for Spanish chorizo and it really adds flavors. I marinate the chicken with the spices the chef recommended, but he marinated his chicken for an hour. I marinated my chicken with the spices for half a day. The flavor were really good. At the end, I followed what he said to turn up the heat for 40 seconds to give toasted rice bottom, its called socarrat (dukot in Bisaya). You can really find good paella recipe that your family will enjoy and that will also suits your budget. If some of the ingredients were expensive, find some local substitute from your local grocery stores.

With the other recipe the popcorn shrimp. I made the batter from scratch. I even made my own heavy cream. Thank goodness for the google. Both recipe I tweak to suit more to our own taste. I think it works really good for us. Bob and us in the house seems to like it and so did our friend Bebe.

Talking about the popcorn shrimp. It’s rally a simple recipe too. I made some of the spices and save the rest for the next time uses. The popcorn shrimp on the other hand, we had to used small shrimp. The downside to it, the cleaning and deveining of the shrimp was a bit of work (we had to devein prawns for paella and shrimp for popcorn shrimp. But at the end its all worth it though. Everyone that likes seafood in our house loves it. I made some ingredients out from substitution. I saw heavy cream in the store. It not worth the money for me because I just need 2 tablespoon.

If ever you want the recipes of the paella and the popcorn shrimp that we made, Just let me know, I’m happy to email them to you.

Good eating you guys!

February 19, 2015 by feyma

Coming home for a visit!

I was talking to a friend tonight. She called me up since we haven’t seen each other for quite awhile. Both of us were just so busy lately. Also since my cell phone I lost all of my contact numbers.. I thank God for FB and email, I am still in contact with some people even though I don’t have their number.

Anyway, she was telling me that whenever her daughter and son-in-law visit the Philippine again, she wants us to get together. Her daughter lives now in the US. She married a law enforcement officer from the mid-west in the USA if I remember. I sometimes corresponds with her daughter especially if her mom comes over to visit us.

Back home, with a Balikbayan Box

My friend mentioned that her daughter will not be bringing that many gifts (fondly called pasalubong here). The daughter is a bit worried because she has so many friends to see but not much time to see them. My friend told her daughter that, she would rather have her and son-in-law here than the pasalubong. The daughter will not be staying long here since the husband just allowed short vacation (less than 2 weeks). The daughter said that they will not be going places, she just wants to hang out at their house and be with her mom and dad and her siblings. I told my friend that I understand those sentiments.

I’m telling my friend that when I used to visit here with Bob and kids, I usually just stay with my Papa & Mama at the house. My dad was so sickly. The whole 3 weeks that we took our vacation here, during daytime me and Chris stayed at the house. Bob and my siblings would go to town to buy stuff needed and our groceries. We paid big money for our fare not to hang out with other people but with my parents. To be honest, I was happy that we let Chris stay a lot at my parents house. It really made my dad happy. Few months after my dad saw Chris, my dad passed away. Next visit same thing me and the kids stayed with my mom, hang out with her. Even sometimes Bob went to see friends we stayed behind.

Anyway, my friend’s daughter is kind of worried that her friends might get upset/hurt that they will not be getting any pasalubong. They’re trying to save some money for something too that’s important to them. I told my friend to tell her daughter that “if she really has true friends with gifts or without they should be happy seeing her and the husband”. My friend said too that she’s telling her daughter that they will just buy little things from here to give. My friend didn’t really care that lots of people here likes the product that come from abroad. I said if it’s given, be happy with it.

I also told my friend if your daughter really is worried, another options for her daughter to do would be slowly buy stuff now and send balikbayan boxes almost the time they come here and just store at her parents house and they will open it when they arrive. The daughter will be coming for a visit before Thanksgiving in the States this year. So they still have time to send balikbayan boxes then.

Really Bob, our kids and I will be happy seeing the daughter of our friend and her son-in-law. I saw her daughter when we were just new here from the States. Really that was over 10 years ago already.

February 12, 2015 by feyma

Our baby has babies!

Well, almost over a year ago I wrote about that we had new baby in the house. The name of that baby was Blue. Our helper got her from the ditch (canal) here near the house. Well just 10 months from we found her she gave us 5 kittens. The runt kitten died the next day. Blue didn’t feed her properly, really she abandoned him. We tried to feed him, but no luck. He was really weak. I never thought we will get kittens this early. We did have a female kitten before and it took awhile for me to have them taking care of (spayed) because they didn’t show signs to have it taking care of right away. Well, Blue was just different I guess.

We joke here at the house that we feel that Blue was a victim of a teen pregnancy. Firstly, she got pregnant early, then she just doesn’t know how to take care of her kittens at first. I guess sometimes now too. She gave birth a little over 3 weeks ago. Not the best mom ever. We also joke that she’s having postpartum depression. She would be in with the kitchen like just staring at something and sadness in her eyes. We’re giving her special attention while her babies were sleeping. We would cuddle her and rubbing her head or tummy. She’s close to Bob, Jean and Chris. She will leave her babies and stay in our bedroom to be on Bob’s lap and be cuddled. She will stay with me once in awhile. A lot of times we just bring her babies to our room and let her stay there until time for us to go to bed.

Blue is something else. When she gets nervous she will lay down/step on her babies, or she’s trying to hurt them by biting hard. It’s not the carrying kind of bite, its really hurting them. Sometimes she will bite the legs of her kittens. My kids will help her when time for feeding the babies. I bought those little bottles for the animals. She really gets nervous when she heard her babies made sounds. She thinks that they’re crying. We felt that her kittens are getting bigger and bigger everyday. We tried to feed Blue more, she feeds active 4 kittens now, we let her drinks lots of milk too.

By the way, we are naming her kittens in honor of Pope Francis visiting the Philippines. Blue give birth the 2nd day of Pope Francis arrival in the Philippines. The first born name is Pope (the easily recognized kitten), the other names are Francis, Tina (short for Argentina, where the Pope came from), Yolly (For Yolanda, Pope Francis visit the PI for the Yolanda victims), last was Jorge (unfortunately Jorge died, he was the runt). Jean, Chris, my niece Bebe and our helper Joy helped Blue during the birth. They even made record of what time every kitten were born. I’m proud of them for helping Blue and staying up late until she was done with the last kitten.

When they were born Pope was the biggest one. Now he’s the runt. He is the one also that easily recognized. He’s the one that had Blue’s color of hair and with some white on him. To be honest we had to put tag with the other 3 kittens. It’s so hard to recognized them, they had the same color of hair all over their body and the same size. For the record we are giving them away. We already had 4 cats in the house. I’m trying to convince everybody here in the house that we don’t need a cat anymore. I think it’s going to be hard to give them away. We are giving them to friends that we know. I want to give them to people that will take good care of them. But in all honesty, I might give the older ones and keep the 4 kittens. NOT…

February 5, 2015 by feyma

Building a house, native style: Nipa hut!

I’ve been asked by so many people by email on the cost of building a simple house here in the Philippines. Sometimes the budget that they can afford is just low for a very nice house. So an idea came to mind for me again while I was looking at my old photos. I came across the house (cottage) built by a friend in Samal.

Like most of the email, they say they already bought a small lot for them to build a simple house. So the house I was talking about it can be 2 bedroom and one bathroom in the loft. The downstairs with living room you can have sofa-bed or have a nice futon bed if you have company. The house also includes with kitchen and dining room and one bathroom downstairs. With nice front porch. The walls are all brick. The roof has tin roof and the owner puts a nipa material (like straw hat materials) or a cogon (blady grass, kunai grass, or Japanese blood grass) on top the tin roof to make to look like a native house. It’s a very nice house and the cost was reasonable. The cost of that house when we inquired with the the owner he said he had it done with roughly half a million pesos. When we talked to him that was over 7 years ago though.

What a beautiful “Nipa Hut”

So to date, the house that I am describing might cost a million or a little bit more now. But honestly it’s still reasonable with the nice brick and the good structure, for me it’s worth it. I saw just recently a friend built a house in Sarangani area with similar size and he built it for 1 million, it’s not brick but with a gorgeous view, I think it’s worth it. I liked both houses but I prefer the one in Samal the brick and the loft attracted me the most.

The thing what makes the house so attractive inside were the nice crown moldings and woodwork. They even used bamboo for some of the moldings and the woodwork. It’s really nice. Both houses, the owners decorated it with native furnishings and native accessories. I’m not really an Adirondack furniture kinda girl but they had it there and I liked it a lot. The side tables were made of bamboo too. The rails of the one in Samal I think he uses bamboo for the rails in the deck. He also uses if I remember in the ceiling lining were woven bamboo ply panels or the crushed bamboo. I’m trying to remember the place my friends, we were there ages ago already. LOL

Quite Nice

I went to a friend’s house and they had bamboo stick for a a wainscoting and a bigger piece of bamboo as the border. It looks good. Really I think partly to make the cost lesser for building a house here, would be by trying using the local and native materials. Ask your carpenters to treat any woods before using it. My carpenter uses woods too when I had something built here in the house, but he always buys something to treat the wood first. It worked for us.

Good luck and have fun building your vacation house or your dream house!!!

January 29, 2015 by feyma

Shopping for groceries: follow up post!

I wrote an article about shopping for groceries in 2007. I compared the price from the time we came here in 2000 – to the year 2007. So it’s been more than 7 years again.

For those who think that the Philippines is a cheap place to live, look at the jump in prices. And, think about the future, these price increases will only continue, you can be sure it won’t turn around.

I want to compare the prices then from 2007 – to the end of 2014. I was looking at the price from the year 2000 – 2007 and it was really a big difference. Just looking at it, now it really made a big jump on the prices.

Philippine Prices 2015

Grocery Item	2000 Price	2007 Price	2015 Price
Chicken per Kilo	P70	P115-120	P140-160
Can of Coke	P8.75	P15	P23
Noodles (Ramin/Lucky Me)	P3.25	P5.95	P8
Egg	P1.50	P3.75	P7
Rice per Kilo	P16	P29-30	P49-65

That’s just a few items that was on top of my head when I was writing the first post. Every 7 years it looks like the prices of the items almost jump twice as the previous price. Nowadays, you really have to wonder how can a family here in the Philippines that lives below the poverty line afford to eat descent meals everyday.

Inflation in the Philippines

The businessmen here were getting wiser though. Just for example they know the typical Filipino family can’t afford to buy the big tank of LPG/Gasul/Price Gas (the regular tank content about 11 kg inside), they now make a smaller tank content of 2.7 kg. If I remember we bought our 11 kg tank and full tank for P2k – P2,500 I think. That was around 15 years ago. We bought the bigger tank too. I can’t remember how much did we pay for that. To refill the biggest tank it will cost P3,500. The 11kg it’s between P700 – P900. I don’t know the 2.7 kg though. It must be cheaper. The prices will vary too.

Talking about the rice, the most important food in the Philippines. The 49 pesos rice, it’s already good. The low end rice might cost P30 (they called that NFA). Higher price rice the better. What I usually do with our rice, I will buy the 49 pesos, then I will buy some red color rice (denorado) and the black rice (they call it tapul in Bisaya). I mix all those rice and the color changes. Just put small amount of the tapul. If it’s white all the time it gets boring. It cost a little bit more but everyone in the house likes it. Even Bob, he eats rice porridge in the morning for breakfast. He likes the colored rice.

I just went to Swiss Deli today to buy bread. We like to buy their Ciabata bread. When we bought that bread many years back the bread was longer and cheaper. Now the ciabata bread got shorter and price higher. It just shows all the products really went up. Same with the powdered juice here like Tang, Nestea, Eight O’clock and many others. Prices were too higher and the content gets smaller.

It’s really easy to get imported items now, with S & R just around the corner from us. If you’re loaded with dough buying at S & R is not a pain for you. They almost have anything you want. I was looking at their meats. They have Wagyu meat, meat from Australia, New Zealand. Good looking meat. Imported seafoods & fish from the States.

Luckily, the people that lives below the poverty line now can afford at least for the clothing too. They had choices for Ukay-Ukay or those clothes that’s made in China or something that they sells now in many shops in Davao. 2 shirts sometimes cost 180 pesos or below. The thinner people really can get all the fashion they want. So many choices for them. I guess for bigger people just go for the ukay-ukay then.

Have fun living here! Cheers!!!