Good growing organic vegetables in Davao City!

April 24, 2014 by feyma

Good growing organic vegetables in Davao City!

Living here in the Philippines for 14 years, I’ve seen so many changes now compared to when we first arrived. At that time I hardly see different kinds of veggies that’s really good to make a salad. The only thing that’s good at that time I think here would be an iceberg lettuce. There could be some other kind but you had to fly to Manila & shop at the grocery stores there. Thank goodness for so many changes nowadays, living in the provinces of the Philippines gets way better now everyday.

I think early this year Bob mentioned to me that one of our foreigner friends told him about a nice and good organic garden that he knew that can be found here in Bajada, Davao City. When Bob said that I was thinking a big place for a garden in the middle of the city? So finally a couple of week or so ago Bob & I together with Jean went to the organic garden that a friend of ours mentioned to Bob. It’s quite a ways for us because we lived in the other side of city. But it’s worth going there. When we got there the garden was surprisingly small but it’s packed with the plants that the owner knows were good to grow in that environment and the land.

The owner his name is Rodelio. He is a doctor I think in profession. Studied here in the Philippines, but continued his college days in the States. Stayed there and worked hard, then came back here after his retirement. He loved the outdoors so much after coming back to the PI, he then decided to do farming especially planting different kinds of herbs.

I was so surprised seeing different kinds of good veggies for a good salad. He grows romaine lettuce, iceberg, purple lettuce, arugula, I think he had oak leaf lettuce, watercress, and other vegetable like eggplant (Japanese & local), carrots (regular & baby), cherry tomatoes and the big tomatoes, different kind of chili peppers (different variety), spinach, squash, radish, onions, cucumber (local & foreign kinds), I think he had asparagus there too and many others.

He also has different kinds of herb spices like basil (different kinds), cilantro, parsley, dill, sage, chives, mint (different kinds), lemon grass, oregano, turmeric, rosemary, thyme and many more. Rodelio also makes sun-dried tomato. Saying that you have to reserve because it will be gone in an instant. We will order that next time. We still have some sun-dried tomatoes, next time we’re out we’ll definitely order from there to try them out. They also made this coconut wine vinegar with turmeric, ginger, garlic and other herbs inside. I bought one bottle like a liter inside. We didn’t use it right away co’z I know that they just newly put the vinegar inside and the spices. When we get home I told Jean & my niece to try to put some small chili (siling labuyo) inside the bottle and let it close for a few days. I could just taste that it’s not that strong of the flavor yet. Now, the longer it stays in the cupboards not open for almost 2 weeks the taste gets better and stronger. We like the flavor of the vinegar now.

One thing also that’s good with the owner. If you happen to have a seedling that you bought from the States or any place abroad, he will try to plant the seeds for you. If the seeds grows good here, you will get to harvest with him too. We like onions, we are thinking of getting him a vidalia onion seeds or some other sweet onions. Thinking of some other seeds that we want that he didn’t have there yet. I forgot to mentioned above that he also owned a land in Cabantian area. He said its almost a hectare, he planted lots of veggies there and some sweet corn. Wednesdays & Saturdays are the harvest days both farms the one near Abreeza and in Cabantian. They will also bring the veggies that were harvested from the Cabantian farm to the one near Abreeza. You can also do the harvesting yourself of what veggies you want.

The name of his place is “Wynward Organic Vegetables & Bistro”. Located at Regina Dalisay Compound, Bajada, Davao City. Just at the back of Abreeza mall on the Obrero side. He also cooked food there if you want to eat there, just call him ahead of time. Maybe he can tell you what’s his special on that day. We didn’t try the bistro yet.

Try to see and visit the place and tell Rodel hello from us!

December 26, 2013 by feyma

My homemade pumpkin-kalabasa pie!

I am giving you now the recipe for my pumpkin-kalabasa pie, Feyma’s style. It’s really a simple recipe. You also just need another local ingredients here in the Philippines. The main ingredients would be the kalabasa (a local squash). You can buy the Kalabasa in any malls here. Of course a good and cheap kalabasa can be found in the palengke (public market). At least there you can really choose the size of the kalabasa that you want. We are so choosy with ours. We want it the outside will be on the almost orange side. It means the kalabasa is ripe and good to cook for the purpose of making pie.

Pumpkin Pie in the Philippines

My niece Glenda is the expert of choosing ripe kalabasa, since her parents, they had a whole farm of it. She’s trained by her parents to harvest and choose the ripe one. So when it comes to buying our kalabasa here, I am sending her. Now our helper is good too. But I am learning in that department. I’m kind of good on doing that now too. I’ve seen butternut squash here in some of our malls. But I am not using that for my pie. It’s more money than the kalabasa. So for sure we will never use butternut squash.

“First job before making the pie is to make the squash (kalabasa) puree”:

Pies galore

To boil the squash:

1 whole ripe squash (kalabasa) – cut into cubes
Pinch of salt
Brown sugar

Procedures:

Wash the kalabasa and peel off the skin. Make sure to not leave any of the skin and the seeds and the stringy fibers before cutting into cubes. If skin not properly remove it might give a bitter taste. And it will ruin the taste of your pie.
Put water to a big pot and put a pinch of salt and bring to a boil.
Add the kalabasa to the boiling water and cook for about 40 minutes or until its tender when pierced with a fork.
Puree the kalabasa in a blender, or food processor or in a food mill or with a hand held blender or potato masher or by hand. Giving you too many options there. LOL
Let it cool. Save the extra for kalabasa bread, cookies or a pancake.

***** Kalabasa (squash) – Pumpkin Pie *****

Thanksgiving fun isn’t complete without pumpkin pie

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups pureed kalabasa
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 egg, beaten
1 cup evaporated milk (Alaska, Alpine & Angel brand or other brand is good too)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A pinch of allspice
A pinch of ground cloves
A pinch of ground ginger
A pinch of nutmeg
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).
In a mixer: combine the squash, brown sugar, cornstarch, egg, milk, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Mix until combined and smooth (might have to use strainer to make sure it’s not lumpy).
Pour into the unbaked pie shell.
Bake in a preheated oven for an hour or more, or until when you insert in the middle of the pie with toothpick it comes out clean.

Let it cool before serving. When serve put whip cream on top. Yummy for your tummy.

Have fun eating. Maybe you will make kalabasa pie for your Noche Buena.

Merry Christmas To All Of You LIP Family/Reader!!!

December 19, 2013 by feyma

My homemade yams!

Another recipe that we made here in the house during Thanksgiving, using local ingredients is Yams. In the States they use sweet potatoes for the yams. Here in the Philippines we use the camote (similar looks to the sweet potato in the USA). Growing up here in the Philippines, we cooked the camote in lots of ways. Like slicing the camote into round sort of thin slice, maybe like around quarter of an inch, fry it until tender then add sugar. Other ways is just by boiling it and it can be substitute as a rice, eat with fish kinilaw (similar to sashimi). Really good to have that dish eating in the beach. Other ways of cooking is by boiling and mashed it and add sugar and wrapped it with lumpia wrapper and fry. All the dishes that I mentioned were really good but the yams is really something else. Its so good.

The holiday table

Feel free to share here some of your sweet potato/camote recipe.

***** Homemade Yams (Sweet Potato) Recipe *****

Ingredients:

2 lbs camote
2+ cups brown sugar (Keep tasting until it comes to the sweetness you desire)
2 cups marshmallow
pinch of salt
3/4 – 1 cup of butter (eyeball if needed more)

Yams at left, and other holiday food

Procedures:

Peel and quartered the potatoes. Boiled water in a large pot and add a pinch of salt. Boil the camote for 20 minutes or so, or until the camote are no longer crunchy; when its cooked. Drain just a little of the water. Not all to avoid dryness. Mash it with the potato masher and add the butter and the sugar. Keep tasting and add more sugar and butter if needed. Put like 1/2 cup of the marshmallow and mix to the mixture.
Butter the bottom of the 8 x 8 Pyrex oven dish. Pour the camote mixture to the dish. And put the rest of the marshmallow on top of the mixture.
Bake at 250 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or until brown. Really keep an eye for not to get burn.

***** Wondering if marshmallow is readily available here in the Philippines? Definitely yes. Almost all the malls carry it. If one mall is out, usually the other mall has it. Here in Davao one place that you will always see marshmallow is at Baker’s Basket, along Mabini Street, Davao City. Not far from Central Bank. Just near MacArthur Highway. S & R carries them too. *****

We do cook yams not just during Thanksgiving. Sometimes on some other occasions too. We are addicted to yams I guess. Ha ha ha.

Have fun eating you guys. Happy Holidays!!!

December 12, 2013 by feyma

My homemade stuffing: Feyma’s style!

I posted a Thanksgiving article with photos of the menu that we prepared here in the house for that day. I also put that on my Facebook account and I got requests for the menu there as well. They just are interested to know what did I do to cook the said menu with lack of ingredients here in the Philippines. A lot of people really are shocked when I revealed that I made stuff with what our place can offer. They just could not believe that I can make a pretty decent menu here using almost all local ingredients. I was even shocked myself that me and my gang of cooks here in the house prepared a nice meal for us for Thanksgiving. LOL.

When you’ve got a turkey, you just gotta have stuffing!

Really me and my niece Glenda and daughter Jean really worked hard to have a very nice Thanksgiving meal here in our house. I could not do it alone. I’m so thankful that they’re there helping me out. Of course with so many tasters here in the house I’m grateful to them too. Ha ha ha.

I got messages here on LiP and on my FB account, some even messaged me privately. They wanted the recipe. So here’s one of the many recipes that I will be posting here in the weeks to come. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as my family did. Hope this recipe will give you an idea for your next Thanksgiving or in any occasions.

Have a good eat!

*****Home made Stuffing*****

Ingredients:

3-4 loaves French bread for croutons or any bread you like (ciabata, white or whole wheat bread) will do.
1/2 kilo breakfast sausage
2 or more cups chopped onions (we like lots of onions)
1 cup celery (chopped)
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
2 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon sage (I don’t really use sage since Bob don’t like it)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt ( adding more salt if needed)
1 tablespoon canola or olive oil

*** Cooking & preparing the croutons: ”Cut the bread into cube and place it in cookie sheet. Mix a little bit of olive oil into the cube bread (around 2 tablespoons) and put in the oven over 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep an eye until the bread turn brown. Really keep a close eye for it not to get burn“.

Delicious Stuffing

Procedures:

In a large pan or skillet put the canola or the olive oil over medium high heat, put the breakfast sausage break up with a wooden spoon and saute until lightly browned and cook through (no more pink inside). Don’t overcook it. Drain and put in a bowl and set aside.
In the same pan, melt the butter and cook the onions and saute until translucent, maybe around 3-5 minutes. Add the celery and cook for maybe 3 minutes until softened over medium heat. Add the thyme and sage keep stirring. Add the cook croutons, stir, add salt & Pepper to taste. then add the chicken broth.
Let it cool before stuffing the turkey.

Note: *** With the extra stuffing, put that in the oven dish and put like the turkey neck on top. What I did I put small cut outs of butter on top of the stuffing. Bake in the oven on a 325 degrees Fahrenheit for maybe 35 minutes or until cook through and crust forms on top. But keep an eye.

December 5, 2013 by feyma

Christmas is giving to the less fortunate here!

Well Thanksgiving is over. Time for us to think now of the Christmas shopping. We are so lucky that we can buy even just a few presents for our kids and give some to our friends and family. Living here now for 13+ years, I’ve seen people – too many people here struggling to buy food for their Noche Buena for their family. It’s really sad but that’s the reality here. Noche Buena – A Filipino tradition for midnight dinner for the whole family on Christmas Eve.

I think you probably read here how we started the first Martin family tradition of giving away. We were just sitting on our office in our house one Christmas eve many years ago. Bob said to me that “Hon, I don’t feel the Christmas spirit here because I think I don’t feel the cold weather“. We kind of just smile to each other. Then after awhile he told me what if we will buy something like burgers from McDonalds and cookies and juices and candies from the grocery stores for the homeless people here in the city. So I called up McDonalds if they can provide me with 200 burgers and I will be picking it up in a few hours. I told them of my purpose for the burgers. They were so happy and so helpful that they said yes they will get it ready for me. They told me too that they will get some of the burgers from there other branches of McDonald here in the city. They also provided me with plastic bags so that I can put some of the other goodies in it. So we headed out to town and found homeless people in the city.

Then later we the headed towards Diversion Road and found so many beggars on the road. My goodness our burgers were gone immediately. But it was really fun giving away to them, since they’re not expecting it. We did it for a few years from our very own money. Of course it’s just limited since the funds were only ours and not so big. Until later when LiP was born. Bob started asking here from you guys our readers if you guys can pitch-in. And you guys did without questions. Now we got the LiP DRIVE. So really thankful that you guys did. We can now give out a lot and so many less fortunate people can put a smile on their faces.

I’ve encountered too many events during our giving away. A few of them really remains in my heart and it really humbles me. And it also taught more lessons to my kids. One of the events that stuck in my head was this event: A few years ago when we were giving out near BUDA (the Davao/Bukidnon border). On the way, we stop by at the road side because we saw an older lady, with her I think her daughter or a grand daughter. It’s really hard to say, she might just be looking older because of harder life. She’s getting ready to ride her horse, we stopped and and said hi to her and the little girl. We greeted her Merry Christmas and started handing her some food for the Noche Buena and some goodies for the little girl. She was shocked and didn’t know what to think, she just started crying and she said that “you guys are the angels sent from above” because she said she was praying for miracle because she didn’t know if they will have food for that night. You know what, tears were rolling my eyes and I know Bob too upon hearing her say that. Our kids saw it and I could see their sadness for the lady’s struggles but happy that at least they had food for the holidays. To be honest, It even brought tears to my eyes until now when remembering that day. Really we hear too many stories similar to that lady when we went out giving. Our kids really enjoyed doing it. They like to go to a little remote area and give there because those people never expect somebody like us to go there and just give. It’s good to give to people you don’t know and they are not expecting to get anything from anybody that day. The smiles and the sparkles of their eyes are priceless.

It’s been a good thing that we did give each year here. Our kids really know that too many poor people live here. I could tell by just watching them that they really care also for the poor people here. Our kids always look forward on every giveaway. They help out packing the stuff. It’s really a team effort by all of us. If you can help again this year, please send an email to: [email protected] and you will get full instructions on how to donate. Thanks to all of you that contribute.

We give 100% of all your donations to the less fortunate people here. I know that all of us struggles with the hard economy right now, but if you have some extra money, that amount can really feed to one of the poor family here in the Philippines. We are so grateful for your sacrifices too. More people will contribute, more people will have food for their Noche Buena. We can put a smile to the faces of the people here, the children especially.

From the bottom of my heart “THANK YOU SO MUCH” for helping our cause. To our LIP Family, I’m forever thankful to God for you guys.

A Merry Christmas to you all!!!