Do The Fondue

Everybody loves chocolate.  At least everyone that I know does.  So, what do you think of melted, warm chocolate with cream?  That’s how chocolate fondue is made.  Since I bought my fondue set and served fondue a number of times, it has not once failed to fetch praises for me.  Here’s my recipe:

220 grams hershey’s chocolate

200 ml cream (all purpose of heavy cream)

Assorted fruits, cheese, large white marshmallows, cake

ground nuts

Take out the chocolate from its individual wrappers.  Mix it with the cream. Let the chocolate melt directly over very low heat or in a double boiler.  What ever you prefer, just don’t burn the chocolate.  Keep stirring until it is just melted.  You don’t have to make it boil because the idea to is to serve it warm but ready to ingest. Transfer your chocolate fondue in the fondue set.

Cut the fruits, cheeses and cake into 1″ x 1″ cubes.  If you are using marshmallows, get the jetpuffed ones from Kraft.  But of course other brands will do too. 

Serve your fruits, cheese, cake, marshmallows and nuts in small bowls, 1 type of food per bowl.  Arrange them around the fondue set and put some forks near it.  Or you can put them in barbecue sticks so they are ready to be dipped in the fondue.  After dipping one fruit or cheese, roll it over some nuts.  Keep the chocolate warm by lighting a candle or burner beneath the fondue bowl.  This will keep the chocolate from hardening.  Give it an occasional stir to keep the chocolate from burning.

Some of the best food for dipping are bananas, pears, apples, cheese and banana cake.  Others like brownies in it but I personally don’t like too much chocolate so I don’t add those.  Anyhow, whatever you like can be dipped.  It’s just a matter of preference.

Some Like It Hot - Rediscovering Curry

Curry has been one of my favorites for some time now.  I’ve learned to eat it since I was 18 years old, when my dad cooked in the house of my aunt in Cebu.  We had stayed there for about 5 years until the time we bought our own house. 

It was on a Christmas eve.  We didn’t want anything traditional that year so we had other exotic food.  My dad, who is really fond of spicy food, said he’d cook chicken curry.  He served it with some bread and since then became a family favorite. 

Lately, as I was thinking of something to cook, I remembered how we used to like dad’s curry.  Let me share it with you:

Ingredients:

1 kilo Chicken, cut - all thighs, or all legs or breast, or a combination will be fine

Garlic - about 3 cloves, minced.  More would be better.

Onion - 1 pc.  sliced

Ginger - about the size of a thumb, julienned

1/4 cup vinegar

1 large potato or 2 medium sized ones - cut into wedges

2 cups coconut milk

curry powder

lemon grass (about 15 leaves, bundled)

1 bay leaf

Green peppers - about 6 pieces

Chilli peppers sliced thinly - about 10 pieces (optional; reduce amount if you want it less hot)

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

 

Procedure:

 Combine vinegar, chicken, black pepper, bay leaf, lemon grass onion, garlic and ginger in a pot with about 1/2 cup water.  If you’re using one of those pots that make the juices of meats come out, omit the water.  Cover it tightly and cook on low heat for about 15 minutes.  Do not stir. 

Add 1/2 cup of the coconut milk and the rest of the ingredients to the chicken.  When potatoes are done, add the remaining coconut milk. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Notes:

You may replace chicken with beef, pork, shrimp or any meat.  When cooking shrimp or any crustacean, I suggest you take the crustacean off from the fire when cooking the other ingredients.  Combine it again when adding the remaining coconut milk.   Also, it is better to omit the vinegar for seafoods.  Vinegar is better when cooking fish or chicken. 

We normally like using freshly baked loaf bread with it.  Just slice it and serve.  Additionally, you may want to have some butter on your bread and heat it a little.  It adds more flavor to the curry. 

Serve the curry garnished with slices of green and red bell peppers.

How to eat it?  Simple.  Get a slice of bread. Break it into small pieces with your hands.  Dip a piece into the curry sauce and dunk it in your mouth.  Smell the aroma and, hey, watch your diet!   Tee hee.

Happy eating!

More Money Making Sites

Lately, I’ve been treasure hunting. That just means I’ve been trying to look for sites that could increase my income. So far, I’ve seen the following:

1. Triond.com - this one allows you to write and publish practically anything including pictures, audio files, movies, etc. and allows you to earn from them. It’s almost worry-free because they mostly take care of submitting your stuff to the appropriate sites. You don’t have to have a site. You can just use your wordprocessing software such as Word and upload your document to the Triond submit page. Did I say they give you royalties on a monthly basis?

2. Linkworth.com - this site is really fantastic and almost unbelievable. It has almost everything you can think of to make money from your blog or even static websites. It allows you to review advertisers’ sites, post paid-links on your blog, and others that I have yet to discover. Also, they can market your own site should you decide to let them do that for you for a fee, of course.

3. Hubpages.com - you write articles on their site and earn through google adsense, amazon and ebay. The only thing you need to do aside from writing is to tag your articles and make sure you have your adsense, amazon and ebay accounts registered with them.

So, that’s about it for this time. I’ll give you an update when I’ve earned from other sites. Hasta la vista, baby!

Why Can’t I Create A Sitemap Here?

I’ve spent more than 10 hours just trying to create a sitemap in WordPress.  this is for my Tabi Tabi Po Blog which is hosted in blogger.com  (http://www.pinas-et-al.blogspot.com).  Somehow, the formatting gets all messed up just when I’ve had a few links already.  Like the first one got messed up when I’ve had 10 or so links.  The 2nd one became messier right on probably the 11th or 12 link.  Any ideas? 

China Goods in Zhuhai for Business?

We’re back from our China Trip. One of the things I checked out was the prospect to importing goods from the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone. Well, too bad for me. Those that I saw were not cheap enough to be brought to the Philippines. With all the taxes and the trouble you’d have to go through, the business will not be lucrative. In fact, some goods are better off bought here. For example, the 2 G flashdrive which cost approximately 600 pesos if bought there is available here at the the mall for only about 530 php. That means from the source it could be had for a much lower price.

My husband’s cousin was telling me about another place in Zhuhai. Well, I have to check it out again the thought of which makes me smile. Travelling always interests me you know.

Blogging While You’re Away?

I was thrilled to learn that Blogger has a feature that allows you to write your blog and have it published long after you have written it. You see, we’re leaving for China on Saturday and my problem was that I will be away from blogging for a long time. Not having an entry on my blogs for at least once in 7 days would affect the website’s reader recall and I might lose my readership. This and my other blogs are fairly new and I can’t afford that. Then I suddenly read today on the blogger home that they already have this feature. I just simply have to save my blog in draft and set the date and time when I’d lke to have it published. And voila! My worries have been answered. Thanks Blogger!

An Academic Award for an Acevedo

On April 3, 2008, my daughter, Ikee, received 3 awards from her school:   

• for being earning the 3rd honors
• for being ranked 3rd in the whole freshamn level
• for deportment

Her teacher approached me the day before that.  Apparently, the ceremony was by rsvp because the Pasig Convention Center was being renovated and the scholars’ assembly this year was going to be held at their school grounds only.  He had told me that Ikee was ranked #3 in the freshman level but that she didn’t make it to 2nd honors. 

According to him, although her grades were very high, she got an 89 in MAPEH (Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health) which disqualified her.  She had been awarded 2nd honors last 3rd quarter and that’s really fine by me.  Why?  Because I knew all along that with her scoliosis, she wouldn’t be able to get a good grade in PE.  Really, because of it, I didn’t even expect that she would be able to attend the assembly.

When Ikee first told me about it, she embraced me and said she’s sorry that she didn’t make it to the 2nd honors.  I merely replied “Even if you didn’t make it to the 3rd, I’d still be happy.  You did your best and that’s all that matters.” <smile>

Ecommerce and Shopping cart - another way to earn

One good way to earn online is to have an online store or business. Two of the no risk businesses I’d recommend are expedia.com and the amazon store. It’s really easy because you just have to sign up with them and paste the html code in your website and voila! you have a store/business that will earn for you. Well, that’s only good if you have a huge traffic to your site.

Another one is having your own business. There are many things you can sell. The point is, when you sell, you should have real products and a good shopping cart so that you don’t have to be online the whole time. Just be sure t regularly check out your system and also be aware of hackers. The risk is 100% yours with this type of busines.

Are You For Hillary Clinton?

Clinton presently leads the presidential race according to some survey. If you were to choose among the US presidential candidates, who would you choose?

Here’s what Uncle Bob has to say:

“I think filipinos must support Hillary. Filipinos joined their war last WW II and they should also be given special treatment in the US. War destroyed the Philippines and until now the economic condition of our country is not good. Many of us wanted the US to take over this country to end corruption.”

Jane:
I don’t agree with that. Having the US take over this country will not end corruption. They are not devoid of it in their country so why would they bother with us here? The war which you refer to had the US’ hand dipped in it too and they are still involved in several wars up to the present time. If we become a US territory, we would be at risk of having their enemies attack us. The question is are we genuinely interested to eradicate corruption. If we answer yes, the next question is are we ourselves not involved in any corruption practice no matter how small? This would probably be more difficult to nod to since just the mere giving of favors to our friends and family, even without return, is by itself corruption already. If you do it, then why can’t another one do it, and why not another one too and another and soon, before you know it, everybody thinks he or she should be allowed to do it. Corruption is like fire - it spreads rapidly and creates a backdraft when you try to contain it. The best way to end corruption is not by having Hillary elected but by being police to our own actions. Honesty and dedication from top brass to grass root levels. Let’s not raise our flags to them because of an issue which we alone can resolve.

What can you say?

The Boy Who Cried "Aquos"!

Paolo Migurel Yumang Garcia, the son of my brother Jun, sang one of the commercials of the Aquos Sharp TV in Japan. He’s 11 years old but he’s done some really good shows since he was 4 years old. Lately, he’s done another song which is recorded on disc and is available for sale in Japan. If you type his name on google, it will yield a lot of link to the sample of his song. Check it out and be proud. YOu belong to a clan of multitalented individuals.