Rachael Ray is in my Kitchen!

Her cookware collection that is! This lovely 10-piece hard-anodized cookware collection from the 30-Minute Meals Queen surprisingly arrived today courtesy of my very generous mother in New York! Thank you mom!!! Such a sweet treat after a very exhausting day editing a video for a client. I hardly got up from my chair until this balikbayan box rang the bell! I was so thrilled to find Rachael, among many other nice things. I’ll tell you more about the loot next time. She really sent me a lot of cool stuff!

Anyway… about my mother… yeah she likes to shop, and lucky me – she likes to shop for her eldest bratinella. Hahaha! I’m not kidding when I say that she lovingly calls me her “spoiled brat” and in return, my term of endearment for her is “my crazy mom” – yes, we are your typical dysfunctional mother-daughter tandem.

My mom loves to shop for us. As a kid, I was fortunate to be never left out when it came to having the latest toy – Barbie, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony… And I always had those frilly Cinderella dresses for every special occasion. As a teenager, my mother fed my infatuation over Brandon & Dylan (If you’re still in your 20s, I bet you don’t know these guys) by sending me lots and lots of 90210 stuff. Fast forward to when I became an adult, she introduced me to H&M and I just got hooked too. I was blessed to have imported bags and clothes because of her. Would you believe she was the one who bought me all my SATC DVDs, with matching coffee table book and a board game? When I got married and I got into baking and REAL cooking, she’s been sending me super nice stuff from Martha Stewart, Rachel Ashwell, Wilton… and now Rachael Ray!

I’m not complaining. But you know what I realized? It’s just like those times when I was a little girl playing with my dolls in my make-believe afternoon tea party. I guess, in my mom’s eyes I’m still that “little girl” she regrettably left when she and my dad split. She didn’t see me grow up. ‘Til now, she sends me these “toys” (much more expensive though than when I was five) I guess as a way to make up for lost time. I’m just wondering though if my mom actually subconsciously thinks I’m still just playing my usual “Bahay-Bahayan” now. Haha! Would you believe that she actually forgot, for one moment a couple of months after my wedding, that I was already married? But I checked the box that arrived today and she dutifully addressed it to Virgilind Palarca. So I guess it has finally sunk in.

I was so excited to use my new cookware today but I was just too doggone tired from video editing that ironically, and quite shamefully, the first thing I ever cooked on my brand-new state-of-the-art cooking pan was scrambled eggs! HAHAHA! I’m not kidding. I was too tired to cook anything fancy tonight! So I’ll just make it up with Rachael tomorrow… On second thought, Rachael Ray is the queen of quick dinners so why should I be ashamed of scrambled eggs? :-)

Anyway, before I take these babies on test drive, let Rachael herself explain how she came up with the brilliant idea of OVAL shaped pots...

Rachael Ray talks about her Oval Pots and Pans from rachaelray.com on Vimeo.