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.

In Labor on Labor Day

Not THAT kind of labor. It was literally Labor Day for my husband and me yesterday May 1 as we did a general clean-up of our apartment. Unfortunately, since we’re only renting the place for another year, we really can’t do some renovations or major sprucing up to make it picture pretty for Real Living magazine, just like my friend and former neighbor Frances’s pad. Oh but I don’t think I can ever keep a stylized pad like theirs. Hehe. We’re just simple folks.

Anyway, our place was already fully-furnished when we got it. We just brought in our LCD TV and some small kitchen appliances. We admit, our nest isn’t exactly best-dressed. But for now what’s more important is that it’s clean and organized enough that I can still navigate my kitchen even when I’m blindfolded. I’ve always been Ms. Tidy when it comes to housekeeping but lately due to tons of work, I’ve become sloppy. So yesterday, we did what we had to do – CLEAN THE HOUSE.

Our 80 square meter 2-BR loft-style condo now is more challenging to clean than my single-life abode which is about 30 sq. m smaller, but what I love about our new place is that I have a spacious kitchen/dining area to work in. The windows are large so there’s a flood of natural light in the room.



I love my new kitchen and all my prized gadgets. My favorite yellow Kitchenaid mixer obviously is the pièce de résistance of my “culinary playground” so the whole area is (almost) color coordinated around it. Then my mom recently gave us a new Cuisinart coffeemaker and that has been my hubby’s favorite toy in the kitchen. This is already our 3rd coffeemaker in just a year of being married. (Yes, we are coffee-holics!) And we swear by this brand’s brew! Now we know why it’s expensive. My husband and I say that it’s only a matter of time ‘til we purchase our first espresso machine.

Thanks to our family Wi-Fi, I don’t need a permanent work station for my laptop. I can blog from bed, from our black leather couch, but most of the time, I do my writing on the kitchen bar counter.

It’s really a delight for me to see my husband doing household chores. He’s not exactly the “homemaker” type, if you know what I mean. But that was before. He’s getting into the game now. :-) Before, I’d get worried every time I had to be out of town for a couple of days because I’m sure to be greeted by a dusty floor when I get home. My husband is such a klutz when it comes to household chores but I definitely give him the crown for ironing clothes. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of pressing. For my personal wardrobe, I’ve always leaned towards picking jersey and other non-wrinkly fabrics.

But that’s about it for him in the housekeeping turf. Everything else is my domain. For cleaning the bathroom, I swear by Mr. Muscle. It really melts the grime faster than all other brands I have ever tried. Since I’m in the cleaning mood, I’ve been poring over the pages of Martha Stewart’s Home Keeping Handbook – one of the very first things that my mom gave me before I got married last year. Speaking of Martha, I personally think she’s better in home keeping than in baking or cooking. She’s got that OC perfectionist personality in her that just screams like white ceramic tiles. Alderson Federal Prison sure was lucky to have the Queen of Clean scrubbing their toilets.



Cleaning by the way can be a nice bonding time for husbands and wives. Joseph and I really enjoyed our Labor Day date. But if cleaning’s not your thing you can always hire a professional cleaner. I hire my friend’s cleaning company to shampoo our mattresses and carpets because that’s something I can’t do. But for everything else, as long as there’s the vacuum cleaner, the mop, the duster, the broom, the rags, and all my favorite cleaning chemicals, it’s Mrs. Palarca literally in labor!

Cooking... Blogging... and Meryll Streep

I’m really excited about this upcoming film starring my all-time favorite Hollywood actress Meryll Streep and newcomer funny gal Amy Adams. The movie’s title is “Julie & Julia” and is directed by Rom-Com Genius of the ‘90s Nora Ephron. Remember “Sleepless in Seattle” “You’ve Got Mail”… okay, you get the picture. I love it because it’s about three things that I absolutely adore: Cooking… Blogging… and Meryll Streep. Here’s the basic plot:

Frustrated temp secretary Julie Powell (Amy Adams) embarks on a year-long culinary quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” She chronicles her trials and tribulations in a blog that catches on with the food crowd.

The film by the way is based on a real life story of Julie Powell herself who really blogged about her cooking attempts. The blog became such a hit that she eventually published it into a book entitled "Julie & Julia". Hmmm, now there's a great idea. Do you think "Memoirs of a New Missus" would fly off the shelves? (thought bubbles hover me now)

Anyway, Julia Child is played by Meryll of course, and in case you don’t know who Julia Child is… before there was a Martha, Giada, Rachael and the Barefoot Contessa, Julia Child was the TV Chef that all housewives in the ‘50s emulated.


(left) Meryll as Julia Child and the real Julia Child (right)

In the film, we would be seeing two eras in juxtapose as present day Julie struggles with gourmet cooking in a tiny New York apartment while Julia begins to build her culinary brand in the ’50s. Cooking then becomes the metaphor for their life and love issues. That’s just my literary analysis. (Me and my penchant for metaphors!)



I was kind of inspired with the story and made me think about putting up blog posts of my own kitchen adventures. I usually just post resto finds & recipes that I have tried and tweaked but I have never written about my experience in making them, and the whole drama that went behind it (if there were any). I actually have 2 new beautiful cookbooks (Martha Stewart's Cooking School and Classic Recipes book set by Hershey’s, Campbells and Eagle Brand) sent to me as presents by my secret “sweet” kitchen fairy. I call her my kitchen fairy because she has been so generous in sending me trivets, kitchenware and cookbooks every time she does some spring cleaning in her home. This famous lady loves to spread the love on homemaking. Thanks to her, I’ve been able to make cupcakes with my favorite gadget – a yellow Kitchenaid Mixer – which I named after her. I’ve told her that she should put up her own brand of home ware like Martha. She’s already got the name. Anyway, that’s enough about her. You might already guess who she is. Hehe. :-)


(left) My yellow Kitchenaid Mixer, a gift 2 yrs ago... (right) and cooking for hubby's bday

Anyway, I really can’t wait for this new film. I love Meryll Streep’s movies. Be it drama, comedy, and even theater… she’s done it all. I love her best in comedies. Here are my FAVE FIVE MERYLL STREEP COMEDY MOVIES: “Postcards from the Edge” (I love the mother-daughter issues of this story)… “She-Devil” (Her character seriously made me think about wanting to become a romance novelist when I was a kid)… “Death Becomes Her” (two words: Goldie Hawn)… “The Devil Wears Prada” (She was so deliciously evil!)… “Mamma Mia” (Again, this really reminded me of my mom and I during my own wedding. Mama drama galore! And her character Donna, is so like my mom. She’s funny like that. Haha!)



Of course, she ain’t Meryll Streep if not for the tear-jerking Oscar worthy roles. HERE ARE MY FAVE FIVE MERYLL STREEP DRAMATIC FILMS: “Kramer vs Kramer” (Again, she reminded me of mom when she left my dad and our family)… “The Bridges of Madison County” (I’ve really always wondered about falling in love in that age)… “Adaptation” (with director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman, need I say more?)… “The Hours” (There was a time back in my melancholic years that I loved Virginia Woolf’s works)… “Angels in America” (An HBO mini-series that had her playing 4 roles. Wow talk about versatility)



But more than her craft, I am more delighted about the fact that she’s been married with 4 children for 30 years to the same man. Now, that’s a rarity in Hollywood. She’s really proof that fame and fortune don’t always destroy families.

Easy DIY Photo Tricks

What did my husband and I do during the Holy Week? We stayed home... slept 'til 2PM (I'm not exaggerating… watched DVDs… cleaned our storage room… went through a million photos for the church commemorative book (okay, now I’m exaggerating)… and had fun with our digital photos! Let me share with you some of the really cool sites that allowed us to tweak and tinker with our pictures.

Our 1st Wedding Anniversary is just a week from now and in lieu of our original plan which is to take a trip abroad (due to budget and time constraints), we decided instead to host a special dinner exclusively for our marital godfathers and their wives and my husband’s best men (best friends too) and their SOs. It’s just going to be a small party for 20 people. We’re going DIY so we made our invitation using a template from this site called Silly Scenes and this is how our invitation came out.

I chose this template for its old world charm which complements our dinner party venue -- @ the Silid ng Bituin of the Adarna Food & Culture.

And then, for our tokens we thought of giving our guests a mock magazine cover as a souvenir photo. Hehe. Just for fun! There are a lot of sites that offer mock magazine cover tricks but we love Big Huge Labs because you can save your image without having to buy it from them and you can make it more personalized. Other sites have templates that cannot be altered. Although it’s low res, it’s pretty good enough to print out on 4R or 3R photo sizes. However, they do offer a High Res pass which is exclusive (I think) to Flicker subscribers. This pass allows you to order and/or save it as a High Res image. By the way check out the other tricks offered on this site. They’re so cool and user-friendly… and best of all idiot-friendly!

Aside from the magazine cover photo, we are also giving our guests a DVD which contains the following videos: Our full wedding coverage… Our pre-nup video that we weren’t able to show during our wedding ‘coz of technical glitches (sigh)… Our Sweet Life Interview with Lucy Torres… and a Photo Slideshow Video that features the events that happened in our first year of marriage. I edited this on my own using the Muvee Autoproducer 6 software that came with my HP Pavilion Notebook. It’s more fun than Windows Moviemaker because it’s got more cute templates and video effects.

The Craziness that is Christmas!

Where do I even begin? Finally, I found the time to blog. Ever since the 2nd half of December started rolling the word “BUSY” could not suffice for what I went through. Between December 15 to 19 I had 5 scripts to submit – one for a concert and 4 others for a sales conference that’s slated in early January 2009. Of course on top of everything else let us not forget that ‘tis the season to be in mad Christmas rush. In between strapping thy self to my home office chair and click-clacking away these work projects, I also had to go to year-end business meetings, last minute client calls, and of course I had a gift list to complete, grocery shopping to do for the Noche Buena, bills to pay, Christmas parties to go to, etc, etc… aaaccckkk!!!! I told myself earlier this last quarter that I would not in any way take part of the holiday frenzy but here I am smack in the middle of the war zone.

Anyway it’s finally December 25 so let me say MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Now I can finally kick back, relax and just sleep all day… well at least ‘til the preparations for New Year’s Eve start kicking in. So technically beginning today I have about 4 days of peace and quiet.

So here were some of the highlights…

After I have submitted my scripts last week, I had one day free while waiting for the inputs of my director. Not wasting any time, I finally had the chance to dispose the box full of “pre-loved” clothes that we have sorted out of our closet. I was able to join the last leg of the bazaar at church. I earned enough to buy groceries for the party I was slated to host three days after.

During the weekend, I had some work to do – the last one for this year. I wrote the continuity spiels for the concert “Ogie Sings with the Idols” at the Aliw Theater, featuring American Idol 2008 Finalist Ramiele Malubay. Hey, here’s some trivia: Magkasing-tangkad or should I say magkasing-liit lang kami ni Ramiele. Hehe. :-) Too bad I was so busy that night. I forgot to take a photo with her just to prove the height similarity. Hahaha.

The concert had 2 runs – Saturday and Sunday – and on each day, my schedule was as jam-packed as the other. On December 20, Saturday before running to the concert, I had to whip up a dinner for four. My husband thought of inviting his COC mates over to our house for their pre-Christmas fellowship/prayer meeting so he lovingly requested his wife (that would be me) to cook for them.

Here are the before and after shots of the dining table.



For recipes of the food prepared that night, click the name of the dish below:

• ChiNoy Maki
• No-Recipe Asian Noodles
• Chicken in Rum & Garlic w/ Mango Salsa
• Ham & Cheese Mini-Rolls

And then on December 21, Sunday afternoon, my church CCBC had a Family Christmas Party. It was fun. There were games and even a raffle draw. My husband and I facilitated the game “You & Me Against the World” We had a lot of laughs.

And then the following day, I had meetings in the morning and had another Iron Chef moment in the afternoon as I cooked for my SSEAYP friends (the very few ones left here in Manila). We had a small get together because one of our batch mates Vlad, who’s now based in London came home for the Holidays.


Roy - Best Costume Awardee for the Night!
Haha. Kinarir!

It was supposed to be a ‘60s costume party ‘cos I needed a reason to wear my brand new Kate Torralba Leg Love stockings! Remember my Christmas Wish List? Yes, I finally got two – the violet and the hot pink one. There were so many colors and prints to choose from. When I saw the display at SM Department Store, I just felt like a kid in a candy store. I wanted to buy them all but the question is where am I going to wear them? Hahaha. :-) Anyway for now I’m okay with two.


Can u believe it? All my friends are GIANTS!
It's so ironic. :-)

The following day, it was time for my husband’s company Christmas Party. In the afternoon, I made jars of my homemade pesto sauce as Joseph's presents for his office mates. The party turned out to be much better than last year’s. And what even made it more special was the announcement that he got promoted. Praise God! I’m so proud of my baby. And did I mention that I'm madly (and sanely) in love with him? :-) Hehe.



And finally, it’s Christmas Eve. It’s our first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs. Palarca so we decided to skip all the family frenzy and stayed in Manila. I got my husband a Bluetooth headset for his cellphone which he badly needs when he’s driving, while he got me not just one but two items from my Christmas Wish List which I posted here on my blog.



My husband got me a good quality set of chef’s knives in red color. How romantic and sinister! Hahaha. And just when I thought I already had my gift, he went upstairs and brought down a big paper bag from the store Dimensione. I know what I wanted from that store so I shrieked as soon as I saw him coming down with the bag. It was my much-coveted (expensive) chopping board in hot fuschia color.



We had a simple Noche Buena – just chocolate fondue, white wine, ham and a few leftovers from the parties we hosted a couple of days earlier. December is almost over. The year is coming to an end. 2008 was great! We can’t thank the Lord God enough for his faithfulness, generosity, and LOVE!

Our First Christmas Tree

It’s still 66 days before Christmas Day but the season has already arrived at our home. Last night Joseph and I already set up our first Christmas Tree as Mr. & Mrs. Palarca. Although we believe our tree is still a work in progress, it will have to suffice for now, especially since we’ve already hit our budget limit for the tree, hehe. Gosh, Christmas trees are so expensive these days. We should have gotten one as early as January this year – you know at one of those post-Christmas Sales where all prices for décor items drop down by almost 75%. I know I should have scoured Divi or Dapitan, or any place else where I could probably get it for a much lower price, but well, I don’t have a car to drive around, and the expenses I might incur in transportation might just equate to the savings that I would get from shopping. So in short, it would totally defeat the purpose so why get into the hassle?

So we got our Christmas tree from where else – SM! =) We got the 7 ft. tall that had the closest resemblance to the pine tree. Have you ever noticed how manufacturers or stores never really get the correct height measurements of these trees? Our supposedly 7ft. tall tree didn’t actually reach a full 6 feet. Odd… anyway, for now we’re playing with a plum and gold theme, to match with the purple and yellow accents that we already have in our home. Those are my favorite colors by the way, next to pink.

Actually, this is REALLY my VERY FIRST Christmas Tree. I’ve never had a tree or any Christmas décor at my single life condominium for the past 9 years. I figured I don’t usually spend Christmas there anyway so why bother decking it out with boughs of holly? This coming Christmas though promises to be very special. This is going to be my first Christmas as Mrs. Palarca and my husband and I have decided to ditch going to our hometowns for the holidays and just stay here at our humble loft in Cubao.

Being the curious cat that I am, putting up our Christmas Tree made me think about whether this practice is biblically acceptable or not. So I hit the Bible of course and the World Wide Web for answers. Alas I found out that like most Christmas traditions that we know, the Christmas Tree is just one of the many pagan rituals that have been “Christianized” through time. In fact some fundamentalists even argue that the prophet Jeremiah (10:2-4) depicted this practice as pagan idolatry. Come to think of it, you can never find a chapter or even a verse in the Bible that commands us to celebrate Christ’s birth as a “feast”.

Jesus never asked His followers to remember His Birth; instead he commanded his followers to remember His Death. This is very clearly mentioned in the book of Luke, "..And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me. Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you (Luke 22: 19 -20)."

Biblically speaking, let me just stress that, Christ’s death is actually more important than his birth because this was THAT IMPORTANT MOMENT when MANKIND WAS SAVED OF SIN. Our salvation came through His death and not through His birth. Come to think of it, practically speaking, if we have to put it in a VERY SIMPLE superhero metaphor – we were “awed” when Kal-el emerged from his space capsule BUT our “cheers” went to whenever Kal-el now as Superman saved the earth from the villain’s diabolical scheme. In short, we do naturally celebrate “being saved” as compared to “witnessing a birth”.

But of course, that’s not to say that we should never ever REMEMBER Christ’s birth. It’s just that “biblically” speaking it’s NOT SUPPOSED to have taken this titanic size of a fiesta. Blame all that to a long history of paganism, religious imperialism and modern capitalism. Add to that is the fact that as human beings, it is in our nature to put so much importance to birthdays. Who in his “right human mind” would want to celebrate someone’s death, anyway? Death in human vocabulary means a sad affair.

Well, Jesus was no “mere” human. He doesn’t think and act the way we do. He was the Son of God. God in Himself. Enough said.

But fast forward to 2008 and we’re 66 days before that former pagan festival date turned Catholic celebration by the Roman Church, we all realize that we are all riding the big Christmas caravan – with all its Christianized pagan rituals and commercialism. It’s kind of disheartening to know now that everything that we have been born into loving about Christmas is not related to Christ at all. The Christmas we know and practice is everything that the Bible is telling us not to do. Yikes!

So as Christians what do we do? Throw out our beautiful tree? Cancel presents? Do not celebrate December 25 at all? Pretty tough call, huh? Let’s admit it… we are kind of trapped in this material world. I confess it’s hard NOT to bite into the whole marketing ploy of Christmas. It’s NOT EASY to withhold our excitement. C’mon it’s CHRISTMAS! You know what I mean? But then again, after reading the long history of the twists and turns and the many scandals that revolved around the evolution of Christmas, it will really make you think twice about following the traditions. In a way, if you discern it well, you’ll get that strong feeling that the enemy has definitely spoiled this soup.

But for the sake of putting ourselves in the mood and probably reinforcing the ambiance of the holiday, setting up a tree and putting on all those wreaths may be harmless, AS LONG AS WE HAVE THE ESSENCE OF THE SEASON IN OUR HEARTS. We all agree to that right? Celebrating Christ’s Birth is definitely more than just following a tradition rooted in imperialistic motives. Christmas is about Jesus. And since the Bible never really told us of any specific date, it only goes to show that celebrating His birth can be done any day and every day at any time. Compared to Christmas lights that look tacky when it’s lit up on other months other than December, the LIGHT of God’s Word never goes out of style.

Pre-Birthday Blues?

I am officially not earning now. A zero-income housewife, if you may. I already received my last paycheck from my previous TV show and that money has already been liquidated for bills. It’s still a bit of a lean season for Events so I’m not getting much of an action there also. Although my husband’s income can cover all of our basic needs well enough, I just feel a little bit guilty sometimes that I’m just here at home typing away rambling thoughts for nothing. My husband assures me that my housework means so much more than a financial augmentation. And he also supports my new blogging hobby. Honestly, I really do enjoy being at home, and working from home, and being able to write at no expense.

I write for a living but that kind of writing is sooo different from this. When you’re writing for a client, you can never own any right to your work and you can always expect it to be butchered according to their needs, wants, and tastes, and sometimes whims. Anyway, bottom line it’s work. They’re paying me good money for some catchy copy so I better squeeze a lot of those creative juices or else I’m dead meat. It’s relatively fun but generally stressful. Sometimes when I write for them, I ask myself “Am I contributing to the betterment of this world through this script?”(Let’s just not try to answer that)

Lately, more questions like that have been prompting in my head which obviously leads to a machine-gun of blog posts. I’ve never been this prolific in my entire journal writing experience. That could only mean 2 things. Either I have just become more reflective or I just have plainly nothing to do. Well, you know what they say Boredom is the Mother of all Inventions. I got into baking because I got bored some time ago. I tried baking when projects were in a slow stream. I never imagined that I would fall in love with it, and that I would actually be fairly good at it. Who knew? I had oven-phobia for the longest time.

Who knew? So now that I am at the crossroads – turning 30 in a week, a newlywed, in between jobs, and praying to be pregnant – Who knows what’s next?

“There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven.” – ECCLESIASTES 3:1

Right now, I practically feel my whole world turning. Almost literally actually. I could feel God’s every move and it’s quite overwhelming. There are some changes that are quite challenging to accept. There are nudges that I’m tempted to ignore. There are calls that I pretend not to hear. In the end, knowing that I do not have control of things, just as seasons come and go whether we like it or not, I just have to LET GO and LET GOD!