Homemade iced coffee

I've been into iced coffee lately, so when I went to Hong Kong I got myself this tumbler (one of the very few things I'd bought, if I may add). I'd seen this before in Starbucks stores here, but it wasn't till I started making cold-brewed coffee that I began wanting one.

I almost regretted buying it for HK$90 when I saw a Hong Kong Disneyland tumbler at the airport selling for HK$60, but I do like the simplicity of this one.

Oh, and inside the tumbler is a big serving of the iced Vietnamese coffee I always have whenever I have time to make it.

My weakness

Durian. You either love it or hate it.

Give it to me fresh or frozen, in a shake or in my coffee, in a pie or in a cake.

This is why whenever someone goes to Davao I always ask for durian. Even when it's off-season, just in case that person happens to come by good durian at the market.

Luscious, finger-licking durian

It stinks like anything, but for fanatics like me the smell is h-e-a-v-e-n-l-y. :)

This makes me miss Davao.

Today in pictures

I'm on vacation the whole week this week. Yay! I had the luxury of time to get ready for the gym.

9:00 am

One of the first things I did as soon as I woke up was check the CFMNL website for today's WOD. It's benchmark day!

9:30 am

I ate my breakfast of leftover sweet potato hash and black coffee while reading this book my friend told me about -- Fifty Shades of Grey. I don't read erotica, but my interest was piqued when my friend told me that it's like Twilight for adults. I'm halfway through it, and I have to say, it's very entertaining. More than the sex scenes, it's the love angle between the two principal characters that's hooked me.

11:15 am

Time to go to the box! Pay no mind to my ratty running shoes. I know I have to get a new pair of shoes for working out, and I've got my mind set on a pair of Inov-8 Bare-XF 210s. Still saving up for those, but reading great reviews about them is making me antsy.

11:45 am

I arrived early for the 12:30 pm class and started warming up and psyching myself up for the WOD. I'm learning that half the battle is won in the mind, so for me, mental preparation is part of the warmup.

1:15 pm

Post-workout: CrossFit hands. I swear, I have rough, man-hands now. And I don't even do the workouts as Rx'd (as prescribed, meaning I almost always scale down on the weights)!

1:40 pm

An empty box on my way out. Now, to have a pedicure...

3:00 pm

There was only one client when I got to the nail salon in our neighborhood. I picked a nice, bright pink for my toes. Gotta love Orly nail polish.

3:15 pm

I was famished by the time I got home. Good thing there was some leftover fish and veggies on the table. I reheated more sweet potato hash, et voila! (Late) lunch is served! It wasn't gourmet good, but it was my best attempt at a balanced meal. After I'd polished that off, I had an orange and a slice of non-paleo chocolate cake.

I think I'm going to enjoy this week-long holiday.

Paleo Challenge

The Paleo Challenge is a 30-day program at CFMNL wherein challengers follow the "paleo diet," also known as the "caveman diet." Huh, sounds like one of those weirdo faddy diets, I know. That's what I thought, too, until I started reading up on it. And the more I read about it, the more it made sense to me.

Basically, the paleo diet is eating meat, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. No grains (rice, oats, and the like), no processed foods, and no dairy (although I think some paleo people are more relaxed when it comes to this). Here's a great beginner's guide to paleo by Nerd Fitness. The end result is supposed to be increased energy levels and improved health and strength. Weight loss (if you're trying to lose weight) or a leaner figure is just a bonus.

I'm on Day 2 now, and have been strictly adhering to it. It takes time and effort to plan and prepare meals, since I'm the only one at home following the diet and everyone thinks I'm crazy. Those who know me know that I don't cook. Yet I find myself in the kitchen every morning preparing my own meals. During the weekend, I made baked sweet potato fries. It wasn't the success I'd envisioned it would be because some of the fries got burned and got stuck to the pan, but it tasted good.

Apologies for the blurry photo :)

Well, let's just see how this goes. So far, I'm feeling good, though.

It worked

I'd been wanting to try my mother's carrot cake recipe and bake them in muffin pans ever since I'd discovered cupcake making. Well, I got my chance yesterday.

Right out of the oven

This is a recipe she got from a professor visiting from the US, and she's had it since the late 70s. I followed the directions to the letter, except for the frosting, which I'd adjusted to suit my taste.

On the rack, with and without frosting 

The cake itself is good enough, and in fact my mother bakes loaves of these to give as gifts at Christmas, but the cream cheese frosting makes it "to die for," as my sister said (and our father agrees).

Best I've ever made, according to my father and sister

And so... another cupcake experiment stamped with the family seal of approval. :)

What I've been up to

My family has gotten so used to me baking every weekend that they've started expecting me to produce something by the time Saturday rolls around. My niece is my Number 1 taste tester, and she's even coined my goodies Weekend Cupcakes. :-) It was her birthday last June 12th and she requested chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Here she is with her mom:

Great looking cake from Shoppersville

The following Sunday was Father's Day and I thought of trying a butter cupcake recipe I found and then dipping them in chocolate glaze. The cupcakes tasted good but unfortunately I had absentmindedly opened the oven door 10 minutes after I put the muffin pans in (I put the excess batter in a loaf pan and wanted to bake them all together). This caused the cupcakes to collapse. And then the chocolate glaze I used was too thin and ended up running over and being soaked by the cupcakes.

Chocolate glaze running all over the place

And then this afternoon I made chocolate chip banana muffins. I loved the taste of bananas and chocolates together, and they reminded me of a favorite chocolate chip banana cookies recipe I also love.  The muffins were very easy to make and ended up quite as moist as banana cake. I must make more than one recipe next time.

Not the healthiest muffins on the block

And in between all that, I've also been obsessing over getting my OS X upgraded to Snow Leopard. Yes, I'd waited all this time to upgrade, and I hadn't really planned on doing it because I thought I'd wait for the next big OS X upgrade. But then when news of the Lion release came out, I found out that I wouldn't be able to "skip" Snow Leopard because I'd need Mac App Store to purchase a Lion upgrade.

Image from Apple.com

Anyway, my problem now is that none of the Apple resellers here have Snow Leopard stock. I'd already left my contact details with a reseller with instructions to contact me as soon as new stocks arrive. If worse comes to worst, I'll order from the local Apple online store. :-)

Muffin day

Yesterday was muffin day and today was supposed to be cupcake day. But I hadn't realized that I had used up my paper liners, so no cupcakes today... which is a darn shame because I was supposed to try making butter cupcakes too, using Lola Tentay's chocolate icing recipe as glaze.

I got my muffin recipe from this site and since I've missed muffins from French Baker I decided to make them. They weren't complicated to make, and in fact the directions are similar to making pancake batter. They came out cute -- like real muffins! :)

They were all gone in 3 hours, and my brother-in-law even set aside one for himself for the next day. I must make them again and this time triple the recipe!

Cupcake experiment Part 2

Because of last week's frosting "disaster," this week I decided to make the same chocolate cupcakes but use a peanut butter frosting instead... and they turned out great! Everyone in the family said they tasted good and was much better than the ones I made last week. Well, everyone except my brother-in-law, at least (who said that peanut butter and chocolate don't go together -- he must be nuts).

I loooove peanut butter so it's no wonder that I loved the frosting.

P.S. The boys loved "decorating" them with candy sprinkles.

A cupcake experiment

I had never been that interested in making cupcakes, and I don't usually like eating them either, but after reading all the cupcake tweets and seeing photos of my friends' cupcakes on twitter I decided to give it a shot. After all, I've already baked cake and all you need to do is simply following the instructions to a T so I thought making cupcakes would be something like that.

First, I needed to decide what kind of cupcake to make, because there are tons of recipes out there in the wild, wild web. After narrowing it down to vanilla, butter, and chocolate cupcakes, I finally decided on chocolate. Because you know, when you have a kid, chocolate is a no-brainer.

Then of course, being the OC person that I am, I had to decide on the icing. I wanted to do everything right even if it's my first time and you're allowed to fail on your first try. I chose to make buttercream icing because I saw that people usually used this to ice their cuppies.

Finally, I gathered all the ingredients and made sure I had the right pans, then I settled down to the task. It wasn't that difficult but I got so stressed out by the two boys (my son and my nephew) nagging me to let them take a lick of the batter. The cupcakes came out beautifully but since they took a while to cool completely, I couldn't ice them right away and decided to save the icing for the next day.

The icing was quite easy to make, but putting them on the cupcakes and making them look nice was the hard part.

My singkamas obsession

Image from flickr

When I was young, summer was about trips to the beach, reading book after book, watching movies on VHS (remember VHS??), and eating singkamas -- that's jicama in English.

Now that summer has begun over here I've been on the lookout for those carts that sell bunches of singkamas. And I'm a happy girl because I've been able to get my fill of these crunchy and juicy veggies everyday. I peel them and eat them raw with a little bit of salt. I eat them in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening when I come home from work. Obsessed much?

As an added bonus I found out that it has very few calories. Although I shouldn't be surprised seeing as it contains mostly water and starch.

Grabbed from caloriecount

Image of jicama from flickr. Nutritional info from caloriecount.