MOM

If you don’t know MOM, for all you who don’t know MOM you should get to know it. My grandparents on my filipino side decided to come up and visit the family on Sunday. When I say filipino, I mean fresh off the boat filipinos. They took us out for lunch at Red Lobster. They came to visit because they wanted to buy some shrimp for their Good Friday dinner. We were wondering why they drove an hour just for some shrimp.

MOM stands for Manila Oriental Market. This is where the story gets interesting. Right off the bat, the parking lot is an absolute zoo. We finally get in and the place is freezing.

Let’s just say I was the only white person in there. Our first stop was the produce section. Jon and I like to cook and at least pretend we know a lot about it. I had never seen so many fruits and vegetables that I had never heard of before. The people there were so exact about how to pick these fascinating items. They were sniffing and thumping in huge groups. I was totally enthralled by the jackfruit, which I had heard of before, but had no idea how incredibly large they were. We are talking the size of 3 large watermelons and covered in spikes. I just couldn’t stop staring at all the men sniffing these huge fruits. Jon’s grandpa spent about 30 minutes trying to find the right eggplants and then yelled at his wife for taking 2 minutes to pick out nice tomatillos.

My grandma was looking for lumpia wrappers. She asked this gentleman that was working there and the guy bolts away no where to be seen. My grandma is not very mobile. Luckily, Katie took off running after him. Finally my grandma and I made it over to where the lumpia was only to find my grandpa with his entire upper body in the seafood freezer. We walk over to him and notice he is picking out boxes of shrimp for their dinner. Normally shrimp are small. These shrimps were bigger than lobsters. They were the godzilla of shrimp. These shrimp eat shrimp.

Jon’s grandma wandered off, so I decided to go after her. This place is crowded. I meet up with her at the meat department. She shows me the chicken feet and tells me that she thinks they are weird. Then she decides she needed some neck bone while we are there since it is a good deal. She told me she uses it for soups. She tells the butcher that she needs 3 pounds. He doesn’t understand her and tells her she can only buy 3. She said she wanted them cut up and wanted 3 pounds. This goes back and forth for a bit until he finally hold up a pig’s leg and says you need to buy the whole thing. We realized the miscommunication and he takes the necks back to the huge table saw in the back and cut the neck up into bits until he had 3 pounds. Then he hands me the huge bag of neck bones. Jon walks up as I discover that I have neck blood on my hand.

While they were off getting neck bone, I was doing some male bonding with my grandpa. We were walking through a utopia of dead fish. Sounds weird, I know. This place has every type of fish imaginable. For some reason my grandpa was obsessed with the salmon fish heads for 99 cents a pound. He was looking around for someone to help him out, but no one would, so being the crazy marine that he was he just went hand first into the fish and just starting grabbing them. Keep in mind the workers are in parkas and rain gear because it is so cold and wet in there. I asked my grandpa why he was touching the fish and he replied “because no one would help me out!”

We saw chicken hearts by the pound, chicken uterus, frozen whole octopuses, and an assortment of other body parts I did not know that you could (or would want to) eat. We picked out the “Philippines Wine of Choice” for $5.99 to take home to Jon’s dad. Then we found a huge bottle of sake for $6 to drink when lent is over and Jon drinks again.

Words we learned:

Lola = grandma

Lolo= grandpa 

My grandma wanted some instant coffee that she drinks. I have never in 24 years seen her drink coffee, but apparently she really needed some. She went and grabbed 2 bags. Looked back and grabbed 3 more. Filipinos tend to buy in excess, which is why we go shopping in my grandparents garage. Once we found a case of champagne in there that no one knew where it came from. We took it to drink. It was awful.

All in all, it was an eventful day with the grandparents and the fiancee. It is always nice when my grandparents come to visit.

 

Orange Chicken Extravaganza

I had the brilliant idea to make orange chicken and fried rice. I love the orange chicken at Panda Express and we aren't spending money at this moment in time, so making it seemed to be the obvious solution.

I wouldn't necessarily try this unless you are comfortable in the kitchen. Then again maybe if you had no experience you would blindly follow the directions and not have the conflict of ideas that we had. There was no conflict. I was just making fried rice like a filipino would. You should know that I am a baker and Jon went to culinary school.

This is our first photo blog of our cooking experiences. Since we have cooking experiences daily this might be the first of many. Then again I am really bad at remembering my camera.

I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen by The Pioneer Woman.

Jon doesn’t let me near the knives. I guess he wants his future wife to have 10 fingers. Picky guy.  I know how to cut properly and it freaks me out when people don’t.

 

He does a great job, so I don’t complain.

While he was chopping the veggies I worked on defrosting the frozen chicken tenders we used.

 

He is a great future hubby.

This is the chopped chicken in a ziplock with cornstarch and spices. I should have used more cornstarch, but I followed the directions.

Jon took over frying. He is very protective of me. I guess for good reason as you will see in a bit.

Wow, yummy chicken!

 

Those slight red marks you can barely see are the burns I got when the oil kept splashing up onto me until Jon bravely took over.

We made white rice. Jon thinks it is strange to make it in a pot instead of a rice cooker. I have never had a rice cooker.

While Jon started on the fried (I keep writing friend) rice I juiced the oranges for the sauce. These are fresh from my front yard. I know I have short thumbs.

There is also lemon and lime juice in this sauce as well as a variety of other things.

This is the delish rice Jon was working on. His filipino side was really coming out.

This was my sauce starting to reduce, so I could add the slurry.

  

We are good multi-taskers.

My puppy (she is 9 years old, so not a real puppy) was hoping that I would drop something. Usually she is right.

My dad doesn’t eat meat anymore. He is making orange tofu instead.

  

A small portion of our very messy kitchen.

 

The chicken was in the oven at a low temp to stay warm while we did all the other steps. It made it nice and crispy.

We like to put all our trash in a bag. It really helps the mess.

The regular chicken turned to orange chicken!

Katie’s plate.

Jon’s plate.

Our plates.

Orange tofu!

Finally we are all ready to eat our delicious meal. It was definitely worth the effort.

   

Jon thinks he is so funny. Ok, so maybe I think he is super funny too.

 

This is my other dog. She really is a puppy.

We used a tons of pots and pans. It was absurd. My wonderful daddy cleaned all of those for us because we cooked. I have wonderful men in my life.

I even have leftovers for lunch this week! Only 3 containers. The other two are salad and ham, so ignore those.

I was watching “Inglorious Basterds” while Katie wrote this. The entire movie is subtitled. I can’t read and talk at the same time. Sorry all.

We're Homeowners!

At the ripe age of 24, we are homeowners. Technically, Jon is 23, but he is so close that we'll pretend. On March 3, 2010, we heard from our realtor that the bank had approved our offer on a wonderful short sale! To give you some background, we signed a counter offer with the seller on December 31, 2009. Short sales are definitely an oxymoron.

Who thought at this young and exciting time in my life that I would be saying Katie and I are homeowners. I just figured you live with your parents until they are completely sick of you and tell you to leave. Especially in the Bay Area. Being engaged really makes one grow up fast and fast I was growing! Where were we going to live by June? What were we going to do? Rent? Buy? Be homeless for our long wonderful life together? Well I doubt that last one would even fly with Katie...not to mention we're both obsessive compulsively clean people!

If we are getting technical again... it is a townHOME! It is perfect. It is 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I HAVE A MAN CAVE!!! It has a man cave, but one that a woman (me) can enter and enjoy as well. It will be our office, but mostly a getaway for Jon to go and be a rockstar. He has a massive guitar collection (he doesn't think so) and I didn't want that to be the main decor of our house.

If you haven't caught on yet, when I speak it is pink and when Jon speaks it is black.

Meet and Greet

November 23, 2009: The gloom has come over the town of Los Gatos and the day is growing old. I just got off work and am heading over to Katie's house trying to get my thoughts together. The ring is in my pocket, but will it be on her finger by the end of the night? Does she love me enough to say yes? Does she even like me at all? As I pull into her driveway I make the suggestion of going to the park for a picnic. We got some cheese and crackers and some wine to set the mood right.



As the one on the other side of this grand gesture, I was very confused at this point. Two years of begging to go on a picnic and we finally do... in November? It just isn't picnic weather, but I wasn't going to complain because I got to go on a picnic! Jon was so anxious to get to the park that was less than half a block from my house and I had no clue why. I thought it was just cold and he didn't like picnics more than I had thought.



I like picnics, don't get me wrong, but this was a momentous occasion. It's not like she's the one asking me and I can say yes or no. I wanted to get the hard part out of the way ASAP and start celebrating...that is if she said yes!



Well, we got to this glorious picnic and I started eating. I mean, I was hungry and we were on a picnic. (I didn't know this was going to be the best day EVER!) Jon got out the wine and asked what we should toast to. I asked him what he thought and he said "how about this?" as he pulled out the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. As you have probably already gathered, I said YES!



At this time, we realized that it was much too cold for a picnic and ran home to tell the world about our engagement. Of course, my parents weren't home and I couldn't tell the world until I told them. We waited rather impatiently while I stared at the ring. I had been waiting for this moment for so long! When my parents got home we excitedly told them and they took us out to a restaurant called Viva! to celebrate.


Phew! What a relief!