Baking, the Last Frontier

Cooking, I can do.  By cooking, I mean sauteing, steaming, and roasting over an open flame.  Baking, on the other hand, involves more precision and patience, and not much of the room for remedy that cooking offers. So, having built a new home, gone back to homeschooling Elise, and gardening, I think it's about time I seriously make some baked goods!

I started out with making squash muffins.  A friend shared with me her squash bread recipe and I adjusted it by using whole wheat flour.  Over the holidays, I went back to Manila and decided to bake some there.  It tasted different.  The whole wheat flour I bought at All About Baking in Quezon City had a different aftertaste, and the vanilla I used was too strong.  Here in Puerto, the vanilla I used was just the local one manufactured by Neco. When I got back here and baked it again, the muffins were "back to normal."

I tried dusting them with powdered sugar for presentation purposes.  But what I REALLY wanted to do was sprinkle some squash seeds on top.  There aren't any available here, and I didn't really feel like drying any. 

I tried baking cookies too, but they came out flat.  I was so disappointed because I used to make cookies a lot --- in the 1990's.  Then, late 2012, I lost my touch.  One of my friends who is a pastry chef said that I might be over-creaming the butter and sugar, or I might be greasing the cookie pan too much or the quality of butter might not be good.  I baked again and adjusted the creaming time and did not grease the sheets anymore since I realized that my cookie sheets are grease proof.  I also switched now from Baker's Best to Magnolia Gold butter.  Now, I think the butter was too softened to begin with. 

So, I moved on to trying to make my own bread.  Last month, I searched for a video that would explain to me visually how to bake bread.   I wanted to see how wet dough and a dough ball would look like.  I searched You Tube for "How To Make Pan De Sal".  

I watched the video, intently transcribed the instructions, and baked bread! 

Not bad!  They were quite heavy and not as airy as I expected.  One factor could be the yeast.  The recipe called for Active Dry Yeast, and what was available at the grocery was Instant Yeast.  I will have to research how to use instant yeast when the recipe calls for active dry yeast.  My guess is just to mix the instant yeast with the dry ingredients. 

A few days ago, I went back to muffin baking.  A friend asked me to make some banana muffins for her.  But instead of walnuts, I used macadamia.  The flavor of macadamia did not blend well with the banana, and Elise and Nacho did not like it.  They could not finish a single muffin.  I baked a batch again and used lakatan banana instead of latundan, and substituted macadamia with cashews. 

They came out so well that I delivered some to some other dear friends this afternoon.  I got to use those cupcake liners and boxes from RM Boxes which I bought in bulk when I was last in Manila.  By the way, they ship to Palawan too!  

So far, so good. :)

The Last of the Seedlings!

There were a few tomato and petchay seedlings that made it just before December.

But when the petchay leaves started to grow, they got eaten by something!  Probably a snail.  My mom said that sprinkling salt around the plant will prevent the snail from coming near. Too late! 

Here are my tomato plants now.   Despite the lack of attention when they were left home alone with just the natural climate for two weeks during the Christmas season, they still grew.  And with the loving care that I've been learning to give them, they are now very healthy!  Only three of them left, so please, grow, grow, grow and bear fruit soon!  

Hit-and-Miss Gardening

I never had a green thumb. But two weeks ago, we planted some tomato seeds in used egg trays, crossed our fingers and our seeds sprouted.

Feeling very encouraged, I did what my mom used to do when basil stems flower. I scraped off some buds with seeds from the stem and sprinkled them into a potful of soil. Good luck.

Our marigold hedge had gone wild and the vines were crawling around other plants.  I trimmed them until manageable.  I also tied ropes around the leaning birds of paradise to try to straighten them out, and replanted some small irises along a walkway.

I was on a roll. I pulled out all the gabi plants - those bulky ones that grow in the forest and reproduce very rapidly.   I uprooted around 40 of them, big and small, and piled them up along some other agricultural waste.

 

On my last trip to Handyman, Robinsons Place, I picked up some petchay and kangkong seed packets.  When I got home, I scooped up some damp soil from our backyard into small pots, sprinkled the seeds into them, and covered the seeds with a thin layer of soil.  The packet said that petchay and kangkong are easy plants to grow because they thrive in clay or sandy soil, and survive harsh conditions. In other words, piece of cake.

 

After three days, small seedlings burst out of the soil!  Happiness!!!!

Rene brought me back to reality and suggested that I find out how best to grow them, as there is a specific way how to take care of certain plants...... When I looked up "how to grow petchay", the suggested method was to plant one seed per pot because they can grow into really lush plants and they need space.  There was also a warning against transplanting them at any point of their lives.  I guess I overcrowded them.   What if I pull out a few to make room?  When I do this again, I'll make sure each seed gets its own pot.

No longer feeling encouraged, I checked our tomato seedlings.... and most of them drooped!! Oh no! They also looked pale and thin.  Maybe too much sunlight!  

So maybe I should look up "how to grow tomatoes" too.....  So much for having a natural inclination towards caring for plants. It is a science.  Botanists and horticulturalists have gained a new level of respect from me today.

I will try again. 

Scuba Diving at 20 Feet

I've always wanted to scuba dive, but have not had the chance to even go for an Intro Dive.  Two weeks ago, I got my chance to finally cross that one thing off my list!   We were picked up from the beachfront of Microtel Puerto Princesa and took a 15-minute boat ride to the open waters in front of Pristine Beach. 

We were several eager beavers, one of us was already a certified diver, and another one already experienced it twice.  I was a bit nervous, as it was my first time to wear the gear, and I had no idea what would happen. 

 

So I fell over backwards into the water, like everyone else, and realized that I was floating, as my instructor inflated my BCD before I tumbled.  No need to think about swimming yet, he said. Just focus on breathing. So I breathed in the clean air from my tank and started to descend into the deep, dark blue expansive ocean. Yaaaargh! It got cold and dark and I panicked, breathing short breaths, almost sure I would run out of air if I went too deep.

I motioned upward and attempted to postpone my adventure for the next time.... several times.  Finally, the lead instructor showed me how to CALMLY breathe rhythmically and lightly, and before I knew it, he was slowly deflating my BCD, and I was going deeper and deeper.  I was getting the hang of it, and happily distracted by the colorful gardens..... and was brave enough to touch them! The brown coral below felt like one of those hard, felt-covered wires that are used for arts and crafts. But they were as soft as feathers.  

The classic blue starfish, whose kind is so abundant in the islands of Palawan, was right there, resting at the bottom.

And then the highlight of my dive ---- a clownfish swam towards me, stopped a few inches from my face, and just stared at me with its black beady eyes!  I could not contain myself, that I poked it on its side. It just flinched and stared at me again.  Oh wow. I kept on poking it till it swam away. 

A few meters ahead, I figured out why that little Nemo was so aggressive.   It was guarding its home. Pretty awesome photo, for a point-and-shoot 12-megapixel underwater camera, with no photo editing!  I was not brave enough to touch the white tips of the anemone, but one of the divers said that it felt like little suction cups. 

Our instructor, Kuya Julius, playfully put one of these little creatures in his mask! Nice!

I only went 25 feet deep below the surface.  Some of the others went deeper and explored a sea wall where lots of corals were attached to it.  I hope to see that before the year ends.  

*The Front Desk at Microtel Puerto Princesa can book your dive for you, with a convenient pick up and drop off right at their beachfront. 

Pink Guava Juice

Our guava tree produces wonderfully sweet pink guavas.  But the fruit bats always beat us to the ones that have just ripened.  Earlier this month, we decided to pick the fruit a little earlier and let them ripen indoors.  

 

A few days later, they were all tender at the same time, and I decided to juice them so they would not go to waste.  It is much easier drinking guava juice without all the seeds rather than eating the fruit.  After thoroughly washing them, I cut them into quarters.  

 

 They all went into the juicer, and the pulp poured into a mug.

 Some water and a few tablespoons of sugar were added and the whole thing simmered for a few minutes.
 

Thank God for the world wide web, I looked up how to jar them up properly so they won't spoil too soon.

When we decided to drink the juice a few days later, it was gone so fast!  Need to harvest more of these soon!


Known health benefits of guava: 

• High in Vitamin C, which boosts the immune system and helps fight infection in the body, especially the common cough and colds
• High in Vitamin E, which lowers bad cholesterol and boosts good cholesterol, and eliminates cancer cells
• High in Vitamin A and B, making the skin smooth and supple 
• Normalizes the digestive system, prevents constipation 
• Lowers blood sugar levels 
• Helps reduce weight
• Helps cure dengue

A Cardboard Dollhouse

Old shoe boxes made for a fun-filled morning for Elise and her friend, A, who both wanted to make a dollhouse.  They taped the two boxes together, wrapped them in white paper, and divided the first and second floors with flat cardboard.

The back of the house was painted by A.

 

 Her little brother, M, wanted to paint too!

 

And the other side was painted by Elise. 

Each room had a different color.  A little oven was made from a small box, and a refrigerator was made from a medicine syrup box.  They wanted to get some fabric to stick to the walls for wallpaper, but we were not prepared.  Floors can be designed like tiles or wooden planks.  Stickers could also decorate the walls like posters.  Aluminum foil could be framed like mirrors. 

They were all quite tired after two hours of intense work.  Okay, time for some snacks! 

Grilled Squid at Nagtabon Beach

Above is a picture of one kilo of squid that was wrapped in foil and grilled over charcoal with no salt, nor pepper or any other seasoning --- just freshly caught from the sea a couple of hours ago.   Maybe the sea breeze blew the flavor of the sea to the squid.  It was cooked before we could tire frolicking in the waves. 

The best time to go to Nagtabon Beach is around March to September.  Otherwise, the waves get really wild and sweep you back and forth the shore, leaving you with little control.

 

If you plan to spend considerable time lounging on the sand, rub some insect repellant on yourself, as you might displace some sand mites (niknik) and they leave bite marks that last for weeks.  An effective remedy for itchiness is Calmoseptine (calamine + zinc oxide), which is generally used for diaper rash.  

Oh, but the sand is fine, without any sharp shells and corals.  Occasionally there are small pebbles.  It's the best kind of sand for letting kids make their own creations.