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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Lemonades, Burgers, PICKLES!

PICKLED MANGOES
A TYPHOON AFTERMATH

Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger.
 Okay, that was weird when I first heard that but hey, it was in Telephone's video! 
I see it as a gloomy way of saying,  
when life gives you lemons, make lemonade
Right? Uhm.. okay.
 
Anyways...
PAG-ASA announced that typhoon Pablo (international name Bopha) might possibly cause great damage in the Philippines since it'll be stronger than the typhoon which hit the country around this time last year that caused deaths. Thankfully, our place wasn't severely affected. A few times there were strong gusts of wind and heavy rainfall, but it didn't last longer than 10 minutes, and they were so far apart that I was thinking there's no typhoon afterall.

Bad news though...
Our house (my grandmother's actually but I always consider it as "ours") which was situated facing the Pacific Ocean, was damaged. Good thing it wasn't totally destroyed, no one was hurt, but the glass windows were all broken. The biggest problem however was that the shoreline receded. The house is in danger of being washed away by the waters. The neighboring houses which weren't made from sturdy materials were totally washed out. And a restaurant by the sea was totally washed out. It was that bad. I wanted to share photos but its totally heartbreaking, I'd rather not.

On the other side...
 Ever heard of pickled mangoes? Okay, I think I made that up.
When I woke up this morning, I saw this: 

Magazine pages, leaves, and mangoes everywhere. There were too many mangoes and it would be such a waste just to leave them there. They were too small though. Some were too ripe, some were too green, and almost all weren't fit for eating.

And an idea...
Why not feed the overripe ones to the chickens? My mother said the chickens would eat them.
And the unripe ones? PICKLES!

So I picked up those that could still be salvaged. One bag was for the chickens, and another was for my pickles! Okay, more like thinly sliced mangoes in brine. Me and my sister used to make these when we had too many mangoes we didn't know what to do with them. I just made a jar-full.

When I looked at the picture, I get that watery feeling.. that type when you salivate (eeewww) when you see something sour.
You can follow me on Instagram! Here o! :D

 I'm not sure if you could relate though. But geeezzz, for me it really looks (and tastes!) delicious!


So, when life gives you typhoons...
Go ahead and make pickled mangoes!

And since I'm trying to spread some optimism here...
 I joined a GIVEAWAY over at Zoey and Nana's World.
It's HERE. Find out how. ;-)

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Banana muffins!

Ever since we sent my friend to the emergency room for being low on potassium, I promised myself that I will never take bananas for granted. And since then, I have tried to become creative. :D

I am not a big fan banana cake or muffins, but what else do you to overripe bananas?

sorry for the nails

I'm not good at baking, and this might look ugly, but take my word for it, it was delicious! I was inspired by the vegan recipe I found on PETA's website. But as usual, I don't follow instructions. I'm happy it turned out great still.

Give it a try too!

Banana Muffins
 4 ripe bananas (small)
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup muscovado
1/2 cup regular brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Mash bananas. Add oil and muscovado. Mix.
Sift flour, salt, and baking soda together. Add to the banana mixture.
Mix until flour is blended.
Pour in muffin pans. Bake at 360 °F

Uhm, I wasn't able to time my baking. But hey, by the time nothing clings to the fork and it comes out clean when you stick it to your muffins then you're good to go! Well, that's about 15-20 minutes.

I made a dozen small muffins :)

Instead of regular sugar, I used muscovado, which explains that dark brown spots on the muffin. And because I wasn't very confident on using muscovado, I only used half a cup, hence the other half cup of brown sugar. And well, honestly, we don't have white sugar (only confectioners'). 

According to Wikipedia, muscovado was one of the most prominent export commodities of the Philippines, especially from the Negros region from the 19th century until the late 1970s.

Okay. :D


HAPPY WEEKEND! 
oh, HAPPY DECEMBER!