I love food

When I was younger and healthier, I could practically eat all day.  I loved to binge particularly in front of TV. As embarrassing as it may seem, there was even a time when I  had to go to my doctor who told me to stop overeating and  give my stomach a rest.  I never went to the doctor since then, not until after a decade.  As I ate too much after one family celebration, I felt so sick that instead of going home, my family  had to  drive me to the hospital.  Funny,  as the nurse was taking my details, she looked up  surprised when I told her my date of birth, . Yes, it was my birthday that day and I was being admitted in the emergency. Oh, poor thing!!!  I stayed in the hospital overnight with the doctor saying the same thing before I was discharged. 

Yeah, I loved food so much then that I embarrassed myself or even make a fool of myself whenever I asked what's to eat in the next meal after having just eaten a big meal .   My mother usually would just laugh this off by saying for example,"you just had breakfast, and you were thinking of lunch already.'' Yeah, lunch was like hours away and with a full tummy, how could I think of food again. I never thought the same situation would arise after many decades.  It was only then I realised I had not outgrown this demeanour which must have been deep-seated in my brain.  Brett said the same thing when I asked what's for lunch after we jsut had breakfast at a cafe one time.

The good thing however, as enthusiastic as I am about eating,  I do  not put on weight too much because I eat in small amounts different types of foods--cakes, chocolates, biscuits, nuts and whatever there is to eat in the fridge.

Since the day I became hypertensive and now diabetic, however, I dramatically change my eating habits and the sorts of foods I eat.  I control my appetite and discipline myself.  Top maneouvre? I  resolve to eat at home and eat out less.  I believe the best place to have healthy food is at home.  It is only at home where I could be sure what I am technically eating. That is, as I cook the food myself, I know that my food has no salt nor saturated fats or anything that will harm me or aggravate my medical conditions.   Needless to say I know that I use good and fresh food commodities in my dishes.

Except for my blood pressure tablets, I have been determined not to take any more tablets so I tried to manage my diabetes by changing my lifestyle and appetite for food.  I adopted a  strict food and eating time regime to the extent that I starve myself just to let my blood sugar go down before I would take any food again. For the past four years or so, I'd say I have been doing well.

Honestly however, I feel like life is going to be boring, as bad cook as I am,  if I will just consume healthy food I cook at home day in and day out . That's why I always look forward to all the family celebrations or gatherings.  I always think to myself--at least I would be able to overeat, without necessarily getting anxious about salt or saturated fats. Besides, the vegetarian spring rolls I always make on these occassions, I could feast on a range of dishes cooked by my three sisters and also by Brett.  Í thought for awhile, it would be okay to forget that I am diabetic.The following shows pictures of the dishes I usually feast on during our family gatherings

This is called kare kare.  This is my sister Cynthia's expertise. I eat most of the vegetables in this dish and only a small portion of meat. It also includes tripe which I don't really like to eat.  The sauce is very nice.  I don't know how to cook this and I never bother to ask Cyn how.  However, when I was talking to my brother Nimrod over the phone, he told me this is very easy to cook.  He told me just put peanut butter. 

Merle, usually cooks a range of dishes from different parts of the globe. The following are some of the dishes she usually brings to the party.  On the right is a meat dish called embutido which I suppose must require heaps of efforts to prepare and cook. But for Merle, I think making this dish is like eating peanut.  Even if there is no occasion, she sometimes sends me a number of these, some to eat right away and few ones to freeze.

On the left is baked salmon. This is my favourite food.  I love this because of its omega three fatty acid that will reduce my risk of having a cardiovascular disease now that I am diabetic. 
I regularly eat this twice a week. I need not exert too much effort cooking it. I just put it in a pan with a little bit of olive oil and it cooks on its own oil eventually.  I eat it with tomatoes, carrots, onions and green mustard.  (Now that guava is abundant in my garden, I also eat it with guava sauce.  Yum...yum

e On the right is another of Cynthia's culinary expertise--palabok.  I like eating this too.  But it's only during family parties that I am able to eat this because I do not really bother to learn how to cook it.  At one stage when family parties were still faraway, I felt like eating palabok.  As I did not pack lunch that time during one of my on-site interpreting assignments, I walked in one of the Filipino eateries in Blacktown and ordered this.  After I ate it, I told myself never to do it again as it was so salty and hence unhealthy.

This lot is my masterpiece, vegetarian spring rolls.  I always have fun wrapping the vegetarian filling as I always do it to near perfect symmetry.  I usually dip it however, not in the sauce pictured here, but in garlic vinegar with some chillies. Recently, I made small spring rolls with spinach and light ricotta cheese filling. I made it smaller as I really felt like putting the ricotta cheese was sort of unhealthy for all of us who have become food healthy freaks now.  I think I did fine, though.  My relatives said it was yummy.

 On the right is  one salad Brett usually makes for our family.  I had asked him to make for us his famous chicken wing dish, but he told me it it too unhealthy for us. So he usually makes us healthy salads which all of us like--most of us left in a state of wondering what's in the salad's yummy dressing.

(I do  not have the picture of the noodles my sister Daisy cooks because almost always I finish eating it before I remember taking its picture. Daisy usually brings me Singaporean or Hokien noodles she cooks at home)

Needless to say I have not cease to  like eating out every now and then either with members of the Blanco Family where I belong or with Brett.

My culinary desires are not so complicated.  I usually want to go to buffet with the Blancos, particularly because I want to taste test a string of desserts.  With Brett, I usually go to yum cha, Michel's Patissiere, the Coffe Club and nearby Lucies Cafe for breakfast and also McDonalds .  Alone I usually go to McDonalds of course and Subway.

Except for coffee and cake, or breakfast,  I have never gone out to eat out for ages.  Last Saturday, however, Brett took me to yum cha.  Hmm...    Brett and I practically had yum cha almost every weekend for many consecutive years that I thought my tummy was crying out then not again!!!.  As it has been like really ages that I have not had yum cha, I knew I was  going to enjoy the different dimsums and dumplings, not to mention the dessert (a coconut cake with red mungbeans) which I forgot to photograph as keen as I was to already have a taste of it. 

This is one of the beef wraps.  I don't really know what it's called.  Brett always takes charge of ordering.  He practically almost always get those steamed dimsums or dumplings.  He said deep fried foods are not good for me.  I was not able to take photos of all the foods we ate as Brett did  not really approve of me doing this.

Overall, I had enjoyed yum cha and that Saturday.  However, I told Brett I was not going to have that dessert again.  Brett asked why.  It was tasty and sweet but the serving was too large and he did not help me eat it....

I look forward to enjoying myself and satisfying my taste buds day after day.  Eating for me is also like an adventure.  I do not technically say no to any food, particularly if doing this would mean offending the host or the person offerring it. When I was holding a Bible sharing sessions in the slum area while I was in the Philippines, the owner of the house where we held it almost always offered me the biggest bowl of  champorado (sticky rice boiled and cooked with cocoa powder and sugar).  I believe she did this then to please me-- I,being the Bible sharing leader.  I was not a big fan of this food, though.  However, so as to satisfy my hostess, I ate it nevertheless to last bit of it.

I think there's nothing wrong in loving food.  God created all things for us to enjoy.  I remember what my young pastor friend said in the past as we were eating one after another penoy or balut (which technically are duck eggs) as a treat from the senior pastor whom we helped in a Christian summer camp to minister to young people.  In this treat we were allowed to eat as many of these two types of eggs we could take in. After my young pastor friend had the sixth egg, he announced he would stop eating.   He said if he ate a seventh egg, then that would be gluttony.  I could not remember how many eggs I ate then, probably four or five. .. but what he said was stuck deep down in the front lobe of my brain.

That announcement  from that young pastor spelled to me  a proper view of food and eating.  There is nothing wrong to love food and eat.  What is sin is to let food control us and consequently commit the sin of  gluttony.

Having absorbed this principle, I could confidently say I eat to live and at the same time enjoy a range of dessert after dessert (ie occassionally!!!)


As a postcript, I also uploaded this beautiful coffee which Brett bought for me when I was feeling down because my mother was in the hospital.  As low as my spirit was that time, I automatically took my phone to take a snapshot of it.  I knew Brett asked the girl to make this beautiful coffee to cheer me up.

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Sa Ating Daigdig

Wala sa panaginip, hindi sa kathang isip o sa alapaap maaaring maganap ang mga pangarap na ating hanap kundi sa'ting paligid sa ating daigdig...

I like this song.  Not because it was composed by a friend, but because I like its lyrics.  Every time I listened to it then, I felt like its message was hitting me to the bone.  I have liked to daydream, to articulate my thoughts creatively on a paper and to skygaze even when I was a kid.  I thank God however, it did not take me too long to realise this truth--dreams are conceived in the head but are realised through actions.  That is I need to act on a dream using at its maximum all my faculties and my senses and all the best possible resources at hand to see it come true. 

At another plane, I could not just lock myself up in the laboratory if I want to count in one's life and vice versa.  I need to go out and explore the world where I live, interact not only with the experimental organisms  I work on but also with my fellow human beings. 

The results indeed continue to amaze me.  In the video above, I included pictures of me taken in the 2000s. I used the song Sa Ating Daigdig (In our World) as music background to remember facets of my life,   As the song says,  it's not in our dreams, not in our literary endeavours nor in the clouds (technically not in our brain) that we can find realisation of our dreams but in our physical world which naturally understandable as we are still flesh and bones.

I have found out that as I go and explore places, and interact with people around me, my outlook in life broadens and I am challenged to pursue higher endeavours and achieve more even in my mature years rather than jsut stay in my own shell. The process maybe slow and painstaking.  However, it is only by taking risks that I am able to produce outcomes, positive ones that reinforce.me and negative ones that teach me.

As I continue to learn  and explore the world around me and the opportunities it offers me, I feel  like mining precious gems. I form relationships, some of which are wholesome and few that are hurtful, by the same token however, I consider these all  more precious than gold, ie,  as they sharpen me as a person. I learn values that have eternal bearing.  I make use of my natural and God-given gifts, which through God's sustaining grace and my best energies enable me to  achieve beyond what I am able to think or imagine.

Yes, in this world, there are no "kamaligs" but heaps of gold (not the gold bars which I have in my safe (oops! in the banks I should say), but rather opportunities to demonstrate that the love of God is in me, to do good to others and most of all to love myself, warts and all.  And I know that as my life will draw to a close one day, I am hopeful that all of my efforts  and labour when put to the test of fire , in the end, will come out as gold.

A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

I have many wishes in my heart, many of which have not been realised up to this day.  Disney World nor Disneyland, however, was not one of them.  I have far more serious wishes in life---most often,  not for myself but for all people I love. Call this melodrama, but it is true.  I treasure all the people I love, that is, the Blanco Family and my nephews and my nieces.  I laugh when they laugh. I cry when they cry. I hurt when they hurt.  If something's goes wrong in anyone of them, it affects me tremendously that I always feel like I am going to die before anyone of them.  These people are the only family I have and I connect with them deeply.  They are my home and I always feel comfortable and relax with them.

God, in His sovereignty, however, knows best.  I think perhaps He thought then that I took  life so seriously,  so He gave me a something I had not even thought of-- Disney World.  WoW!

Even if I might have the money then (as I am a great saver!)  to go here on my own, I would not probably opt to spend my savings on this, anyway.  So He gave me a scholarship which could pay for my visit here and still not hurt the bank balance.

I was already in Gainsville, Florida, USA that summer of 1984.  My! As bad as my geography, I thought  Orlando was technically like a stone's throw away.  So I thought I would be foolish not to consider going to Disney World.

At the end of the orientation given by our Course Coordinator on day 1, he asked all of us whether we had any questions.  My co trainees threw all those questions directed to make an impression.  When I asked mine, our Course Coordinator nearly fell flat on the floor.  What was the question I asked?  Plain and simple--how do I go to Disney World?

Hmm... did I make a fool of myself? I knew very well I did not go to Florida to see Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.  My government sent me here on a red passport  to learn how to use ionizing radiation and radioistopes in scientific research...  

Our old and bearded Course Coordinator was accomodating, though.  After all, I was a young lady as he always referred me throughout the entire duration of the course when he spoke of me to his colleagues.

With a little bit of help from his secretary I made it to  Disney World at some stage.  To be fair to my government and also to myself I carried  with me our main textbook in the training course so I could read in between the rides and showcases as I queued up for these.

Even if at the back of my head, I like to celebrate with Donald Duck who I think was celebrating his 51st or something that time, my priority was to learn as much about radiation and radioisotopes and go back to my country ten thousand times smarter.

Truly, I thank God for this episode in my life, that is, being in Disney World.  I could been happier however if my little nieces Abigail and JA,  were with me.