I’ve gone back to the habit of drinking tea last year. Celestial Seasonings was a brand that was readily available in Rustan’s so I ended up stocking up their various teas. My favorite is still the Mandarin Green Tea, then their Tension Tamer comes as a second.

However, I’ve also received some teas from friends in other countries. Dai Reimei gave me a box of Darjeeling tea at the end of last year’s Asia Source 3 camp. And just last week, Mifan Careem gave me a box of Ginger Spice Ceylon tea. Ah, so much tea. To think I still have some jasmine tea flowers which I bought from the bazaar in World Trade Center and the matcha milk packs I bought from Lorence.

Tea is something that soothes me and I think that I’d rather take tea more often because it helps me calm down. Or it revitalizes me. It depends on which tea I am drinking. And it’s better for me because when I drink coffee, I do find myself palpitating sometimes. -_- And that’s something scary for me T_T

Now my tea ware is also growing. I first bought a teapot with an infuser for those times I am using tea leaves and the jasmine flower. That’s the best option I have. However, I want something portable so I hinted at wanting a tea tumbler which my friends at work gave me. And now I bought a stainless steel tea ball from Gourdo’s. Viim says it’s better to use an infuser, but, oh well. If I find something locally, then that’s it. The infuser it will be.

Lastly, I am glad to find a tea blog by Filipinos. I think that coffee is more popular locally, especially since we have good coffee from Batangas, Cavite, Bukidnon and the Cordillera region. Anyway, check out Tea Completely by Andrew dela Serna and Aileen Apolo for more tea posts.

Hrmmm.

World Chicken. Probably just bananas or potato salad as side dish. Occasional pasta.
KFC. Salad. Maybe the chicken wrap?
Wendy’s. Salad. Or the occasional baked potato.
Pho Hoa. I’d just have to make sure that JM gets more noodles than I ever will.
Bacolod Chicken? Inasal is salty. Maybe chicken breast then just the mango salad thing.
Shawarma Stop. On bread, definitely.
FlapJacks. Salad.

Rescue Operations

1. National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) (+632-9125668, +632-9111406, +632-9115061, +632-9122665) Help hotlines: (+65 734-2118, 734-2120)
2. Philippine Coast Guard (+632-5276136)
3. Air Force (+63908-1126976, +632-8535023)
4. Metro Manila Development Authority (136)
5. Marikina City Rescue (+632-6462436, +632-6462423, +632920-9072902)
6. Pasig Rescue Emergency Number (+632-6310099)
7. Quezon City Rescue (161)
8. San Juan City Hall Command Post (+632-4681697)
9. Bureau of Fire Protection Region III (Central Luzon) Hotline: (+63245-9634376)
10. Senator Dick Gordon (+639178997898, +63938-444BOYS, +632-9342118, +632-4338528)
11. Senator Manny Villar (+639174226800. +639172414864, +639276751981)

Civil Society/ Media

1. Philippine National Red Cross (143, +632-5270000)
2. Philippine National Red Cross Rizal Chapter operations center hotline: (+632-6350922, +632-6347824)
3. Go to GMA Facebook page & post complete addresses and names of people in need of immediate help.
4. ABS-CBN Typhoon Ondoy Hotline: (+632-4163641)
5. Jam 88.3: (+632- 6318803) or SMS at JAM (space) 883 (space) your message to 2968

Rubber Boat Requests, 4×4 Trucks

1. NCRPO (+632-8383203, +632-8383354)
2. Private citizens who would like to lend their motor boats for rescue
please call emergency nos: +632-9125668, +632-9111406, +632-9122665, +632-9115061)
3. You can also text (+632917-4226800 or +632927-6751981) for rescue dump trucks.
4. For those who are able to lend 4×4 trucks for rescue: Please send truck to Greenhills Shoppng Center Unimart Grocery to await deployment, Tel No. (+632920-9072902).

Power Supply

* Meralco (+63917-5592824, 16211, +63920-9292824) If you want service cut off to your area to prevent fires and electrocution.

Relief Aid and Donations

1. Victory Fort is opening its doors to those affected by the typhoon. Call 813-FORT.
2. NoyMar relief Operations: Clare Amador (+639285205508) or Jana Vicente at +639285205499). Drop off for relief donations is at Balay Expo Center across Farmers Market Cubao.
3. Miriam Quiambao drop off points: One Orchard Road Building in Eastwood, or message http://www.twitter.com/miriamq for more details.
4. Philippine Army Gym inside Fort Bonifacio or GHQ Gym in Camp Aguinaldo are now distributing donations for Ondoy Victims.
5. Team Manila stores in Trinoma, Mall of Asia, Jupiter Bel-Air and Rockwell shall be accepting relief goods (Canned Goods, Ready-to-drink Milk,Bottled Water and Clothes) for distribution by Veritas.
6. Caritas Manila Office at Jesus St., Pandacan Manila near Nagtahan Bridge (+632-5639298, +632-5639308)
7. Radio Veritas at Veritas Tower West Ave. Cor EDSA (+632-9257931-40)
8. Aranaz Stores in Rockwell & Greenbelt is accepting donations of any kind for Payatas communities affected by Ondoy
9. Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan Task Force Noah, a disaster response arm of the Jesuits, is accepting donations. Please drop it off sa Ateneo Cervini Dorm.
10. Philippine National Red Cross‘ different ways to Donate.
11. Red Cross Load Donations: Right now the easiest way to make donations from the seat of your chair is via mobile phone load. The Red Cross Rescue and Relief Operations. Text: REDAMOUNT to 2899 (Globe) or 4483 (Smart)
12. Ateneo de Manila University is now accepting donations for the victims of Ondoy. Donations can be dropped at MVP Lobby. For those stranded/those who need help: To all students who need help or know of people who need help. Please text the name, location, and contact number to (+6329088877166). ATENEO, which is now an open shelter, accepts refugees. Call (+632917-8952792)
13. Papemelroti stores in 91 Roces Ave. / Ali Mall Cubao / SM City North EDSA / SM Fairview / SM Megamall / Glorietta 3 in Makati / SM Centerpoint / SM Southmall are accepting relief goods (canned goods / milk / bottled water / clothes – NO CASH pls.)
14. TXTPower now accepts donations via SmartMoney 5577514418667103, GCash 09179751092 and Paypal http://is.gd/3GvuN
15. Our Lady of Pentecost Parish (+632-4342397, +632-9290665) per Gabe Mercado, donations are very much welcome. The Parish is located at 12 F. Dela Rosa corner C. Salvador Sts., Loyola Heights, Quezon City.
16. Hillsborough Village Chapel – Water, blankets, shoes, and clothes may be sent to Hillsborough Village Chapel in Muntinlupa City. These will go to families whose houses were washed out in the nearby sitios.
17. Greenhills/Mandaluyong/San Juan Area, if you want to help out with the rescue and relief operations, you can drop off your donations (clothes, food, etc..) at La Salle Greenhills Gate 2 tomorrow or volunteer from 9am to receive, sort, repack the donations.
18. Petron: You may bring your relief goods to all Petron branches.
19. LUCA stores (Rockwell, Shang-rila, Eastwood, or GA towers): Send your old clothes & donations (no cash pls).
20. “LUZON RELIEF: Volunteer / Donate / Pray”: Donations can be brought to RENAISSANCE FITNESS CENTER, 2nd Floor, Bramante Building, Renaissance Towers Ortigas, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City starting MONDAY (Sept.28) / 9am – 7pm Contact Person: Warren Habaluyas (+632929-8713488) or email at luzonrelief@gmail.com
21. MOONSHINE boutique in Rockwell also accepting relief good to help Ondoy victims in Marikina and Cainta.
22. Katipunan Avenue. Contact Erica Paredes at (+632917-4741930) — they need bread, packed juice, sandwich filling (tuna, chicken, anything) You can help her make them, deliver the sandwiches to her house, or help her distribute! Call for more details.
23. Manor Superclub, Eastwood City will accept goods and other emergency items starting Sunday at 10 am.
24. Citizens Disaster Response Center (CDRC): Relief goods for typhoon victims being accepted at 72-A Times St., West Triangle, QC. Tel (+632-9299820/22)
25. MINISTOP IBARRA (Espana cor. Blumentritt, Sampaloc Manila) is also accepting relief goods, Food (non-perishable goods only) Clothing, Medicines, Beds, Pillows, Blankets, Emergency Supplies to help Typhoon Ondoy victims.
26. Whitespace 2314 Chino Roces Ave Ext as a Mkt drop-off for relief goods.

* FINDERSERVICE. For Smart, text “wis < your name > < your mobile>” to 386.
* FINDERSERVICE. For Globe, text “find < your name> < your mobile> to 7000.

Baja’s located on the third floor of Greenbelt 3, near Capriciosa. We don’t recall which restaurant or fast food or bistro it was that we wanted to try out but Baja was near the ticket booth so it made the decision easier for us.

We ordered fries and burritos. I don’t recall the names of the food we ate. (Now I wish I took the receipt home with me.) Anyhow, the pictures will have to suffice for now.

Supreme Fries was served first, along with our drinks: orange juice for me, Sprite for JM. The fries were awesome! Definitely not soggy! A big plus for me. They also didn’t taste like sweet potato, which is a very good thing. Fast food fries taste like sweet potato every so often.

Look at all those tomato bits, onion bits, guacamole, sour cream and cheese! I love potatoes a lot so this was something I loved. I could come back to Baja even just for these fries. I swear, that platter of fries was something JM and I both loved last night.

JM ordered a siding of chili con carne. But it was more of chili beef. There was little to none of beans. Oh well. But it tasted ok to me.

My order was a Baja grilled chicken burrito without the rice. I was really trying to make sure that I had space for Red Mango’s frozen yogurt so I decided to hold off the rice. The chicken was tasty actually. And I really loved how the Mexican hot sauce just went along well with it, the sour cream and guacamole. The nachos and salsa on the side were an extra treat for me.

JM’s food came last. And when it got to our table, we knew why. The Super Grande Burrito was true to its name.

He didn’t know how to eat it. In my case, my burrito was of a normal size so I could still bite it off like you normally will. But the one he got was really huge. No other word for it. He settled for the fork, knife and spoon method. (LOL)

Slicing a bit off from the burrito reveals that it is one heck of a packed burrito. Whoever prepared it is amazing! All that rice, meat, beans and leafy veggies took some effort! And JM was one happy man eating that burrito.

The burrito I ordered was PhP 255 and JM’s grande burrito was PhP 355. Both are well worth our money and they sure satisfied our appetites and taste buds. In JM’s case, he even brought home part of the burrito because he got so full with it already.

I was ready for Red Mango after we left Baja. After all, it was something I really have been looking forward to after all the raves I’ve been hearing.

My co-worker recommended the green tea frozen yogurt to me. And because of that, I know that I had to add mochi and red beans to it. A small cup of green tea frozen yogurt + those two toppings cost me PhP115 but it was heaven in a cup!

This picture could never do justice to how delicious and delightful this combination really is. Yummy! Too bad JM was so full of burrito he couldn’t even try to taste this heavenly delight. Red Mango’s frozen yogurt is something I’d definitely go back for every once in a while. I even told JM that I’d consider setting aside budget for this every month. I loved it so much. ♥

Baja and Red Mango are both in Greenbelt 3 so if you’re going there for a movie, try and taste the food they offer.

Talking Tongues serves Chinese Indonesian food. We think that he owner is probably Indonesian because she asked me if I was one. (Being Filipino, we are usually mistaken for being Indonesian, Thai, Chinese, etc.) We ordered our food and she asked us if we wanted our food spicy. Of course we said yes! So we sat down on one of the tables while waiting for our food. Looks like they prepare things as they were ordered so it took a while. We looked at the decorations of the place and the uniforms the staff sort of reminded me of Banana Leaf’s staff uniform. The place was colorful with the yellow, purple and blue stuff and furniture. There were even some kind of figures on display. I think it’s to emphasize that they serve Chinese Indonesian cuisine.

It was actually hard to decide on what to eat, considering that everything on the menu seemed interesting. It doesn’t help that seeing all those food being served to their customers when we arrived looked great and smelled like it. Ah food. We really hoped to eat them and get satisfied in the end.

This is what the placed looked like.

The food

JM’s food was some kind of spicy fried rice dish with egg on top of it. The barbequed chicken was the viand. But really, I think that the rice itself was ok already. There were also pickled cucumbers on the side. We sure were glad to ask for spicy food because we got what we asked for. And there was even hot sauce on the table for those who wanted it extra spicy. As you can see from the picture, the rice looked like it had a lot of spices when it was prepared.

At first I was thinking that maybe my food will end up bland because of the light color. It wasn’t as red as JM’s rice. But I was wrong. It was actually quite spicy. Adding the hot sauce made me think that the dish I ordered was some kind of a traitor. Just striking when you least know it. But that’s ok. Spicy is good!

The fried dumplings were a bit ‘meh’ for my taste. And not so meaty either. I could have eaten dumplings elsewhere. But the rice dishes were really terrific and I wish that I could have eaten a whole lot more.

I’d gladly go back to Talking Tongues some other day. I hope to bring some friends there some time too.

I ordered two things: the spicy fried rice with bit of dried fish and egg plus fried dumplings.

Ingredients:

• 350 g shell macaroni (his mom used penne when she cooked it so i suppose that or fusili or rotini should be fine)
• diced chicken breasts (not sure how many grams, I threw the pack away sorry! but should be enough to be used for 350 g of macaroni)
• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 medium sized green bell pepper,  finely chopped
• half a bar of regular processed cheese, grated
• 2-4 tablespoons of butter
• 1 small pack Del Monte tomato catsup
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Cook the macaroni (or whatever pasta you’re cooking) according to the instructions on the pack. Set it aside.
2. Melt butter in pan. Sautee the finely chopped onion and bellpepper.
3. Stirfry the chicken with the onion and bellpper.
4. Add the condensed cream of mushroom soup, ketchup and grated cheese. Mix it well. Let it simmer.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Add the macaroni. Mix it well.
7. Cook it on the stove until it is ‘baked’   Make sure you use an aluminum foil to cover it until it gets ‘baked’

In my case, I didn’t have aluminum foil so I put the mixture in a microwavable container and made sure I buttered the sides of the container. I let it stay in the microwave for 6 minutes using Med-High settings.  It became a bit baked. During the first attempt, I mixed in tomato sauce, not tomato catsup. It wasn’t quite enough to taste as well as my officemate’s mom’s cooking.  Today, he said that it lacked some catsup but suited him.  Another co-worker suggested I could add more cheese. So, there. Please feel free to check it out and if you find that other variations on the recipe taste well too, let me know I’d love to know what you did with your chicken casserole.

As I type, I have the pork and chicken on the stove. Waiting for it to become tender. The recipe I based it from is here.

The recipe also required paprika but, uh, it’s not a common thing in the office so I am not using that.

Anyhow, I wasn’t able to properly follow the measurements. I have to cook it tomorrow by frying the meats then adding the sauce then reducing it. Rawr.

That will be all for now.

So we were greeted by a fresh glass of dalandan juice and JM was really hungry by then. While waiting for the salad, I admired the table setting.

We were served the salad first.

The lettuce leaves were so big and fresh. I don’t think I saw lettuce leaves that fresh in the supermarket! There’s only one dressing and even if I included fruits like mango and jackfruit in my salad, the dressing went well with it. If I go to Sonya’s Garden again, I’d buy a bottle of their salad dressing. It’s not too strong unlike some vinegar based dressings. It’s not too creamy either. I don’t know but it’s just right. A bit sweet, not salty.

After enjoying the salad, we had some bread with interesting spreads. JM had an interesting experience when he spread some peppercorns on his bread! Hehe. The bread was soft but the crust was a bit toasted so I liked it a lot. The spreads were interesting. The dips: pesto, white cheese, anchovies, tapenade. I love the white cheese and the pesto!

As for the main course, we had pasta. I especially loved the sundried tomatoes. And the salmon too. For me the chicken with cream was not too great because I am not a big cream-based sauce fan. I guess it’s because I found it a bit too sweet. In any case you have a choice of adding mushrooms, olives and other food I don’t recall at the moment because this post is really long overdue.

JM actually didn’t eat much bread in order to have space for the pasta. Hehe. He loved the pasta!

For dessert, we had the following: glazed sweet potato, turon, chocolate cake. It was served with tarragon tea.

JM couldn’t eat much of the desserts already because he was full. But I just had to taste everything I am a huge fan of turon, to be honest, and theirs wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet so I loved it. ? The glazed sweet potato was also tasty. Nothing like the camote cue we’re used to eating for snack. The glaze didn’t make the sweet potatoes too sweet and it looked appetizing. The chocolate cake was heavenly! I actually wished I could eat more but I was too full for that. The tarragon tea was perfect.

We had to take pictures of the garden too:

There were nice little house-shaped lamps on the ground and lots of pretty flowers at the side of the dining area. There was also this droopy sunflower and JM just had to pose beside it, as if commiserating with it. Awww.

It was a great trip to Sonya’s Garden and I wouldn’t mind going back again

Anyhow, this is the adobo recipe we followed — sort of. We didn’t have laurel leaves so we just sort of followed it. Also, we didn’t separate the sauce from the adobo. We removed the marinade after making the meat tender in it but after frying the pork we poured all the sauce in the pan and let it ‘dry up’ or ‘reduce’ — I am not sure what the proper term is but what happened is that in the end there was less sauce.

We had to add more pepper because we used crushed pepper. That was all we had in stock. We added it in while waiting for it to dry up a little.

Some pictures of the cooking experiment:

And this is the finished product!

As of the time I am writing this post, it’s more like the dry adobo JM likes. I prefer it a bit soupy to be honest but this works too! And we tasted it earlier. I could say it was Nami*!!!

*Nami = my bastardized word for “Yummy!”