Like The Tomato
Nothing here but my musings about daily life, books, anime, and food.
For the past week or so, I have been scouring my brain for the best post to celebrate the one year anniversary of our move here to this State. It’s odd that I can’t seem to find the words about one of the biggest decisions we have made in our lives.
So, I decided to just stick to the basics.
We still live in the same apartment. We just renewed the lease actually. I am not saying that this place is perfect, I do think that we still need a bigger place. This place still doesn’t have enough storage space or counter space. 1 year in and we still have 3 boxes of books unpacked. I still want an actual workspace. I love doing work on the dining table but an actual work table would be great. But regardless of the apartment’s shortcomings, I love coming home to this little place. This is our place. All the things in here scream us. From the bookshelves. To the shoes. To the soaps. Down to the clutter. It’s all ours.
I finally left the corporation that I was working for. Ten years and I finally got the courage to leave. And honestly, if we didn’t move, I wouldn’t have left. But, here I am now working for a young company. And I love it. It’s sort of a start-up lab and I really enjoy being part of the team to establish the company here in the US. Oh, and I am now walking among the living. Traded my overnight job of a 9 to 5 grind. Finally.
I finally ditched my car. Well not really. I still have my car but I chose to take the bus to work now. Well, I guess I can drive to work if I wanted to, I can be at work in about 30 minutes. But it only takes me 40 minutes to get to work by bus. The 10-minute difference is not that bad. Can’t complain at all. I don’t have to deal with traffic myself. I just sit on the bus. And then I don’t have to deal with looking for parking. I work downtown so parking can be very interesting. So the bus is definitely an advantage.
Since I moved, I finally get to read more. I know, I could’ve made the time to read in San Diego. But since I am taking the bus now to and from work, I am able to read more. I tend to not read at home. House chores. Doggie cuddles. Netflix or Crunchyroll. Being at home can be distracting to my reading. So the commute definitely gave me the much-needed reading time. I am still not reading as much as I want but I can’t really complain when I’m already on book 26 for this year.
So do I think this move was a success?
I think so. San Diego was great but I always felt out of place. Regardless of the fact that my friends and my family are far away, and I do miss them dearly, but this city felt like home from the very first time I visited. I personally don’t regret the move.
Dinuguan is a Filipino stew made of pork meat cooked in pork blood and vinegar. This very popular dish is often eaten with the well beloved white puto (steamed cake made with rice flour) or white rice.
We live outside of Seattle and for some reason, Filipino restaurants here are rare and scarce. To say that we have been craving for this dish is a huge understatement. My fiancee’s dad makes a mean dinuguan and we miss it. So what is the solution? I want to try and give cooking this dish a try.
Disclaimer: Before I continue on, it would be best to disclose that there will be no measurements on this post. I don’t believe in them. I read the instructions but never followed the quantity that they use on recipes. All things I use, i.e. vinegar, salt, pepper, are all eyeball estimates and often adjusted to my own taste buds’ satisfaction.
Though traditionally made with pork offal, I decided to cook this dish with pork thigh and pork belly. Yes. I would like this to be fatty so I chose cuts that have a little bit more fat in them. The recipe is surprisingly simple, the only misgiving that I had was cooking with blood. Never handled it in the kitchen before so I was very apprehensive.
I used 1 diced yellow sweet onion, minced garlic, 3 slices of pork bellies, 1 pork thigh, 3 chilies, vinegar, 1 beef broth carton, bay leaves, 2 containers of pork blood, and then salt and pepper to taste.
The first step I did was thaw the blood. And while that was in progress, I decided to marinate the pork meat with just a little bit of fish sauce. I was very careful not to put so much fish sauce, I just wanted the meat coated with it.
Using a stew pot, I sauteed the onion in a little bit of olive oil. I don’t like caramelized onions when cooking stew, I just “sweat” it. Once I feel like that the onion had sweat enough, I added the minced garlic. When I see that the onion had reached a certain transparency to it, I added the pork meat being very careful not to pour off whatever little fish sauce I used for marinating. I took my time sauteeing the pork meat, I made sure that all the slices were brown and at least appeared to be cooked externally.
The next step was tenderizing of the pork meat. I poured a whole carton of beef broth into the pot. Water is definitely an option but I just like using broth for any stews that I make, it just gives the dish a little bit more flavor. This was also the step where in I poured vinegar to the mix – if I could put a quantity on it, maybe about 1 cup. I also added maybe four or five bay leaves onto the mix. I stirred the contents of the pot, slightly covered it with the lid and left it for about an hour or longer depending on how soft I wanted the meat to be. I did check from time to time using my trusty fork to make sure that the pork meat was at the right tenderness.
Then the pork blood went in the mix. I was stirring the stew maybe every 3 minutes just to ensure that the blood didn’t coagulate. I also added the chilies at this stage. I didn’t taste the dish yet however. I just stirred, rest, stirred again for approximately 30 minutes. They said the blood should be cooked in about 15 minutes after you put it in the dish but I wanted to play it safe and did 30 minutes before I started adjusting the taste.
The taste adjustment taste should be pretty simple but this was the most crucial for me. I wanted the dish to taste acceptable and to not make it obvious that this was my first time cooking dinuguan. I added salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then tasted it. Not enough, I added a little bit more salt and pepper. Not vinegary enough, I added a splash of vinegar. I did this in little increments until I have the desired taste.
Once I was happy with the taste, I took the pot out of the heat and just let it sit for a while. You can serve it right away with rice, I just like it when the dish sits on the counter for a little bit to let the flavors combine more and do its magic.
I prefer my meals with rice, so I decided to serve dinuguan in a bowl on top of white rice. I had it last night for dinner and I had it again for breakfast this morning – the stew was even better in the morning or the next day! My fiancee loved it too so that was a win for me.
Will I cook this again? For sure, it was so easy to make with very minimal ingredients. The ingredients were also not difficult to buy. Asian markets or in our case the grocery store next to our apartment pretty much sells everything. A little deviation from this though is that I want to try it with ginger for sure. I heard a lot of good things to adding ginger to this dish.
Cravings satisfied for sure.
I am not picky with food, I mean I won’t say no to any good food. Sure I might not eat some dishes – anything with exotic ingredients is a no go – but generally, I enjoy and love food.
I like eating out, I like cooking. I love food. And I am lucky that I get to enjoy food the way I want to.
Until recently –
This might be a little TMI to share on the net but if this episode didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have met up with an allergist.
For the past year or so – maybe a couple of years or more – my skin had been a real problem. I get super itchy at times and my skin breaks in rashes. I thought it was the weather. Dry skin, stress, blah blah blah. But in a not so distant past or I should just say early last month, my skin got horrible. One day I was fine, the next day I wasn’t.
It started on my face – swollen and red. Then scalp got super dry and very aggravated. Then my skin. I was covered in rashes. I was miserable. I was struggling with itchiness and not scratching it.
I went to see a dermatologist, she said that it might be eczema but the fact that I never had it when I was kid almost ruled out that possibility. She suggested an allergist. She didn’t want to start treating me for any skin condition if the rashes and everything else were triggered by allergy. But she did say to stop using anything that has fragrances. And she prescribed me some strong steroid cream to calm my skin down.
That next week, I saw an allergist. I had some blood work done. We found out that I am vitamin D deficient, which could be a factor why I am itching so much. I am allergic to dust, some trees and pollen, cat and dogs – I have two dogs so that’s a bummer. It was also confirmed that I am in fact allergic to some shellfish – well the crustacean side anyway, so shrimp, lobster, crab. I am also allergic to eggs, milk, wheat, almonds, soy and peanuts.
So my allergist and I agreed that an elimination experiment on my diet is in order. Giving up my dogs was not an option, so eliminating allergens out of my diet was the way to go. Aside from shellfish, which I had stopped eating when I was in my early 20’s, all the other food allergies I have is in my diet pretty much everyday. The past three weeks had been tough. Some of the food that I like to eat and some of my favorite food in fact contains those allergens.
It has been an interesting journey. I have been reading labels ever so diligently, actively avoiding some of my favorite foods, not eating out too much, and accepting the fact that I probably won’t be able to enjoy food as much as I used to. My diet had to change drastically and I understand that I have to choose whole food now and actually have to cook my food at home.
I told Chris that I’m still deciding if knowing my allergens is a good thing or not. But the results have been amazing. Since I had stopped eating food with these allergens, my skin had recovered nicely. No more rashes, no more itchiness. And I’m pretty sure the no fragrance thing helped out a lot too. The only thing that I am having trouble now is breathing since I have environmental allergies as well. But that is another story and I have an inhaler for that.
And now a dilemma rises.
How do I go about writing about food if I can’t eat most of them?
Cindy, a reader that I’m following on YouTube, decided to host a readathon last month. The Asian Readathon. She had designed the readathon to be pressure free and somewhat lazy and after the video announcement, I agreed. Cindy had even provided a list of books for participant – including a list of books that will knock out four challenges (there were only five challenges in total).
I normally don’t get tempted to participate in readathons. Why? I have a problem with sticking to a TBRs. Sticking to a reading list had always been a difficult task for me. But I wanted to participate. I mean read one or two books that could satisfy four challenges and then read the group book. Total of 3 books a month, not difficult.
I prepared a non complicated TBR – 1 manga, 2 books. And I also prepared some back up books. Just in case I decided that I don’t want to read anything on the original TBR. Perfect.
Day 1 – I read 2 mangas – volume 1 of Tokyo Ghoul and Gantz. I don’t even know why decided to read 2 mangas when I know that reading even just 1 manga would KO 3 of the reading challenges. Whatever. My first day was good. And I felt like I was on a roll. I even read the first 2 short stories from the group book – A Thousand Beginnings and Endings.
Day 2 – picked up Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld to satisfy the challenge of reading a book that features an Asian intersectional character. I don’t even know if this counted since obviously Scott Westerfeld is not Asian. But I figured, why not, this book still features an Asian character in the LGBT community. To me, that counted. Anyway, tackled this book in tandem – physical book and audiobook. I mean, this book definitely caught my attention and I couldn’t put it down. I finished this book at the end of week 1.
Strong right? I really felt that I was on the right track. I mean what could go wrong? I only needed to finish the group book if I want to succeed this readathon.
Then the worst thing happened – READING SLUMP.
I couldn’t pick up a book after reading Afterworlds. I got invested to the story and I can’t seem to forget it. I tried reading some of the stories in the group book. Which I did succeed but there are stories that I had to skip just to get to the ones that interested me. It was horrible.
For the next couple weeks, I struggled hard to pick up a book, anything at that point. And nothing kept my interest. It was bad. I was pretty disappointed in myself really. I mean how could this have happened on the easiest readathon ever! I had no choice – I DNF’d the group book.
The moral of the story: Roma can’t do readathons. It would just end in disappointment.
Currently Reading: A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St. Mary’s) by Jodi Taylor