Eyes on Barney

Seldom does Jade pay attention to TV shows. She’d ask for the television to be turned on, watches local cartoons or DVDs for few minutes and turn away from it to get back to play. But not until she came to love the Barney series we got on a CD bought back home. She can stand to watch one whole 30-minutes series without any interruption. She’d join the kids singing and dancing. She loved the “bunny hop hop hop” thing from the “animal friends’ series”. She’d even run towards the TV screen in an attempt to join the kids hugging Barney. One of the things she learned from it that we love is to kiss and hug mom and dad when she hears the “I love you” song.


One time, in a scene where the camera focus was shifted from Barney to the kids, somewhat getting him out from the picture, Jade cried out to look for him and even searched the side of the screen in an attempt to find Barney there. Dennis was the one who noticed it. Then when Barney showed back; she smiled and cheered. At times when our phone rings that required us to tone down the volume or to interrupt the show to hear the other line, she would protest with a cry. She’s learning words, actions and good stuffs from the Barney shows so we’re not stopping her to watch unless it gets to disrupt her eating habits.

Jade would sit watching for a while but when the singing and dancing start,

she'd leave her seat and join the fun

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What comes after deviating from the original recipe?

One of the advantages of keeping an e-group is that members get to exchanged ideas about any subject raised that interests anyone from the group. The subject could include family life, work, sentiments, rants, jokes, movies, men, women, travel experiences, kids and of course, recipes. The last subject gives me the highest interest especially if it is something that I can cook out from my kitchen. In one of my e-groups discussions, we talked about pasta recipes and some of the members mentioned about Fetuccini Alfredo. Since the dish name sounded complicated to me, I didn’t put much attention to it until after my last week’s search for an easy to prepare dish for dinner. With combinations of tiredness from my own dishes, riddance of take aways, excitement over a new recipe and short requirement for dish preparation, I googled what came out to be a delectable serving.

Google search took me to http://www.allrecipes.com/ where I looked for various recipes and ended up choosing from 2 pasta dishes. With quick preparation in mind, I opted for the “Broccoli Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo”. Original recipe is shown below but with limitations of supplies in the grocery store, I did my usual variation style which turned out to be "Broccoli Ham Spiral Alfredo" (My modifications are shown in italics).

INGREDIENTS
1/2 pound dry fettuccine pasta (500gms spiral pasta)
1 cup fresh chopped broccoli
2 tablespoons butter
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast (4 regular ham slices)
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup [2 regular cans cream of mushroom soup (Campbells)]
1/2 cup milk 375ml fresh milk
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese


DIRECTIONS
1. Bring a large pot of salted water (and cooking oil) to a boil. Add fettuccini (spiral) pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente, adding broccoli for the last 4 minutes of cooking. Drain.

2. Cut chicken breast meat (ham slices) into bite size pieces, trimming any fat off in the process. In a large skillet melt butter or margarine over medium heat. Add chicken (ham) and saute until well browned. Add soup, milk and cheese and stir all together. Add pasta/broccoli mixture and heat through. (I didn’t heat through the mixture anymore, I just mixed the sauce in the separate pan) Serve hot.

The ham being sauted

Cream of mushroom added

Fresh milk added and started to boil


Sauce, pasta and broccoli all added and ready to eat

Preparation time: 5minutes, cooking time: 15 minutes and there the dish is actually ready in just 20 minutes.

Over the weekend, I got curious as to how the dish got its name. Instead of getting the information I wanted, I ended up reading more and more variations of this famous dish. Only today did I eventually have the chance to know this famous pasta’s origin and true to my hunch, it got its name from the cook who invented it. And guess what led the cook to this dish? To please his pregnat wife! What a romantic act.

Source: Wikipedia
Fettuccine alfredo is a pasta dish made from fettuccine pasta tossed with Parmesan cheese, butter, and heavy cream. As the cheese melts, it thickens the liquids to form a smooth and rich coating on the pasta.

When butter was added both before and after fettuccine was put in the serving bowl, the butter was known as doppio burro (double butter). Di Lelio's original contribution was to double the amount of butter in the bowl before the fettuccine would be poured in, thus a triplo burro (triple butter) effect instead of double. And why did Alfredo double the amount of butter? His young wife was pregnant and was unable to keep any food down. Alfredo tried every dish he could imagine, but his variation on the fettuccine worked. When his wife began eating again, Alfredo added the new dish to his restaurants menu, but it was not perceived as being anything special until a couple of Hollywood movie stars stumbled across it a decade later.

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Birds power

Without much to blog about lately, I turned to searching for cute, funny and animated videos. High rating subjects constantly catch my attention. I find it amazing how people generate such form of entertainments. The embedded video is one of my favorites. I'd say a group shouldn't underestimate the power of an individual.


Video source title: For the birds



After watching this video, I made an assumption that one question that could possibly arise is "why don't birds get electrocuted when they sit on power lines?" Thus, I made an extra effort to refresh my memory and look for a supporting visual.

Illustration: Debrah Solomon

The answer to that question is simply said to be because they are not grounded thus not completing an electric circuit. Unless the birds touch another wire or grounded object, they are safe.

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Image upload issue in blogger - still an open bug!

I published my post “Basil and seafoods” on Sunday night and all images showed up well until the next day. However when I checked on the new comments come Tuesday, I noticed that only the “boxes with small x marks” were visible. I double checked it by clicking the refresh button several times but to my dismay, I didn’t see the pictures of basil and seafoods. As it was my third time to publish/re-publish that post, I no longer attempted to re-upload the images. I checked on the html codes and didn’t see anything unusual so what I did was to copy and paste the picture’s code in a new post to see if they appear but I didn’t succeed.

I searched blogger’s help sites but couldn’t find any related topics so I decided to report this issue to the related contacts by filling up the form. If anyone of you encountered this, please let me know if you have a fix.

On the other hand, I browsed the forum in google that discussed the image issues in blogger and bumped into this.


We are aware and currently working to fix the image uploading issue. This issue predominately causes the following error codes:
bX-6tnmaz
bX-ltlqzv

For updates and discussion of this issue, please visit this Hot Topic thread in the Blogger Help Group. — LATEST UPDATE ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2007
LABELS: images, outstanding

It reminded me of the same messages I seldom encountered when uploading images in my posts. I didn’t pay much attention on it then because re-uploading the images shortly after getting the error message worked for me. But the thing that struck me is that this issue has been detected and raised to blogger admin more than a month ago and a blogger employee said on October that a fix is imminent but I figured that issue still exists until now. There are users complaining but a fix doesn’t seem to be found yet.

Added to that, I still didn’t get any feedback on the complaint/concern I raised. I hope blogger admin can work on these problems as soon as possible.

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Basil and seafoods (updated)

I really love cooking and I’d say my median skills are results of observation, practice, experimentation and exploration. Recently, I discovered how the herb basil contributes to the aroma and savour of seafoods. Perfect is how my husband describes it.

I used to know and use only the dried basil leaves which are also part of the bottle of “Italian spices” I use mostly for pasta preparation. Then I figured that the taste I didn’t like much from fried chicken and squid tentacles sold in the night markets is actually fresh basil leaves added just few seconds before the goods are lifted up from the boiling oil for dripping. It is also the same herb usually added in the viands served in my workplace’s canteen.

One time, we had dinner in our friend’s place and she served us clams filled with herbs. From the smell of it, I told her that was the scent I avoid in foods but she told me it goes well with the clams. I really didn’t have to eat the leaves because the main purpose of having it added in the viand is just to make it smell even better - in other words, the basil leaves were the dish's seasoning. Setting aside the herbs, I spooned only the sauce and the clams and to my surprise, it tasted oh so good.

From there, I searched from the internet facts about basil leaves and realized that pesto is actually made from it, with the addition of pine nuts and olive oil. That made me even more excited leading me to looking for articles on how to make pesto. I found several writings about it which basically say the same thing but presented in different ways. Anyhow, I planned to make pesto by myself but didn’t have the food processor and realized our blender is too small to make a desirable amount. So until now, I still didn’t give it a try.

On the other hand, when I had the chance to prepare various seafood recipes after that “fishing” experience in Taoyuan, I bought a bag of fresh basil leaves and had them as one of the main ingredients in my cooking.

The first dish I cooked was a replica of the clams my friend prepared. The recipe is very simple – all I needed were chopped onions, pressed garlic cloves, small amount of oil, oyster sauce, clams and half-bag of the basil leaves. I sauted the first 2 ingredients, added the clams and oyster sauce and let it boil. Since the clams were soaked in water, there’s no need to add water. I covered the pan and let it boil for few minutes with the clam shells popping out here and there. When the sound lessened, I opened the pan and noting that most of the shells are opened, I added the basil leaves and covered the pan again and left it boiling for another few minutes. My allotted time is not really measured as I am used to estimations.

The second dish I cooked with basil leaves consisted of the crab legs as the main ingredient along with the same items listed earlier but this time, I also had an egg and flour in my preparation table. For ease of eating, I asked hubby to crash the shells with the “pounding” metal before cooking. That time, what I had in mind is the dish that we usually order in a seafood restaurant we visit on an occasional basis. It’s actually quite expensive so I thought of imitating it. I guess I was lucky to get it right on my first try. The crab legs were boiled separately first, a dash of salt to taste is added. After boiling, I set separated the crab legs from the broth and set aside the latter. I took another pan and sauted the onions and garlic on a small amount of oil (mine was olivenol oil) then added the crab meat. After several toss and turns, I added the oyster sauce and the broth and left it to boil while I beat the egg and mixed the flour with a small amount of water. I actually used flour because I didn’t have corn starch in my kitchen cabinet. The purpose of adding it anyway is to make the mixture a little sticky. Now when the boiling mixture matched my taste, I added the egg and mixed flour and stirred what’s on the pan. Then I added the basil leaves, covered the pan and let it simmer for few minutes. The scent of the herbs filled our small kitchen area and extended to the living room and bedroom which made us hungry right away. Good thing the rice is already cooked so after allowing the dish to simmer, it was time to get the serving bowl and lay the dish on the table. We set aside Jade’s porridge and decided to serve her plain rice with the crab meat either from mommy or daddy’s plate. Of course, compliments in forms of “wows” and “sarap” followed while we were feasting on this newly discovered viand recipe. I ate bare handed which made it even better for me to enjoy the meal.

I will still have to work on the pesto but the next thing I have know is where to find the pine nuts.

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The Clone!

You guessed it right, I am still online at this time of the night! I finally got to publish my two posts that remained in draft for almost two weeks now. I am about to call it a night but I decided to browse some funny videos and found this funny baby video which is the third from a series of "n". I thought this is the same laughing baby but after watching, it made me uncertain now. I guess the popular laughing baby is a boy, the baby on this video is a girl and her dad did this and the other videos.

Definitely, there were effects implemented in this video but I just love it I wanted to share here. I'll show it to Jade tomorrow.

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anticipation or instinct?

During our 2006 summer vacation back home, we dropped by Tam-awan Village after the family's Asin swimming. I was a no-first timer to this place however it was my first time to see the artists stationed there and offering sketch services to the place's visitors. We took a quick look at the displayed images but decided to head to the coffee shop first as we were all famished. Then my sisters went back to the artists' post and asked my niece to pose. At first, we thought only one artist will work on the subject but it turned out that two guys actually got their papers and pens and started to chalk out my niece who was behaved well during the entire course.

Thinking that our daughter may be not be willing to be seated for a long time, we didn't follow suit. But after my niece's sketches were completed, we eventually decided to have Jade take the subject's seat. For few minutes, she kept still and behaved well but realizing the absence of entertainments around her made her start to get bored and attempted to get free from mommy's arms. The other artists then started to make different sounds and actions to make her calm. Everyone noticed a cat around so they called feline near the artists sketching her such that they could still take a look at her face. Finally, the wait was over.

At that time, Jade had very short hair and may have even looked more like a boy so we were grinning to see how the sketched looked like. Expecting us to question it, the two artists explained to us right away that they lengthened her hair so that she'll appear girlish. We were pleased for the consideration they regarded. Somehow, it made sense to us. We brought her sketches with us here in Taiwan and having no space to display it in our small apartment, they were kept in our document storage bin.

The younger artist displaying Jade's sketch

Jade: Who is that? She doesn't look like me at all!

The senior artist finishing touches!
Jade: Mommy, bring me down! I want to go play with Manang.

We didn't think of it until several weeks ago, hubby asked me to look at Jade as he exclaimed “she looks like the painting now!” I asked him what painting he was talking about and he told me “the one from Baguio”. It took me a while to pick up what he was saying until I realized “ah, the sketches from Tam-awan.” I stared at our daughter and seconded Dennis statement about her now looking like the way she was sketched six months ago. I opened my online album after that and realized that she looked more like the sketch done by the younger artist compared to that of the other guy. (I forgot their names, they have etched it in the papers but I'm too lazy to dig them now.)

Closer look at the 1st artist's piece.

Jade looks closely to this.

Jade's latest studio picture

Doesn't her hairdo resemble the sketch?

Nah, she was too serious she didn't even smile.

Now, did the artists anticipate that she'll eventually sport that kind of hairdo or was it a father's instinct they exhibited there? Hmmnn, I'm not even sure if they are family men. But no matter what, we appreciate it.

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The works!

I’ve been aiming to publish at least one post from my drafts last weekend but I wasn’t able to do that. My thoughts were simply disorganized that completing one seemed a very long time. Instead of pursuing it, I decided to work on my page customization in a semiempirical way. I made use of the trial and error method and that meant numerous clicks on the “preview” and “clear unsaved edits” buttons. Nah, it wasn’t all in a day’s work as it took me three non-consecutive nights to get it done. I’d say I am happy with the outcome.

Working on the template’s code using “edit html” and “add page elements” (javasript/html) were mostly what I did. And why is that? It’s because I simple don’t know how to work directly on the html codes and I don’t have the luxury of time to study it. I used google search and luckily, I bumped into Vin’s Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta) blog where I found almost all I needed to come up with the layout I wanted. It was a matter of understanding the articles published and following the simply instructions provided. I didn’t even have to type codes because it was as simple as doing “copy and paste” and editing the variables to incorporate my actual blog’s name. (But I maybe asked why it took me 3 nights to do it if it’s a matter of copy and paste only – that’s another story :).

Anyhow, here are changes recently implemented in my blog’s layout …

1. Three column width – this is one thing I wanted to do since I saw several WP themes displaying such format. It even made me think of migrating to WP but eventually, the idea was shrugged off. Vin provided the codes and explained in detail what it implied. I had to make few tweaks on the width figures and alignment of the sidebar as the code provided is for right sidebar but what I wanted was a left sidebar since the opposite already existed.

2. Post expandable summaries – I may not have long posts all the time but it helps having a post summary and having it expanded independently to read the whole thing. Installing the codes made all posts have the “read more” line at the end by default so I had to edit the latest 7 posts which are displayed in the main page such that the “read more” option exist in the midst of the post body. I also tweaked the codes such that the “read more” line is shown in bold and caps lock fonts. From it, I learned several tag codes and tag termination.

3. New window view for my blogroll – a friend has already informed me how to do this before but I was not able to incorporate it at that time. I thought I can simply paste the code in the page element but no, I had to insert it in the expanded widgets code. That meant I had to scroll down the html scripts to find the blogroll widget. Anyhow, this will now enable my blog friends to open the links without leaving my blog.

4. Option to subsribe to my blog – at first, I only got the chicklet from feedburner then I figured out, there’s also an option to offer email subscription. The codes were provided separately but I thought of merging them in a single page element.

5. Recent comments display – Vin showed two options and I chose the simpler one – that is to display 5 recent comments. Clicking them will bring you to the commented post page.

Earlier than the above implementation, I also added three pictures at the right sidebar showing my daughter and hubby. I also organized all my posts categories but may still need to narrow them down. And yes, I enrolled my blog back to PPP several weeks ago but I only got to post the tools the other night. I got the codes from PPP’s customer support because I cannot view them in my explorer window but figured out later that codes show up well in firefox (that’s another story too).

So there! I still have some items left in my to-do list and that includes changing the header image because I only borrowed the image from a multiply template.

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Ninety Five

Wow, who would have thought of blogging at the age of 95?

I bumped into this site while surfing the net and I thought I'd have it shared in my blog. I am actually surprised to learn that a "lola" is blogging HERE. It made me ask myself - "will I reach that age?" and "would I be blogging if I were her?"

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When it rains

it pours… so don’t forget your umbrella! – quotable quote from my friend, Sheng.

I am taking a few minutes break from work and that break to me means scribbling down this post – I’ll take another break later to get a cup of hot drink from the cafeteria. Hay, I’ve been very busy since last week and my “system” is doing a total adjustment. It has been six months since the last time I was really busy at work. Wow, that’s two quarters! So what did I do all this time? Hmmnnn, two months was the official vacation leave while four months was spent at work but not really doing much. I even had to talk to my boss several times to ask for tasks to do. He did gave me some but weren’t that much to eat up the whole office hours so I still had chances to surf the net and update my blog/s.

Now that I am starting with a new project, I find it quite strange to see myself busy. But this is not even comparable to how busy I was for the past two years when even at the peak of my pregnancy, I got to work until 1am. Yes, I worked on more than 5 major projects by myself – that meant staying late at work almost everyday as I needed to collate and edit reports, update emails, generate my own reports, attend night telecons and do other things I shouldn’t really be responsible of. Good thing my Jade didn’t decide to come out while I was on a meeting.

If somebody gets back to me like this - I'm might not be able to control my temper and give him/her a punch (not the drinks, ok :) ).

I should be able to shrug off this kind of “new” working scheme yet I have to welcome the delight of not having to worry about overcoming a day-long or even worse, a week-long boredom that results from being idled. Gotta get that cup of drink now and finish my “to do’s” else I’ll end up dumped with more of it.

PS. I got several posts kept in my draft and I’m not sure when they’ll get published. Anyhow, I’ll get back on my regular blogging activities in no time.

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a pet's wakeup call

I saw this video when I opened my explorer window last night and I found it very cute. Good thing we don't keep a pet at home. If ever, I'd make sure it doesn't get the chance to enter the bedroom :)

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igorotblogger.com in the making

Bill from the boondocks won the contest here. More to that, his rival Rachel was also announced as a winner. How very generous the host is for deciding to give these two bloggers their own domains. I liked how Tina wrote about her lessons-learned in one of her posts prior to announcing the winner/s.

Kudos to all participants.

PS. I just checked the soon to be domain and noted that it's already alive

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