Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall - a nice place to visit in Taipei

Don’t be surprised to know that our visit to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei two weekends ago is our first step on the place after almost three years of living in Taiwan. Sadly, our 1st year of stay here was devoted to work that sleeping late on weekends was of higher priority than going to places back then. Good thing, we were able to visit the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall two times before it has been renamed to National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.

The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall

Sky was vividly blue at that time

Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is located at the middle of Taipei City and is accessible to tourist commuters, local or not, via MRT. From our place in Tamsui, we had to take the red line until the main MRT station in Taipei, transfer to the blue line and get out at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall station. We had around five minutes walk to get to the place. At first, we thought it was just the hall that was there, and then came a small garden on the side where Jade headed right away and took the grass path, instead of the side walk. To our surprise, the view of the Taipei 101 building was very vivid from the place and infront of the memorial hall was a wide playground and a huge water fountain. To us, the place provided a child-friendly environment that adults are tempted to be child-like seeing the kids running around here and there. More so, hubby figured that there were a number of people kite-flying to which he followed suit after we had a quick snack-picnic for Jade to have her late lunch meal.

Taipei 101 is clearly seen from the hall's ground

Which among the two is hubby's kite?

Dennis had to buy a ball for her because she appeared very envious of the kids around playing balls and bubbles. While her dad went kite-flying, Jade and I played on the grounds with her chasing her ball and me chasing her. She seemed so tireless and unmindful of the people around her not even caring if mom is following her or not. She would stare at people when she couldn’t run any further and look around for mommy. On the other side, hubby was enjoying his kite even if it fell down three times because of sudden change of wind strength and direction. He said he didn’t feel bad because all of the kites fell at the same time anyway.

Man-made lake park within the memorial hall's compound

This is where Jade saw the turtles and duck...

We exchanged roles of playing with Jade when the wind suppressed with the little girl enjoying every moment spent in the grounds. Later, we left the grounds and went around the place where she got the chance to see real turtles and a duck in the man-made like on one part of the hall’s park. With the sun about to set, we decided to leave the place exchanging ideas that we should go there more often on spring and summer.

Here are some of the hundred pictures we took. More of which can be found in this album.

Sun Yat-sen's statue

A statue that depicts a father telling stories to his children

That should be tea they're drinking...


Another statue depicting an elderly narrating to two children

The girl looks so interested in the man's story

A Chinese philosopher's statue around SYMH

Sorry, I can't figure out who he is...

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The bridge that changes color at night...

It's actually the light on the bridge, not the bridge , that changes color starting at twilight.

I thought F4 fever is gone but I think I’m wrong. I thought of calling it "Meteor Garden mania residual". Three weeks ago, hubby told me two of his highschool classmates, a couple, informed him they were coming to Taipei only to watch an F4 concert. Surprisingly, the concert’s venue is right here in Tamsui. What luck it is that this group will reunite hubby with his highshool classmates! By the way, we never heard about it as it seems the group’s no longer in the limelight here. Hearing the news from hubby, I checked the web for information about this concert and google led me to one website that’s managed by F4 fans. I figured that the group is no longer called F4, they’re JVKV now. The Taipei concert is scheduled on Saturday early evening in the Fisherman’s Wharf while a fan/autograph signing day follows on Sunday somewhere in Taipei City. We thought we can bring the two, KC and Alexis, out first before the concert or maybe the day after but it appeared that they have been booked already. Thus we met them at the MRT station and decided to bring them to the concert place which is less than 10minutes bus ride away from the station.

On the way, we chit-chat and I was like, “did you really just come here for the concert?” And the answer I got is of course, yes, indeed! I asked how much the tickets cost and found out there was none because the concert was actually a free one! Free? Then does that really mean they’re no longer in? Hmmnnn… that did not come from me that was from one of them. We arrived at the place just after sunset and we saw the crowd already gathered and waiting for the group. We saw a group waving small Filipino flags. KC mentioned that one of them may be another Pinay she knew who came to the concert venue a lot earlier than us. She told us that the said Pinay fan and her friends went to the place in the morning. I am not sure if they also flew from Manila just to watch the concert. With time still available for quick exchange of stories, I figured out that Alexis came to like the F4 group through KC. They also went to Hongkong last year to watch the group’s performance and mind you, they watched the same concert, on the same venue, for three consecutive nights. Awww, these two are really fanatics.

The concert stage

F4 fans waiting

(I was not able to take a close shot of the fans waving small Philippine flags)

Jade curiously trying the "concert light" I bought for her

The concert was scheduled to start at 6PM so we left them earlier so they could find a good place. We strolled for a while then headed to the coffee shop nearby. Realizing we haven’t gone to the Wharf for a number of months, and no night shots yet, I left hubby and Jade in the shop while I went out to take some pictures. I found out that the bridge light alternately changes color. We were able to see it lit in blue and green. We peeked on the venue hoping to catch a glimpse of the F4 guys since we were already there but with no luck. We left the place before 7PM without seeing any of the F4 members. I guess the concert started late.

The so-called lover's bridge in blue
Twilight shot

This time light's changed to green

Boats at the wharf

(Noeds commented it looked like it's inVenice)

The wooden bridge at twilight

More photos can be found here.

On Tuesday, hubby received a message from the couple informing him they got back to Manila safely on Monday and was happy to have watched the concert. I’ll not be surprised to hear that the two will fly back again to Taipei for yet another F4 concert.

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Chicken liver pate

We spent the weekend at home because of the impending rain on Saturday and the temperature drop on Sunday. That ended me up experimenting on two dishes, chicken liver pate and cucumber sushi. I did have plans to cook but these two are not on my list. I was supposed to try gambas ajillo or putanesca but obviously none of them was served in my kitchen. Coming up with the two dishes were both unplanned. On Saturday, I went to the market with Ate Rosie (my first Saturday at the market in my 3 years stay in Taipei) to buy a week’s supply of meat, fish and vegetables. Thinking of something new to grace my daughter’s palate, I thought chicken liver would be nice and healthy as well. I bought an “i-jin” (600gms) of it and planned to have it divided for several cookings. I realized though that the hubby does not eat liver but on the contrary, he loves liver spread and he eats igado (Filipino dish with pork liver). So, few pieces went into the pot, mixed with seasonings and resulted to liver adobo good for three servings but not necessarily in a single day. The uncooked ones were meant to be stored in the freezer. After lunch, I thought of searching the internet for any other liver recipes and found the chicken liver pate (with video shown in videojug) interesting. I told the hubby about it and with delight, he agreed that I try it. We checked the ingredients and it turned out that we’d need bacon rashers and sherry besides the seasonings we already have in the kitchen cabinet. No sherry was found in the grocery and the net showed that to come up with it, two different kinds of beverages need to be mixed. That being said, we opted to use red wine instead. And you know what, the liver turned out to be the cheapest ingredient of the liver pate. This made me realize why pates are costly back home; I’d rather buy the canned liver spread next time, lol. Anyway, the cooking process turned out to be not as simple as I thought; putting the cooked dish in our tiny blender resulted to some mess. The good thing is that we ended up with three servings of homemade chicken liver pate. Please see the complete “cooking story” that follows and give it a try if you’re interested. Of course I’d say you will love it!

The homemade chicken liver pate

Ingredients that I used (sorry, no exact measurements provided):
Chicken liver, cleaned and halved


Rashers bacon
Basil leaves (it should have been parsley but I didn’t have it)

Red wine (it should have been sherry)
Italian spices (I thought it would be nice to add these up)
Chopped garlic
Chopped onions
Butter, two portions (one for cooking and one for topping later)

Bay leaves (for toppings later)
Salt and pepper

My way of cooking it:
1. I melted the butter to have the portion for topping available right away. I used what’s left in the pan to fry the bacon with the onions and garlic added later.

2. I added the liver tossing it ocassionally. I gave it at 5~7minutes before putting the seasonings.

3. I added the Italian spices, sprinkled a dash of salt and pepper and stirred. I gave it 2~3minutes so the seasonings can “get through” the liver and bacon.
4. I added the red wine and left it to simmer for 10minutes. Occassional stirring still needed here. Of course, I tasted (and asked hubby to sample it as well) the sauce to make sure the seasonings are enough.
5. I added the basil leaves and give it another 2 minutes.

That’s it, it’s cooked! The next step is to blend dish. I’d say this is the part that takes most of my time preparing the pate. The dish had little sauce so I had to add a little amount of water otherwise the blender will not work. I know this is not supposed to be done, don’t do it then. Find other means, maybe you can add sherry or melted butter instead.

Finally, after having it blended, I set three small containers (this is advisable so you can open and consume one in a day or two), spread the blended dish and had it follow the mould of the containers. I put few bay leaves on top (for decoration purposes huh?) and topped it with the melted butter. That completed the chicken liver pate. The containers had to be placed in the fridge until the butter solidified.

The story ends with the family enjoying toasted loaves of bread topped with homemade chicken liver pate. Sunday’s experimental dish will follow in a separate post.

Credits: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-chicken-liver-pate - this was my main recipe reference. I altered it to suit availability of ingredients.
Note: Photos in this post are all taken by the blog author.

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Fairytales don't always have happy endings...even if the books say so.

We all think that the "happy ever after" endings of the stories involving the fairytale beauties but I think something happened during the course of their marriages.

I just love this cartoon I grabbed from one of the forwarded email messages I received this week and thought of posting it here. And you think only us humans got marital problems? They do too! :)

TGIF it is! Let's all have a great weekend!

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Strange-sounding, mouth-wathering recipe: ADOBASIT

Combination of pork and squid invading one of my teflon pots

You’re not a Pinoy if you don’t know and eat adobo! That’s my personal line and I don’t intend to insist. :) Adobo has always been a favorite in our home. The adobo can be anything like baboy (pork), manok (chicken), combination of baboy and manok (the first three can be with or without potatoes), pusit (squid), and sitaw (string beans). The adobong manok can also be varied from a combination of all body parts (except the internals), wings, drumsticks, breasts, and “adidas” (chicken feet). Back home, different provinces have their own ways of coming out with adobos, others prefer dry while others with sauce to mix with the rice later. For me, if I cook adobo, I always include all, if not most, of the following basic ingredients: onions, garlic, ground or whole pepper, bay leaves, soy sauce, vinegar (or calamansi extract), salt and sugar. At times, I add ginger to adobong manok and oyster sauce to adobong pusit. In one of my favorite restaurants (part of Iggy’s Inn or Iggy’s Place) in Baguio, the special adobo served is a combination of lechon baboy and chicken. That didn’t sound strange at all to me.

Recently, I was exchanging comments with my multiply friends when I posted our Christmas celebration with seafoods mainly served. Noeds, also a high school friend back in SJHS, asked Sharon and I if we ever tried cooking adobong baboy and pusit, not separately but combined. Both our answers are “no” followed by same reaction and question of “Really, is there such thing, sounds strange to us! Can you share your recipe?” Noeds in turn told us she just cooks it like the regular adobong baboy and add the pusit. The tastes match, she said. She also mentioned about using something like the pork cubes. I told her I’d like to try. I mentioned it to hubby and he was interested. I told him I couldn’t imagine the taste and he said it should be fine.

Last Sunday, I had no other plans for dinner except for that much awaited adobong baboy and pusit which I simple call ADOBASIT. Sounds like a combination yet contradiction of the Ilocano terms “adu” (many or plenty) and “bassit” (small or not much). As I mentioned in my earlier posts about recipes, I really don’t have an exact recipe. As long as you know how to cook adobo, you’d know how to come up with this. What I did was to cook the adobong baboy first then when the pork meat was already tender, I added up the squid noting that when the later gets overcooked, the meat will harden. I gave the combination less than ten minutes to simmer and tada, dish was readied for dinner. The combination came in just fine. I’d say, the taste of the pusit dominated that of the baboy but was still ok. This is one dish that will get through my kitchen not just once or twice but often.

Don't you think they make a good pair?

You may have to think twice and give it a try!

Thanks to Noeds for sharing this authentic dish!

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The siopao that will change your lifestyle...

We used to simply pass by a store where we noticed many people queued on the ordering counter while others waited for their numbers to be called. To us, it’s just like the long line in Mister Donuts and Dunkin Donuts which we find quite strange and we didn’t want to wait that long to get donuts as we find nothing really special on them. On other occassions, we notice that the line is short but unsure of what the store sells, how to order and what to order, we just head to the nearby coffeeshop. On one Wednesday night however, after bringing Jade to the clinic for one of her vaccine shots, we had to find a place to eat our dinner. Seeing food stalls on the other side of the road, we crossed and noticed that there’s no line in the store. We got the chance to look at the goods they sell and figured out they sell siopaos, colorful and variety of them. Looking at the store’s name, it showed “Mr. Baoz”. There are product portfolios at the counter and we eagerly grabbed them to check the list. To our delight, the prices were also listed and it turned out that one siopao costs around 25~30NTD, price for one donut. There are packages for a single piece, 3pieces, 6pieces and 12pieces. Excited yet quite wary of the taste, we opted to get a package of six.

It's actually the box which says "This food will change your lifestyle."

I bet it will. BTW, bao (or pao) means steamed bun.

While waiting for our order in the noodle house where we settled for dinner, I grabbed one which turned out to be topped with some sweet creamy paste and stuffed with black beans (or was it actually sesame seeds). Upon seeing me bring out the siopao from the box, Jade kept on exclaiming “Eat! Eat! Eat!” I took the first bite which right away made me learn why people queued for it. I gave Jade her share followed by succeeding bits and pieces of the “dough”, stuffing and topping. Dennis was the last to have a bite and was almost tempted to get another one. He was able to control himself and waited for the noodles instead. When we reached home, we left 3pcs for our friends while we brought two for our packed breakfast. The next day, Dennis and I exchanged phone calls at work to describe how our shares tasted. Mine was better I think; I chose the chicken while he had the curry flavor. More to that, our friend said they really liked it. They had the strawberry, squid roll (w/ wasabe) and steak flavors. We thought that we should have bought a dozen instead of just six.

This package of six is called Jewelry Box

Single piece: Dear Me

12pcs: Choose from Forest Box, Royal Sharing Box and Champion Box

For our New Year celebration, we planned to buy a box of 12 so our other friends can have a taste of it but didn’t get any chance to go to the nearest store in Shipai, around 5minutes walk away from the MRT. It remained a plan thus making us crave for several weeks until hubby got the chance to go to Taipei. I asked him to drop by the store on his way home and get us a box of 12. Later in the afternoon, he called me to say that he only had 200NTD in his wallet and there was no ATM machine he can withdraw from. That meant he can only buy 3pcs as he still needs some amount for his fare but at least we can satisfy our craving. When he arrived, I was surprised to see him carrying a box of 6pcs, just like what we bought for the 1st time. I asked how come. He said his MRT/bus card is still loaded. Without worrying of not having extra amount and thinking of the “trouble” he had to go through to get to the store, he better had a full box of six than only three. Good decision he made! We ate three pieces that night, not for dinner but for our evening snack. We brought two again for breakfast the next day while he consumed the last piece for dinner.

Bao pictures collected from the store's website

The first five are part of the Jewelry Box and we tasted all of them.

The sixth one, is something I look forward to eat

We will definitely try other flavors if we get the chance to go to Shipai. I want to try the ones stuffed with icing or ice cream and topped with chocolate flakes.

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Pictures speak louder than words...

My first post for year 2008! It's not that I forgot publishing in Page 101 but I've been busy and overwhelmed uploading hundreds of photos in my multiply album, most of which are set to be viewable only by people in my network. I may need to set a time to filter the pictures suitable for posting here and will have to find the words to draw the emotions that came along with those pictures.

Anyway, after Christmas, we had a busy weekend - a year ender family getaway in an indoor hotspring (more of a bath house) in one of the oldest hotels (1950 built) in Yangmingshan followed by a fun-filled cold Sunday in the grounds of Taipei Municipal Children's Recreation Center. We had a happy New Year celebration, hubby and I waited for the countdown on the TV while Jade went to sleep and didn't want to be awaken. We celebrated New Year's daywith friends and colleagues at home, we served lunch this time. First weekends of January were spend outdoors - mainly meant for Jade to enjoy. Full stories to follow soon. Just to let you know that I'm still around :) Here are some of the pictures, insignificant number compared to the collection :)

The family enjoying the warm soak on a cold Saturday night,

last Saturday of year 2007

Dynamic Jade enjoying the grasses on a cold Sunday afternoon,

last Sunday of year 2007

Cheers to Year 2008

The family celebrating with friends on New Year's Day

(Jade had her first taste of red wine, just a single drop)

Another family outing on a cold Saturday,

1st Saturday of 2008

(Mini-San Francisco Bridge on the background ???)

Jade displaying her independence by taking the slide by herself,

1st Sunday of 2008

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