Dalikan/Anidoan...

During cold days when most, if not all, family members leave the house for work and/or an early day appointment, heating water in the gas range or bathing with a pail of icy cold water come as options. When the former is opted, one can't be spared from the morning nags of a mother who worries about the increasing price of LPG while when the latter is chosen, one may come home with flu at the end of the day. To be spared from either consequences, the younger ones resort to heating as much water that the whole family can use, with some refills in between.

Even with an oven gas range in the kitchen, the "dalikan" outside the family house is still used especially when cooking "pinikpikan" (native delicacy) and "inangir" (boiled for a long time). And while cooking, one can also warm up from the heat that emits from the "dalikan" thus we also call it our "anidoan" (fireplace). In the early morning, it somehow becomes our father's "tambayan" or comfort zone with him sipping a hot cup of coffee. At times when he cooks there during the day,he would bring his "apos" (grandchildren) and teach them how to make "anido" their hands and even their feet. Our Jade of course, had her own initation during our stay, lol.

I believe that even if in the future, the family house is decided to be renovated, we will still opt to keep that kind of dirty kitchen as it does not only serve as a backup when we run out of LPG, but also because the dishes cooked from wooden fire tastes better than that cooked from the gas range.

Firewoods being dried in the backyard...

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The Christmas that was...

Ours was just a simple one. With the 25th treated as a typical day here in Taiwan, we opted to have early Christmas celebration during the weekend. Since Sunday was planned to be celebrated with Ate Rosie and friends, we invited our colleagues and friends to our humble home on Saturday and the theme was seafoods for dinner. Earlier on Saturday, I went out with 'te Rosie and hubby to the seafood market in Taoyuan leaving hubby and Jade home so the little girl can take her nap.I set dinner to start at 7pm so when we reached home by 3pm, I started to work on the kitchen few minutes after we arrived from the market.Dishes prepared includes adobong pusit, buttered shrimps,clams, crab feet (cracked before cooking), seaweed salad and stir-fried pork.While I was cooking, Dennis and Jade went to KFC to buy 2 buckets of chicken.

As the guests started to arrive, fish and squid balls with spiced vinegar for dipping were served with the help of a friend.Our friends enjoyed the meal except for the crab feet which entailed one to eat barehanded to savour it. The guys were teasing one of them when he started to "agkammet" (used barehand to eat) because his index finger was "nakapilantik" (lifted and directed upwards) but he didn't mind and continued to savor his plate with matching slurping sounds. The meal was followed by some rice cake sweets from the night market and more of the fish and squid balls. The dinner ended with the group watching the "Pirates of the Carribean" (don't know if it was part 1 or 2) where most of them sat on the floor because of the limited space.

The next day, we went to Juvel's place for late lunch while the rest of the day was spent at Ate Rosie's place where we had our dinner. They prepared the usual macaroni salad and spaghetti that's why I didn't cook these two anymore. I brought down the leftovers plus my simple "pinakbet" from Saturday which our "manangs" consumed with delight. Watching ate prepare one of the dishes taught me another new delicacy for me to try in the future.

On the 24th, we fetched Jade after work to attend the early Christmas eve mass which started at 7pm. After the mass, we headed home right away and dropped by ate's place to get some food servings for our noche buena, if we can call it that. After our meal, we unwrapped the rest of Jade's gifts as some were already unwrapped earlier during the Christmas party we attended a week earlier. She was all smiles when she saw Barbie though she was actually the one who chose it when mom and dad were doing the shopping. We watched DVD (Biohazard 1, Resident Evil) after that and to our delight, Jade didn't make any attempt of pulling us back to the bedroom so we were able to finish the movie.

On the 25th, we were at work as usual but after office, we went to KFC and had Jade enjoy the playpen slide her own.

We called our families already during the weekend as we expected that it would be difficult to get into the line on the 24th and 25th. It would have been a different Christmas if we were home celebrating with the bigger family yet we had to make do with what we have and where we are. Eventually, Christmas celebration 2007 was fine.

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Merry Christmas

From my family to yours, Merry Christmas!
May the spirit of the season fill your homes.
And may the coming new year bring us all good luck.

Have a merry christmas and a blessed new year!

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Third and last visit to the studio on 2006

Before 2006 ends, we decided to have our 3rd and last family picture taken in the studio on the 31st of December. The 1st visit was on June 2006 (Tamsui) and 2nd on October 2006 (SM Dasma).

Jade wasn't really on a smiling mood yet the pictures turned out to be good. Here are 3 of the 4 pictures showing our family.

Mommy, Jade Dominique (7mos,3wks old) and Daddy

She's still not smiling huh!

With Daddy

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5months of existence

We had our family picture taking in a photo studio when we went home to Cavite for a week vacation (after coming from Baguio). Jade has turned 5mos on Oct. 6. She seemed to enjoy the picture taking and easily posed with charming smiles.

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