The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
If you’re familiar with the 1986 film About Last Night, there’s a part where the lead female character Deborah describes to her friend, Joan, the dining arrangement she has with her live-in partner, Danny. Two nights a week, I cook. Two nights a week, he cooks. Two nights, we go out. And then, there’s sandwich ... (more)
It’s kind of serendipitous to write about our tiny vegetable patch in the garden now that Tangled is showing in local movie houses. Tangled is, of course, a spin on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel, a story about a pregnant woman who was pining for the rapunzel (a vegetable) in the neighbor’s garden. In ... (more)
There was a time when I was in my teens when my mother, encouraged by a friend who turned vegetarian, entertained thoughts of turning all of us into vegetarians. She “diluted” meat dishes with vege-meat which we hated. Then, her vegetarian friend started having dental problems. Apparently, the vegetarian regimen was not supplying his body ... (more)
Over the past few months, water supply in our subdivision is cut off at night and I have been unable to invite my mother, who lives in the city, to spend a few days with us this summer as she requires running water 24/7. I told her about our water situation and, just yesterday, she ... (more)
When I was a student, Home Economics was exclusively for girls. We cooked and sewed while the boys had their Automotive class. That was then. Cooking is now part of TLE (technology and livelihood education), a subject that boys and girls alike are required to take and complete. Our conservative society is finally embracing modern ... (more)
For those asking (complaining?) about the lack of new posts in this blog, I didn’t die. And I’m not sick either. I’m working real hard, believe me, although you won’t see the results until the 19th and thereafter. These days, there are only three parts of the house that I spend a lot of time ... (more)
I saw this gorgeous and seemingly simple recipe for Oreo cheese cupcakes in Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes cookbook and decided I was going to make some. I was so sure it was going to be an enormous success that I took photos of every step of the procedure because I intended to post the recipe with the photos in my food blog. Well, that’s the only photo I’m going to show the Internet at this point. The cheese cupcakes were, well…
Casa is Spanish for house. CASA is also an acronym for Connie, Antonio, Sam and Alex. We are all surnamed Veneracion. We all love to take photos -- of anything that catches our fancy. It's a family obsession.
This is a journal of how we live, eat, learn, play and have fun. Work? Work is part of playing and having fun. Seriously.
In 2003, a time when I hadn't heard of the term "blog", I started a recipe website at cooking.houseonahill.net using a now defunct content management system that ran on ASP. Ok, never mind the geek talk, I'm sure you're not interested in that. The contents easily multiplied and, in 2004, I moved the food site to pinoycook.net. Always unhappy with the fact that the dot com versions of houseonahill and pinoycook weren't … (click here to read all »)
I guess no one wanted to diss me so Speedy and Alex continued to go through the motion of dipping bread in the cheese fondue. But I could see the expression on their faces and Alex, especially, looked like she would rather spit the thing out. 
Earlier this week, I found these lovely jars at the supermarket. Just the right size for the content of packets of dried herbs and spices. I found seven of them on the shelf, I bought them all, and I would have bought more had the supermarket not run out of stocks. 
Lemon wedges, garlic and fresh herbs are added to chicken pieces in a baking dish and baked in a slow oven. The result? Good straight out of the oven. But reheated, the bitterness of the lemon’s pith becomes pronounced.
It’s convenient to buy frozen fish fillets but when there’s an opportunity to go to Farmer’s Market for good-quality fresh fish, I prefer to buy a whole slab and have it prepared according to my specifications. For instance, I chose the tail end of a salmon and had it weighed…
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