The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
This entry consists of two parts. The first part is my column today in Manila Standard Today; the second is the full text of an e-mail forwarded by my brother-in-law, Buddy. First, the column. Conversation with the househelp WOW Philippines describes the province of Zamboanga Sibugay as “blessed with an impressive range of excellent tourist ... (more)
Although the exact cause could not be pinpointed, a new research says many children from low-income families are overweight. The first thing that crossed my mind was that I have never seen an obese child from a poor family in the Philippines. Fat babies, yes. But overweight children above the age of 7, I don’t ... (more)
The following article appears on today’s opinion page of Manila Standard Today. We were on our way home on Sunday evening. In a quiet section of Antipolo about 10 minutes from our house, there was a man walking in the middle of the street. My husband honked his horn but the man barely moved toward ... (more)
On the evening of June 12, 1998, we were crossing a flyover in Edsa. I can’t remember anymore which one but I do remember that we stopped, and so did other drivers, cops included. Somewhere in Manila, some government committee in charge of the centennial celebrations had started lighting up fireworks. Who could resist the ... (more)
Too late for a Christmas greeting yet too early to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I’ll take the middle ground and say that I hope you’re all having a grand time. I sure am. Things aren’t hectic as they were last year but, still, I can’t remember a time when I stayed away from ... (more)
Sam sent me a text message asking if she could go with her classmates to the mall to see a movie. It’s the last day of their Trimestral Exams and I understand that they want to unwind. But. BUT. I was just on the phone with Speedy. And a former classmate from the U.P. College ... (more)
Since yesterday morning, my broadband connection has been slow and spotty. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that between slow and spotty, my internet connection is dead. PLDT customer service (outsourced, of course) has put in a recording to explain the “browsing problem” with an assurance that their engineers are working to ... (more)
It was Sam who suggested that I take a photo of the boy with the sando bag. That the plastic grocery bag was used as a real bag interested her, I suppose. The photo was taken in Quezon City ten days ago. That’s North Avenue on the background. These kids were selling flannel cloths that ... (more)
I was 30 minutes late for a talk I was scheduled to deliver to Chin Wong‘s journalism class at the Ateneo University early yesterday morning. I was up at 5.00 a.m. and we were out of the house by 7.00 a.m. But the rain started to pour just as we entered Sumulong Highway and, by ... (more)
A funny thing happened when a fellow food blogger did some research on bulalo recipes in preparation for cooking his own. He found a recipe in The Manila Bulletin Online published in July, 2006. But, having read my food blog before, the words he read just seemed uncannily familiar. He scoured my archives, found my ... (more)
Classes have been suspended for two days. While the torrential rains have abated since early today, the skies remain overcast and the weather people say that more rains are expected until tomorrow. The kids have been happily surfing the net and watching DVDs to get some respite from homeworks and projects due tomorrow while wondering, ... (more)
During the first weeks of summer, I bought a new blender. Haven’t had one since Sam was a baby. I’ve been content with my Thunderstick which chopped veggies well enough. But my kids are crazy about smoothies and fruit shakes and a blender would not only keep them busy over the vacation, I would benefit ... (more)
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 … »»
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