The Sassy Lawyer & Pinoy Cook on food, family and home.
If you Google “melon cocktail”, you’ll find that there are two categories. The first is an alcoholic drink; the second is a dessert. This falls under the second category. But while most melon cocktail desserts simply used balled melon and a sprinkle of mint leaves, this is something more. Yep, the grape syrup which I ... (more)
Saturday night, we went out to see The Avengers. Alex had seen it with her school friends on opening day because, well… she had to be among the first. It’s a Robert Downey, Jr. thing. She’s smitten. Speedy and I, on the other hand, hate seeing any movie on opening day. We don’t like jostling ... (more)
My first encounter with vegetable protein was a disaster. I was in high school, my mother was flirting with vegetarianism, she bought bags of TVP (textured vegetable protein) and added the cubes to meat dishes. The TVP label said that when cooked with meat, the TVP would acquire the same taste, color and texture of ... (more)
Speedy gave Alex an assignment today: do something with the mangoes in the fridge which were becoming too ripe already. Alex initially thought about a simple milkshake but wanted to incorporate gelatin in her recipe (which made me wonder if she used gelatin in her 2006 layered milk shake). I suggested that she puree the ... (more)
Late last month, my mother passed away. Despite her professional stature (she was a judge), there were no eulogies, no rituals, no ceremonies. That was how she wanted it. Her instructions, contained in a duly signed document, were clear and precise. Yesterday, we completed the last of those instructions. We headed out to sea and ... (more)
Sam was born on August 20, 1992, exactly two months before my 29th birthday. And for my birthday that year, Speedy gave me a rocking chair. He had this idea that if I held Sam in my arms, sat on the chair and rocked gently, she would soon be asleep. Well, it worked when Sam ... (more)
We already knew that Sam wouldn’t be coming home this weekend because she’ll be out of town on a photo shoot. We were, however, expecting that Alex would be home. In fact, because she doesn’t have classes on Fridays, we made preliminary arrangements to pick her up on Thursday afternoon. But she couldn’t come home ... (more)
The night we went to see the Sherlock Holmes sequel, we were two hours too early for the last full show at the Eastwood Mall. We had had dinner already and we weren’t sure how we’d pass the time. We ambled around, spent some thirty minutes inside the bookstore then did some window shopping when ... (more)
A story I almost forgot to tell. It was in December between Christmas and New Year and my mother wanted to go out to buy her Christmas gifts for the girls. The gift-buying part took a very short time. It was the eating — from noon ‘till evening — that took up much of our ... (more)
It has always been my opinion that to become a good cook, one has to be confident about his skills and taste. And by that, I don’t mean professional training. No, not at all. Rather, I mean the ability to think outside the box, to never feel limited by the lack of access to certain ... (more)
Speedy and I have a weird social life. Our together social life consists mostly of family. We go out and party with his family or my family or, sometimes, with both families together. When it comes to friends though, we have separate social lives. He goes out and parties with his friends; I go out ... (more)
Speedy drove the girls back to the condo late last night. The third term of the school year officially begins tomorrow, January 4, and the girls were supposed to spend today clearing up their class schedules and finalizing their enrollment. As I watched the pick-up pull away from the front door, a wave of sadness ... (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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