An Australian version of a Filipino sausage dish

Dear Readers,

I write this to you at 8:02pm on Thursday, 30 December, 2010, from my dining room table. On the other side of the room, in the kitchen, I am in the process of frying sixteen Aussie Beef sausages, in a pan... literally saturated with vegetable oil, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano and smoked paprika. I confess! I'm an addict now!

Before Joe introduced me to longanisa, I'd never cooked with rice wine vinegar (or indeed any sort of vinegar, unless a recipe specifically called for it), had no idea that one could buy smoked paprika, and didn't know what rice wine even was! Now, my life has been enriched, I feel... Enriched... with garlic...

So, Joe was right when he said that I had some reservations about the amount of garlic included. I read the recipe and it said, 4 cloves of garlic. When I went to the supermarket, I saw four heads of garlic in a little bag and something in my mind linked "four" to "garlic", and I picked up the entire bunch, delighted that I'd been able to buy all of what I needed. Got home and showed Joe. One look at the expression on his face and I suddenly remembered that "cloves" of garlic were slightly smaller than "heads" of garlic...

Shhh... It's a Karaoke Secret!

My lovely Joseph has been working on a very special project for the second year running: Karaoke Secret Santa! Click to see a playlist of this year's videos (definitely worth checking out). In the meantime, here are our contributions to the event. I consider it to be very cute that we both decided there was a need to include gifts from one another in the "decor" of our videos, without either of us realising that the other was doing the same thing!











Wishing you love and joy for the holiday season,
Pamela

Skype Date, the Third: The Filipino Main Dish Experiment

So, last week (was it just last week? So much to do in December!), Pamela and I had some free time together and decided that we should plan a third Skype date. But, we had a hard time finding one that really spoke to us. Okay, *I* had a hard time finding a dish that really spoke to *me* (<<<pain in the butt). It might be because we had made a couple of dessert dishes already and my soul was hungry (literally?) for more. After some brainstorming that didn't yield strong results, we decided on graduating into the main dish realm.

Now, this isn't as easy as it may seem. The time difference between Australia and the United States is at *14 hours* now, meaning when one's ready for dinner, the other is probably ready for breakfast (or still sleeping). So, it was important to find a dish that can be eaten as a breakfast dish *and* a dinner dish. And the first thing that came to my mind:

Longanisa! (from an April meal. Yum!)

However, I soon found out that longanisa (or longganisa, or commonly misspelled as "longhanisa", "loganisa", "loghanisa", etc), in its Philippine sausage form, is not readily available in Australia. Heck, I'd have to go to a speciality market in Philly to see if it's available.

Go see how Pam and I overcame this hurdle (and others, as well), after the jump!

Skype Date, the Third: The Preview

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I present to you a preview of Pam and I's third date over Skype. We've graduated over to a main course of sorts. After some brainstorming that often meandered and stalled, we finally agreed on a dish that is close to my heart. We shall talk more of it soon, when we make it for dinner/breakfast.

Here's a preview pic:

The Ingredients

The Meat, Marinating

Lulled into dreamland...

Watching somebody sleep has to be one of the most personal, intimate things in the world. Neither party is required to really do or say anything; one simply has to sleep, while the other rests and remains quiet. I feel incredibly acquainted with Joe's sleeping self; the tossing, the turning, the amount of times he wakes up, the cute noises he makes in his sleep and, best of all, the way he opens his eyes, looks directly at me, and says, "I love you," even though he may have said it thrice already on similar wakings. Here is a man whose purity of heart is revealed to me from the very moment he wakes up 'til the moment he sleeps again, and I feel very blessedly unworthy.

The Second Skype Non-Bake Bake-Off! Bake Date. Yeah. Date. Not Bake-Off. Um. (Part 2: Notes from the Other Side)

Ah, my Caramel Slice *looked* gorgeous:

Look at that. Gorgeous!

But, I made one mistake:

...find out more after the jump...