What I think about after Waffle Day

Every March 25, coinciding with the Feast of the Annunciation (vårfrudagen) is the more secular, almost-namesake Swedish feast, Waffle Day (våffeldagen). The emergence of Waffle Day came supposedly by mistake. Vårfru (virgin) became confused for våffel (waffle), which was served on feast days. And to make the long story short, it resulted in that one day in the year where waffle mixes and waffle irons disappear from store shelves into the arms of customers who think of nothing but eating waffles for lunch or dinner. Waffles and pancakes here are – it may surprise you – anything but breakfast items.

You bet I've been thinking about eating waffles all week long. I was thinking about it when I read ads for cheap waffle irons; I was thinking about it when I passed the local café specializing in waffles; I was thinking about it when we gave a waffle iron to a colleague as a bridal gift this week. Waffles were on my mind on Waffle Day, and even after Waffle Day passed three days ago, when I was contemplating on my waffle-lessness. I thought: I must eat waffles! I want a waffle maker!

Marcus was on my side on this one too, and we decided to buy a waffle iron today totally on impulse (or was it?) as we were taking a walk. As I've always tried to remind myself, it's dangerous to go walking, exercising, or shopping while hungry: you think about all possible things to eat, most of which aren't exactly the healthiest. But our stomachs won over our brains yet again. Thank goodness the waffle maker was indeed cheap. It was a no-brander that cost 175 kronor, so we threw not less than three waffle mix packages in the bag, overoptimistic that we'd be eating waffles several times in the next month. I felt so happy I was skipping.

... Later, after dinner ...


... And after gobbling up four waffles each topped with cream and cloudberry jam, I must admit that there are really drawbacks to overdoing things. I'm just up to my throat with waffles right now I can't even think about waffles anymore. Just making that picture above was hard (Plus, that's probably exactly how I look like right now, which doesn't help!). What's more, we've only just consumed two-thirds of one waffle mix package, out of the three we bought. Uh-oh! Good thing those pre-fab powders last a year. Because now I'm thinking, I don't want to eat waffles again for a loooong time, man! No wonder there's only one Waffle Day in a year.

Meanwhile... cakes!

During the time I was blogging about the Philippines trip, Marcus turned 30 and we had a party in the apartment. Happy birthday, Marcus! The "decade" birthdays are a big deal in Sweden, but I (we) hadn't planned for anything big, having come back from 2 weeks in the Philippines and returning with colds. We planned a small get-together in our apartment anyway, and celebrated with homemade cakes.

The cake bottoms were not from scratch, but we made "everything else", i.e. the filling and decoration. We browsed recipes and let ourselves be inspired, but we didn't follow any any recipe in particular.

This is our adaptation of Black forest cake, without the expensive hazelnuts. It has two layers of (store-bought) plain meringue bottoms slathered with Nutella and sprinkled with slivered almonds, and a filling of whipped cream, stabilized with an egg white and vanilla sugar. The icing is made of the same ingredients as the cream filling but topped with cherry preserves, almond slivers, chocolate panels and shaved chocolate. The chocolate details were made by melting baking chocolate and then either letting it cool flat or shaving it into ... well, shavings.

This cake was definitely the better one between the two we made. After a night sitting in the refrigerator (to let the flavors blend in!), the meringue acquired a melt-in-the-mouth texture but maintained the meringue taste and crunch. "Real" Black forest recipes with meringue bottoms require nut meringue, but I think the plain one works just as well. If leftovers are any indication about the "saleability" of this cake, we could have made a profit if we charged our guests :-)

The second cake was a Nutella chocolate cake, which we whipped up because we (rightly) didn't expect the Black forest to last for eight people. It's a three-layer cake using store-bought yellowcake cake bottoms. For the cream layers, I used a recipe from The Big Nutella Cookbook (In German, which I got as a gift from Liz and Rob years ago). It's just cream whipped with powdered sugar or san-apart (a German baking product for stabilizing cream) mixed with half a bottle of Nutella. The result tastes like mocha cream with a Nutella aftertaste, and it has a nice firm-foamy consistency that supports the cake layers well enough.

We ran out of cream to top this cake, so I used the remaining baking chocolate and butter we had in the fridge to make a "glaze", that I read about belonging to another cake recipe. Actually, the glaze was too hard over the soft cake, so the glaze layer cracked in pieces when we tried to get a slice (It was really more like a chocolate shell around the cake). Afterwards, I browsed through some alternative recipes for what could have been a better frosting. One idea is to mix a dash of cream (which we didn't have) into the melted chocolate and butter, to make some kind of runny glaze. So, although this cake wasn't as much as a bestseller as the Black forest variant, I must say it's a pretty good breakfast with a mug of strong coffee mixed with an equal part of hot milk. Beats porridge any day!

The bonus for making our own cakes, aside from getting to eat the leftovers, is that making two of your own complicated-looking but easily-assembled cakes costs just a little more than one plain Princess cake ordered from a bakeshop (Flour, cream and butter are all still pretty cheap around here and both wheat and milk and produced locally).

So:

Cake ingredients for two cakes: 240 kronor.

When your friends say that your cakes look almost professional: Priceless.

Philippines 2010, part 3

Just about this time of the year in 2009, I was attending a course on Ageing, Body and the Life Course as a newly accepted PhD student. A British professor came by invitation to talk about the narrative – the telling of life stories – as a qualitative research method, and on the first day she asked us to bring an object that told us something about our lives. Instead of bringing a book or a picture, I settled for a map of Metro Manila, which I had given to Marcus on our first year together. It was an apt biographical object, I thought, since that's where majority of my twenty-something life has been spent. My school- and work years were mostly within a 6-kilometer radius in Quezon City. Later on in the course, we reflected on how one's life stories were as much stories of other people, of places and objects in time significant in one's life. And – well, here's where I'm coming to my point – I realized that Metro Manila, or Quezon City in particular and the people I know who populate it – is the Philippines for me to a great degree. They're what I talk about when I talk about "home", such that it sometimes seems to me that the Philippines really isn't a place, but a network of connections that I in turn associate with certain places and events in my life.

I stop at that. I have no deeper conclusions. Here, instead, is the last part of my entries on our Philippines 2010 trip, featuring many of the people that have made this trip more than just another winter escape to the sunshine. Thanks a million!

Family! Friends! Fun!

Feb 20, Day 10: Brunch at Jeline's with our mutual friends in the guest list. Lawrence, who was also in Manila for field work, should have also been there, but was unfortunately sick (Hope to catch you next time!). Val was out of town and my mother was too tired to go, so it was PJ, Peachy, Jeline, me and Marcus. Thank you, Jeline, for organizing this! It was nice to see you again after our (all too short) time together in Sweden. I wish we had the time and the money then to bring you to more places we think you would have wanted to see – then again, you're always welcome to visit us in the future ;-)

Brunch. Translates to breakfast, lunch, and lots of stories to tell!

Smiling with mouths full – of corned tuna, puto, mango float and cupcakes. PJ owns an online cupcake shop, Chipper Cupcakes. Visit the site and order for you and your friends!

Feb 21, Day 11: No pictures! We were planning on maybe jogging this day with my brother Jon this day. Since it was a Sunday, the University of the Philippines oval would have been more empty than usual. However, Marcus woke up feeling feverish and had sore throat. We stayed at Jon's anyway to watch silly movies and YouTube clips, and Marcus got to nap. For dinner, Jon warmed up some bottled pasta sauce comfort food. It was quite tasty, actually.

Feb 22, Day 12: The Monday of the week we're leaving. Day 12 of 14. I suddenly felt that my time in Quezon City was ticking, and that I still had friends to meet. Cheryl, who works in the afternoons, dropped by our house in the morning and ate lunch there. Hey mom! Cheryl wanted me to mention that your pancit tasted great. You probably didn't notice, but she ate about the third of the batch, hehehe! Marcus, who was still feeling sick and feverish, was napping in the next room and I had to leave him there while I met Val in Tomas Morato for a meryenda (that's a snack or a fika) that lasted two hours.

I don't think I have pictures from this day either, but I wanted a picture of Cheryl in the series, so here's one from when we had lunch at Cyma. Bad hair day for me. Cheryl's hair looks nice as usual

Feb 23, Day 13: Lea landed in Manila from Bangkok during the night. It was nice to get to see her too, and since she's working in Thailand now I wasn't even sure that we would meet during my two weeks in Quezon City. What can I say? I shared a room with her almost throughout grade school and high school, we had the same leisure activities and we even bought matching clothes and shoes. We cosplayed together in our anime days, we swooned over Gundam characters and we did things like applaud after watching an LOTR special feature. I think many of our Manila Kendo Club friends thought we were twins (In fact, Lea's 8 years older)! So of course it's always nice to see her, and it's exciting to hear about her new life and travels abroad. The cat bell is hanging by our kitchen window, Lei!

Lea, wearing a shirt that I got from Cheryl for Christmas once upon a time. It fit Lea better. Sniff!

In the evening, I invited my high school friends home instead of going out with them, so that I could also look after Marcus. Grace and Rhea are hardworking people – Grace had just passed the medical boards; Rhea works long hours for a TV company – but they're hilarious as ever. We laughed with mouths open when we remembered our make-believe clothes design company StarJar (Sorry, this is real girly highschool stuff. Tee hee!)

With Grace and Rhea. Poor Rhea had to get back to work editing for TV after this dinner! Grace passed the medical boards two days after we met.

Feb 24, Day 14: Our last full day in the Philippines. It felt a bit sad to know that we were leaving. Though the two weeks were great and fully packed, I suddenly thought of more things we could have done just when it was too late to do them (which is what next times are for, right?). Like, next time I want to take my parents out to dinner – you have to remind me next time, mom! Neither Lea nor Jon was at leave from work, but we wanted a family lunch so we organized one at Jon's place during their lunch break. It was a take-away lunch from Max's Chicken, one of the oldest Filipino chicken chain (as Marcus observes, we're not short of chicken chains). Mom must have been happy to see, short of Liz, almost all her grown-up kids together. Don't worry, we ate your share, Liz :-)

Dad and mom taking a micro-nap ("power nap"?) in Jon's day bed after lunch

Jon, with his and his girlfriend's cat Yoshi, who here is doubling as a microfiber mop

On the last evening in Quezon City, PJ and Val came to the house to say goodbye with some pizza. Heheh! There are no words to describe this night without breaking into laughter. We probably woke some neighbors up with our cackling :-D Awww, I miss you guys! It was very reassuring to laugh with you like I never left for years. And PJ, I won't publish your "face of the night" picture here in case you decide to sue me. Tee hee!

See, with people like these, it's great to plan for vacations. Ano, Bangkok next year? :-)

Metro shopping fun a.k.a. Philippines 2010, part 2

When I wasn't meeting friends in the Philippines, I did what most Filipinos do on their home journey: shop. Since this trip was limited to two weeks, and limited to Manila and Quezon City, shopping was, I guess, a must. It's the local Manileño pastime! Everyone goes to the mall, even just to kill time and even if they aren't buying anything. One obvious reason is the airconditioning. Another, sadly, is the lack of free recreational activities in the city that does not require one to have a car. But malls are also all-in-one places. Folk meet, eat, read, study, watch movies, exercise, watch concerts, go to conventions — and nowadays, even see their doctors in malls. Little wonder that malls are everywhere in Metro Manila. Our newfound favorite was one called TriNoma, just across SM City, my old favorite (Sorry SM!).

What I found out was that, generally, branded items costed just a little more than half of what they would be sold for in Sweden. For another, no-brand basic items (undershirts, socks, underwear, jeans) were not only cheaper, but of better quality than the mid-range no-brand stuff in the Swedish malls. Books were only slightly cheaper than they are here, but eyeglasses were a pure steal — titanium frames, multicoated lenses and a cleaner spray for a price of basic steel frames! Mall competition meant a wider array of choices, in both food and clothes, in all price classes. Shopping was a joy. It was also a reward, since I more or less abstain from shopping here. The last time we bought the bulk of our clothes and underwear was four years ago on our last Philippines trip. That should be a testament that those stuff last long!

As far as we observed, only two items were more expensive in the Philippines than in Sweden: pizza (costed at least a third more), and oatmeal (seven times more expensive). Oh, need I mention that alcohol is, in comparison, dirt cheap in the Philippines? Rum and brandy are also available at any drug store, which in the Swedish alcohol-monopoly point of view, is beyond bizzare.

Itinerary! Meeting friends! Shopping!

A recap of days 5 to 9. Little digestible bits do the trick!

Feb 15, Day 5: After the Chinatown trip the day before and hanging out at my brother's place the previous evening, it was time to... Guess what! Go shopping. We needed some more clothes for our stay. We met my gradeschool friend Cheryl at TriNoma, where she treated us to Greek food at Cyma, at the top floor. Listen, Cheryl! Marcus thanks you for the best restaurant food he has ever had (Lamb souvlaki)! He describes it as perfectly seasoned, juicy, with a good balance of meat and vegetables. He even forgives Cyma for serving healthy pita bread, heheh! I would definitely eat there again myself. (Next time, Cheryl, I can treat you to that lamb souvlaki). Cheryl was, otherwise, also a great resource to ask about which clothes botiques to buy from, and which botiques not to buy from. You kinda lose that skill if you're away from the scene for some years, you know. Thanks!

The praised lamb souvlaki (450 PHP). If pictures could spring out of the screen, I'd grab this.

Feb 16, Day 6: A visit to the eye doctor to get a new glasses perscription for Marcus, and thereafter to... Guess what again! Go shopping! Actually, we did have a shopping budget (and stuck to it!) as well as a shopping list (which we also stuck to!), but honestly, a day or two simply isn't enough to browse, fit, look for shops, compare prices, and decide on purchases. That's not to mention that walking for hours (albeit indoors in and between shops) can be quite demanding, especially if you're carrying shopping bags, too. We simply couldn't shop for everything in our list in one go. Good thing that in a mall, you're never really far from someplace to sit and eat. Or a taxi line to catch a taxi home. Taxis are the most convenient means of transport in the Metro, and save you the hassle of driving in that chaos yourself. We never spent more than 200 pesos on a taxi anywhere we went. Distances in the Metro aren't actually that great; it's just the traffic that slows you down.

The view of Quezon City from the eye doctor's office's 16th floor corridor. Actually, it's floor 15, since buildings don't have the "unlucky" 13th floor. Elevator buttons skip right up to 14 from 12.

Feb 17, Day 7: We didn't have any plans for this day, so mom and dad took us to La Mesa Ecopark, a relatively newly developed park by La Mesa dam, a protected area where the Metro gets its tap water. There's an entrance fee of 20 pesos for Quezon City citizens and 30 pesos for non-QC residents, but it's all fine once you're inside. The park wasn't particularly large nor wild nor away from traffic, but for residents of the bustling city, this is probably as much green and wild as you can get without leaving the Metro, so it's a very welcome public space. Trees grew much taller in La Mesa Ecopark than I usually see them in the city, and the foliage denser. Pretty cool. It was Marcus' first time to see an acacia tree. If you you have a car to get to the La Mesa area and some picnic food in the car trunk, the place can be an alternative to passing time in a mall (they have a swimming pool by the way, which one can use for a fee). The sun though, was blazing hot, so if you ever go there, don't forget a hat and an umbrella!

Dense foliage and tall trees in La Mesa Eco Park.

Picnic! You're guaranteed never to go hungry with mom and dad

Siesta! Knocked down by the food and the heat

Feb 18, Day 8: Mom cooked a really good lunch with steamed shrimp (bought alive, with their legs still moving when they got home), mussels with vinegar dip, and a meat-and-vegetable stew. As usual in our household, there's a lot to eat! For dessert, there were bananas in syrup, fresh pineapples and ripe mangoes. I ate to my heart's content, especially since some vegetables are hard to come by here. But there was a limit to my stomach, after all, which I hit after the third or fourth serving. In the evening, there was more — you guessed it! — malling in TriNoma before going home to freshen up and having dinner with PJ and Kapi in Gateway (another shopping mall, this time in Cubao where the two metro train lines meet).

The now-cooked shrimp and a vegetable stew. In our household, people usually fight over the veggies and the meat sometimes gets left over for the cats!

From the top floor of TriNoma, an artificial park. Mall designs are incorporating more gardens lately

Feb 19, Day 9: No pictures. The shopping is tapering at this point, and we were only in TriNoma this day to get Marcus another pair of glasses made. We had problems with the lenses they made at the first store, Sarabia (first, their machine scratched the lenses; then, when they cut the lens manually to prevent this problem, the unpolished edges let in light, which created a dizzying effect). We found a seemingly more professional store in the same mall, called Vision Express. It's a bit more hard to locate, but had undoubtedly superior service to Sarabia. Mom took the chance to buy a discounted pair of snazzy frames at Vision Express (Hey mom, I hope you wear them soon! You deserve the update!). Then we went to Yellow Cab Co., also in the mall, to eat my dad's favorite fastfood: pizza. An 18" NY Classic, which only has salami ("pepperoni") and cheese.

I think the next and last part will be dedicated to friends, since I mostly did catch-up stuff in the next days in Quezon City.

Until then...

Philippines 2010, part 1

Zoom! And we're already back in Sweden!

I don't know where I would have found the time to blog during our two-week stay in Quezon City, which is why the last entry proved to be the only one in February. Just when I was getting used to the big city rhythm in Metro Manila, it was suddenly time to go back home. As nice and relaxing as it is to be back in our own apartment after two hectic weeks, it also feels strange to be suddenly back doing Swedish routines again. And we haven't even been gone for that long.

My worries and mixed feelings about "having changed" in friends and family's eyes were, in hindsight, really unescessary. What I found out was that friends and family welcome you anyway the way you are, and that maybe I (and family and friends) hadn't really changed as much as I thought I (we) would. After just a few days of getting used to my childhood home again, I actually began to feel like I never left the place. It hardly felt that I was gone for four whole years! It was the same about meeting friends: it felt same as usual. We have jobs and other new events in our lives now though — but basically, it was as if nothing had changed, even though we lived years of our lives doing separate things. Granted, I never saw some of my friends for more than a few days in a year even when I was living there anyway (hi Cheryl!), but what the heck! This trip showed me that distance and proximity, although they matter, matter little when you're face to face with a friend again laughing your head off.

So for two weeks, I was Quezon City girl again. The changes around me — roads were widened almost beyond recognition, drivers which I percieved to be more agressive, new giant malls, new billboards and new TV shows — were negligable, superficial changes. Everything, although slightly different, was warmly familiar. And that's a great reassurance for me, who at one point, used to wonder if it was really possible to keep two homes.

Itinerary! Observations! Pictures!

Here's a recap of days 1 to 4, which is all I have time for before I spring to work.

Feb 11, Arrival day: No pictures! The heat is always hotter than I remember it to be. I suddenly remembered why people use umbrellas in Manila rain or shine. Nowadays, it seemed even acceptable for men to carry umbrellas. That El Niño was in the region didn't make it any better; even the "locals" were complaining about the heat. Indoors in our Quezon City kitchen, it was +31 Celcius. All around the city, it's campaign period and there are lots of hung campaign materials. All overpasses have banners saying "Thank you Madam President Gloria Arroyo for this overpass!" as if she paid for them personally, and not the taxpayers. In the afternoon, we went to SM City shopping mall and shopped for a set of clothes, as we only had the ones we were wearing. Our pale winter faces must have made us stick out; hordes of SM salespersons were trying to get our attention and they were hard to shake off, even if we were buying something as mundane as sport socks!

Mom and Dad grow tomatoes in two sizes. One sort is the size of a ping-pong ball. The other sort, which tasted really good despite its thick skin, was no bigger than a chickpea.

Feb 12, Day 2: Marcus' suit-ordering day. We went to the large market district in Manila called Divisoria — a half-slum, half-street market, half-mall area where a suprising amount of money gets exchanged every day. It is known for its cloth market, and we bought Marcus' suit cloth from a trusted Chinese guy Benson. In the afternoon, we delivered the cloth to the tailor's, Simon's. In the evening, we ate out with my brother and my dad at an Ilocano restaurant (Northern Filipino food) where we had salty stewed veggies and crispy fried pork. Yum!

At the Ilocano restaurant. It happened often that, when the food came, I forgot all about the camera and started eating. So, no pictures of the food this night!

Feb 13, Day 3: We jogged around the University of the Philippines oval at 6AM with Mom and Dad. Lots of joggers there, although none of them seem to be giving it their all in the morning heat. We felt like pros overtaking the joggers — if they only knew how untrained our legs actually were off running season! Only three people overtook us, but they looked pretty hard to beat and were probably in the end leg of their run. That afternoon, we joined a guided tour about Imelda Marcos and 70's Philippines arranged by Carlos Celdran in the Cultural Center of the Philippines and surrounding areas. This is my third Celdran tour — he's amusing and informative, and his tours are always thought-provoking. Each of his tours leave me feeling hopeful about Manila, though what exactly about Manila, I don't know. After the tour, I met my college friends PJ and Peachy over some sweet, cold Filipino dessert, halo halo. With all that sun and sweat, sweet and cool make perfect sense.

The Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), built for the 1976 IMF-World Bank meeting as one of Imelda's projects. It was Asia's first international convention center. Imelda put the Philippines on the map back then, although she did use agrarian reform funds to build her projects.

Feb 14, Day 4: Hotels and restaurants lost a holiday this day, because Chinese New Year and Valentine's day fell on the same Sunday. We go to Chinatown, a small part of Manila. It appears half-slummy, but has surprisingly one of Manila's highest land value. The Chinese have occupied this part of Manila even before Spaniards were in the picture, and going there is a bit like going abroad. Newpapers are still printed in Mandarin, Chinese drugstores sell crushed sea horse, there are street temples, and crispy duck take-out stores are in almost every street corner. Round fruits, symbolizing luck (actually, money) were sold everywhere that day. Dragons (also luck-bringing) danced the streets and stopped in every store to bring the owners tidings for the new Chinese year. We ate in the Chinese tea house President. Loved the dumplings! Loved the noodles! Loved the lychees! I love Chinese food! Almost had pigeon, but the waiters were honest enough to admit that the pigeons they had on stock weren't good anymore. For another day.

The gate to Chinatown

Cars and dragons. Here the dragon is on the way to the intersection to perform a dance.

Lots of people! (Most were in red, the lucky color)

More to come. Work calls!