Catch up - Birthday Post Part 1

It's been a while since I blogged. Honestly I wanted to, but I didn't have the time and I felt so tired when I get home this past month. It must be my 35-year old bones creaking at the end of the day :-)

Speaking of age, here's a super belated post and super compressed on my birthday festivities. My birthday celebration was a blast and it lasted three days! The first day, which was a Saturday was spent with family members. We had A Japanese-themed dnner at LP. It wa truly a family effort. My aunt Socky made some Yakiniku Steaks marinated in garlic, soy sauce, grated apples, sesame oil and sesame seeds and grilled very quickly on a griddle. Yum.



My sister in law Angel, Angel, made some California Maki on site. Also a hit both for the kids and adults. Would you believe she learned how to make it from YouTube?



I made Mango Kani Salad with Wasabi Dressing, Sesame Peanut Noodles, Prawn and Vegetable Tempura (although I didn't do any of the frying).







And for dessert, I baked some chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cupcakes for the kiddies.





The following day, hubby took me to Seaside Wet Market (behind Mall of Asia, or MOA for short) we shopped for fresh seafood and had Sis Rose Seafood Palutuan cook it for us.





The restaurant "barkers" in the area will come up to you offering discounts and such. We chose Sis Rose because they offered "Money Back Guarantee", if we don't like the way they cook the dishes, we don't pay :-) Not bad eh? I just wished they didn't have a karaoke machine inside. We only realized there was one when one of the customers belted My Way by Frank Sinatra, sheesh my ears! Aside from the crappy singer who stopped singing after I sent him dagger looks, he he he, everything was great.









This is a nice way to celebrate my birthday, we had fresh seafood, nice view of the Manila Bay as we dined and hubby let me pick my birthday gifts at the mall :-)



To be continued on my next post.....

Unusual Desserts

One time, hubby was in the mood for some Japanese food and we happen to be in the Roxas Boulevard area. We opted to dine in Kimono Ken at the Blue Wave mall. We ordered the usual fare that we both favored. Katsudon, Gyudon and Futo Maki. A unique dessert caught my eye. It was the Mango Tempura.

Mango Tempura is basically just fried mangoes with tempura batter. Topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. My curiosity got the better of me, so I ordered it. I was quite disappointed, it didn't meet my expectation on several levels. First, the mango wasn't sweet enough. Second, the tempura batter was too bland, some powdered sugar on the batter would have improved the taste remarkably. Third, the ice cream was just your run off the mill variety, I was hoping that it was home made like some Japanese restaurants have. Last, I would have preferred a vanilla syrup or condensed milk instead of the chocolate. Of course, this is just my personal preference. The price was cheap enough, it was just P80.00 per order. You're better off with a mango parfait somewhere else. Barring that, the food in Kimono Ken is pretty good and quite affordable. Meal for two would typically cost P700 with drinks and one shared dessert.

Another dessert that caught my eye was the strawberry cheesecake of Starbucks (P120 per slice). Their version is very different from the traditional cheesecake
with strawberry topping. Theirs has a nut crust, I'm guessing cashew nuts. It's quite hard to tell because the nuts were pounded to oblivion. The crust is not too cinnamon-y which is great because it doesn't overpower your taste buds. The cheesecake itself is light and not too sweet, just the way I like it. What's so unusual about it is that the cheesecake itself is topped with a thin layer of sponge cake, jam and then about an inch of strawberry mousse which was really really good. Finally, paper thin slices of strawberries and clear gelatin. Yummy. Perfect with your cup of Joe. It was so good, I ordered it again the following night :-)