Chamba

They say the way to a Man’s heart is thru his stomach. Well my husband could be one of those men, though he is not a picky eater.

Now that my husband and I moved in to our own place, homemaking is now our priority. I now find myself thinking about what to cook for dinner and breakfast. Funny how I thought that this was easy, but since am not a very good cook thinking about variety in the dinner table is just challenging.

At our first dinner at home, I cooked salt and peppered fried chicken wings and
“dinengdeng” (ampalaya and straw mushrooms cooked the Ilocano way) . At the dinner table, Chris liked the chicken and asked what the sinabawang gulay’s name.
“ ano tawag dito sa gulay?”
“dinengdeng.”
“hindi… ang tawag dyan Chamba! haha”

Kung di lang nya naubos yung niluto ko, nainis ako.hehe But he liked what I prepared so my confidence for cooking for my own family was up to a number of points. Last night I had my first attempt to cook pochero.
Chris said “madalas nang nakakachamba si mommy!”.

To all husbands out there, always show your appreciation to your wife’s cooking even if it’s just hotdogs for breakfast. Think about how that dish came at your dining table! Fist the wife goes to the market, but before that, she planned for it (actually prepared a budget too, eliminating the item for your can of beer and a copy of her favorite magazine.) At the market, she haggles for prices so she can still have something left for dessert (like a banana). Then she carries that around, till she gets home.

Now she cooks it (while washing the dishes, looking over the baby and the children). Sets the table… there after fixes herself pretty so that when husband is home and it’s time to eat she looks great and smells wonderful. ..and show that cooking for the family is the “easiest” thing to do and one of the most meaningful and yummiest way to show love.

Dinner is ready!
*******
POCHERO (as cooked by me)

Boil half kg of pork (yung may ribs) with half a spoon of whole paminta and two medium size red onions until tender. Make sure that hindi matutuyuan ng tubig. Make sure may extra hot water na pandagdag ng tubig pag nabawasan yung sabaw.
Pag malambot na ang karne, timplahan ng asin at patis. Ilagay ang nahiwang saging (yung pang banana-q na medium ripe), baguio beans at Chinese pechay. Do not overcook vegetables.Hanguin pagkatapos.
Chow!

Earth Day should be Everyday!

Tomorrow, April 22 is International Earth Day!

Let's make Earth Day an everyday experience in our daily lives.

Here are a few examples of showing that we love Mother Earth and we are God's good stewards of his creation. These are things we personally practice in our family:

1. We segregate our solid wastes into biodegradable and non-biodegradable. The bio waste we just put in our composting pit in our yard.Good source of organic fertilizer for my Mom's plants.

2. We never (unless there's no other choice) use clean water (potable) for flushing in the toilet! What we do, we always save the greywater from washing clothes or collect rain water for flushing the toilet.That's big savings plus my conscience is clear from guilt of flushing clean water for urine and feces.Di ba sayang? Sa africa madami namamatay dahil walang malinis na tubig! Dito sa atin 20 million Filipinos don't have access to clean water.

3. The water used from washing dishes are saved and used water to the grass in our lawn. The birds get free bird food too afterwards.

4. We changed all the yellow light bulbs to white fluorescent lamps because it uses less energy thus less pressure to our water sheds!

5. BYOB. We practice "Bringing our own Bag" when going to the market, to reduce use of plastic bags. When I go to the bookstore I have my canvass bag and that's where I place my bought goods. it's more expensive to recycle plastic bags so the best way of helping mother earth is not just reducing the number of plastic bag we use but substituting it with sturdy, washable cloth bags.

Now that We're having a baby, we have committed to lessen the use of diapers when baby is born and use cloth lampins just like when I was brought up. Do you know that it takes 400 years before a piece of diaper totally decomposes? not to mention the damage it brings by blocking the canals and waterways or killing wildlife.

I encourage you to share this piece and add to it your personal practices for our Earth. The Only Planet we Have. Happy Earth Day!

Don't Be Caught Dead!

Found at the back of a Taxi...
"Don't be caught Dead Without Jesus".

Yes am Pregnant!

Yes, okay...the bulge in my belly is not actually fat but my baby who's six weeks old!
Oh God, were truly excited, the expecting lolo and lolas are more excited. Chris is actually over the top about it, two days after we've known it he actually asked if the baby is kicking already.haha

No, di pa ako naglilihi...just that I keep eating mangoes and pipino because this is the true "sisig" before it became pork ears and fat. "sisig" is eaten by pregnant women in the olden days to ward off morning sickness.

We came to know about our pregnancy because of my delayed menstruation, red days in February didn't come for me so we thought it best to buy a pregnancy test kit last Wednesday.
quite expensive, the kit... but it promised to "detect pregnancy even on the first day of missed period." So we did the test. I got the first look and I casually gave the result to Chris and savored his facial expression.

I would never forget the look on his face, its like winning the jackpot in the lotto.haha just an exaggeration, but happiness is clearly written in his face.

God so blessed us with life inside my womb. Praise the Lord!

How to Spoil Your husband (sometimes)

One time I decided to apply one of the ideas I read from the book "How to spoil your Husband" given to us by friends. Chris got his version of "how To Spoil Your Wife" too. This idea is secretly slipping money to your husband's wallet.

Since our marriage, my CEO (my husband) has appointed me to be the Chief Financial Officer of our family. So every payday he dutifully gives his hard earned salary to me (against my wishes, believe me!). But being the obedient wife, I have no recourse but to accept it :)

So one night (a few weeks after payday), while he was washing the dishes (maybe that's one of the ideas in "How to Spoil your Wife) I looked at his wallet. I assume it was the Holy Spirit that prompted me to do so (I don't usually do this,believe me!). And there I found out that my generous husband has a mere 150 pesos in his wallet. That's a Sunday and did he mean to live with 150 pesos for the next five days?!

So remembering the idea in the book, I secretly slipped a 500 peso bill in his wallet.

The next day, I deliciously anticipated the time when he's going to discover it. He texted me midmorning and asked me why he has 500 pesos in his wallet, did Santa Claus suddenly appear in Chinese New Year? I just texted him with a smiley icon.

When I did this for my husband, I had no idea that it would fill my heart with warmth.

And stomach somersaults. Believe me.

Tale of the Facial Scrub

During one of our wedding preparation, Chris and I really took care to be healthy, fit and i daresay beautiful (okay, presentable) on our wedding day. So months before our wedding, I did'nt have a haircut so that my hair will be long. Got a long delayed waxing session too(shhh)(its not really painful, try it!) .To a bride to be, D wedding day is a long lot of preparations.

But for the groom...

I started telling Chris ( the soap and water guy) to start using facial scrub especially that he's been getting lots of exposure from the sun and his skin seems a bit flaky(harhar).
Like the indulgent guy, he did try to use facial scrub.

One time, I chanced upon him washing his face with the facial scrub (with apricot beads to be exact). I was brushing my teeth then, and nearly finished brushing my teeth but Chris is still at it "scrubbing his face".

"bakit tagal mo maghilamos?" , dianne.

"eh ayaw pa matunaw nung mga beads eh..", Chris.

"haha, di naman talga natutunaw yan eh!"

ganun ba? kaya pala sakit sakit na mukha ko eh.

hahaha

Well not all guys know about facial scrubs and the like. Just one of the reasons men need women.haha

The Bank Vs. The Coop

As with any other possible things a young married couple would want. My husband and I already agreed that we’d have a joint savings bank account.

But now I’m urging him to join our local Cooperative too. This Coop is now more than 25 years old. I’ve been a coop member since I was 18 years old and I could really say that if you want to grow your savings ,put it in a reliable Cooperative instead of relying on Banks alone.

There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Cooperatives give a higher return of investment to your money than what the average banks does. Our Coop gave as much as 50% of our money as a dividend and if a coop is already established the lowest could be anywhere to 5-7% return per annum. Compare that to the banks investment return of 1% per annum.

2. Access to loan to Cooperative is much easier because you borrow against your money. Example, if you have a fix deposit of 5,000, you could borrow that amount in your first year as a member. As you grow old with the coop, the amount you can borrow could be doubled or even tripled with or without collateral.

3. Loan interest is also 1% per month or 12% per annum only. Tell me if there’s a bank which offers that!

4. Cooperatives now a days offer a wide variety of loan products like educational loan, appliance loan, business loan and even construction loans.

Of course, the decision on whether to put your savings in a bank or cooperative depends on your financial objectives. hmmm

Just don’t be like the lola who put all the savings she had including the dollars given to her by her children in a box under her bed. Know what happened?

She died. And when they cleaned up her room they found her boxes of dollars!

Only…it was eaten by termites.

Sunday Mass

I've been married exactly 29 days! and I'm not counting much. Why should I? Time passes by quickly when you are Happy.
This morning Chris and I went to mass. Sunday Masses is a must for us . Though Chris still has work this Sunday (sigh) going to mass is still the priority.


and I'm glad we did. Today's gospel talked about how a day in the life of Jesus is spent. The gospel showed that Jesus spent the first part of his day praying. and he prays a lot. Jesus prays before preaching in the synagogue, healing the sick, comforting the dying. He prays for just about anything we do. Prayer ultimately becomes His work.

I'm glad that my husband and I decided that every Sunday, the first thing we do is go to mass. Regardless of ( this we agreed even before tying the knot) anything.

Chris always has his hilarious attempt to wake up at 5 a.m so we can catch the six a.m mass. But he's not a morning person so we almost always end up attending the 8:30 a.m. mass. Going to mass together helps us align our plans with what God wants us to pursue as a couple. Going to mass together means praying together and of course a little Sunday stroll is romantic too!

This Sunday, Chris made our Sunday mass extra special too, he bought us matching shirts to wear in mass.haha His in color orange and mine in blue. Isn't that corny? but truly romantic and thoughtful!

Sunday Mass