so, where to start...
hmmm... to fellow ft students out there, can i just say that fn (nutrition) subjects are so much fun. for those not in the know, we only have two fn subjects in our curriculum, and yet, these are the only subjects where we are able to cook meals or dishes which we get to sample for purely hedonical reasons (i.e., parameters for evaluating each dish are only qualitative such as "i like this cabbage salad in mayo with paprika extremely", or "i like this kare-kare very much", or "i dislike ampalaya in whatever preparation it is done in moderately" using the 9-point hedonic scale). this afternoon was the second session wherein we've cooked the dishes we've planned. the first one was the result of our planning for a given set of meals per day given a person's height, weight and energy requirement given his occupation. this was accomplished by using the Food Exchange List (FEL), an extremely helpful tool, especially if you're planning special meals such as when you are dieting. you are actually able to limit your calories, but then, to be able to provide more variety, you should be quite well versed in substituting food items as well as able to prepare them in a variety of ways so that you won't get bored with the usual stuff which you prepare, which i think i am wont to do since i don't have enough knowledge on cooking foods. the lesson is that with more meals per day, you are able to distribute the carbohydrate requirements in terms of food items. in our case, we only had three meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner and the requirement for the normal diet for a healthy person is that a minimum of 65% of the day's energy allowance come from vegetables. therefore, for breakfast of an adult male with an activity of the typical jeepney driver, we prepared a breakfast of 2 cups of cereal with low-fat milk, a slice of Gardenia wheat bread with four teaspoons of strawberry jam and a small piece of apple. for lunch, we had one-and-a-half cup of rice, tinola (with chicken breasts and sayote), 1 serving of lakatan and two teaspoons of iced tea. dinner was fried tilapia with sauteed kangkong with soy sauce, sauteed togue and buko juice. we also got to eat among others, buttered rosemary chicken (oha oha! o di ba, something close to gourmet cooking - well, at least from my point of view, since di naman ako napupunta sa mga fine dining places dito sa metro). =)
today, we prepared low- and high-calorie dishes. our group was assigned to work with vegetables. for our low-cal, we had steamed vegetables: young corn, carrots, brocolli, cauliflower, pechay, button mushrooms with a very minimal coating of butter and salt. our high-cal dish was kare-kare, the peanut butter and fatty pork slice upping the calorie content of an otherwise very low-cal dish had we used only vegetables. of course, the peanut butter taste of it was more than what i was accustomed or else used to, especially since it's been ages since we had kare-kare with genuine peanut sauce at home. mom had resorted to using only the kare-kare mix in recent years. however, to macky, our chief kare-kare cook since it's his favorite dish, the peanut butter taste was less than what they usually prepare at their home. i also discovered a new way of slicing eggplants. haha. what joy...
other dishes called for entree, dessert and beverages, appetizers and salads and cakes. thus, today's banquet (haha! i wish) included brownies for a high-cal dessert, a low-calorie cheesecake (cream cheese was replaced with cottage cheese) which still needs freezing at the moment (tomorrow is when we get to sample it), adobo, watermelon smoothie, hawaiian lumpia, cabbage salad (with raisins, cheese, onions, mayo and paprika) and ensaladang mangga. the cabbage salad was mexican-inspired, and the mayo didn't taste revolting at all, which it usually does, with the mixture of ingredients and more importantly, the large influence due to the paprika, which lends the salad its taco-like flavor. the hawaiian lumpia was also quite an interesting dish with sotanghon, ubod, pineapple and tuna flakes, among others, inside the usual lumpia wrapper complemented by a sauce with a tart taste which, if you would believe, has fish sauce (patis) as one of its ingredients. by just stretching the imagination, and combining food items with different sorts of spices, one can actually come up with many interesting dishes. a frustration of mine, actually. i'd really like to have the knack for combining different sorts of items and subsequently, ingest wondrous flavors, much like the chefs in 5-star hotels who create masterpiecese which less than 1% of the world get to witness within a span of 24 hours and never to be experienced again. the last holiday's chef didiere of the hotel poop come to mind.
those dishes i've talked about here, except for the ones which our group prepared, are courtesy of group one's executive chef, diana dreza (dood, apprentice ako sayo!).
last friday, i had the pleasure of watching pinikpikan's sir sammy asuncion do a hegalong solo with a perc accompaniment (i forget the specific instrument which was used). it was my first time to see him perform, not even with pinikpikan, although they'll be performing at this week's Friday Film Bar (6.30 pm at the Ishmael Bernal Gallery (back of UP Cine Adarna) featuring student short film Sakdal Laya, the full length In The Red Korner by Dado Lumibao and Bong Ramos, a not-to-be-missed performance by Pinikpikan and free-flowing tea and coffee).
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