Cooking Mommy: Paella

In a previous post, I wrote that I (somewhat foolishly, hehehe) told my husband that I will cook paella before the year ends. This statement was uttered in the throes of happiness over our new kitchen :P.

Well, since I want to become a good mommy cook, I took on the challenge and overcame my fear: I cooked paella!

I asked Tita Gigi for the recipe, since it was her paella which inspired me to cook it. She taught me her recipe and encouraged me to cook.

I did not have a paellera, so I used a flat-bottomed pan about 4-5 inches in height. I lightly fried strips of green bell pepper and set it aside, then sauteed onion and garlic, then fried chicken strips, chopped chorizo, tomatoes and chopped black olives. Then I put in the tomato paste, then the rice and the chicken broth. After the rice is cooked I included the shrimps (should have used prawns), then garnished using the bell pepper and lemon wedges. Paella success! 🙂

Our Brand-Spanking-New (Looking) Kitchen

Finally, after almost a month of demolition and renovation; after countless trips to Wilcon Builders’ Depot and other hardware stores; after filling out numerous Wilcon raffle tickets as a result of our frequent purchases; after weeks of arriving home to a dusty, dirty and disorganized house and workers coming in and out of the kitchen; after days of no water in the kitchen sink (and actually, no kitchen sink at all); after days of enduring the high-decibel noise of grinders, saws, and construction what-nots, and coming home to the smell of rugby, we are happy to present *drumroll*–

Tada! Our kitchen!!!! I’m soo happy!!!! 😀

The pretty sink

New cabinets, and look! The oven is clean 😛

To celebrate, I vacuumed, and cleaned the oven. 🙂 I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate a nice, clean kitchen, and a nice, clean house. Living in a constant state of disarray takes its toll. There is just now the matter of getting all the stuff back to where they belong. Then I can bake cookies again! And continue learning how to cook different dishes. Hopefully I learn how to cook delicious paella soon, as I (over)confidently told my husband I’ll cook it for him before the year ends.

Challenge… accepted!

Frayed and Exhausted

It’s been an exhausting couple of months. It all started when Gabby’s yaya returned from the province sick; she then passed on the virus to my son, who in turn passed it on to me, with Anzen getting sick in between. After a week of all of us being healthy, Gabby got sick again, then me again. I had barely recovered when our manang got sick too, as in for an entire week. With chills and dizzy spells and high fever and everything. There was no one to take care of the house, to clean and cook and do the laundry and the ironing. I mean, we can hardly expect the yaya to do all of that herself on top of taking care of the baby, which job in itself requires full all-day attention. So I had no choice but to take a couple of days off work and be all household queen. Even when I had to go to work I was still making sure that everything’s all right at the home front before I left for the office.

It was exhausting, I tell you. I had no idea that ironing clothes was so tiring, that you really do get pasma when you wet your hands after ironing (which I did),  and that you’ll wake up the next morning with your entire body aching from the ordeal. Those gusot-mayaman barongs really did me in. On the positive side, I discovered that necessity made me a pretty able cook, far from my usual palpak self. I also only now experienced the full-on stress of having to run the household full-time while holding on to a job. It was very difficult to take care of everything, as in everything in your house, including taking your kasambahay to the doctor almost daily, and monitoring her temperature and making sure that she is okay, on top of all the house stuff that needed to be done, on top of taking care of your baby, on top of working sometimes even from home. My nerves are frayed and my body is breaking down (sure sign: I’m on the verge of yet another illness), even though we now have got some breathing room as our manang had gotten better slowly but surely. Gaah.

Brownout!

It’s brownout season again, because the storms and heavy rains have come at last. When you have a baby in the house, the discomfort during brownouts is magnified. Whereas before you only had to contend against your boredom and the heat due to the lack of aircon/fan, now  there is the matter of making sure that your little one is comfortable.

A couple of days ago, heavy rains coupled with scary thunder and lightning caused a power outage in our area at around 4 pm. Since the air was cool, I didn’t really have a problem about my Gabby getting too hot and sticky. But when he fell asleep at 7 pm (which was an hour earlier than his usual bedtime), I assumed my station beside him on the bed and started fanning him so that he’ll be comfortable. Mind you, it was nakakangawit, I had to stop every few minutes to rest my arms. At around 11 pm even I got too sleepy and could no longer wait for my husband to get home, so I took our Firefly rechargeable lamp and fan and placed it beside the bed to keep Gabby cool. Being cooped up in our room though, I didn’t realize that power was already back by 11 pm. Hehe.

Here’s what I learned and/or realized re coping with brownouts:

1. Always keep a stash of candles on hand, but never bring a lighted candle in bedrooms; as a safety precaution, we always limit the candle within the vicinity of the kitchen and the dining room where there aren’t any clothes or curtains which might catch fire, and where water for dousing any unexpected fire is within easy reach.

2. Have lots of batteries in various sizes on stock. I felt secure during our last bout of brownout because of this. I was able to turn on our battery-operated air pump for our aquarium and use four flashlights, with lots of batteries to spare.

3. To make life easier, get those rechargeable lamp and fan combo thingamajigs. We were able to use ours twice already, the first time being post-Ondoy, when power was out in our place for 4 days. The one we have, the Firefly one, works great, and has a good battery which does not run out of power too soon ( I can’t say the same for our Akari lamp, though).

4. I also bought, post-Ondoy, a couple of handheld battery-operated fans. I got those from the toy department of SM, actually. One of them was silent but did not give off any air; the other was a bit noisier but did its job. These come in handy especially for when you have babies or small children in the house. Now though, I could not find either of them , hence the Mommy Paypay routine.

5. Get battery-operated AM radios as well. Keeping up with the news is essential especially when there are typhoons.

6. It’s not that hard to entertain a baby and keep him occupied even during brownouts, but once nighttime sets in it’s better to get him to go to sleep ASAP. The darkened surroundings during power outages are more conducive to falls and slips since they lose their balance more easily; don’t let them loose!

Creepy Crawlies

We were lucky that we don’t have a lot of pests and insects in our home, save for ants and the occasional mosquito or the once-in-a-blue-moon cockroach. I say “were,” because ever since the scarily strong winds of typhoon Basyang, we found that our terrace, garage, garage walls, and pretty much our entire yard had lots of these:

Here's one of them

See those 3 along the wall? All neatly lined up! And there were others more along that wall. I never knew millipedes are an organized bunch.

Here's one who's lost

I initially thought the winds that night probably shook the trees so much that these creepy crawlies were displaced and landed virtually everywhere; I even see some on the street. However, until now they have not yet made their way back to the trees, and in fact it appears that they are increasing in number. Yikes.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think too much about it, but I’m now doing so on account of one, there seems to be more of them everyday, and frankly it’s disturbing; and two, my baby goes out to the terrace and yard to play in the mornings. Hence I’d like to know if these creepy crawlies bite, or will cause the itchies, or some other adverse reaction.

So I did some research. Based on what I found out on the Internet, it seems that they are millipedes. As they eat green matter, whether decaying or not, and loves moist places, they appear to have found a home in our garden, especially now that it rains almost daily. There are also probably lots of drying/rotting leaves on our roof and gutters due to typhoon Basyang. My only source of comfort is that they are classified as scavengers, and that they apparently do not bite. However, some of what I read say that they sometimes emit noxious or poisonous substances (!). Whuuut?!? In any case, I think it’s time for them to go.

So now my question is, how do I get rid of them? I asked our manang early this morning to wash them away with soapy water, but apparently that doesn’t work. She sweeps them and kills them on a daily basis, but it doesn’t seem to affect their numbers in any way. I’m not keen on using insecticides and such other sprays; I’m not a big fan of bug sprays, especially now that we have a baby at home.

Any ideas?

A Day in The Life

…of a working mom. Taking care of  a toddler and a husband, running a household, and having a full-time job is not easy work. And, if you have househelp and yaya, it’s not mostly the physical work that’s really draining (except for those late-night wakings of your baby on a workweek, or those nights spent awake when he is sick); the mental and emotional toll is taxing as well. Your day is mostly a whirl of activity, and your mind is abuzz all day as well.

A typical day will include some, most, or all of the following:

• feeding your baby when he wakes up (milk or solids)
• giving him a bath
• getting ready for work
• traveling to and from work
• actual office work
• paying bills
• going to the bank
• doing the groceries
• going to the grocery for the items “missed” during the last grocery run
• buying other stuff baby needs which are not available in the grocery
• playing with baby
• reading him books
• getting daily report from yaya about baby’s day
• planning dinner
• cooking dinner
• baking cookies
• checking the weather, because if it’s raining hard, Dad should come home immediately lest he gets stuck in traffic or worse, flood
• feeding baby his dinner
• giving baby his nighttime bath or sponge bath
• getting him to sleep
• accompanying sick baby/husband/yaya/helper to the doctor
• contacting the repairman/repair shop for house repairs

And did I mention that a breastfed baby is virtually your shadow? Half of the time that we’re together, he’s lifting up my shirt for a drink :))

Interiors by Baby

When they say that a baby will change your life, be prepared, because the change also includes your house. 😛

In our case, it was not just the baby-proofing. Our living room used to look like this:

Now, the rug and coffee table are gone, the rug in order to avoid allergies and the table owing to an accident I wrote about previously. Our living room now looks like this:

It's been cleared! 🙂

Notice the coffee table now on the altar 🙂

As you can see, our living room has now been cleared in the middle so that our baby can run and jump to his heart’s delight without us fearing for his safety. Notice also that it has been turned into some sort of parking lot for baby’s wheeled things (stroller, walker, ride-on toy cars). In there also is a stack of extra rubber puzzle mats which we can assemble over the living room floor in a pinch. It’s actually a bit roomier now that we’ve packed up the playpen.

Of course, not spared from this redesign was our bedroom; our bed now has a bed rail so that our baby won’t fall to the floor; a couch which we set up on the foot of the bed as an additional harang, occupying what used to be the crib’s spot; a chest where we put baby’s clothes, on top of which are placed his diapers and other toiletries; the DVD shelf where we also put some of his board books; and of course, toys on the floor.

Not to be outdone, the library also received an overhaul; where it once housed our books and various abubot, half of it has been converted into a playroom for our little cutie:

Even though our house has been turned upside down and inside out, I absolutely have no regrets. Anyway, we have our manang around who manages to put some semblance of order into our house. The joy of having a baby is incomparable. I’ll just put my dream of a home worthy of Martha Stewart on hold in the meantime, no biggie. For now, I’m enjoying our home designed by baby. 🙂