Love Someone

I have been obsessed with Jason Mraz' Love Someone from the moment I heard it last night when he posted it on facebook. It was on repeat in my car and it brought me to thinking about what loving is and how love is supposed to feel like.  the song just perfectly describes how I think love should be like, in it's simplest form.. It should be without all the complications, it should be a very happy thing.. It should feel like flying and it should be about being sure that the amount of love you give will return to you.

The song made me double think my relationships, it feels like most of them do not have love in them, everything feels complicated and it feels like it is always an exchange of something. It's like I'm always expecting something in return. I know it shouldn't be about that, it shouldn't be about waiting for someone to give, it should be a selfless thing.. It should be yourself giving and not you expecting someone to give to you.

Maybe I've been feeling like this because I have not given as much love as I think I've been giving, I have been expecting people to give to me instead of me giving to them. I guess I have not been seeing love because I am too focused on people not delivering and not giving me what I think I deserve.

I guess I just wanted to share my thoughts about love.. I guess this is me trying to convice myself to believe that love should be about giving love and knowing that somehow the love you give out will be returned to you in thousand folds.

TBC (i hope).

Bagoong fried rice

I always have left over cold rice. It always ends up wasted and thrown in the trash or fed to my kitties outside.. what a waste! And today I found cold rice sitting on my refrigerator again, usually this gets turned into your normal fried rice but today I wanted to do something different. After scanning a few recipes on the internet I decided to try out bagoong friend rice with unripe mangoes. *I thought I had unripe mangoes but it turns out they've already ripened, but it's okay*. In my recipe I used skinless longanisa, you can use pork belly or liempo. Here's a quick recipe for cold left over rice:

Ingredients:
Left over rice, around 2 cups
Bagoong (Shrimp Paste) 3 tbsp
chopped garlic
2 eggs
Cooked skinless longanisa (sliced into bite size pieces)
Ripe or unripe mango
Chopped scallions *optional*
Salt and pepper

1. Beat eggs and add salt. Scramble eggs and slice into bite size pieces. Set aside.
2. Saute garlic. Mix in rice. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Add the bagoong, mix until it is evenly blended with the rice. Stir fry for a few minutes, like around 3 minutes, then add longanisa and eggs.
4. Once cooked, place in a plate and add the mangoes and scallions.

Chicken Paella

Hi! This morning I woke up insanely early and I chanced upon the movie Julie and Julia on HBO, and it inspired me to cook today :) I went through our little library here at home and found one of my mom's cook book, then just randomly flipped a page and found a recipe for Chicken Paella. It looked easy enough and *most of* the ingredients can be found at our local market. So I went out bought the ingredients and just started cooking. I did change a few stuff from what's in the book but it still turned out really good. So here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
Lower half of the chicken (thigh, leg)
1.5 cup rice or Italian risotto (I just used rice as I couldn't find risotto at the supermarket)
2 pcs sliced onions
4 garlic cloves
4 pieces skinned tomatoes
2 pieces seeded green or red bell peppers diced
Olive oil
1 small cauliflower, broken into florets
Saffron or safflower (kasuba) *i used safflower, can't find saffron either*
1 little chili
1.5 cup water
1 Knorr chicken stock
Salt and pepper

1. Cut the chiken into 4 parts. Chop the the tomatoes.
2. I used a wok pan to cook the chicken in olive oil. Turn until all sides are browned (half cooked)
3. Add onion, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower. Season to taste.
4. Scatter the rice or risotto into the pan and add water. Chop the knorr cubes into tiny pieces and add. Stir until water is boiling.
5. Simmer for 30 minutes or until chicken and rice is cooked. You can add more water if it dries up before the rice is cooked.