Headless!

Happy Halloween to everyone. This is the time where kids love to frighten themselves with ghost stories - a white lady who haunts taxi drivers during the night, skeletons walking at the corridor, eerie sounds from a dark alley, the piano playing by itself and the lights turning on and off by themsleves...... spooky, scary, creepy, hair-raising - these are terms used to describe these ghost stories.

In our house, we also a have very scary experience ... there is a cute little girl whose head moves from one body to another. Once she was a mommy and the other day she became a daddy. It's really frigthening to see the headless body ..... and the head of the little girl ...... awoooooooo!

It was Julia's idea to take these photos using trick photography. With a pretty face like Julia's, I'm sure halloween will not be scary but merry! Happy Halloween!

The Meaty Curacha of Zamboanga

In a recent trip to Zamboanga City, a gracious (magnanimous, I should say) friend sent us loads of curacha and lapu-lapu. Lapu-lapu is all to familiar to us Manila-based folks so let me tell you about la curacha.

The Spanish term for cockroach (which I abhor from the depths of my being), I think the curacha doesn't deserve the unflattering name. The curacha is a sea crab specie which can be found in the waters of Zamboanga. This crustacean is like 'crab-leveled-up.' Outside, you'll see a pagong-like (turtle-like) appearance but with tentacles. Andy describes it like the predator in the alien movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The alien look of the curacha



Meaty Curacha!

Once you remove the 'gigantic' cover, what appears is like the regular crab except that the shell is harder (I had to use a knife to cut the body in the middle). The tentacles also have less meat. The curacha-meat is like crab-meat but firmer. The taste is also similar but i'd say it has more texture as the strands of meat are thicker (more like crab-meat has hair-like-strands, while curacha-meat has crochet-thread-like-strands). It also has loads of aligue (crab fat) that I had to literally restrain Andy from devouring all of it (it's his super fave!)



The "aligue" - Andy's favorite

What can I say - we had bulging tummies and satisfied palates after the experience!

by Apple

The World of Pan De Amerikana

It's an inverted world at Pan De Amerikana

When you go to Pan de Amerikana along White Plains Ave., it is like visiting Alice's Wonderland (local version). Outside, the facade is an inverted house, with the corresponding inverted car and table and chair set. Once you're in, you'll find more colorful chairs and tables - at the ceiling!

The place is refreshing and cozy. There are a lot of plants and recylcled ceramic decorations (even the toilets are peppered with broken ceramic designs). The ceiling is high and there are a lot of open windows, making it energy efficient.

Now comes the food - they are ultra affordable. Where can you find a restaurant with a price range of P20.00 to P200.00? Steamed vegetables like the okra we ordered was P20.00. Their bangus belly sinigang was P80.00; pinakbet at P30; caldereta at P60. The sisig was P145.00. Brewed coffee is P20; turon langka at P20. Pan de Amerikana is like a classy carinderia that offers good "lutong bahay" food at very reasonable price.

No wonder parking is hard - patrons troop here for that eat-out-pig-out experience that's not hard on the pocket.

Food and Coffee at Pan De Amerikana