Three in One

This year's visit to the cemetery in remembrance of the dearly departed ones was early as the family would be out of the country during All Saints Day.

Three candles for three very important persons in my life: Nanay, who died in March 1990 when my daughter was almost two months old; Tatay, who left us in September 2002 when my family was about to transfer to our newly constructed dream house; and Bong, my youngest brother who succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 33 in February 2011.

I love you. You will always be remembered...

Garnished Empanadas

The women's group in our church held its culinary skills session.  For the first part, our invited resource person trained us in vegetable carving. We were surprised to see him use kangkong stalks, which we normally throw away after getting the leaves and the soft parts for sinigang, as a base for flowers carved out of radishes, carrots, and even garlic cloves. The rest were the usual designs using tomatoes and cucumber.

The second part was about cooking empanada which is one of my favorites. I tried to cook it once a long time ago but I found the output worthy of a second or more tries. The trainer prepared two fillings, chicken and ground pork, and used small-sized molds. The other one was bite-sized which is normally used for commercial purposes.

Finally, the group was able to produce a plate for documentation and the rest was gone in a few minutes.