Turon

One of life's simple pleasures. Turon harks us back to the old days when life was not very complicated, when the neighborhood magtataho was still greeted by glee and kids grabbing bowls for their share of the rich soya concoction. Turon, along with banana and camote cue, reigned supreme as the street food of choice.


Turon is even simpler to prepare. All you need are cooking bananas (which we call saba), brown sugar, lumpia wrapper (available at the Asian store), and frying oil. Although in our case here in New Zealand, cooking bananas are more difficult to come by so I grabbed some when I caught the news that it was available at New World. It was still dark green, though, and so we placed it in a warm place for it to ripen properly. It took 2 weeks for it to become bright yellow, and then it was ready for greatness.

Vegemite

We are big on sandwich spreads principally because we have become accustomed to eating bread in the morning, and of course it helps a lot if there's something we can wedge between the bread slices! We love chocolate spreads especially. My wife, who is growing conscious of our increased food intake, would like to introduce healthier options into our diet. And so she bought Vegemite because she thought it, um, had veggies in it. She's partly right about that, of course.

Vegemite is made from leftover brewer's yeast extract (a by-product of beer manufacturing) as well as various vegetable and spice additives. The taste may be described as salty, slightly bitter, and malty — somewhat similar to the taste of beef bouillon. The texture is smooth and sticky, much like peanut butter. It is not as intensely flavoured as British Marmite and it is less sweet than the New Zealand version of Marmite.

Vegemite is popular with many Australians, who commonly consider it a national food and a cultural icon.[2] It can be found in shops around the world, particularly where there are large populations of Australian expatriates. Vegemite has not been successfully marketed in other countries, apart from New Zealand and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom, and has failed to catch on in the United States, despite being owned by US food company Kraft Foods. When seen in the United States, the Vegemite label often does not contain the Kraft logo. (Wikipedia)

Veggies galore

Having trouble incorporating veggies onto your meals, keeping to simple meat dishes that only require a quick dip in the hot oil? Here's a site that will entice you to give veggies a try. Vegetables.co.nz will give you not only recipes but also tips on the best ways to handle vegetables properly so you can get the most out of them.

Love Food, Hate Waste

Did you know that around a third of the food we buy ends up in the bin and most of this could have been eaten? I know this to be true, especially during the time when I was living by myself in a two-floor apartment some years ago. I had a medium-sized ref which I liked to stuff with meat and veggies and leftovers and beer every now and then. My philosophy then was to put the ref to good use instead of just having cold water sitting there!

Unfortunately, I spent long hours at work and outside the house that I usually eat out with friends for both lunch and dinner. So it was not surprising that I will always find successful batches of mold experiments in the ref! It would be a delight if I were a collector of such amazing creatures like Dr. Egon Spangler, but I wasn't. So a lot of stuff gets thrown away. Except the beer, of course.

Times have changed since then. I moved to a much smaller place my molds experiment days were over. These days, my wife cooks wonderful meals for us and I no longer mind repeat meals so being more conscious of our food wasteage has really become part of our daily routine.

But enough about me. What I would like to share is this wonderful website called Love Food, Hate Waste. It's based in the UK but its principles are applicable pretty much anywhere else! In a nutshell, the site aims to help its visitors plan much better in food purchasing decisions, thereby minimizing wasteage and saving money at the same time.

Cool Kids Cooking

There's a show on TV here that teaches kids how to cook and is broadcast on Saturday mornings. Cool Kids Cooking presents fun, easy to make recipes that kids can help out in preparing. TK (the host) dishes out the instructions and guides the kids to culinary goodness. And there's a head chef, in the literal sense of the word.