Almon Marina Roast Chicken

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

For P204.00, Almon Marina will sell you a roast chicken with rice and 2 sidings of either (if I remember right), potato salad, veggies, mashed potatoes and.. err, something else. I went with the the veggies and mashed.

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Amici’s Roast Chicken

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Nearly everywhere I eat, I order the roast chicken if available. This is partly due to my diabetes, which disallows fatty and greasy foods, and partly because I've always felt roast chicken is a benchmark of whether the restaurant knows what it's doing. It's a universal dish as all cultures and nationalities have roast chicken in their menus, and so it is an appropriate 'standard' for rating restaurants IMHO.

It's also a simple dish. It takes some time to bake, but otherwise all you need is chicken, some herbs, an oven and time. It's hard to get simpler than that.

So I've come to make it a staple, and tried out several already. Today I'm going to review  Amici's.

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Assad Cafe

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Wife and I had dinner at Assad Cafe on a whim today, after I remembered a friend raving about 'a great Indian resto front of Unilever'.

Google Map below. There are no markings on it at the moment so play with the map and you'll get the general area.

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The Adventures Of Tintin Movie Review

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Of course I'm gonna write about this. I'm a Tintin freak and have been most of my life. I inhaled the Tintin books when I was a teen, and probably several times more into College and onwards, reading them over again when I had the chance.

So it's hard for me to write about a Tintin movie with complete objectivity. In fact I considered skipping the movie altogether, so afraid am I of watching anything that wouldn't live up to expectation, the only thing convincing me otherwise being the Spielberg name.

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Bridesmaids

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Annie (Kristen Wiig) is a 30-something bachelorette struggling with a battered sense of self after the combination of a failed relationship and a failed bakery business. As a result she allows herself to be used by Ted (John Hamm) as a convenient and easily dismissed fuck buddy, and goes about life directionless in a job she clearly hates. To add to this, her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces she is getting married, promising to make her life even more miserable by forcing her to have to go it alone.

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Chicken Curry In A Rice Cooker

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

We've decided to forego buying a range because we just don't have any more space in our condo makeshift 'kitchen'. But what happens if I get the rare urge to cook? Why, use the rice cooker of course. And today it's Chicken Curry.

To be honest this is a kind of mishmash pot whose ingredients are partly determined by what I'm trying to get rid of from the ref. My way of explaining why there's ampalaya in there.

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475,000 Reasons To Think Of Before Moving To A Condo

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

If there was any error in our decision coming here it's the incredible cost of parking that we totally overlooked. Consider this:

  1. At carpark monthly rate: P3,500/mo. Daily rate is something like P160. We are paying as of this moment 3 days worth, pending results of looking for a better deal. There is an hourly but no weekly rate.
  2. If you buy a parking spot at a parking building (currently under construction): P475,000.00
  3. Alternative: Wait for someone to rent theirs out, but at the risk of having it withdrawn any time (it's a seller's market), and there's already a long line.
  4. Alternative 2: Look for parking at nearby compound and at the shops across the street. So far this makes the most sense.

Those figures are enough to make you think twice about moving at all. The janitor around here, a really nice guy btw, can make a killing if he decides to broker parking spaces, being in the know about these things. Dunno if he already is actually.

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One Step Backward, Two Steps Forward

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Before:

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2, Maybe 3 More Days To Go

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

Ladies and gentlemen a cabinet in the making.

The wood bits will be white and there will be small metal pegs that you can insert onto drilled holes on either side, 4 each per layer, that will support each layer. Because they're removable you can therefore adjust each layer's height and even add more if you wish, which we definitely plan on doing.

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Painted The Right Type Of Green. Just A Few More Days Away.

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Gabriel Mercado

I dunno why you know who didn't take many pictures, but at least this one shows the wall painted 'Apple Green', which has turned out to be the exact shade of green we wanted!

If it sounds like I wasn't too sure if it'd turn out that way then that's exactly right. I probably delayed the choice as long as I could for fear of getting a wrong shade, so I'm thrilled it's turned out right.

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