I finally got to watch My Sassy Girl and it was terrific, or at least the ending was. Quite likely some of the scenes gist' were lost in translation so they came out long and pointless, but it came all together in the end. The Wikipedia page says 'it became a mega blockbluster hit in the entire region from Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, as well as South East Asia, to the point where it was drawing comparisons to Titanic'. That's very impressive and I finally got to see why. It might not necessarily have the best of any given particular detail, but at the end it leaves you happy and that's more than enough for me.

I cooked a fave of mine, meatballs in tomato sauce, which we had for dinner the other day and lunch today. Jill calls it Tomato Balls. What I like about it is that being tomato based, it lasts for a long time, and you can have it with toasted baguette with butter as well as rice. Living alone really makes me learn to stretch meals as long as I can, and these type of meals, along with Adobo and Menudo, are the answer.

Besides I dislike having to break off work in order to have to cook, so I like cooking things in advance and keeping them in the fridge ready for reheating via my little electric oven.

I need to update BallEx. In fact, by tomorrow the 2nd, I need to really start cracking on the stuff that I've always planned to do with the blogs. So I'll sleep now, it's 11. Goodnight y'all and Happy New Year.

Pauso Menudo

Recipe:

• P100.00 worth of Pork Liempo (which translates to approx. 3/4 kilo), sliced into bite size pieces.
• 2 or 3 medium potatoes, diced to thumb sized bits.
• 3 to 4 mid to large onions, sliced.
• 1 clove garlic, chopped.
• 3 to 4 pieces green pepper not as big as BIG PEPPER but not as tiny as siling labuyo, sliced into two pieces each.
• 1 to 2 pieces siling labuyo, chopped into little slivers.
• Tomato Sauce
• 1/10th of a cup soy sauce.
• 3 teaspoons sugar.

1. Heat a pan at low heat, oil it and when hot (but not steaming hot), place in sliced onions and garlic.
2. Once Onions lose their color, put in Potatoes. Stir for approx. ten minutes until potatoes half cooked.
3. Add pork and stir for ten minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Mix Tomato Sauce, sugar and soy sauce until smooth (you shouldn't be able to see the sugar or feel it with your spoon anymore). Dump with the pork.
5. Here's where I wish we had an oven. Since we don't, mix it well and cook on low to medium - low heat for another 30 minutes, occasionally giving it a taste and testing the pork if cooked.

Sizzling Onions and Garlic

You'll notice I cooked it for a long time (approx. 1.5 hours). This is because I wanted to heat it enough for a meat - falling - off - the - bone consistency with the pork, but without too much heat to sear / burn it. You can't do that using a pan - fry method. Rather, you'll need either a deep pot or better yet, in a deep pot and into an oven, neither of which we have. We don't even have a cover big enough for the whole pan, which would've kept the juices from evaporating. So I made up for it by cooking at low heat for a long time.

Tasted great though. The big issue is making sure its cooked well and you're set.

* The Pauso Chicken is more or less the same recipe.