Current diet however, suggests I need to eat more veggies. And I really really want some. So..

Here's how it went. Ingredients are Eggplant, Squash, Tomatoes, Garlic and Onion, Ampalaya Tops, leftover Adobo and Tinapang Galunggong, which I use to substitute for Bagoong. The Ampalaya leaves were because a single piece of ampalaya is way too many for this one dish.

Re the Binagoong 'substitute' Tinapang Galunggong, let's be honest here. It's probably not so different toxic - wise, from Bagoong. I am sure however, that Bagoong per se would increase purines in my blood resulting in gout within the day for me, so I'm taking my chance with the Tinapa instead. Besides, a single purchase of Bagoong, like the Ampalaya, is too much for just this one dish. At the grocery it comes in bottles, and in the market in a small plastic bag, both still too much for my needs. Galunggong however, I can have for breakfast occasionally.

The iPod is so I can check the instructions from time to time, found here.

So I chopped the squash into even pieces, including the skin. I read somewhere the nutrients are with the skin.

Same with the eggplant.

And put it in some water for ten minutes. This is to remove whatever impurities it still had from whichever farm it came from. Or so I'm led to believe. Better safe than sorry.

If you'll notice I made a mistake here, and put in some tomatoes as well. No biggie, I dealt with that later on. I only had 3 tomatoes for this dish btw, leftovers from some other dish I made a week or so ago.

Above are the ingredients with 1 garlic head minced and 2 large to medium onions minced. On the left is some leftover adobo.

After all that chopping we start a-cookin'. I stir fry the garlic, onions and tomatoes in some of the delicious 'juice' from the adobo for a few minutes.

Meanwhile we start the Bagoong substitute. I take out the bones from the Tinapang Galunggong.

And mince them.

Yum. Imagine that in the morning with some fried rice.

Anyway, I boil a pot of approximately 2 to 3 glasses of water, and pour the Galunggong in it.

I chop the leftover adobo as well.

Then pour it all in the boiling water along with the simmering onions and garlic too.

Recipe called for ten minutes boiling, then add the rest (eggplant and squash). At this point the whole house smells wonderful, and your neighbors' stomachs, if they can smell this, will be churning.

The squash starts out tough and hard almost like potatoes. So how long we'll boil this depends on how long the squash turns into a mushy consistency.

Ten minutes later, mushy consistency accomplished.

I then added the Ampalaya Tops, and boil it a little longer.

Result? Yum!

I'm gonna try to add ginger next time, although I'm not sure how that'd change things. As it is I'm pretty happy getting some veggies in me, as all I had been eating was pork and chicken.

Unlike the other Pauso concoctions, this time it took a real lucky turn. I saw 'mechado cut' beef cubes in the ref and proceeded to defrost them this morning as I went to Tropical Hut along Ortigas Ave. to buy necessities and get some breakfast in me (there isn't much to eat in the house today).

I started to cook it fully intending to make it a tomato - based Pauso invention, but in the middle of d stewing it along with onions and lots of garlic, it 'sweated' out - a fancy term I picked up from the Lifestyle Channel, and produced a sweet smelling beef stewy 'juice'. It smelled and tasted terrific, so I scratched the tomato paste and opted for water + corn starch (a thickening agent) instead.

Above shows it already stewed out, and I know I should be using an oven plus some ceramic or deep type of casserole container dish to cook this, but I have to make do with a kaldero as it's the only thing we have around here (literally). I just cook it at the lowest heat setting possible on our LPG range, which is why it took (brace yourselves) a whole 1.5 hours to fully cook, simmering all the way.

I added up to two cups water and 3 - 4 tablespoons of corn starch, and I'd have added a beef cube to boot if we had one (but we don't). I know its all starchy now, but I really wanted to go for a nice thick soupy liquid. Spices are purely salt and pepper, and that worked out fine. The other people who try to cook in the house try to drown food with too many spices, I think (again, another result of the Lifestyle Channel, particularly the Food Network), but I like to keep things simple, and really, it's hard to beat just the right amount of salt and pepper with good beef.

We have waaay too many spices than we should have. No thanks to Food Network.