White Beans With Malunggay

Hubby and I love beans like pinto, mung beans, navy beans, white and black beans. He said he grew up with beans and potatoes and I grew up with beans and rice, lol! What a pair! Both of us are not so picky with foods as long as it's not spaghetti for him and not pork for me. I used to like pork but I gave up eating it six years ago due to health issues. I prefer healthy foods for me and hubby.

I cooked this white beans with malunggay a few days ago. I always love to add veggies with my beans. If malunggay is not available then I add ampalaya (bitter gourd) and since I don't eat pork, I added ground beef instead.

Here's my recipe:

Ingredients:

1 pack white beans (soaked overnight)

1/2 lbs ground beef

2 medium onions (sliced)

4 cloves garlic (minced)

ginger (crushed and sliced)

fish sauce

salt

1 bunch of malunggay

water

Directions:

1. In a frying pan, put oil and saute the garlic and onions. Add the ground beef, fish sauce and cook until brown. Remove from fire.

2. Put the beans in a pressure cooker with water and salt. Add the beef, ginger and cook for 40 minutes. If you don't have a pressure cooker, use regular pot but cook it longer around 1 and 1/2 hours or until soft.

3. Add the malunggay and add more water if needed. Add fish sauce depending on your taste. Cook for another 5 minutes. Serve with rice.

Buridibod, Ilocano Style

Malunggay is in season once again and we have one at the back of our house yielding lots of malunggay every other day. My brother climbed our roof top and got lots of malunggay so we can cook buridibod, an Ilocano recipe. I am an Ilocana so I love this recipe so much. Even my hubby who is a Caucasian learned to love this food. He can eat a lot of malunggay, and he calls it now green hotdogs, lol! We got that name from Aika because that's what her hubby calls it. In fact, while we were eating the malunggay, we were thinking about them. Hope they are here with us so they can enjoy too eating buridibod.

INGREDIENTS:
4 pcs camote
6 pcs eggplant
10 pcs malunggay fruits
alukon (baeg)
samsamping (Ilocano word, don't know what they call it in Tagalog)
fried fish or ground beef (I used ground beef)
shallots or onions
patis
fish sauce
water

DIRECTIONS:
Peel the camotes and cut them in to cubes. Clean and wash the samsamping and alukon. Peel and cut the malunggay. Brown the ground beef and put patis and the chopped shallots or onions. Then boil some water in a pot for the fish sauce. Add the ground beef and the camote cubes and let it cook. Here, you can prefer your buridibod somewhat drier or soft and pulpy. if you want a pulpy buridibod, boil the camotes some more or you can mash it by using a ladle. But mash it not too mushy so enough broth remain. you have to retain enough broth for your souping purposes. when the camotes are cooked, put in the malunggay, eggplant and samsamping and alukon and let it cook for some time. Serve with rice.

Chicken Dumplings Salad

I learned this recipe from a good friend of mine more than four years ago in Texas. I have made it several times already and it was a hit to my hubby and also my friends. The recipe don't need a lot of ingredients because if it does, I don't like to make it. Lots of ingredients turn me off. So this recipe is so simple and easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

2 cans pineapple chunks
2 cups chicken breasts, cubes (cooked)
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 1'2 cup seedless red or green grapes
1/2 cup chopped peanuts

Dressing:
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp half and half or evaporated milk
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp mild curry powder
1 tbsp apricot jam
salt and pepper to taste

Direction:

Just mix all the ingredients and the dressing. Refrigerate for an hour before serving.

Getting healthy in 2012

Guest post written by James Grant

One thing that I really want to do in 2012 is finally get my health in line. I have high cholesterol and I really need to change around my diet and my lifestyle so that I can get to a much healthier place.

I've been doing research on how to get healthy in a realistic way. I know that I'm not going to want to go out and run a marathon, ever. So I'm trying to take a realistic approach. While I was online looking up that stuff, I ran across the site miracle ear. I looked through it and decided to go and get fitted with some hearing aids, like people have suggested to me before.

I'm also going to hire a personal trainer, because I know that if I'm paying someone to tell me how to exercise, I actually will do all that they tell me to do if at first to just get my money's worth! I'm hoping that I'll start feeling a lot better too so that it will serve as even more motivation.

New Year 2012 Celebration

This maybe a late post but it's better late than never. Lat New Year's eve, I was so busy preparing and cooking for our Media Noche. It was only me and hubby plus my brother who celebrated New Year so I didn't really prepared a lot. Just enough for us and also included some to give away to my neighbor. Hubby helped by making his favorite potato salad. I made first the fruit salad because it's the easiest one to make. I just open the cans of fruit cocktail and mix it with the Nestle cream and a little condensed milk. After mixing I put it in the fridge.

Next thing I did was to cook the chicken barbeque. I marinated  the chicken a few hours before so I just had to put it in the wooden stick and cooked it in the electric grill. When it's done cooking, I cooked the hotdogs in the frying pan and then put it in the barbeque stick and I added colored marshmallows for good presentation. I didn't cook pancit because hubby said he got tired eating it. We didn't buy a cake either because it's only the three of us. So midnight strike, all people were busy making noise in the streets and lighting firecrackers and fireworks. I called my hubby and my brother to come and eat the foods prepared on the table. We thank God for blessing us the past year and also for giving us another year. Happy 2012! Thank you Lord!

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Beef Adobo With Potatoes

This is a very simple recipe of adobo, very easy to cook and yummy to the tummy. This is our family's favorite from my grandmother's recipe.

Ingredients:

2 pounds beef

2 1/4 cups water

1/2 cup Soy sauce

4 medium size potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

4 cloves crushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

Dice meat into small cubes, mix in other ingredients except potatoes in a large saucepan and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 50 minutes then add the potatoes and cook until meat is tender. Add water and salt if needed. Serve with rice.