The Random Purple
Hello! My name is Luj, and I'm a twenty-something media practitioner from the Philippines. This isn't a blog about my job, but it does have some random tidbits about it, as well as bits from my very random life. :)
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The Nolita Burger
6oz Angus Patty served on a homemade brioche bun with blue cheese, bacon, caramelized onions and a fried egg
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More food!
Spicy Alaska Duo - kani and salmon maki
@ Ramen Cool
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Japanese A5 Wagyu paired with Horin Sake
Geisha, Fort Bonifacio
*gacked photo from our contact in Geisha :)
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Thankful I got to finish writing my script early-ish last Sunday, as my reward was having dinner out with my parents and tita Cyn at Basil, the new-ish restaurant along White Plains.
The place looks like a garden from outside, and since I didn’t bring my other camera - the one that shoots nice night photos - I decided to forgo taking pictures of the interiors. But it’s really nice! Colorful patterns, wood furnitures, and lots of leafy plants, they really added to the ambience.
I’m gonna go straight to the food. We didn’t go all adventurous, but decided to stick with Thai-resto staples.
The appetizer we had was the Yam Pla-Duk Fu - Thai Crispy Fish with Green Mango Salad.
Next we had the Tom Yum Ta Lay - Spicy Seafood soup. There was a really good portion of seafood in our soup, and I super enjoyed slurping this down. The spicy-sweet-sour taste was amazingly balanced!
For starch, we had the Khao Kluk Gapi - Thai Bagoong rice. I love that their dried shrimp (hibe) were ginormous, and really added to the flavor of the rice.
We also had pandan chicken with a really yummy dipping sauce…
Some Pad Thai - sweet and yummy!
And some Goong Phao, Grilled Prawns with spicy dipping sauce - nothing too special, but yummy all the same!
For dessert, we had some sticky rice with mango - which was OK, but we would have preferred it to be A LOT sweeter; and also some Thai Halo-Halo (ice cream on the side) - which arrived about 10-15 minutes late.
Service is a bit slow so I’d advise against eating there if you’re SUPER hungry already. But the staff is nice and apologetic enough - especially about the Halo Halo because apparently their ice shaving machine had just come in like, a few days ago and they were still trying to get the hang of using it.
Anyway, overall impression: food was good, it’s typical Thai food. I really liked the food we had (with the exception of the desserts) A tad pricey, but definitely worth trying out!
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This past week has been such a harrowing one for me, one that really tested my patience and sanity, and at the end of it, I’m glad I made it through, and hope that I don’t have to go through something like this week ever again.
I needed to write everything down so I can (hopefully) move on from this week and have it leave my mind once and for all. So here’s a rundown of what happened this week:
- I almost lost an opportunity to get a huge paycheck (I think. My friend and I still aren’t in the clear in this) We managed to miss not one, but two or three deadlines this week to pass whatever it is we needed to pass, and I finally sent it in today. Hopefully we still haven’t lost it. I’ve actually already vented this out on a friend of mine, so I won’t go into every detail here anymore. But this was the start of my very bad week
- I also scrambled to finish checking my interns’ works. Got so frustrated by the very disappointing outcome that I sent them a long-ass email about it. I kept my cool on this one though. I was probably expecting too much from them, anyway.
- I almost lost my temper on same interns. They just kept asking me ten zillion questions, some of which I felt had very obvious answers. Some of which can be attributed to just my general bitchiness about being disturbed.
- Got into a shouting match this Friday with an officemate about liquidation reports. I will be pissed off about this for a long time though. I really didn’t do anything wrong and I absolutely did not deserve being treated like an idiot so I don’t feel bad that I lashed out.
- I also went to a shoot where I wasn’t allowed to shoot a lot. By this I mean I was only allowed to shoot about… oh screw it, I got virtually nothing. It pissed me off, and it pissed my boss off, too.
- Oh, and someone called me fat and ugly. In the same sentence. I know he was kidding when he said it, but you know the saying jokes are half-meant, and it really hit a sore spot. I didn’t confront the guy who said it, I had to work with him the whole day after he said it, and I wish I did. But I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s day by being so very negative in the morning so I didn’t. I’m VERY touchy about my weight, and I don’t like discussing it, never have. I get enough of it at home. And to be called ugly, well obviously no one wants to be called that ever. So I’m still processing this last one. Hopefully the feelings go away. Because the pounds seem to… not. haha
I’m going to focus on the positive now, though, and leave all this negativity behind. Hopefully I can move past it.
I’m just really glad the week is over.
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Post reblogged from Food Swoon
DEFINITELY MAKING MYSELF A BATCH LIKE RIGHT THE EFF NOW! (or tomorrow, since i’m still at work)
Since returning from London, I’ve been plodding away on a post about a trip-inspired recipe I’ve tested and re-tested, and well, I don’t mean to be a tease, but let’s just say I’ve got the darn thing exactly where I want it and I think it will knock your socks off. In the meantime, I want to pass along one of my staples, a recipe for roasted garlic butter, and share a little secret:
I keep a bowl of roasted garlic butter in my fridge and use it on everything.
Ok, not on everything, but smeared on thick slices of crusty bread? Yes. Slipped under the skin of roasted chicken? Of course. Brushed on skewers of grilled shrimp? Obviously.
My son, who is the pickiest of eaters, requests it on toast but would eat it by the spoonful if I let him. Butter alone is near perfection, but combined with caramelized, melt-in-your-mouth garlic, it can transform an ordinary dish into something more complex and exciting. For example, a few tablespoons of garlic butter stirred into freshly-cooked pasta will take it from uninspired weeknight fare to a plate of food you’d swear came out of the kitchen of your favorite Italian restaurant.
And it couldn’t be easier to make. Whole heads of garlic are trimmed of their tops — beheaded, if you will — and roasted under a pat of butter in a tight-lidded dish or enclosure of aluminum foil. The butter melts and seeps down into the cloves, encouraging them to evenly roast and brown.
At this point I should warn you: The scent of roasted garlic drifting out of your oven may make you weak in the knees, or at the very least, very hungry.
