Under the Weather Thursday

I'm very thankful that our weather has turned from smoldering hot (which caused the brownouts) to fair and rainy. However, a side-effect of the rapidly changing weather is sickness.

I actually started to get sick the other day, Wednesday, but still worked because, well, I didn't want to miss work. Then, yesterday, Honey (Yuri's yaya) had to go to school to get enrolled for the new school year, so I had no choice but to be absent. That was okay because I felt even sicker than I was the other day and I really wanted to rest.

However, as you mothers would know, there isn't really true "rest" for a toddler mom. So I tried to lay on the bed while my toddler ran around the room and only got up when the situation called for it.

Mom in the Disposable Mask

 Yuri entertained himself by playing by himself and with himself

He loved himself, too.

Then I let him watch some Instagram videos. He loves Vito's videos by Frances Sales

We ate a lot, too. We emptied the pantry again. My father often remarked that I'm the only one he knows who has a big appetite in the morning. Well, I have a slightly good appetite for a sick person, too!

 

I was just reminiscing the moments when I watched Disney Junior in the wee hours, and one of my favorite cartoons was Gaspard and Lisa. Then just yesterday, somebody gave us boxes of these chocolates! Thanks!

Don't look at me. It's the boy's doing. He licked the chocolates while I ate the almonds haha.

Of course, the sticker is mine!

When we finally finished the box (errmmm), we opened a tub of peanut butter. Hey, no judging! Yuri ate the most of it!

Then I went back to lazing in bed  and Yuri played hide-and-seek...

...with himself. Kawawa! :-)

While I enjoyed watching movies like Click and The Book of Eli. And the walang kamatayang...

I woke up feeling a lot better today - but the bad news is that my Yuri has fever! Poor Yuri wasn't in the mood to eat anything - not even peanut butter! But the good news is that he's more active now and even ate three pieces of toasted mamon. I hope the fever will be completely gone before the day ends.

How about you? How are you doing? I sure hope you're doing better than we are!

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Two Natural Ice Cream Flavors You Can Make this Summer

I seriously cannot recall how it felt during the cold months of January and February.

Even though our weather here in the south is a bit on the "cool" side now because of the storm (Oh God protect us!), the air is still hot and humid.

As it's already officially summer, is there a better thing to do than eat ice cream?

Yes, there is something better. Make one!

This week and last week, I made two different ice cream flavors that you can create at home. Aside from being more affordable than commercial ice cream, these only have two ingredients each. What's not to love?

First one is the classic avocado ice cream. Americans might be surprised to hear that we eat this fruit in sweet desserts. Anyway, I love avocado because it has protein and healthy saturated fats which we all need.

To make the ice cream, you only need two ingredients: avocados and condensed milk.

Yes, I know condensed milk is not the most nutritious stuff on the planet and it raises the cholesterol level of this ice cream, but there's no better replacement for this (unless you can suggest one?). Plain milk makes the mixture too liquid, which is not good in creating ice cream, while honey does not make it creamy enough.

I seriously believe it's still better than commercial ice cream!

How to make it? Just blend the two ingredients together! I don't have measurements because you only need to add the milk from time to time until you achieve the flavor you want.

The second ice cream you can make is a lot healthier than the first: banana-peanut butter! I actually first wrote about it last year. I love bananas because they're rich in potassium while peanut butter is full of protein.

Like the name suggests, you only need bananas and peanut butter.

You can use any kind of peanut butter, but I shy away from using brands with too many ingredients. My current favorite is the local Danes brand as I have yet to see a brand here with just peanuts as the ingredient.

Anyway, just blend the two ingredients together! Again, I don't have a measurement for this. Just gradually add the PB until you achieve the flavor you want.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a photo of the actual ice cream because we quickly ate it all up during a power interruption. Fail!

That's it! Have a great summer!

Tip: You can make any fruit combination that you want. Just remember to use fruits that are fleshy and not those that are juicy (oranges, watermelon). While these fruits are great for juices and smoothies, I don't think you'll be able to make creamy ice cream with them.

PS: This week or maybe next, I might make mango ice cream. Yum!

PPS: What about durian? Ooh interesting, although there are only two people in the house who eat durian: my mother and my kuya. Hihi

PPPS: If you're not fond of ice cream (how come?!), here are two healthy alternatives to battle the summer heat:

Yogurt

Ice-cold chocolate made of 100% chocolate callets from Cacao de Davao

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Homemade Peanut Butter - Chocolate Granola Bars

Even if I'm such a novice in the kitchen, and even if we don't have a properly functioning oven, I still prefer making Yuri's snacks rather than buying them from the grocery. That means a lot because I love grocery-shopping. While I do have grocery-bought snacks for emergency purposes, it's quite scary buying snacks for a young toddler especially when you can't even pronounce their ingredients!

To minimize Yuri's exposure to preservatives, chemicals, unnecessary sugars, and many other stuff I don't have any idea of, I roll up my sleeves and try to search Google for recipes I can easily create.

I especially like creating granola bars because not only are they healthy (well, depending on the ingredients you use) but also require virtually no special equipment. I've been wanting to make another batch of granola bars again (our go-to snacks), so I looked for an easy recipe, which I found here. Here's my re-creation of the yummy peanut butter-chocolate granola bars.

Ingredients:
Rolled Oats (I used Bob's Red Mill 5-Grain Rolled Cereal.)
Peanut Butter (I used a local brand, Dane's. It not only is cheap but also contains just three ingredients: peanuts, sugar, and butter.)
Chocolate Chips (I used generic baking chocolate chips from the grocery.)
Milk (Soyfresh chocolate soy milk was what I had, so I used it. You can use any milk!)

Optional add-ons:
Marshmallows (I have a lot of mini-marshmallows which I planned to use to make rice crispy treats, so I added some to the granola mixture.)
Chocolate chips (Since you already have them, why don't you add more?)
Rice crispies (I still have one more box of Breakfast Choice rice crispies from last month.)
Nuts (You can use nuts, but I prefer not to use them because Yuri doesn't like nuts yet.)
Raisins I would love to use raisins; unfortunately, I forgot to buy some during my last trip to the grocery!

(I didn't have measurements because I didn't measure any of them. I just poured what "looks" right and then adjusted if the resulting mixture was too runny. You will need to create a mixture that is relatively dry, so if the mixture was too runny, I added more cereal. If it was too dry, I added more milk or peanut butter.)

Procedure:

1. Mix the peanut butter, chocolate chips, and milk. You can either melt them in the saucepan or in the microwave.

2. Melt them until you form a smooth (luscious) mixture like the one below:

Easy-Peasy Breakfast Ideas (A Round-Up)

Good morning and happy Thursday! It is Thursday na, right? Oh Mommy Brain is real; I can't keep track of the days anymore, and I'm only 23!

Anyway, to offer you a measly excuse, it is still before 9 in the morning. Mornings are the most hectic part of my days. And when I say "hectic," just believe me that it is. I barely sit from 7-9, and the only times I get to sit are (one) while feeding Yuri (which is a hectic experience by itself) and (two) while working. Okay. Friends with no children: you'll never know what busy is until you have children!

That's not to say that I don't enjoy motherhood. I am! However, when mornings become too hectic, it's not difficult to become super stressed. Lalo na ngayon that we're having a new struggle. You see, I always let Yuri sleep in. It doesn't matter what time he gets up because I believe sleep is crucial to growth. So it's not rare that he sleeps until 7:30 in the morning - and even if I do get a bit stressed (I calculate the time left for me to prepare breakfast, etc.), I let him be.

However, recently, even after getting up and nursing a bit, he refuses to get up. As in he was like me when I was a child. He would go back to lying down and would say, "tuyog," even if he's not the least bit sleepy. So imagine how even more stressed I become!

 Of course, it is hard to stay stressed when I see this face.

The solution, for me, to lessen the hecticness of the hustle-and-bustle of my mornings is to create breakfast the night before. If I get busy in the evening, which is inevitable, I have "backup 5-minute" recipes to make. Here's a round-up of some of the breakfasts I have made for Yuri in the past:

1. Mango Frozen Yogurt

Preparation Time: 2 Minutes
Blending Time: 2 Minutes
Ingredients: 1 whole manggo, 1 cup yogurt, 2 tablespoons fresh milk, and 2 tablespoons honey

2. Banana-Peanut Butter "Ice Cream"

Prep time: 3 minutes
Blending time: 5 minutes or more (depending on your blender's power)
Ingredients: SEE HERE

3. 5-Minute Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Cake

Prep time: 3 minutes
"Baking" time: Around 5 minutes
Ingredients: SEE HERE

4. 5-Minute Banana Oatmeal Cookies

Prep time: 2 minutes
"Baking" time: N/A
Ingredients: SEE HERE

5. "Imbento" Brownies

Toddler-Approved: Peanut-Butter Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

I have two jars of peanut butter, a bag of oats, and, of course, milk. We always have fresh milk. I was getting tired of preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so I scoured Google for easy-to-do (as usual!) recipes that use peanut butter, oatmeal, and milk. I was able to find several recipes, but they required more ingredients than what I like to use. Finally, I saw this 3-minute recipe from Averie Cooks.

Her recipe's primary ingredients are peanut butter, chocolate chips, oats, and milk. Perfect! The optional ingredients include vanilla extract, sweetener, and dry add-ons (i.e. raisins and coconut flakes). I originally planned to add vanilla extract and raisins, but I decided against it so that I know how the recipe tastes like plain. To cut the long story short, here are the ingredients I used:

Place the chocolate chips, milk, and peanut butter in a microwave-safe bowl and melt them together in the microwave. If you don't like using the microwave, you can melt these in a saucepan. 

We only have very few chocolate chips left in the fridge, so the mixture isn't as chocolatey. I did provide more peanut-butter. Actually, I didn't follow the recipe for the amount of ingredients. I guess it's up to you on how much you want to use.

After melting milk, peanut butter, and chocolate together, it would form a paste like this.

Mix the oats and your optional dry ingredients into the paste. Like what is said in Averie Cooks, the mixture should be fairly dry, so you need to add more oats as necessary.

Averie's recipe called for old-fashioned or rolled oats, but I didn't have any, so I just used ordinary instant oats.

Press the mixture in a container and place it inside the fridge. 

After the mixture has hardened, slice them any way you want. You can also eat the entire piece by yourself! :-) 

Sayang, I didn't get to take a photo of Yuri eating the bars. That's because by the time I remembered to fetch the camera, malapit ng maubos ang bars! Also, my dad who isn't fond of eating sweets found the bars yummy. Yes, it's delicious! Delicious + easy + nutritious = toddler and mommy approved!

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Noob Baker: 5-Minute Peanut Butter Chocolate-Chip Cake

Blogger confession: This post has been sitting in my drafts for, what, almost 3 weeks already! This is just to explain that since writing the initial draft, I've baked for several times na. Yabang ko lang no?

Now that we got that shameless confession out of the way, let me begin my story. Yuri is a picky eater. He doesn't care for rice much, but he loves other forms of carbohydrates: bread, pancit, cakes, biscuits, etc. He doesn't like sweets, but he does go overboard when I give him a slice of bread or cake. That's the point in my undomesticated life where I decided I should learn how to bake.

My mother is a superb baker. I kid you not. While there are very rare times when her baking fails (mostly due to our cranky oven), in the other 99% of the time, her cakes and pastries are flawless. Of course, I want to inherit her baking and cooking gene; I just didn't want have the patience to deal with an old oven and matches.

That's where I realized I can bake using our microwave oven! I've come across so many microwave cake recipes; I just wasn't interested before. What's stopping me now? So one day, when we had a bunch of bananas about to go overripe and a fresh jar of local peanut butter, I knew I just have to try.

Obviously, I was about to bake for the very first time: Peanut Butter Banana Cake with Chocolate Chips. I tweaked the recipe from here. Here are the ingredients:

The original recipe makes a cake in a mug, but that's not enough for us. So I doubled everything. I also removed the egg from the recipe.

• 8 Tablespoons Flour
• 8 Tablespoons Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
• 5 Tablespoons Peanut Butter (Just a local brand from my parents' officemate)
• 2 Ripe Bananas
• 6 Tablespoons Milk (I used Oaties; I like its flavor)
• 4 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil (I used Canola)

If you notice, the photo above shows Cocoa Powder. I changed my mind after taking the photo because I wanted to make a plain peanut butter cake. I decided to use chocolate chips instead (not in photo).

Now, for the procedure. Actually, there's no procedure. Just mix everything into a microwaveable bowl! I mixed the dry ingredients first and added the liquids one by one.

Here's how the mixture looked like when I added the chocolate chips:



Then, just pop it into the oven. I was able to make enough for two medium-sized microwavable bowls. Please remember not to fill it more than halfway because the mixture will rise. Anyway, I just placed the setting on High and timed it for about 3 minutes (according to the microwave timer).

After pacing back and forth, wishing that what I just made is, at least, edible, here they are!



Lovely, peanut-buttery color!



And it's really moist and chewy ha, certainly not what I expected from a microwaved cake! Actually, my sister told me it reminds her of butterscotch brownies. Haba ng hair, sayo na ang korona!

For the taste test! It's sweet and really peanut-buttery. There is a slight hint of banana, and the chocolate chips (I used dark) balance the sweetness of the peanut butter. It had the seal of approval from my sister, who devoured the bowl in one sitting. What about my other cake connoisseur?

Please know that he sneezed in the photo above. His facial reaction is in no way related to the taste of the cake.

He liked it! Woot!

For the next several days, I baked some other stuff in my microwave. I baked a chocolate cake that had too much flour and too little sugar. Fail! But I baked another one to mask the failure haha.

 My brother and I also prepared pancakes. Well, it's not baking, but it has something to do with flour, right?

On a sidenote, I seriously love Swiss Miss Dark Chocolate, the box behind the regular Swiss Miss. It reminds me of local tablea! :-)

Of course, it would take a long time before I can copy my mother's famous Chocolate Moist Cake (no photo) or her muffins that rival Krispy Kreme's Kruffins:

Or our neighbor's fantastic special ensaymada:

Or a chocolate mousse cake, like this one from Bread Talk (which my parents got one day for absolutely no reason):

Nevertheless, it is addicting and is a great stress-reliever, so I'll keep trying! 

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