Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I always have this Christmas blues feeling especially when the month of December is here. It has been a long time since my last post (August) have stopped posting regularly, it's not because that I was running out of ideas, but there were times I feel like quitting. I have readers from different continents who frequently visited my blog, and this is the reason why I am not giving up.

I have been visiting other blogs such as cooking,baking, decorating/home, travel blogs which tops my list. Blogs has been an important part of my life - crossing borders of different cultures, learning from them, sharing their ideas and looking at the beautiful pictures of sceneries around the world.

If you have any comments and suggestions about my blog please feel free to contact my email add: jaylanuza@yahoo.com

Season's greetings and wish you all the best for year 2009!!!!

Christmas Tree in our Shop

the bare view of the 7 ft. Christmas tree

Putting the ornaments, I guess I have to add some more decor

A souvenir hand-painted Christmas ornament from a friend in Michigan. She made this specially for me.

I can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner. I haven't posted anything on my blog for quite sometime. I just wanted to post some pictures for the festive season.
We dont really decorate our shop during Christmas except for Christmas lights we hung in our shop window. But this time I decided to put up the 15 year old artificial Christmas tree.

Cross-stitch

I made this christmas tree cross-stitch

Food I Made For Christmas Day (Noche Buena)

Pina-upong Manok (Sitting Chicken)

Christmas Midnight Chocolate CakeLumpia Shanghai



My sisters and I prepared some delicious goodies for our Noche Buena. I made four dishes as part of my share for the family party.

Here's the recipe for Pina-upong Manok (Sitting Chicken)

This is a Filipino dish that I haven't cooked for many years now. It was simply disregarded and completely forgotten in my recipe boxes. This morning as I was dusting and sorting my files, I found this recipe tucked in a cookbook.. A Kapangpangan friend of mine handed this recipe to me 10 years ago).There is a traditional way of cooking this chicken (without water, just let the chicken sit on the bed of salt and steam it) but I prefer my recipe with 7-up.

Pinaupong Manok

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
1 bottle 7-up or sprite
1 pc. onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, chopped
5 pcs. whole peppercorn
3 pcs. calamansi or 1 pc. lemon juice
1 pc. chicken bouillon cube
1/2 cup margarine
achute for coloring or 3 tbsp. soy sauce(Add some more if you want a darker sauce)
1 tsp. salt.
Procedure:
Boil chicken with 7-up, onions, calamnsi juice, chicken cube, margarine and salt, enough water to cover the chicken. Cook in medium fire until chicken is tender. Cook for about 1 hour for a kilo of chicken. Reserve soup for sauce.

I'll share the other recipes later...