I would never in a million years have thought that cream cheese had a place in mashed potatoes, but it does!  I actually never really think cream cheese has a place anywhere.  I went into this yummy bread store we pass on our way home from the market last week.  I saw some raisin bread and thought it would be good for a Saturday morning treat.  After waiting on line for a good twenty minutes (Philippines is definitely NOT known for their speedy checkout lines) the lady told me it was raisin bread…with a cream cheese center.  I bought a baguette instead and left disappointed.  When I told Randy this story expecting he would sympathize with me in the ruining of my Saturday morning raisin bread breakfast dream, he said- yum that sounds delicious. 

This is a long winded way of saying Randy really likes cream cheese and I usually do not.  But as my mom said today, cream cheese makes everything taste better.

I boiled the potatoes, mashed them to let out the steam and added two tablespoons of butter, a half cup of cream and 4 ounces of cream cheese (writing it out it doesn’t sound less fatty).  Yum!

What was Adam doing while I was making this delicious dish.  Well, I had decided to try to turn his obsession with the red and yellow garbage can into a positive and I have been giving him little pieces of garbage to throw away.  After which we clap to show a job well done.  I figured this would keep him from taking stuff out of the garbage.  Yesterday, I caught Adam doing this…

Back to cooking, as I was chopping the thyme I had picked up at Salcedo market I saw this guy in my thyme.

As Randy said, at least we know its organic.  But, the thought of accidentally chopping him up and adding him to the marinade for the meat definitely gave me some serious chills. 

Some of use were a little nervous about the talking robots at first…

 If there were dinosaurs roaming the earth, Adam would have a new favorite animal.  Sorry dogs, dinosaurs are just cooler 🙂

I’m not sure who was happier, Adam or me.

Adam finally has some toys!

Having a favorite word- This. You use it when you want something, you use it when you absolutely MUST have something, you use it for everything. It sure is cute.

Knowing where your head, ears, nose and your favorite – your belly button are!

Being able to use crayons and a coloring book and almost not eat any crayons.

Knowing what sounds the cow, dinosaur, lion and of course your favorite the dog make!

Bringing over mommy’s shoes and trying to climb into your stroller when you’re ready to go out.

Watching every motorcycle and truck that passes by in awe.

Getting excited every time a cop car with flashing lights passes by.

Trying to copy everything mommy and daddy do.

Going over to your bookcase and choose which book we read, this usually means Carl’s Christmas…again.  Thanks Grandma 🙂

Helping yourself to a snack from mommy’s bag when you’re ready for a snack. And helping yourself to the wipes, the diapers, the cream and anything else you can find in there.

Being OBSESSED with kissing stuff, dogs in magazines, your little table, mommy and daddy, a spoon. You’re not selective which I love. When I ask you to be nice to the plant and not pull the leaves off, you give it a kiss. When I ask you to be nice to the magazine and not rip the pages out, you give it a kiss. When your temper gets the best of you and you ‘accidentally’ hit mommy, I ask you to be nice and you give me a hug and a kiss.

Being 15 months old. 

Every day I can see a little more of who this little boy is going to be and so far I have to say he’s pretty awesome.  He has the best sense of humor and already knows what he wants (except he calls it all this so I’m not always sure what this is).  I live to hear him laugh and see him smile.

Every day Randy asks me if I ever thought we would have a boy old enough to- walk over and pick a book out, pick up a ball and bring it to us when we ask, eat off a spoon and do a million more new things every day – every day I try to remind myself how lucky we are to be experiencing all of this with Adam.   

Happy 15 months Adam.

I started with the old standby to build my confidence.  Sauce and meatballs! I had to finagle the recipe, not because of lack of ingredients at the store but because I not surprisingly forgot to buy some. But this turned out delicious!  I always make Batali’s simple sauce and Barefoot Contessa’s meatballs.  Both turned out yummy even though I made the sauce with no carrots and the meatballs with only two types of ground meat instead of three and only one type of breadcrumbs instead of two.  I also am incapable of making my meatballs round, they are more of an oblong shape but still tasted good.

Sauce:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/mario-batali/basic-tomato-sauce-recipe12/index.html

Meatballs:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/search/delegate.do?fnSearchString=barefoot+contessa+real+meatballs&fnSearchType=site

Then I decided I might as well try to make an Asian dish.  I want to try to start cooking with more local ingredients and flavors.  This stuff has to taste better and be fresher than the produce they import from the US.

I always love Asia noodle and beef soups and I know Randy does too so I decided to tackle this as my first Asian dish.  I was a bit scared but it turned out to be relatively easy and super tasty.   Oddly enough when I went to the supermarket to get all the ingredients the Green Curry Paste was in the imported section. Guess it’s not that commonly used here, but they had all the ingredients!

I made the broth and the noodles.  We don’t have a grill so I roasted the vegetables in the pan and Randy broiled the steak in the oven.

Thai-Style Beef with Noodles

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon mild honey
• 2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce, divided
• 1 pound flank steak
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
• 2 large shallots, thinly sliced (1 cup)
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Thai green-curry paste
• 1 3/4 cups reduced-sodium beef broth
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/4-inch strips
• 1 bunch scallions, trimmed and cut into 3-inch pieces
• 3/4 pound dried Asian egg noodles

I never thought I would hear Randy say this but he did say it could use more vegetables.  This coming from someone who recently told me that vegetable stir fries are one of his worst enemies.

We’ve also found a great store nearby, Santis that carries good meat and great wine.  We are definitely happy.  I know you nosey nellies want to know what the failed mean was.  I attempted Ratatouille (thanks for nothing epicurious Rustic Ratatouille).  It was very time consuming and dry.  So bascially the opposite of what Ratatouille should be.

In other random thoughts, I have to say I may find Rachel Ray a little annoying, but her garbage bag idea is brilliant.

In other news what has Adam been up to you ask?  Well he’s been helping me out around the kitchen.  Baby obsession to end all baby obsessions- the broom, dustpan and kitchen cabinets.  I won’t need to hire any help now that I have Adam on the job 🙂

Since I’ve already rambled so much on this post I may as well continute. The weather in the evenings has been been great so we’ve been going on family walks.  These have been great and it’s so nice to do something after dinner.  It has definitely been the thing I enjoy most about the weather here.

This weekend we took our visitor Kate and headed to Salcedo Market.  This market is open every Saturday in a park in Makati and it was at the top of Randy’s list of things he wants to check out in Manila.  I actually don’t know how long this list is- I should probably ask him.

I’ve been to my share of Asian markets and I was picturing this:

This place was small but had everything.  They had fresh herbs that smelled amazing! Rosemary, thyme, mint- none of which my local supermarket carries. I bought a bunch and I am going to try to cook something tasty this week.  There were plants, spices, baskets and more!

Adam even got to see some animals…well these fish were still alive. Does that count?

And here is Adam trying to convince his dad that he needs that Buko pie (young cocunut custard pie!). 

I have a feeling the Ali family will be making this market a regular weekend haunt. 

1) I’m sitting in my bed using wifi because Kate knows enough about these things to take me to Market Market (our nearby mall) and help me buy my own wifi router (please don’t laugh at me people) and now we have wifi in the house!! 

2) Kate is my spa buddy.  She was the one in London that rightly convinced me that facials and spa days are necessary.  So that means while she was here we had to check out The Spa in our neighborhood.  I walk by it every day and every day I think this is someplace I need to check out.  This weekend I finally got the chance to! Ok, maybe finally is a bit dramatic since we’ve only been here three weeks but it was still pretty exciting.  1100 pesos later (27 USD) I walked out of there having had an awesome massage. Thanks Randy for baby sitting.  Here we are looking super relaxed (note to self next time take a picture before you have spa hair).

3) Speaking of babysitting, Kate motivated us to get a babysitter last night! By motivate I mean she was in town and we wanted to go out to dinner somewhere fun and stay out past 8pm.  It was so nice to have an adult night out and to be able to enjoy a meal and some drinks and some good conversation.  We also had an amazing babysitter…Rose can you come be Adam’s yaya!

4) She brought Adam the most amazing presenst.  Two great books and this adorable shirt.  He was so happy to be wearing it, see the photographic evidence below. 

5) She loves to buy home stuff as much as me and we were able to find some awesome baskets and wooden rolling pins at the market this weekend!  Pictures of baking goods made with rolling pin to come soon!

Here is Adam’s stroller after a long day ‘sightseeing’ in Manila.  Adam had to walk since we needed his stroller to carry all of our goods.

She even ran down with me to the White Elephant sale in our building (which I had high hopes for but which was a total bust) and humored me when I asked her to use her foot as a reference to show how HUMONGOUS this guy was.  (cute shoes Kate!)

5) She loved Adam even when he was being a bit of a brat at lunch.  Here’s a picture of him looking super cute at lunch which makes it hard to believe he could be a brat but this was definitely the three and a half minutes he was being this cute, ah toddlers.  But I have to admit he sure looks cute here.

6) She gets as excited about decorating our apartment as we do…if not more.  She helped us get some fun plants and convinced us we needed a comfy chair in the kitchen where she could drink her milky tea and read her kindle.  This corner has been dubbed Kate’s nook and will remind me of her whenever I look at it.

Kate, we miss you already and can’t wait until your next trip to Manila and to come visit you in Hong Kong!!

Poor baby was so out of it and sick that all he wanted to do was sleep on me.  This hasn’t happened in months.  In some ways I loved the cuddles but I wish they didn’t have to be sick cuddles.

We went to the Embassy doctor in the morning and he was great.  He used to be a pediatrician which made me feel much better.   He thought Adam had a virus but nothing more serious.  We headed home and went out for a walk.  By that evening I could tell he just wasn’t feeling good at all.  His fever had gotten higher and the nurse on call thought it best we bring him into the nearby hospital- St Lukes.  I had no idea what to expect but I was for sure pleasantly surprised.  It was clean, the wait time was short and we soon found out that poor Adam had strep.  I’m happy it wasn’t anything more serious and we were able to get him on some antibiotics and today he’s already feeling much better!

ps – our entire ER bill was 1700 pesos or 40 bucks.

But if I could spend my life anywhere in Manila it would be here:

Here i am trying to explain to mommy that I didn’t pull the paper out of the garbage and run around the house with it, she is very much mistaken.  I found that garbage on the floor and I was being a good Samaritan and throwing it away.  See how looks can be deceiving 🙂

We had a helper start on Monday.  That’s what they call someone here who cleans and cook and basically does everything you could think of to make your life a million times easier.  Our helper is named Elsa, she has three children who are now grown.  The two days she’s been here she’s been great. She’s been cleaning, cooking, organizing and doing more than I could ever imagine someone could do.

All this and she makes a dollar an hour.  And this is on the high end of the salary for the Philippines where the average salary is a dollar a day.  Before this she worked in Bahrain for four years working as a nanny.  The four years she was there she came home to visit her children and husband twice.  The thought of seeing your husband and children twice in fours years made me sad. 

We headed out to the supermarket and she started walking about a step behind me.  I’m not sure if her last employer insisted she do this or she thought this might be what I wanted, but I asked her to walk with me so I could talk to her and get to know her. This made me sad.  Just because she’s working for a living doesn’t mean she’s not worthy to walk next to me and Adam.  Then she made sure whenever we crossed the street she was in between the traffic and us, which in the Philippines is saying something since crossing the street is like a game of Frogger.  We definitely are not paying this woman enough for this.

Then later in the day I asked her what she wanted me to get her from the supermarket to eat for lunch.  I suggested cheese, sliced meat, vegetables. She asked for a mayonaisse spread and bread. I wasn’t sure if I had understood right and asked her what type.  She said Kraft Mayo spread and maybe when she finished that jar a jar of peanut butter.  I bought her both and some cheese and rice and I couldn’t stop thinking about this all day.  She was going to make a sandwich with mayo spread and nothing else. This is what she wanted when I offered her anything in the supermarket.  This just made my heart hurt.

Through all this she still manages to be upbeat and positive and is so grateful to have this opportunity.  I was very excited to be able to actually afford someone to help me clean and cook so I could spend more time with Adam, but man this is hard. 

So many times this week the whole situation has made me sad.  It brings home the reality of the poverty here.  I guess the only thing you can do is learn from it and try to help and make a difference while you’re here.  Either in the job you choose or by volunteering your time somewhere worthwhile or donating to a charity or trying to help people you meet along the way and treating them as you would want to be treated.