Congee

A friend from New York emailed the other day raving about this congee restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown where he intends to take me when I come over to visit.

I never liked congee.  I guess, it was because my parents fought my colds with it when I was young.  It was always the plain, tasteless kind.  I was a sickly child so one can only imagine how much of it I took with no complaints.  I do, however, love champurado, ginataang mais, ginataang mongo and  ginataang bilo-bilo. 

Much to my surprise, I’ve recently come to fancy congee and practically enjoy a bowl of it everyday for breakfast.  The reason:  Saffron’s congee station which allows me to add any ingredients I desire besides the usual century egg, regular boiled egg, scallions, ginger and fish balls.

Thus, my friend’s invite failed to arouse much interest, especially now that I think I eat the best congee in the world, plus the reviews I read about this congee restaurant’s poor service is much too discouraging since I am now used to the prevalent warm and gracious service here at Panglao’s restaurants. 

But then again, the distinctly New York phenomenon to be abused by the people you paid to perform a service, must have become so deeply ingrained in every New Yorker’s psyche; making it acceptable with least resistance, as I had meekly consumed the plain congee my parents fed me when I was a sickly child.

In my reply to my friend, I didn’t allude to having any plans to visit New York in the near offing, but I suggested that he and his family visit Bohol to get some sun and enjoy the congee station here at Saffron Restaurant.

seafood congee with crispy calamari and shredded chicken

seafood congee with steamed fish

congee with general tso's chicken, pork asado and steamed fish

special seafood congee

congee with beef steak and tempura chicken

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Food Trip Friday

Yummy Sunday

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

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Baji Through the Fire: All women art exhibit

Baji Through the Fire 

an Art Exhibit featuring

Bohol's female artists in celebration of

Women's Month

at Island City Mall Activity Center

March 4 - 30, 2012

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Related link:

Blossoming of the Baji

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Litratong Pinoy

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A seat for one

"When we cannot bear to be alone, it means 

we do not properly value the only companion 

we will have from birth to death - ourselves."  

                                                                       Eda LeShan

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Sharing with:

Weekly Top Shot

Skywatch

Kat Eye Studio

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I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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Shadow Dancing

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." --   Carl Sandburg

Since graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred thirty-five dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed four Broadway shows.  She received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor.  Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.  She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1965, Ms. Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance.  Her dances are known for creativity, wit and technical precision coupled with a streetwise nonchalance.  By combining different forms of movement – such as jazz, ballet, boxing and inventions of her own – Ms. Tharp’s work expands the boundaries of American ballet and modern dance.  In addition to choreographing for her own company, she has created dances for The Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet.  Many of Ms. Tharp’s works, some from as early as 1971, continue to be performed by ballet and dance companies around the world.

Read more here.

Twyla Tharp photo courtesy of twylatharp.org

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Shadow Shot Sunday

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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Crystals

What are crystals?

Crystals are natural solids made from minerals.  Each type of crystal has a unique and precise atomic structure.  They are commonly identified by their color and degree of hardness by using Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness.

            

Some crystals like Quartz come from the center of the earth’s fiery gases and molten minerals.  Intensely heated, they are catapulted to the surface by the planet’s tectonic plate movements.  As the fiery gases break through the Earth’s crust and meet solid rock, they cool and solidify.  This process may take eons or may be fast and furious.  

Other crystals, however, are not formed under such intense pressure.  There are those that develop in deep underground chambers, growing in layers, or dripping into existence.  Nonetheless, whatever their origins and the eventual shape and sizes they transform into, their crystalline properties can absorb, conserve, focus, and emit energy on the electromagnetic waveband.

The wondrous powers of crystals: fact or myth?

            

The growing interest in crystals – for their captivating colors, shapes and forms, including their holistic healing effects – is not at all some leftover influence of the New Age Movement of the 1980s.  

Actually, medicine men and shamen of ancient civilizations have been using crystals and gemstones as sacred tools for healing and protection.  Their recorded use dates back thousands of years, from the annals of the Chinese traditional medicine to the Ayuverdic texts of India.  

The Bible also contains hundreds of references to crystals and their powers and connections.  The Greek philosopher Theophrastus (372 - 287 BC), a student and collaborator of Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), wrote the book Peri Lithon (On Stones), which presented a taxonomy of known gems, their origins, physical properties, and healing and magical powers.  It is regarded as the first systematic mineralogy book in the world.  To date, it serves as a basis of modern scientific classification of gemstones.

            

Moreover, since ancient times, various schools of thought – mystical, magical, scientific and pseudo-scientific – strived to offer valid explanations for the wondrous effects of crystals.  Through it all came some remarkable discoveries, such as the ability of crystals to generate a voltage in response to mechanical stress (piezoelectric effect) and the ability of crystals to generate an electrical potential in response to temperature change (pyroelectric effect).  The other explanations for the beneficial effects of crystals involved heat, electricity, “focused energy,” the placebo effect, and magic.

            

Although concrete evidence remains elusive to modern science to prove the many other wondrous powers of crystal – such as the direct effects of crystals on the human condition and his environment – previous significant discoveries eventually produced many practical applications.  Crystal quartz is now commonly used in watches, computers, cell phones, and radio transmissions, as well as in the development of laser technology in the fields of medicine and space explorations.  

Notwithstanding, the scientific community, with the quantum physicists at the forefront, continues its research into the properties of crystals and their potential uses to enhance our life.  Thus, for now, the belief that crystals work by magic becomes valid, if magic is defined as “that which is beyond our understanding at this point in time.”

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Suggested read:

The Healing Power of Crystals


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Saturday Sareenity

Shadow Shot Sunday

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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Life 101: Idleness

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, 

or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

                                                                               Thomas a Kempis (1380 – 1471)

Thomas à Kempis was a late Medieval Catholic monk and the probable author of The Imitation of Christ, which is one of the best known Christian books on devotion. His name means, "Thomas of Kempen", his home town and in German he is known as Thomas von Kempen. He also is known by various spellings of his family name: Thomas Haemerkken; Thomas Hammerlein; Thomas Hemerken, and Thomas Hämerken.

In 1392 he followed his brother, Jan, to Deventer, Netherlands in order to attend the city school. While attending school in Deventer, Thomas encountered the Brethren of the Common Life, followers of Gerard Groote's Modern Devotion. He attended school in Deventer from 1392 to 1399.

After leaving school, Thomas traveled to Zwolle, Netherlands to visit his brother again, after Jan had become the prior of the Mount St. Agnes monastery. Thereafter, Thomas was invested at the Mount St. Agnes monastery in 1406. He did not become ordained as a priest, however, until almost a decade later. He became a prolific copyist and writer. Thomas received priest's orders in 1413 and was made sub-prior of the monastery in 1429.

Kempis was born at the Lower Rhine region in Kempen, Germany, County of Cleves ca. 1380.  He died in 1471 near Zwolle in the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht, seventy-five miles north of his birthplace.

Read more here.

This post is part of Ruby Tuesday and Litratong Pinoy

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Thank you!

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Papaya

Go to any of the popular grocery stores at Tagbilaran City and notice how they rarely carry a good selection of papayas; worse, there’s hardly any selection at all.  I found this puzzling at first until I realized that most Boholanos have papaya trees in their yard.  A local I once spoke to claims the two trees at his backyard bear fruit so abundantly his family got tired of eating papayas, and nowadays just leave the fruits for the birds to feast on.

I love papayas!  There was a time I would go on a three-day cleansing diet by just eating papayas and nothing else.  According to recent studies, papaya has protein­-digesting enzyme, papain, in the milky juice or latex, which is carried in a network of vessels throughout the plant. The enzyme is similar to pepsin in its digestive action and is reputed to be so powerful that it can digest 200 times its own weight in protein. Its effect is to assist the body's own enzymes in assimilating the maximum nutritional value from food to provide energy and body building materials.  

Moreover, if eaten regularly, papaya can correct habitual constipation, bleeding piles and chronic diarrhea. The juice of the papaya seeds is also useful in dyspepsia and bleeding hemmorrhoids.

Regarded as a wholesome fruit, it can fulfill our body’s daily requirements for essential nutrients like proteins, mineral and vitamins. The vitamin C in the papaya increases as the fruit’s maturity progresses. Also, its carbohydrate content is mainly of invert sugar which is a form of predigested food. 

Papaya is cultivated for its edible ripe fruit; its juice is a popular beverage, and its young leaves, shoots, and fruits are cooked as a vegetable. It is also used as flavoring in candies, jellies, preserves, and ice cream. Shallow cuts on the surface of fully grown but unripe fruits cause the exudation of a milky sap or latex that is collected, dried, and termed crude papain. 

Papain, the enzyme in papayas, has a wealth of industrial uses.  It has milk-clotting (rennet) and protein-digesting properties. Nearly 80% of American beer is treated with papain so as to remain clear upon cooling.  Papain is most commonly used commercially in meat tenderizers and chewing gums.  Cosmetically, papain is used in some dentifrices, shampoos, facial creams and soaps.

Papaya has been used widely in folk medicine for many ailments: the juice for warts, corns, cancers, tumors, and indurations of the skin; the roots or their extracts for tumors of the uterus, syphilis, yaws, hemorrhoids, and to remove urine concretions; the unripe fruit as a mild laxative or diuretic, and to stimulate lactation, labor, or abortion; the ripe fruit for rheumatism and alkalinizing the urine; the seeds as an anthelmintic or to stimulate menstruation or abortion; the leaves as a poultice on nervous pains and elephantoid growths, or smoked for asthma relief; and the latex for psoriasis, ringworm, dyspepsia, or applied externally as an antiseptic or to heal burns or scalds, or smeared on the cervix as an ecbolic.

Waverley Root, an American journalist wrote, "The papaya leads a disorderly life. Normally some plants bear female flowers and others male flowers, putting it in the category of 'harem trees' -- male trees are thinned out as soon as their sex can be determined, to leave one male for each eight to fifteen females."   

"The papaya is not normal. Hermaphroditic trees appear, bearing both male and female flowers, while others change their minds in midcareer and shift from male to female or vice versa. Miscegenation is rampant, too," Root further claims.

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Related links:

Papaya Health Benefits - Part 1

Papaya Health Benefits - Part 2

Papaya: The Healing Fruit

Yummy Sunday

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Please note:

I very much appreciate my articles and photos appearing on fellow bloggers' sites, popular broadsheets, and local broadcast news segments, but I would appreciate even more a request for permission first.

Thank you!

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