A Foodie Post of Sorts

A few weeks back I had a birthday ending in nine making it the last birthday I'll have before one of those big ones comes along. Per Filipino tradition, some pancit (vegetable and noodles on the right) were made for my birthday meal as in their tradition, the noodles symbolize long life.

On our way back from our vacation, we had picked up some Jollibee fried chicken. It is a chain restaurant that is thicker than McDonalds is here back in the Philippines and their fried chicken meals come with a container of gravy. It is meant to be spooned over rice but because we are American or Americanized, it typically just goes to waste in our family. But having just been denied entry into Canada and knowing we were going to have lots of potatoes soon, we saved our gravy, it is quite delicious gravy too, for the occasion.

In the process of digging potatoes, a few injured taters are nearly inevitable unless one wants to work three times as hard as necessary. So when we got home, I cut up those wounded taters and per my girls request, french fried them. The adults, and even the girls with a little persuasion later, spooned some of that saved Jollibee gravy over the top and sprinkled on some cheese to create some homemade poutine. It was the third time in my life I have eaten it and it was by far, the best tasting time.

However, it is very unhealthy and probably shortens my lifespan by consuming it. But with the long life properties of the pancit, I'm hoping I at least cancelled things out. 

We had so much produce harvested from our garden that we gave some of it away to friends and in return, received a handful of ripe tomatoes that will later become the T in our BLTs. With what is left, we ate quite a bit of it fresh or in the case of the taters, were put down in the basement where hopefully they will last a few months until we can get them ate. Others, we preserved them in a variety of fashions. On the left, I shedded up quite a few of our carrots and my wife made a sweet cold pickling solution which we will keep in our refrigerator and eat as a sweet relish of sorts. In the middle, we tried a method for pickling bitter melon which is supposed to reduce the bitterness of the melon. We just did it with some leftover pickling brine to use up and if it doesn't work out, we'll try another method the next time. On the right, I used my mom's dill pickle recipe to pickle some of the smaller okra that we weren't able to consume. Those will be stored in our pantry and eaten like a pickle with just about any meal.