Pancakes for dinner

In case you skipped the title, I had pancakes for dinner.

It had been a while since I last made pancakes. At one time, that was dinner for two or three days in the week. Somewhere in the middle of last year, pancakes and I seemed to have a falling out. I didn’t completely stop … I just phased them out, even when they bought those two syrup containers that are still here. They just won’t run out!

Since then, we just relied on anything else, or had some food delivered (yum!). Today, after the 6:00-8:00 class, which ended early, I spent a long while trying to decide between spending what money I had on buying some of those empanadas they sell right outside campus (I can count the times I’ve bought food in college), or just going home, hoping that someone bought or ordered something. Anything. Well, guess what I chose to do?

I got home to a lukewarm greeting from my mother and my sister, who were sitting in the balcony, trying to get my baby nephew to sleep.

I asked What did you all have for dinner?, and got the disappointing reply of Everyone made something for themselves. I should’ve bought those empanadas. I was feeling tired, I was hungry, and I didn’t feel like having a repeat of last night’s dinner (canned herring steaks with soda crackers). So, after muttering to myself, over and over again, that I had made the wrong choice, I faced the consequences and went to look in the fridge.

There was little to choose from and, while everything in it was seemed edible, every possible combination of just about anything required a moderate amount of effort. I didn’t want to settle for that instant ramen that we never seem to run out of, so I grabbed the box of blueberry pancake, cleaned up the old non-stick pan mix and got to work.

Like I said, it had been a while, but I was extra careful with the mix and it didn’t end up all watery or too thick. There was no butter margarine or spread, so I ended up using olive oil to grease the pan. That was a first. I generally stay away from cooking with oil because I fear it’ll jump at me.

The end result (to your left) turned out nicely. And the syrup … well, it may have been long past its expiration date, but it didn’t kill me, and I didn’t notice a difference in taste. And so, dinner was solved.

But I still think I should’ve bought those empanadas.

Maybe next time.

All about Christmas Eve

That’s done and … that’s done. We had dinner a few hours ago, had a couple of guests over. I needed something to do, so I grabbed the camera and began taking pictures of everything. While I got many photos of my family and the guests (who are also family), I won’t put them here. Instead, I’ll just show everything else.

Like I had mentioned and, as you can see in that second photo, there were lots of presents. It’s a tradition here to open the presents right after dinner.

Dinner was good, and there was plenty of it (not picture above are the two hams and dessert). I stuffed my face ate a plate and a half of it, unlike the rest of the people who didn’t seem excited about the eating part of it. By the way, remind me later to yell at my sister for making me read a Christmas prayer out loud. An actual religious person would’ve been better suited!

After dinner, there was the usual delivery of dinner plates to various neighbors. One of them lives in a fourth floor … a bit of post-dinner cardio for me (on the other hand, she likes to return the favor, and her cooking is a hidden gem of this world). Both for the sake of generosity and because there were enough leftovers to feed a small country.

We also got calls from our relatives in New Jersey. I got to speak to some uncles of mine whom I hadn’t talked with in years. That was nice. Afterwards, we all sat down for the opening of the presents. It’s become a tradition here to respond to every present announcement (to x person, from x person, etc.) with a collective Aww! I got nine boxes/bags of presents from various people. As it was expected, my nephew got the most presents. Plenty of baby clothing and noisy toys that are bound to keep us annoyed (should’ve wished for earplugs!).

Now, my eyes have a life of their own and are threatening to shut down for an extended period of time. Yet another reason why it is a good thing that we open the presents after dinner.

I leave you, reader(s), with yet another happy holiday wish, and a photo of that delicious cake we had for dessert. Well, half of it.

Better days

Yesterday and today didn’t completely suck. That’s good, isn’t it? I had an exam (Marketing 2) that I got out of rather quickly, earning a score of 19/20 (that’s 19 out of 20, not a fraction equivalent to less than 1). I had made a presentation on Thursday for graphic design class and, while all the other presenters were asked to repeat their presentation and have their survey results represented in charts (which I’d already done), I was not asked to present again, leaving me with zero work to do for yesterday. All I did was go make that film positive for Prepress class. I was going to get that done in the morning, right after the test, but it was rather cloudy and it began raining not long after, so I made the right choice of going home.

I asked my father to take me to that printing place (just in case the weather would change for the worse again). I’m glad he was with me the whole time, because they had told me that the design would be done in 40 minutes, so I waited that long. He loses his patience a bit (or he thinks these things are done instantly), so he started asking around when if my design was done. I got up and asked at the register, and it seems it had been ready for a while now. So, I probably would’ve sat there for hours before taking action had I not been given that little push. What I’m worried about now is that the teacher is supposed to arrange a meeting with the students so we can all go someplace where we can do the next steps in screen printing. I’ve also got two other team works that worry me, but that’ll hopefully be solved by the weekend. Anyway …

Today was … slow. We’re all supposed to make three pop-up card desings for Illustration (2) class, using the company we chose at the beginning (a bank) as the theme. For today, all we had to do are three empty cards with a working mechanism. I managed to make two. It seemed for a while that I was the only one who bothered doing any work until someone else walked in with two apparently-finished cards, pretty much ready to be delivered. So, after having seen my cards, all we did was talk about another work we’re supposed to do, and joke around a bit. I made some good jokes not very worth repeating, but the whole class got a good laugh out of them. Yay for my comedic skills.

As usual, the 7-10 p.m. class doesn’t actually take all three hours. After we got tired of talking, we left shortly before 9:00 and I hurried home. Since I wasn’t feeling bad at all today, I forgot about all those lame “sick-people” dinner choices (soda crackers, chicken soup, etc.) that I’d been having the past few days, and made some mac & cheese. Well, not actually macaroni, but shell-shaped pasta. And not the usual cheese, but “three cheese”. But I’ll save myself the trouble and refer to it as mac & cheese, because that’s what it says on the box.

While I’m not able to provide photographic evidence (despite the image on the right, taken today), I daresay my mac & cheese turns out prettier than it looks on the box. You’ll have to believe me! Instant cooking is all I’ve got!

So, here I am. Almost midnight and with little work to do. Like I mentioned above, I’ve got some team work to do, one of them is for Saturday, and there’s that screen printing thing. It worries me that the first one I’ve heard little of, so I don’t know how much of that has been done. I hope they haven’t kicked me out of the team!

And … wow, this is one heck of a post. I sure write a lot when I feel like writing. I’ve got a one-hour class tomorrow, leaving me with plenty of time to do some work, both college-related and not. I hope I can get it all done on time. I’ve also got work for Thursday!

Anyway, I’m off to sleep, or something.

This stuff will be my doom

This Saturday wasn’t the best one ever. I’ve been feeling bad, I was trying not to fall asleep in class (despite how interesting it is) and, having slept through the afternoon, I just didn’t do much of anything else. A couple of hours ago, I had my dinner. Feast your eyes on this:

Thai peanut flavor chow mein by Nissin Foods. Delicious and instant. I’m not much of a cook, so this is perfect, but, this probably isn’t the best dinner for someone with stomach problems. The medication I’ve been given isn’t doing much, so I figured I’d eat something tasty and rather spicy to make it a fuller experience. It won’t make me feel worse, but nothing–not even sleep– is making me better.

I’ve almost got zero work to do for this upcoming week. Only a T-shirt design proposal for Friday and nothing else. I was counting on this (almost started begging!), because I need to rest and not think about work, to see if that makes me feel better. My mother continues to buy all this food (cereal, juice, milk shakes, etc.) that she thinks will make me better (she thinks it’s because I’ve been skipping breakfast), but, just when I thought I saw some progress earlier this week, it went back to the same-old-same-old situation, so I avoid eating  anything if I’m going out right after, so as to save myself any possible embarrassment.

There’s been a bit of a heat wave the last few days. Even with all the fans aiming at me, and on the highest level, it was unbearable! I thought it’d be the same on Saturday, but it wasn’t (thankfully). It was rather cool, and the air conditioning in the classroom this morning helped a bit. Thank goodness for electricity.

Anyway, I’m almost done for now. I’m hoping to get as much rest as possible today (Sunday!), and hopefully get some things done. Not sure what they are yet, but I’d like get something done so as to make this weekend not feel like a complete waste.

Aaah … I sure hope that dinner doesn’t wreak havoc in my already-chaotic digestive system. It can’t be that bad a thing to add some spicy food to an acidic stomach, can it? No, wait. Don’t answer that.

Go read something else!