Home Cooked Meals

When I was a newlywed, I invested in several food magazine subscriptions in hopes of creating yummy meals for Stan. Luckily, my mom was able to send me cooks/helpers who knew how to read and more importantly, FOLLOW the recipes. Stan has been pretty happy with the fare we had at home. With the coming of Anya, we had a yaya shuffle and my former cook now became Naima's yaya. My relatively new cook Gina is also great at following cookbooks although each of them have their own favorites - Good Housekeeping for Gina and Yummy for Tata. The almond coated fish was originally from my mom's cook, Tona. It was made for breaded chicken but since this was usually served to my pescatarian brother, it was modified into almond crusted fish instead. Crunchy and pairs well with sweet chili sauce.
This is a salmon and dill pasta dish from Yummy magazine. Could've been an excellent dish except Gina forgot to take out the salmon bones (from the spine). She thought that since the bones were crunchy, they would add ooomph to the dish. The extra crunch didn't match the savory dish.. we know better next time. Aside from the fish-y dishes, we added the parma ham with gouda cheese I got from Shopwise. I realized that it's better to have your ham sliced when you purchase rather than buy the pre-packed ones which tends to be old and dry.
======
Meanwhile, weekends are usually spend dining in parc, ren or bay. Two Sundays ago, it was my turn to host my siblings and their families for dinner. Thanks to Prima Taste, we enjoyed a home-cooked Singapore feast.
We started with the Hainanese Chicken Rice and just added chicken and cucumbers. It was the real thing - with chicken rice, soya sauce, chili sauce and ginger sauce. We just didn't have the chicken broth to go with it. Plating c/o Gina.

I also purchased some crabs for P360 per kilo from Baclaran Seaside Market. We got 5 small crabs and transformed them into Singaporean Chili Crabs, paired with roti bread from SM Hypermart. Yum! We didn't include the extra hot sauce as the crabs were spicy enough for our taste buds.

Prima Taste has a lot of pre-mix sauces. Aside from the top 2 sauces, we've also tried the char kway teow and bah-kut-teh mix - all pretty good! For our Laksa, we usually opt for the Wo Hop bottle mix. Maybe next time, we'll try Prima Taste's Laksa mix too.

A Lovely Afternoon Tea Party

I've always loved tea parties! While studying in the DC, I wanted to try the numerous tea salons they had but couldn't do so on my limited student budget. When we went on a family vacation to Hong Kong in 2008, I coerced my entire family to do a high tea meal at the Conrad's. But contary to my expectations, the Conrad high tea was quite heavy - a mix of English and Chinese delicacies.

Last Thursday, I was invited to Amelia's Tea Party to celebrate her 30++ birthday. Amelia is one of my breastfeeding friends and even after 3 kids she still looks great! Her family owns Barbara's where the party was held. According to Zeka, this tea party had been brewing for several years already.

Her tea party was just how I expected a proper high tea party should be. When guests arrived and are seated, a waiter comes with a tray of with an assortment of various teas. You choose your tea bag then the waiter comes back with a porcelain cup and saucer set and a porcelain tea kettle and fills your cup with your chosen bag at your table. Ooohh so prim and proper!

Look at the buffet tables laden with savories and sweets!










Amelia's giveaways were feathered fans or bag charms with her ever thing note tags. The party was actually just an afternoon merienda but food and tea were overflowing! The requisite cucumber sandwiches and scones were present with clotted cream! I enjoyed the crunchy sesame shrimp cakes, the warm apple crumble pie, decadent chocolate lava cake and the assorted rich pates.

The table setting and floral arrangements were also very elegant - quite prim and proper - as how I imagined a high tea would be.

I shared the table with other breastfeeding friends and it was an afternoon filled with updates, chatter and laughter. Thanks to Amelia and kudos to a wonderful high tea celebration!

*All photos by Eddie Boy Escudero.

BIR Santax Woes

It will be almost 6 months since my last post and this post is a rant about the inefficient, stupid BIR Santax project of the new Commissioner. You can read the Philippine Daily Inquirer's report and Philippine Star's report about this project.

So last Sunday, I joined the St. James Bazaar. It was my second bazaar and first time to join St. James. St. James Bazaar actually started on Friday, November 27. But since I applied too late, only the Monday, November 30 slot was open and I was able to join only on the last day (1-day).

At about 10am, BIR asked the organizer to announce on the P.A. system that it was only accepting payments up to 12noon. After lunch, they will be going around the bazaar and ask concessionaires to show their receipts if they have paid or not. So I went to the BIR table to ask about the tax to be charged and here are their stupid answers:

1. Even if you are a registered business, you still need to pay an application fee because by joining a bazaar in Muntinlupa, you have a "branch" and it is that branch (bazaar) that you will register.
2. The P500 application fee is good only for 1 year. So if you join St. James 2010, you will need to apply and pay again.
3. Since I was a concessionaire for 1 day only, I needed to pay P650.00 which consisted of a P500 application fee, P100 advance income tax and P50 percentage tax.
4. Even if you are just giving out flyers, you will still need to register and pay as long as you have a booth and as long as you are listed in the masterlist of exhibitors.

But the thing that really pissed me the most was that they did not issue official receipts to concessionaires who paid!!! See below the receipt that they issued my neighbor - who paid. And what more - they quoted different amounts!! My neighbor was initially quoted P700.00. She had already paid when I asked and was quoted P650.00. I immediately called her to go back to the BIR table to ask for a refund of the P50 which the BIR people slowly returned.

I asked the BIR people why they did not issue receipts and they said that they had run out. I asked them how could run out of receipts when they have the masterlist of all concessionaires. They said that it was the fault of the St. James Bazaar organizers - for not informing the concessionaires early on about the tax requirements.

I talked to the St. James people who informed me that BIR just appeared on Friday, asked for a table and started calling the concessionaires to pay for the taxes! St. James had called BIR to ask about their requirements but BIR never got back to them. Furthermore, BIR collected different taxes on different dates! So if you paid on Day 1 of the bazaar, it was P1,500. Day 2, it was P1,300. Day 3, it was P1,100.00 and on Day 4, it was P950. These rates are applicable to 4-day concessionaires. But for single-day concessionaires like myself, tax was either P650 or P700 (as my neighbor experienced).

Meanwhile, BIR was claiming that the concessionaires should have gone to the Muntinlupa RDO to pay your taxes before the bazaar date! So who were the BIR people at the St. James Bazaar? They were Rene Corpuz, Nene Balmorez, Rex Amiaga, Calvin Morga, Berna Magpantay, Mafe Lucas.

I called RDO53-B's Assistant Revenue District Officer Danilo Lino (556-0176). He informed me that the activity was supposed to be an awareness and not an enforcement activity. I told him that this was not the case. His people angered the concessionaires. Also, his people did not know how to explain their purpose (awareness) and were not at all friendly. One of them even had the gall to threaten the concessionaires that if they didn't pay, they will be receiving a notice with penalties!

Mr. Lino told me that they only found out about the bazaar on Friday - since they do not know who were the organizers of the bazaar. I told him that I found the organizers of the bazaar online. It was easy to find the information online and with the BIR's resources, I am sure they could have easily found it too. I told Mr. Lino also that if the activity was supposed to be awareness and not enforcement, it should have been handled differently.

What happened during St. James was that the BIR people angered the concessionaires. I asked for the names of the BIR people there and they initially refused to give the names to me. They eventually gave their names but only if I give my own name. I gave them my calling card. I was also really pissed at their inconsistencies! Why were there different "taxes" on each day? Why was there no sufficient receipts? If they got the list of concessionaires from the organizers on Day 1, they would've seen from the list that there are more than 600 names listed there! So they could've easily gone back to their office to get more receipts. Yet another BIR person told me that there were just limited receipts allocated per Revenue District Office. WHAT??!!!! How can I pay for "tax" without being issued a receipt?

I really think that BIR should fix this "SANTAX Project". Clear rules and regulations need to be publicized. Newspaper accounts are not sufficient. Also, BIR cannot expect Bazaar organizers to contact them. They should be resourceful enough -- information is readily available on the internet. And last -- sana naman, the money that they collected will go into the Philippines' coffers and not in their own pockets noh?!! Hay ... so sad to be Pinoy entrepreneur during this time!!