My Adventures with Tikoy

This has been long overdue, since Chinese New Year happened last week and this was an entry I was supposed to do for that event.  Work and school papers got in the way so...

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I had a minor dilemma.  My very nice boss, Dr. Paulino Y. Tan, president of Asia Pacific College, gave all his directors and assistant directors (I'm one of his lucky lucky assistant directors) a big box of that delicious brown tikoy from the Bueno Mano Hopia Factory.

Thing is, I live in busy Mandaluyong with my sister, who's always out on shoots and events, being the aspiring stylist that she is. The dilemma: What do I do with a whole box of tikoy and a relatively empty pantry? I didn't think I can finish the entire thing all by my lonesome and if I cooked it traditionally -- dipped in egg then fried -- and ate that everyday, I knew I'd be sick of it. As soon as I got home, I checked my cupboards for ingredients I could use, thinking that there had to be a creative way to prepare tikoy besides the obvious.

We had olive oil. Ok, I couldn't imagine using olive oil on tikoy. Ick. So that was out of the question. No butter. No eggs either. There was milk. Hm. I heated a cup of milk in the pan, sliced 4 pieces of tikoy and bathed them in the milk. Thank goodness for nonstick pans. I was able to fish the slices out without difficulty.  Too bad I wasn't able to take a photo, since it was only while I was stuffing myself silly did I get the idea of writing a blog entry about this dessert.

The next day, I went to the grocery. Bought eggs (just in case I wanted to go back to being traditional), cream and peaches. This time, I wanted to try tikoy in peaches and cream.

This experiment got me curious enough to want to try it without the cream. So I went for tikoy and peaches.  Was able to use pineapple tidbits on the next experiment, though it didn't taste as good as when I used peaches. Then again, I'm extremely picky with my pineapples and it's very seldom when they taste just right.

Okay, so on the next attempt, I decided to use plain ol' eggs.  Without oil and without anything else. I scrambled up a couple, bathed 6 slices of tikoy in them and plopped the entire contents of my bowl into the pan.  The result actually tasted pretty good and it didn't make me dizzy, the way traditional tikoy would make me feel after some time.

My last experiment had something to do with a combination of peach syrup, milk, honey and eggs.  I mixed them all together, shoved my remaining tikoy slices into the consistency and fried them in olive oil. Then prayed over them so I wouldn't regret what I just did.  I was actually surprised that it didn't taste icky. It tasted like your regular tikoy, without the added guilt (and headache) caused by regular cooking oil.

I tried making tikoy maruya (inspired by the thought of banana fritters), but I didn't have enough ingredients in my cupboard so it ended in total FAILURE.  Oh, and I also had tikoy with peanut butter and rolled that on a bunch of sesame seeds. That was weird but it was good.

I asked around for other suggestions and a couple of my former students mentioned deep-fried lumpiang tikoy.  Hm, sounds good.  Someone else suggested I put melted cheese on it. Ew.  A former colleague (Jag Garcia) said I should try cooking it in "oil, glorious oil" sans the egg. Double Ew.

Thinking about this experiment led me to believe that:

1. I need a recipe book.
2. I need to find nutritious alternatives to fast food.

The second item, I cannot do anything about if I don't have time to check out exotic grocery stores.  I only have time to do kitchen experiments like these when I'm locking myself up in the condo because I have to work on doctoral papers (the experiments happen during breaks). As I mentioned sometime before, I'm sick of eating cardboard-tasting wheat bread in the morning and I do so resent turning to instant pancit canton in the evenings.  I need variety but I also need to learn how to whip up dishes that are quick and easy to make. Not to mention, healthy.

The first item...well, it just so happens that Animetric's World came up with a contest and a Yummy Cook Book Set happens to be one of her prizes. The timing couldn't have been more impeccable!  I actually posted about this contest in an earlier entry, but since I had missed my self-imposed deadline for My Adventures with Tikoy, I figured I should just make this my official contest entry instead.  I do still want a Celeteque Advanced moisturizer and a Starbucks Clean and Green Tumbler but I suppose I have to eat. Survival deserves primacy.

Animetric's World Celebrates First Anniversary

Rowena Lim Lei celebrates her first anniversary as a blogger today and she's giving away prizes sponsored by some of the brands I swear by. Ro's  rules say "one entry per prize" but I was in a hurry and I (rather excitedly) posted about all three of the items I wanted in one comment. LOL.

Here they are:

The Yummy Cookbook Set - Since I live on my own, I super need to learn how to make a variety of dishes. I am tired of eating the same old cardboard-tasting wheat bread for breakfast. This should help me soup up my fridge. I love experimenting with dishes, too, especially when I have the time.

Celeteque Advanced - It's true! This moisturizer is so light-weight, I could hardly feel like I have anything on. I tend to have oily skin so I really dislike putting on gook that feels like grease. Especially since the SPF I tend to put over moisturizers also tend to be greasy (the higher the SPF, the greasier it gets; and that's a fact). I also love the idea that it can be used as an eye cream so I don't have to buy so many products.

Starbucks Clean and Green Tumbler - I use organic products for my bathing needs and try to eat healthy as much as possible (except for occasional bouts of instant pancit canton cravings), so the idea that having one of these could also help save the planet is very appealing. Whenever I go to Starbucks, I would usually have my drink in their "for here" mug just to lessen the carbon footprints. I heard that bringing your own mug -- and this one would be perfect -- entitles you to a discount? Sounds good to me! It doesn't hurt that it looks very pretty, too.

The rest of the prizes can be seen in this picture:

If you want to win these fabulous items, all you have to do is pay tribute to Animetric...and of course, read the contest rules, which could be found here:
http://animetric.blogspot.com/2010/02/animetrics-favorite-things-year-1.html

Happy Anniversary, Ro! So very glad that you went blogging. You've actually embarked on a very exciting adventure. Hope this keeps up. Best of luck and more power to you! Mwah!

Skysenshi's Artist of the Year: Jano Vesina

In 2006, it was Niccolo Salonga (for the mature version of the Otaku Fridge).In 2007, it was Michael Santos (for the regular Otaku Fridge).
In 2009, it was Jedidiah Dumawal (still for the Otaku Fridge).

In 2010, it's Jano Vesina for skysenshi.com. While I retained Jedidiah's Neko-chan for the Otaku Fridge, I commissioned Jano Vesina for my own personal blog just this previous December. Jano is a very quiet person. That was how I knew him back when he took Human-Computer Interaction class under me five years ago; he was a freshman then. So quiet, in fact, that I didn't know how good he was until I encountered him again in my Portfolio class during his senior year. This made me wonder how come he never became popular in Asia Pacific College. Goodness knows, he wasn't the only silent artist type -- definitely not when it comes to the School of Multimedia Arts -- and yet many other quiet types were featured repeatedly in BUMP (our magazine). How did we ever overlook him??

So here I am, collaborating with him on my blog design. He did the Neko-chan artwork, as per my yearly tradition*. At first, I wanted to revive my old GM Shadow Guru Blog design, which I used to maintain when I was still working for Level Up, Inc. That design appropriated one of the fan artworks provided by Gravity's commissioned fan artists. I remember suggesting that we use GM blogs to promote Level Up so it was sort of a personal/professional thing. With the revival of that theme in my mind, I sent Jano the peg and my color scheme.

This is the original default Blogger look.

My old GM Shadow Guru Blog. Illustration by MilkTea.

Jano is very prolific and fast. In fact, in a couple of days, he was able to give me three studies, with Neko-chan in various levels of armor (light, medium, heavy). Can you imagine how hard it was to choose?? They were all so good! I asked him to do the selection so he, like every other male I'd ask, picked the bare armor.

Neko-chan's armors: light, medium, heavy

What he ended up with was totally different from the peg (and wonderfully breathtaking, at that!) so I had to adjust my design a bit to compliment his work. I had to go minimal with the CSS, not wanting my part to clash with his. Organized and stitched sticky notes. Sort of. How else do you combine European Medieval with Oriental? Plus, I tend to go heavy on my content so I could not afford to go heavy on the graphics. I tweaked the CSS yet again so that my body content and his Neko-chan remained cohesively on the center no matter how big your monitor got. (Actually, the bigger your monitor gets, the more you see of Neko-chan.)

Almost final artwork.

Initial collaboration result.

When he saw how his illustration melded with my design, he decided to kick the notch up a bit. Without me asking him to, he changed Neko-chan's eye color from green to gold, added more detail, gave her a lunar staff (my symbol) and finally appended his signature. (I had actually been pestering him to add his signature because I didn't want someone else filching the exquisite work.) While he was at it, I asked for clouds on a separate layer on the PSD. I then made minor adjustments to his color palette and re-aligned the clouds. Voila!

 

Jano's final revision.

My final editing.

I really feel good about this collaboration. It was the first time I actually asked someone to illustrate first before I design. My artists usually do the illustrations AFTER seeing my design, so it's like they just followed my lead. With Jano, I really felt the team work. I should do this activity with my other artists more often.

To make up for the fact that we have discovered him late, BUMP will be featuring this artist and his works in the next issue. Coming up in March 2010, so watch for it.  In the meantime, why don't you visit his DeviantArt page: http://dianos.deviantart.com? Who knows, you might need an illustrator.

*NOTE For those who don't know the Neko-chan tradition: I first commissioned Niccolo Salonga back in 2006 for an avatar -- a "mascot", if you will -- because I didn't want to post my real pictures back then. I wanted a cat girl that could represent me. Well, she wouldn't look exactly like me (since she'd be a 2D character) but she'd have my hair, at least. At that time, the choice was between Niccolo and this other artist who was willing to do a sketch for free if I posed nude for him. I went with Niccolo instead. After that, I would commission new artists every year. This is the only year that Neko-chan did not sport my hair, but that's because the last time Jano saw me was when he graduated in May 2009. I did have highlighted rebonded hair back then.