Archive for the ‘Dining’ Category

Living in the tropics means we have a lot of bananas all year round. It can get pretty boring munching on it and straight out of the peel. These photos give me ideas on how to get more adventurous with my bananas.

Healthful pancakes for breakfast

Another breakfast favorite, dressed up: French toast with grilled banana

Honeycomb ice cream on top of a warm banana pudding, topped with vanilla sauce

Banana financier

Banana cake

Banana waffle

Bananas, spring roll wrap, nutella, and butter

Turon - bananas sliced lengthwise, wrapped in spring roll wrap, rolled in sugar and deep fried. Jackfruit bits are usually rolled up with the bananas for a more delicious combo. These warm wraps go well with the ice cream.

Dessert medley - banana parfait, banana chocolate milk custard with baileys sauce and a chocolate dipped banana lollipop

I have not had any kind of crepe in a long, long time. But I think I am going to have one this Friday when my husband and I celebrate our 3 years of wedded bliss. In the meantime, I satisfied my craving with a dose of crepe shots from Flickr. Who would have thought that you can have crepes from breakfast to dinner!

Bacon and cheese crepe for breakfast

If you’re not up for bacon, maybe some roast beef?

A light lunch: halibut on the side and ratatouille inside

Another candidate for a light lunch: salmon crepe sushi

For the vegetarians out there: tomato, mushroom and avocado

Now, since that lunch was light - there’s room for a dessert: banana and Nutella crepe with vanilla ice cream

And another dessert - strawberry and chocolate

A yummy afternoon snack - Crepe Florentine

An Asian inspired crepe for dinner - rice flour with turmeric filled with roasted pork, shrimp, onions, scallions, bean sprout, served on a bed of lettuce, English cucumber, pickled daikons, carrots, mints, paired with Vietnamsese Vinaigrette.

Lovely chocolate and whipped cream topping!

If you’re tired of the chocolate swirls - why not top your crepe dessert with caramel and mint?

So did you like your virtual all day crepe treats?

Nothing beats rats in their ability to ruin a restaurant’s business. Once word gets out, a restaurant’s profitable days could be numbered. They are also a popular topic for TV exposés and urban legends. This recent post on slashfood (Some Boston restaurants have rats too) also shows how a local rat problem could become a topic of interest in the blogosphere.

All this reminds me of an email I got a while back, about how some Chinese restaurants in the US are serving people rats disguised as fried chicken. Now all this may sound gross and far fetched, but all uncommon meats do taste like chicken (see here). And because the internet is the ultimate source of truth, I decided to do some very scientific research using it.

I found that people really do eat rats in some parts of the world. Most notable are in China where they are actually a delicacy. Poor people from Laos also use rats as a cheap source of protein. Also poor farm folks from my country, the Philippines, also eat farm rats. They even call them star meat because the letters of “rats” reversed spell out “star”.

I also found a web page version of the email I got about the rats as chicken meme. The pictures, as you can see, are really disturbing. But most people think this is nothing but urban legend. The gas canister are clearly marked as being in China, where in some parts people actually eat rats. So I believe these pictures are the work of some clever pranksters, putting unrelated pictures together to stir up disgust.

But in the end, none of this matters. People just eat different stuff around the world. Some people eat chicken, while other eat rats. Maybe in some parts of the world, chicken are said to taste like rats.