Pasta Vongole is relatively new to me. When it comes to pasta, I've always been type to favor the simple spaghetti with meat sauce. Seafood pasta has only become part of my eating repertoire in the past 5 years!

I first enjoyed a version in NomNomNom Cafe in QC. I liked the creamy, lemony flavors, so I've tried to make this a couple of times since then. The first attempt was a failure! The flavors were nice but I wasn't able to clean the clams properly. The result was a gritty mess of a pasta dish. I've learned to clean clams better since then. I rinse them out, and let the live clams filter themselves for a few hours, constantly changing the water. Thankfully, the seafood vendors at Salcedo Market have already pre-cleaned the clams. But of course, they still need a good washing.

When I visited my mom's house last week, our yaya made adobo. I was craving for some more, so I made some for dinner.

Adobo in our family home is always served with lots of sauce. Yum! We put potatoes and eggs too, but for this dish, I didn't have any eggs in the ref. (Must include in grocery list next time!)

I'm very picky when it comes to fish. I can only eat the fried or ihaw fish our yaya makes. I don't like paksiw. Fish bones (tinik) and scales make me want to run away and puke. My mouth is very sensitive, so I can easily feel any microscopic tinik that might have escaped into my carefully picked fish meat.

Cream Dory is the only fish I can cook on my own. You can buy it in fillets, without the fishy smell and without scales! That's the most important part of all. Haha!

So whenever I feel that we've been eating too much meat, I make this so we can enjoy something healthy instead.

With my dad visiting and our 8 year-old laptop suddenly dying on me, I totally forgot to post about these black pepper crabs!

I organized a Seafood Saturday with my dad and brothers. Bought 2 kilos of prawns, a kilo of clams, and a kilo of crab claws. If you had read this post, you know that I have sworn off cooking whole live crabs again. We'll have to see when I'll break that promise!

I was checking out the meat counter at the grocery and spotted some pork tenderloin. I suddenly remembered some blog posts and articles about pulled pork that I chanced upon recently. I didn't know the exact recipe, but I was sure I could improvise.

I have made pulled pork sandwiches before, but I served it with salad greens and sharp cheese. Decided to try making it with coleslaw this time. Red wine vinegar and honey coleslaw to be exact!

When Mike bought  me a convection oven last Christmas, I knew that a roast chicken was in order. This is the first time I've ever cooked chicken whole! What a feat is was.

Super easy to do. Drizzle a bit of olive oil in the ramekin, line with prosciutto, and crack and egg into it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and your choice of herbs. Pop into the oven for less than 5 mins and you're done.

Nilagang baka has always been one of my favorite dishes. Mike has always said that our yaya makes a great "clean version". I think I make a "messier" one. I just pop everything in the pressure cooker and leave it be. The result is a hearty, flavorful soup that will warm you up in an instant.

I love eggs ben! The first time I became truly in love with it was at Mandarin Hotel. My girlfriends and I were having a sleepover and we had a breakfast buffet at Tivoli. I think I ate about 4 that morning. They were small ones though (LOL! as if!).

After that, I've been ordering it up wherever I could get them- Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Bizu, Mr. Jones. This is the first time I tried to come up with it on my own.

This is a typical breakfast we'd have at our family home. Fried rice with chaosansi, a Chinese "canned good" (LOL!) of bamboo shoots, pork bits, chilis. I don't know when we started eating this. Probably when my dad came home from China where he worked as a teacher in an international school.

Chaosansi can be bought at some groceries. It's usually in the canned goods sections along with beans, chilis, and canned veggies. Chaosansi is great for lunch or dinner too! Haha! When our yaya is too tired to come up with dinner, she'd open a can of chaosansi, add it to cooked rice and my brothers and I would be happy campers.

Tuna pasta is our default "there's-nothing-in-the-ref-we-have-nothing-to-cook!" dish. I've always thought that should there be an emergency, at least we'd have stuff in the pantry to make tuna pasta.

Since I hadn't ventured out to the grocery to restock our fridge, I decided to make use of what we already had at home.

Had dinner with some family friends at a Korean restaurant recently. We had samgyupsal, kimchi stew, bibimbap and a dozen side dishes that came with the meal.

Back at home, I knew I had some pork belly in the freezer (ironically, I bought at a Japanese grocery!), so I decided that a light Korean meal was in order.