Chicken Teriyaki

Well, I have forgotten about this recipe. Sometimes, I wonder how I got through Med school with such a poor memory.

Ingredients:

• 1 (3 pound) whole chicken, cut in half
  
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (brown sugar would be good, too)
  
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

Procedure:

• Rinse chicken halves, and pat dry with paper towels. Place chicken cut side down in a baking dish.
  
• In a medium mixing bowl, combine sugar, soy sauce, grated ginger and garlic. Mix well, and pour mixture over chicken. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
  
• In a pan, bring the chicken mixture to a boil and make sure chicken is done. Let cool slightly, then cut into smaller pieces to serve.

Creamy Carbonara

This is my own version of Carbonara. It's quick and easy to make!

Ingredients:

• Pasta
  
• Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
  
• All-Purpose Cream
  
• Bacon or ham
  
• Onion (white ones would be better)
  
• Optional: Milk or water, mushroom slices

*Amount depends on how much you want to make and how many you'll be feeding

Procedure:

• Boil the noodles in some salt. Drain and wash so they don't stick together.
  
• Gradually add cream (and water or milk, depends how creamy you want it) to the cream of mushroom soup. Mix them well so they won't form lumps.
  
• Fry the bacon or ham, without oil, so that its own oil will come out. Add in the onions and then the cream mix. Simmer until thick.
  
• Add the pasta into the cream and coat well.
  

Beer Batter Fish Fillets

Here's a recipe that I picked up somewhere from the Internet (and altered a bit). I got this idea when I was in Singapore, the days when my cousin and I would go to malls and look for Chippy British Take-away stalls. We would eat fried Mars bars, fried fish or whatnot, and it's really good that I even thought of putting up a store similar to Chippy!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
  
• 3/4 cup beer
  
• 1/2 cup milk
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 pounds fillets (you can replace this with chicken or something else, if you want)
  
• vegetable oil for frying

Procedure:

• In a large bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder, and dill. Add beer, milk, and eggs; mix well.
  
• Place fish fillets in batter mixture, coat well, and let stand for 15 minutes.
  
• Heat the vegetable oil in a drying pan and fry the fish until golden brown. Cook fish in batches to maintain oil temperature.

My friend chef said that an alternative could be just dipping the fish in the batter right before frying. Her version involves just beer, flour, baking powder and baking soda. I have yet to try that!

Vegetarian Kare Kare Recipe

Kare kare is a Filipino dish. I learned this recipe from a good friend and since I've been staying home, doing nothing, I have been up on my feet doing some cooking (and "baking"). Here is my version of kare kare because I know my friend, chef Charm, does it a lot differently.

Ingredients:

• pumpkin, banana bud, string beans, eggplant, pechay
  
• 1 beef broth cube
  
• water (about 8 cups)
  
• onion
  
• garlic
  
• peanut butter (about 5-6 tbsp)
  
• grounded toasted rice (about 4 tbsp)
  
• cooked bagoong alamang or anchovies

Procedure:

• In a pot, blanch the pumpkin and banana bud (or whatever else that would take long to cook) in water with the beef broth cube. Strain and set the stock aside.
  
• In a big pan, saute the garlic and onion until golden brown. Add in the stock, grounded toasted rice and the peanut butter. Bring to a boil and simmer.
  
• Add in the rest of the vegetables and be careful not to overcook them.
  
• Bagoong alamang can be added to taste or can be served on the side.
  

That's it! I'm sure you can change a few things here and there, just like I did, to make this recipe fit you.

Congenital Heart Diseases

I visited my Ob-Gyn yesterday and as usual, we had a chitchat about our personal lives. She told me that one of her younger brothers had one child with tetralogy of Fallot and another child with truncus arteriosus. So, what are these?

Aside from being popular medicine exam questions, these are defects or problems involving the heart.

Tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) involves, of course, 4 anomalies:
1. a ventricular septal defect
2. an enlarged right ventricle
3. overriding of the aorta
4. pulmonary stenosis



Blood coming from both ventricles of the heart, a mix of oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood, is pumped into the circulation. Because there is lack of oxygen going through the body, those with this anomaly usually present as cyanotic or have a bluish discoloration of the skin, lips and nailbeds.

If you're interested to understand ToF better, here's a link to a Flash video from Cincinnati Children's Hospital's website and an article if you want to read more.

Truncus arteriosus, on the other hand, occurs due to failure of separation of a great vessel arising from the heart which should become the pulmonary artery and the aorta. This occurs with a ventricular septal defect which also causes a mixing of blood, like in ToF.



Read more on truncus arteriosus here.

Both of these anomalies are congenital, meaning, they are present at birth. It is said to be caused by a genetic defect or due to environmental exposure during the first 8 weeks of pregnancy.

So, why did I even bother posting about this? It's to leave you a note: Take care of your embryo/fetus especially during your first trimester! If you're into drinking alcohol or coffee or are used to smoking a lot, you'd better quit while your pregnant. Encourage your partner to stop smoking as well so you and your baby won't be inhaling secondhand smoke. Watch whatever you ingest because most of it will surely go to your baby, as well.

Have a happy pregnancy!

How to Rearrange Post Footer Elements

(When the 'Page Elements' tab won't let you.)

OK, so yesterday I tried a million times to rearrange my post footer elements using the 'Page Elements' tab provided by Blogger but the elements won't budge. Thanks to Pocket's tutorial (along with some HTML knowledge), I was able to figure out how to do it using the 'Edit HTML' tab. I'll be trying my best to guide you on this but bare with me as this is my first tutorial.

1. Log in to your Blogger account and if you have several blogs, choose the one that you'd like to edit by clicking on LAYOUT > EDIT HTML.

2. Make sure you backup your entire template by clicking on 'DOWNLOAD FULL TEMPLATE' before you proceed. (Just in case you accidentally "destroy" your template.) Tick on the 'EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATES' on the upper right corner of the editing text box.

3. Press 'CTRL' + 'F' or click on EDIT > FIND on your browser and type in 'POST-FOOTER-LINE'. There would be 3 footer lines, each labeled as shown below (Note that they won't be close together like this, this is an edited screenshot):



4. Now, I am not sure how I can explain this but if you would look at the picture below, those enclosed in purple brackets [ ] is considered as one block. (Notice that the words 'SPAN' begin and end one block.) See here that the underlined words are post-author vcard, which means that this will be the block for your 'posted by blah'; and post-timestamp is the block for the time that you posted. You'll have to read this part of each block so you'd have an idea which shows which.



So for example, you want the 'LABELS' to show in the second footer line, you'll have to CUT the entire post-labels block and PASTE it under 'POST-FOOTER-LINE-2'. And so on, and so forth.



That's it! I hope you got that.

PS. Thanks to Pocket for inspiring me to help other people as much as he [his tutorial] has helped me put up this XML site.