End of the Month Roundup - January 2013

(Source: The Heart of Innovations)

A lot of changes are coming to this blog. As of now, I'm doing some tests on the new template, new widgets and other things to this blog. I hope to roll out all of these improvements before the middle of the year comes. But while we're waiting for those big transformations, let me give you one of the new segments of this blog, which I name as the “End of the Month Roundup”.

End of the Month Roundup gives the summary of my adventures for the month. I might include other things here that may foster (I hope) discussion among the visitors of this blog. We can call this post as a sort of end-month party. ;-)

So, without further ado, let us start the end of the month round up for January.

January is the month of beginnings and what better way to start up the year than to honor the woman whom I consider the Mother of God, the most blessed Virgin Mary? I started the year by going to a Holy Mass in the Mother of God Church in Rangsit. I was given the chance to see my Thai brothers and sisters in the Faith honor Mary during the procession.

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Next stop is old train station in Bangkok, which is popularly known as the Hua Lamphong Train Station. I consider this train station odd because its architecture is European. Many tourists flock to this station to board trains going to tourist spots located outside of Bangkok.

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My visit to Hua Lamphong Train Station strengthened my desire for the Philippines to have a good train system.

Finally, I talked about my visit to Dreamworld. I served as the guardian for a child being cared for by a foundation. It is one of my happy days here in Thailand. I enjoyed playing with the kids and acting like a kid.

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Of course, I talked about food. I posted about omelette with mussels and bean sprouts from Tops Market. I also talked about the not-so-good namtok from McDonalds. Compared for all the foods that I posted last month, the best one would be the chocolate ice cream from Swensen's.

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Meanwhile in the real world, I got another chance to meet Foong last month when he visited Bangkok for the nth time. I was glad to see him and he still looked the same, and no he DOES NOT look like a panda. I will not tell you the places that we'd been so you better watch out for those in the coming blog posts.

I also got the chance to return to the Philippines last month. I had a lot of adventures in my country, which I will talk about in the future posts.

Before I wrap up this post, let me leave a poll for you Dear Reader. Of the four images that I posted here, what do you think is the best photo?

Please answer the poll here:

Choose the Best Photo for January
	Thai Catholics Offering Roses to Mary
	Trains at Hua Lamphong Station
	Smiles at Dreamworld
	Swensen's Chocolate Ice Cream
pollcode.com free polls

You may also leave a comment and tell me why you chose that photo as the best.

End of the Month Roundup is the monthly segment of this blog that summarizes all the adventures that I featured for the month.

My Very First Spaghetti

Note: Regular blogging is temporarily suspended to give way for my cookery.

I said previously that one of activities here in Thailand is learning how to cook. Well, I am glad to announce that my cooking had improved. I had cooked a lot of dishes and majority of them had tolerable taste.

I had a pack of pasta that was sitting in my cupboard for more than a month. I intend to use it for spaghetti. Every ingredient for the spaghetti is ready. I have a can of tomato sauce and some spices. Ground pork that I intended to use for the spaghetti came and went but no spaghetti was made.

I was too lazy to cook the tomato sauce for my spaghetti. I needed to find a way to dispose the pasta the easy way. The easy way that I found came by the name “Prego spaghetti sauce”.

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This can of Prego spaghetti sauce is not my favorite tomato sauce but a carbonara-styled sauce.

I don't have a big pot so I used the rice cooker to boil the pasta.

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I added 2 teaspoons of salt and let the mixture boil for around 9 minutes. I kept on checking the pasta so that it will be al dente (firm but not hard). How did I know that my pasta is already al dente? Well, I just followed the tip of mother. She said that the pasta is al dente if it still “hard” but will stick if thrown to the wall.

I threw three strands of pasta to the wall. I continued boiling the pasta if the strand refuse to stick to the wall.

I was happy when on the third throw the pasta strand stick to the wall.

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Hooray! My pasta is al dente.

The next step is straining the water from the pasta.

My problem is that I don't have a strainer. So, I improvised a strainer from the net used for garlic that I bought from the grocery.

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Pasta on improvised strainer.

Cooking the sauce is very easy. All I did was to heat the Prego spaghetti sauce on the pan and then pour it on the pasta.

Voila! My very first carbonara spaghetti is ready for eating.

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Bon appetit! :-)