No matter how much I bellyache about turning a year older every year, I really do like birthdays.

They’re an excuse for me to bake birthday cakes—and really, there’s nothing like the look on someone’s face when they have those candles in front of them, the wishes held in their breaths. And when the candles are on a cake you made yourself, it’s pretty special, I tell you.

**S. and the birthday cake I made to look like her favorite candy—a giant pink Starburst!

Birthdays are also a chance for me to craft. I try to give handmade birthday gifts to friends as much as possible, whenever time allows me to. They’ve ranged from necklaces to earrings, aprons to tote bags. I like imagining how my gifts will be part of the everyday happinesses in a friend’s life in the coming year, until I get the chance to make a new gift again.

**I made A. and B. some handmade necklaces and had fun decorating their birthday boxes with punched-out paper dragonflies

As for my own birthdays, I mostly like them because of one selfish thing: my Birthday Wish List. I write one every year, something not a lot of people know. It’s kind of my thing—a fun, yearly exercise to take the dread out of getting older. Whether or not people ask me what I want, I like the idea of having a ready answer to, “So, what would you like this year?” Because there’s always that new cookbook I still don’t have, a sewing project I need fabric for, that purse I’ve been dreaming of for months and the red ballet flats that go with it. (Every girl needs a pair of red shoes!) I like the idea of naming things, of articulating my imaginings because you never know, some wishes were made to come true.

My birthday is this Friday, and I started out my birth month with a feeling of impending doom: Soon, I’ll be ___ years old, an age I couldn’t even imagine being when I first started writing my Wish Lists. In the Philippines, there’s a description about ages in Tagalog: “Lampas ka na sa kalendaryo.” It meant, “You’ve gone past the days of the calendar,” a solid, measurable, quantifiable sign that meant you were old. And yes, I hung on and dropped off the calendar’s precipice a while back.

So, to ward off the yearly birthday doldrums, and armed with a Post-it note, a pencil and a couple of wishes, I started my list. I posted it near my work monitor; looking at it everyday made me happy.

I would scratch things off to the list and add stuff in, scribbling randomly around the note whenever something popped into my head. So many fun things to look forward to! Maybe some new shoes? Aimee Bender’s new book? I was eager to post the wish list on my blog, a hint to anyone who was thinking of getting me something for my birthday. (Actually, someone’s already getting me #1-thanks, Alicia! You asked me about that book even before I wrote it down!)

But then something happened. Well, not just one thing, but these little ripples in the river of my everydays: I read my old journals and realized how different I am today from the girl who used to write these lists, I listened to friends about the things that broke their hearts and made them whole, I spent time with my family when my dad was here, I became a U.S. citizen after eight storied years of living in the States, I took a bad fall, sprained my ankle and was nursed back to health by E.

And I looked at my list last week and realized: All I really need, all that makes me happy, is something I didn’t need to wish for. I have many, MANY blessings I never even dreamed of when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong—there are always wishes to make. But for the first time in years, I realized I didn’t want to wish for THINGS for me. Is this what growing up does to you? I realize that I have many friends and family who are always dealing with one challenge or another, and all I want, all I REALLY want for my birthday this year is for their wishes to have a chance in the world.

So, for anyone out there reading this who has ever whispered a wish to me (you know who you are as you go down my list!), your wish list is now MY Birthday Wish List. I write them out as a prayer, and when I blow out the candles on my birthday cake, if I DO have one, I’ll be making these wishes for you.

- I wish for the health of my parents and for the success of my brother. I want them to be around for a long time.

- I wish for E.’s happiness in every single way. For his family to be blessed. (I want them around for a long time, too!)

- I wish my single friends who are looking for love a fantastic, awesome journey to it. You know my story; wishes DO come true.

- I wish all my married friends trying to conceive an unending supply of hope. And then some more.

- I wish all my friends/family who do have children or are currently pregnant all the best in life that they hope for, for celebrations big and small, for belly laughs and silent, everyday joys.

And that…all that is what’s REALLY on my wish list.

But oh, maybe just one wish for me?

- I wish to live an original, creative, awesomely surprising life.

And with that, I say, Happy Birthday To Me.

May all our birthday wishes come true.

Something sweet from E.’s mom. A yummy tote bag and wallet from Fluff, which she found in one of her shopping expeditions in downtown L.A. All their stuff is so cute, SEE?

Discovered that there’s a Le Creuset shop really close to us in the Citadel outlets. A Le Creuset OUTLET. Holy mother of pots. I had to contain myself because I didn’t want to embarrass E.

Found: Wendy Mullin’s Sew U book for working with knit fabrics for a song in Barnes & Noble. Me: bargain-happy.

How your weekend was lovely!

Made these pieces for two friends’ birthdays.

Haven’t made jewelry in a while, so it was fun going back to something I ♥!

Have a lovely weekend!

A little sewing

A little beading

A little Julia

I hope yours was lovely!

A lazy picnic at the park

Made some tissue paper bloom into roses to top a friend’s birthday gift

Picked my dad up from the airport! (Those are the new, alien-ish light fixtures at LAX’s Tom Bradley.)

How was your weekend?

Who knew the highlight of my weekend would be a plain cardboard box?

That’s because it has all this gorgeous, fresh, organic produce in it!

This is our very first CSA box. What’s that, you ask? Well let me tell you, and please pardon the babbling enthusiasm!

“CSA” is an acronym for “Community-Supported Agriculture.” (I found out about it through Giselle, who had left a comment on one of my earlier vegetable posts.) Through the South Central Los Angeles Farmer’s Coop, $15/week buys me a small share of an organic farm out in Bakersfield. This means a box of locally sourced, in season, picked-fresh, all-organic vegetables!

I can do this as a weekly subscription and get a box of new vegetables every week, delivered to a location close to my home for me to pick up. I can choose to do this every other week instead, if I feel like I’m buried in vegetables. The terms are flexible (you can pay $20 or $25 as well, depending on what you can afford), the money goes directly to my farmer, and I have access to enough vegetables that can feed a family of four for a week or a couple for two weeks.

Part of the charm is that I don’t know what I’m going to get in the box exactly, but what I do know is that everything is picked at their peak. I’m discovering all these new vegetables I wouldn’t think of buying at my local market. The CSA is a great introduction to all these nutritious alternatives, and just in this week’s box, most were vegetables I’ve never cooked with before.

There are many other CSAs for Los Angeles. For more information on those and to find out what CSAs are available in your region elsewhere in the U.S., go HERE.

Lots of healthy cooking up ahead, which should be awesome for my “Eat Your Vegetables” project!

All the images in this post were taken with the iPhone 4 (save for the screenshots below). I wanted to see how well the new toy would take pictures, and what better way to play with it and putz around in the kitchen at the same time? Quite acceptably good/awesome for a camera on a phone, eh?

These ingredients were for some seriously yummy Butterscotch Brownies, also made with the iPhone! The recipe is from the Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything app. I’m really enjoying it. I like its minimalist presentation (no photos!), that it’s organized and comprehensive (at least for being a mobile app) and was one of the first iPhone 4-specific apps available to download.

The best thing about this recipe is that the ingredients are probably already in your pantry. Plus, it’s so simple to remember because you’ll only need ONE of everything!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

1 stick butter

1 egg

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

WHAT TO DO

1) Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8- or 9-inch square baking pan or line it with aluminum foil and grease the foil.

2) Melt the butter over low heat. Transfer to a bowl and use an electric mixer or whisk to beat in the sugar until very smooth, then beat the egg and vanilla, stirring down the sides of the bowl every now and then.

3) Add the salt, then gently stir in the flour. Pour into the prepared pan and bake until just barely set in the middle, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on a rack before cutting. Store, covered, at room temp for no more than a day.

Chewy but with crisp edges, and the unmistakable flavor of real butter in every bite. So uncomplicatedly delicious.

Pretty happy with the pics from the new phone, and doubly happy with the new cooking app. More adventures in food up ahead with both. There REALLY is an app for THAT!

Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything app sells for $4.99 in the Apple App Store.

You guys, I’m knitting again!

The last time I knit anything I was in high school. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road” was on repeat on the radio. I wanted to marry Eddie Vedder and had a pair of chocolate brown Birkenstocks. (What? Those things have really good arch support!)

What made me take up my needles again? My friend Bona asked me to teach her how to crochet or knit for a charity that she’s interested in. I’m pretty comfortable with crochet, but I wanted to see if I had my knits and purls on straight before I could teach Bona. After a quick trip to Michael’s for some yarn, I was on the couch casting my first stitches on, my brows furrowed in concentration. After a couple of tries (and a lot of YouTube tutorials!), I was knitting and purling away! Just like riding a bike, I tell you. And it was actually the perfect thing to do while recuperating from the flu. (It’s even more awesome if you have the Stanley Cup finals on in the background!)

I chose this awesome, simple “Magic Scarf” pattern from Crazy Aunt Purl to practice with. I love the alternating textures, and the fact that it’s all just knits and purls, which are really the only two stitches I know. (But don’t tell Bona that! Haha!)

I’m enjoying myself, even if I tend to be nitpicky about my stitches and want to rip everything up and start again (which I actually did, several times, until I just gave up and let everything go!). Taking up this form of needlework again makes me remember my Lola Pin, the grandma I lost a couple of months ago, because she was the one who taught me how to knit. I got the nitpickiness from her, so I’m sure she approves of the obsession to get things just right!

So, this is what’s kept my hands busy these days. I’m hoping to get better at this so I can make scarves for some people at Christmas. But this first one goes to me—a gift to myself for learning to knit again.

By the way, the charity the Bona is learning to crochet for (she decided after all she preferred it over knitting) is Knit A Square. The group encourages crafters to send crocheted or knitted squares (size details are on the site HERE), which volunteers then all sew together to create wonderful, warm patchworked blankets for abandoned children and AIDS orphans in South Africa.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and would like to learn how to knit or crochet, leave me a comment. We can meet for tea and I’ll be happy to show you what I know. The only payment I ask is for you to make a square to send to this charity. Knit A Square’s goal for 2010 is 105,000 squares! After this scarf, I’m going to practice my stockinette for some squares of my own. (I can see my Lola smiling!)

In the meantime, it’s all about the knit-5-purl-5 for me!

I’m finally better after being sick for two weeks, the first few days of which were devoted to making and eating arroz caldo, a rice porridge that my mom and grandmothers used to make for me as a kid. Its Spanish name translated means “rice soup.” One of the best things about arroz caldo is how ubiquitous it is in Filipino cuisine: It’s eaten for breakfast, as merienda (a mid-afternoon snack) or sometimes even as a late-night meal. It’s served in homes and on street corners, and has a million and one variations. Often served with slivers of tender, flaked chicken; I prefer mine with a plain hard-boiled egg. It’s sometimes topped with crisp, deep-fried golden garlic pieces or fresh rings of green onion. Any way it’s eaten, it’s ultimate comfort in a bowl.

When E. saw me make this, he said, “Wow, that looks…really Asian.” I had to laugh, because that thought never occurred to me—it was just simple arroz caldo, something I’ve cobbled together for years without even thinking about it. But to him, it’s a new, foreign thing. And this is something I’ve actually loved discovering: the many differences in how we eat. When E.’s sick, it’s usually Chicken Noodle Soup to the rescue. Our mealtimes have given me an appreciation of what each of us, literally, brings to the table.

If you’re interested, here’s my recipe for arroz caldo. It’s a really simple version (I’m a minimalist when it comes to this dish!), but big on that heavenly, almost-therapeutic flavor of ginger.

And I’m also including my foolproof way of making hard-boiled eggs to top your bowl off. I know boiling eggs should be fairly easy, but so many overeager cooks get it wrong, which means rubbery eggs with smelly, green yolks. I’ve finally gotten the perfect egg down to a science, and hopefully this means no more green yolks for you either.

ARROZ CALDO

3 teaspoons Canola oil

4 cloves garlic, mined

2-3 tablespoons ginger root, cut into small pieces

1 small onion, diced

1 cup uncooked jasmine rice, washed and drained

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

salt

fresh-ground black pepper

fresh lemon slices

- In a saucepan, heat the canola oil over medium heat

- Saute the onion until wilted and transparent. Drop in the ginger and stir-fry for another minute or two until the ginger gives off its characteristic, herby smell. Add the garlic, cook until aromatic (but not brown).

- Stir in the drained, wet jasmine rice and cook for about two minutes, giving the grains a chance to soak in all the flavors already in the pot.

- Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil, stirring to make sure none of the rice has stuck to the bottom of the pot. Lower to a simmer.

- Cook, covered, for about 15-20 minutes or until the rice is tender. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Adjust liquid as necessary (some prefer their arroz caldo soupier than others.)

- Ladle into a bowl and top with a sliced hard-boiled egg. Enjoy with a squeeze or two of lemon.

PERFECT HARD-BOILED EGGS

- Place your eggs in a saucepan, and cover with COOL water (v.  important that you don’t start with warm water!) by about one inch.

- Slowly bring your water to a boil with medium heat.

- Upon boiling (as in a strong, rolling boil), cover your pan and remove from your heat source. Let sit for 12 minutes. This will vary, depending on how strongly your rolling boil was. This is what’s worked for me so far!

- Run eggs under cool water, peel and enjoy!

I’m not in tip-top shape yet, but I hope to get back to being creative and writing about it soon. In the meantime, I hope you’ve been well and virus-free!

Designed by the awesome folks at Team Manila

If I can’t eat them, I can just wear them.

Have a lovely long weekend, all!

The first baking experiment I ever had as a kid was when I made a Mango Cake with a Mango Buttercream Frosting when I was 14. My nanny helped me bring all the ingredients together, but for the most part, I did all the creaming and mixing and baking by myself. It was somewhat of a major undertaking, because making buttercream in the tropical heat isn’t exactly a walk in the park. The cake wasn’t perfect, but it was my first, and for that it will always be special. After I decorated it, I stepped back with eyes wide as saucers, and said, “Wow, I made that!” And my nanny piped up and said something I will always remember, “You always could, you just didn’t know it!”

I remembered this story as I learned to make macarons last night. I attended a two-and-a-half hour baking class with Clémence Gossett of Gourmandise Desserts (at Platine Bakery in Culver City), where I learned to make these legendary little gems. They’re legendary because there’s so much myth surrounding how they’re made. And culinary myths are the worst kind. They’re spun and re-spun in kitchens, on blogs and in bakeries that they take on a life of their own. They’re shrouded in mystery and scare away the most well-intentioned home bakers; they scared this home baker for a long time.

Clémence is the kind of generous teacher who doesn’t just disseminate information. Her class wasn’t simply, “This is a pot, you put these things in it, cook it for this long and serve it this way.” We also learned about ingredients and where they come from, and being a rabid food history fan, I appreciated the lessons very much. She told us about the interesting origins of chocolate, how vanilla beans are cultivated, all the little back stories of the materials we would use to cook. And once she started telling the class about how sugar is made, I felt right at home. I grew up around sugar all my life (read this post about my childhood on a sugar mill in the Philippines). I loved hearing the story of my favorite ingredient told by someone who understood it well. Clémence was all about debunking the Great Macaron Myth, and it was refreshing to hear that my fear of these tiny things was actually quite irrational.

I’d like to think that the class was like smelling salts to the slumbering baker in me. It made me recall the pure, unadulterated joy I feel when I bake. I honestly don’t know why I forget sometimes. I guess life has a sneaky way of distracting you. For me, there’s a day job to do, things to sew, dance classes to try and get back to, blog posts to write, trips to take and people to love. But more and more, I’ve come to realize that among all my creative pursuits, I’m most confident with my baking. In my other lives, I’m still very much the hesitant quilter/crafter, the shy dancer, the tentative writer, though I try to learn as much as I can every day to become more competent in these arts. But in the kitchen, with a whisk in my hand, I’m at my most courageous. I’m most myself when I’m lost among the sounds of a busy kitchen: the steady whirring of my mixer, the cracking of eggs against the lip of a ceramic bowl, the pinging of pistachios as they’re poured into a steel bowl for shelling. These make up the soundtrack of my bravest days.

And so, if you ask: “Are macarons difficult to make?” The answer is: they are and they aren’t. They’re challenging because of the techniques you DO have to learn: how to gauge the stiffness of your meringue, how to fold your almond flour into the mixture without deflating the eggwhites, how to tell when you’ve folded enough. But at the same time, they’re easy…because I was able to make them. And I didn’t undergo training through a rigorous pastry program in culinary school. I’m just someone who loves to bake, who went to a baking class that happened to be close to my house, who watched, and listened, and learned. And I’m willing to practice.

The first thing that popped into my head when I tasted the Vanilla Macarons with Salted Caramel that we made was this: “Kanamit!” This is the word for “delicious” in Ilonggo, the dialect I grew up with. It had this crunchy shell that gave way to a delicately sweet, chewy center, that led you by your tastebuds to a rich, toe-curling caramel.

It was heavenly. And how interesting, I thought to myself, that the language of flavor in my head isn’t in English! It’s in the words of my childhood. Maybe this goes back to that very first cake, in that hot kitchen in the province, and the realization that I even as a little girl, I was capable of making delicious things with my own hands if I only set my mind to it. That memory echoes to the big girl I am today, and tells me that I CAN make macarons no matter how mysterious they may be. I could make these mouthwatering, divine treats all this time—I just hadn’t known it.

I sometimes forget how much I love baking, and then I take a class like last night and feel like going home, baking all night and not minding one bit if I fell asleep in my apron with flour on my nose and powdered sugar in my hair.

Here’s to more adventures in flour, sugar and egg whites!

——–

If you’re interested in exploring the world of dessert-making through a delicious class with Clémence, her website HERE, lists all her upcoming classes. If you sign up for her newsletter, she sends you recipes, too.

It’s been a while since my last post, and here’s where I’ve been.

Behind my new toy

I saved up for this MacBook for a while. A long while. Too long, if you ask me. Now that I have it, I don’t know how I survived all those years without my own laptop. I’ve spent the past two weeks organizing my digital life, which meant transferring files, contacts, music, pictures; syncing all to my phone; downloading applications and trying not to be too crazy organizing all the digital “furniture” in it. It’s kind of felt like I moved homes.

On page 132 of this book

Vickie Howell’s new book on the different personalities that make up the crafting movement across the world, Craft Corps, hit bookshelves today. I had responded to a call for entries about a year ago to submit my profile as a crafter for this project. I thought nothing of it until I got an e-mail later in the year saying the publishers were including my profile. I found out at lunch today that the book was available at Barnes & Noble and I half-skipped to the store the minute I got off work. I was nervous because I know text gets cut in final manuscripts, but E. and I leafed through the pages, and there I was, on page 132! (I wanted to twirl across the book aisles in sheer elation, but I didn’t want to be kicked out of there!)

What’s even more awesome is that my profile comes right after the feature on Denyse Schmidt, who’s my modern quilting heroine. I know she doesn’t know who I am, but following her in a book on crafting feels like we’re sitting next to each other on a park bench.

This book couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been in the crafting doldrums lately, but reading it has reminded me of something: All I’ve ever really wanted to do is make the most of this chance to live a creative life, be it through something I make in the kitchen or something I put together on my craft table. I’m looking forward to slowly reacquainting myself with my sewing machine, my crochet needles, my jewelry pliers and my yarn and threads. And while I’m at it, my rolling pin, my piping bag, my electric mixer, my cookie cutters! There’s just too much awesome creative energy out there to ignore. I have to celebrate it by joining this big, creative, cool club.

And how have you been, World?

The National Food Bloggers Bake Sale is TWO DAYS AWAY! Woot!

WHAT: National Food Bloggers Bake Sale
WHEN: Saturday, April 17, 10:30 am to 1 pm
WHO: ME! I’ll be there from 11:30 am to help sell my Cakes In A Jar, along with baked goods from over 40 other food bloggers in Los Angeles.
WHERE: Morel’s French Bistro at The Grove, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90036
WHY: 100% of proceeds from the bake sale will go to Share Our Strength, whose main focus is ending child hunger in America.

IF YOU CAN GO:
Look for my uber cute Jar Cakes! I’m making Swirled Nutella Cupcakes and Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cakes. Yum!

IF YOU CAN’T GO:
You can donate online at The Girl With A Curl’s page HERE.

Tell people about it by sending them the link above or pointing them to this blog post!

The first annual National Food Bloggers Bake Sale, part of the Great American Bake Sale, will be held on April 17. Organized by Gaby Dalkin of WhatsGabyCooking.com, food bloggers from across the country will unite to support the cause by holding bake sales in their states. Readers will have the opportunity to taste the baked goods from their favorite food blogs at each state’s bake sale location.

Funds raised through Great American Bake Sale support Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger in America. Nearly 17 million—almost one in four—children in America face hunger. Despite the good efforts of governments, private-sector institutions and everyday Americans, millions of our children still don’t have daily access to the nutritious meals they need to live active, healthy lives.

Food bloggers are holding bake sales in locations across the U.S. this weekend. To find one in your area, go HERE.