It’s still summertime

That means there are still some activities all of us can get involved in. For one, parents can send their culinary-inclined youngsters to courses offered by Vicky Veloso Barrera at The Tiny Kitchen in Quezon City. Children 7 years and older can still catch up with daily classes held until the first week of June. Small groups of kids are taught the basics of preparing a full meal, from main dish to dessert, even drinks.

The technique is hands-on and therefore the participants enjoy the actual experience of being in a kitchen. Fee is P5,500 for five sessions. Each consists of two recipes, a main course and dessert. They can get to an advance course when they are ready. To date Vicky has authored two cookbooks ("Tiny Kitchen" and "Not So Tiny Kitchen") for children. She is coming up with a third, "The Best of Tiny Kitchen", later this year. Call 410-2279 or 0916-5165035 for inquiries.

Then there’s the beach. Take advantage of no-rain days and head for the water as we did the past weekend. It would be more practical to go on a Friday, to avoid the crowds. Anyway, we had a beautiful day at the Terrazas de Punta Fuego in Nasugbu, Batangas. From the Alabang interchange it takes about 2 hours to reach this haven of terraced landscape and an 800-meter stretch of white sand beach, calm blue green sea, lots of trees and a string of Asian-inspired cabañas for cooling off or maybe a soothing massage. As expected, along the shoreline there are fisherfolk who peddle their catch, like lobsters at P250 each (about 800 gms). Batangas sweets, matamis na mani and espasol, go for P100 for three packs. Later in the afternoon, there are people selling delicious Batangas bibingka. Like most of the resorts in the country, this is a private membership club. For dining, it has a full-service restaurant, Café Sol, with gracious and efficient staff. What can be a better picnic lunch than tasty barbecues, chicken inasal, pancit sotanghon, sinigang and the overwhelming halo-halo? Perfect day, indeed, for those who love nature.

By late afternoon we moved to Canyonwoods for an overnight stay. The following morning upon checking out, we found a vegetable outlet of Leisure Farms by the entrance. Beautiful tomatoes were at P90 a kilo, capsicum (yellow and green) for P110, honeydew at P90 and brown rice (P100 a pack of about 2 kilos), among others. There are bottled bangus and herring at P80 and P70 respectively.

On our way back home, we stopped at Cliffhouse in Tagaytay for lunch. The kids in the group decided we should have crepes and therefore we went to Cafe Breton. Inspecting the open kitchen, we saw four creperies, not enough to serve a party of 15 fast. We counted five slices of veal sausage in our crepe but lots (really lots) of sliced mushrooms. Be careful about dessert. This is normally big, but tempting. On the counter some bottled items are on sale. Products of JUCariab, Bangus Pate is tagged at P110 and Spicy Dulong at P130. There is also organic marmalade with raw honey in tubs.

New cooling product in the market is the New Selecta Lite ice cream, a 35% less sugar concoction in three favorite flavors–Cookies and Cream, Double Dutch and Very Rocky Road. All natural ingredients are used as substitutes for fat and sugar, but they don’t detract from the creamy consistency of the ice cream. This line is now available in stores and supermarkets. A tub costs P130 while a pint is priced at P70. Here’s another way of enjoying your ice cream. Put a dollop on top of your hot coffee instead of sugar and cream. We assure you, this is a great dessert.

Can you imagine some 50 master chefs doing their thing in one place? We would really like to see how this will be pulled off. That’s the ambitious event to be mounted by the International Culinary Chefs Association. The group is gathering 50 participants for "The First Beijing-Taipei Culinary Festival" on Saturday, May 20 at the Pan Pacific Hotel. Chefs from the two cities are coming to Manila. The many aspects of cooking will be demonstrated from 1 p.m. with a 10-course Grand Lauriat in the evening priced at P2,500 a plate. Interested parties may call 522-0222. It is envisioned that after this, a much bigger Asian Culinary Chefs Competition will be held in December.

Our next market trip will be to the new Dampa on Macapagal Avenue. We have had some good feedback and we surely would want to check this out. We understand seafood is always fresh and prices are reasonable. We’ll let you know.

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