Indulged in some retail therapy Saturday and found these beauties. I love my new shoes and my new jacket is in my favorite shade of red!

Have been passing this tree that sprouted these really tiny blooms when walking the dog and today I just couldn’t help but pick a bloom off it.

Also today, Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao did all of us Pinoys proud by knocking down Ricky Hatton in the second round in their title bout in Las Vegas.

Was at Brupark today to watch Wolverine at Kinepolis when I took this shot. The tram just arrived and I thought it would be cool to get tram and the Atomium in a shot together.

As for Wolverine, it was ok but I felt it kind of dragged in places. The action sequences were pretty cool as expected but it felt like the movie was nothing but those action sequences pieced together – if there was no action going on, things got really slow. It was fairly well done as a whole but after other great origin movies like Iron Man and Batman Begins, this really pales in comparison! I hope they’ll do better with the other origin movies in the X-men franchise that’s being lined-up.

I cooked up a childhood memory today – Pancit Bihon Guisado (Sauteed Rice Noodles) and Fried Chicken which is almost always on the menu during my birthday parties as a child including this one when I turned three.

I’m a big fan of The Great British Menu program on BBC 2 and they have a new series showing right now. This time around, the chefs are cooking for a banquet for returning troops from Afghanistan and their families.

What I love about this program is how chefs from all over the United Kingdom interpret British food and tailor it to the banquet in question. It is very inspiring to watch and gives me lots of ideas on how to turn humble Filipino cuisine into a semblance of something that can be called haute cuisine.

One such idea borne out of watching this program is my Filipino take on surf and turf. Filipino food is truly humble – a simple broth or viand with rice served family style. We don’t plate our dishes so much so that they’re really not built to be plated like French cuisine for instance. Food is about sustenance and only about sustenance.  Very little if at all attention is placed on food presentation so it’s really a creative struggle to “haute” humble Filipino food.

However, after watching one program where the chef made surf and turf with pork belly and shrimp, I figured I could do the same thing too. Like the Brits we also love our pork and lechon kawali or deep fried pork belly is a Filipino favorite. With the turf part of the dish nailed down, it was a simple matter of finding the surf part and gambas or spicy shrimp fits the bill to a T. To round up the dish, I have a roasted sweet potato and spinach salad as a side mainly for its color and because it’s currently my fave side to make these days.

I can’t believe I haven’t been posting for 12 days …

Anyway, it hasn’t been a really eventful few days with the exception of my lunch with my friend Louise on March 19. For the most part my photos are themed around spring. After the gloom and eerie silence of the winter, outside the apartment birdsong can be heard everywhere.

Day 74 and 75. A perfect example of the bird population that has come back to inhabit the trees in our area include a pair of magpies (did a little research to find out what they were!) that decided to build a nest on one of the trees in front of our living room balcony. For days we could see them carrying twigs until they finally have a semi-coned shaped nest all built up. I think there are already little birdies up there and I’m really glad because last spring, another pair of birds tried to build a nest on that same tree but I think whatever was laid there died as the nest fell to the ground after a very windy day last year.

Day 76. I feeded my addiction to Jane Austen with the arrival of Austenia items from Amazon including DVDs of Emma starring Kate Beckinsale; an older version of Persuasion and Lost in Austen – a British mini-series about a woman who finds herself in the middle of Pride and Prejudice after going through a door in her bathroom. I also got Mr. Darcy’s and Captain Wentworth’s Diaries which is a take on Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion respectively from the hero’s point of view.

Day 77. Made chicken curry for lunch. Now this recipe of mine for curry (I sometimes make this with beef) has evolved through the years and the evolution is largely influenced by the countries I’ve lived-in through the years. It started as a basic Filipino chicken curry but living in the Middle East with its strong affinity for Indian cooking, my curry started taking on more Indian characteristics with the use of Madras curry powder and the addition of chilli powder. And now, living in Europe, I’ve added yet another ingredient – sour cream. Who knows what kind of evolution it would go through next!

Day 78. Speaking of Indian food, Louise took me out to an Indian restaurant for lunch as a belated birthday treat. We went to Mumtaz in the Porte de Namur area in Brussels and the food was really, really good! I really enjoyed myself and Louise didn’t end there, she even gave me a nice clutch as a present.

Day 79 and 80. Spring photos. I love spring! I especially love my street during this time of year and I intend to capture it for this project. For one, I intend to capture the view from my balcony on every equinox this year, starting with Day 79 which was on March 20, the spring equinox, to get a feeling of the passing of the seasons. Let’s hope that it snows on December 21 to make a perfect series!

Day 81 and 82. All about food. Sunday lunch – Ho To Tay soup, a favorite dish that I always have at the Chinese panciterias in the Philippines! Eaten with lumpiang shanghai – perfect! As for the other dish – a super macro photo of baked macaroni which is one of my earliest hits and which was our contribution to a pot luck given for someone who was leaving.

Day 83. Bird on a branch. This bird (it’s a pigeon I think) amused me with its balancing act on the rather thin branches of this tree.

Day 84. Worked on the computer all day.

Day 85. Am really sick after getting rained on the other day while walking Salman.

Had a lovely lunch with friends today to celebrate belatedly my birthday since I wasn’t in Brussels on the day itself. Organized by Ana, we had lunch at the Mont Liban, a Lebanese restaurant in the Chatelain area of Brussels.

The food was good but of course not as good as what Ich and I used to have when we lived in the Middle East. Nonetheless, it was nice to see, smell and taste food that is so much a part of our personal history.

It was a particularly sunny day in Brussels today and Salman definitely took advantage! He laid on the terrace for most of the day and if he is inside, he laid by the sliding doors to catch the rays that were streaming in.

Day 70. View of the city center of Brussels from the restaurant on the top floor of the Musical Instruments Museum. Tower on the foreground is that of the Hotel de Ville on the Grand Place.

Day 71. Used this grill brush for the first time today. This was a gift from a friend who bought it in MoMA when he visited New York during the Christmas holidays.