Last Minute Thanksgiving Dinner 2009

My Thanksgiving Dinner 2009:

4 hours of food/supply shopping

5+ hours of cooking

7 dishes

Spending thanksgiving with people I love = Priceless

Our thanksgiving feast:

This Thanksgiving we did everything last minute! I planned what I wanted to make and shopped the night before thanksgiving. I was going crazy running around finding ingredients for each of the dishes. After all the shopping, I was just too tired to start prepping so I told myself I would wake up really early (at 7am) to start everything...I over slept and totally missed my alarm so I woke up around 9. I was panicing because dinner is suppose to start at 2ish. I didn't think I could finish all 6 of the dishes in 5 hours but with the help of my father and sister (Vivian) we managed cook everything we wanted to make. Yay!

So this year I decided to make 7 dishes, 2 of them are my all time favorite potato shrimp salad and corn casserole (I make these every year! My fans, I mean my family members always request them). Five other dishes are new recipes which came out great!

Lumpia Shanghai (Flipinino egg rolls): I love Filipino food so I wanted to attempt my favorite Filipino dish. Special thanks to Maribeth and Joanne for their recipe:

String bean casserole:

Shrimp and prosciutto with alfredo sauce

Crab quiche

Crown Jewel Cake

Let me know if you want any of the recipes, everything was so simple to make!

Jollibee The Bee: Filipino Fast Food

This Saturday, Andy and I finally made time to go check out Jollibee! Jollibee is a famous fast food chain based in the Philippines. There's many chains in the West coast but the first East coast store is the newly opened one in Woodside, Queens. It's been opened in Woodside for about a month already. We've heard so much about this crazy long lines Filipino fast food joint. I've heard rumors that lines were 3 blocks long and one of the workers there confirmed it was true for us. She said it was crazy in the beginning and things were running out fast through out the day. My friend Maribeth said she waited around 1 hour and 40 mins on the line during the 2 week after the opening. Even now after more then a month there's still a lines but it wasn't that bad.

We waited around

~30 mins outside: sooo freaken cold! *shivers*

~20 mins inside: servers went around taking orders on a piece of paper
~10 mins: we waited for them to put our order in and then packed our food to go
Total: ~1 hour!!

At this point we were extremely hungry and cranky since it was already 4pm and we haven't eaten anything the whole day. We decided to order one of each of their specialty item on their menu since we waited so freaken long! We wanted to try everything to make our wait worth it because we're not sure if we would want to come back again.
So what did we order?? 6 piece fried chicken, spaghetti, palabok, aloha burger with fries, mash potato side, 2 peach mango pie and soda. Yes we order that much food....

6 piece fried chicken eaten with gravy ($13.39) the 18 piece is $30 bucks!
Pretty expensive for chicken that taste somewhat like KFC but with fresher chicken.

Palabok ($5.79): thin rice noodles fried with soy sauce and some citrus and possibly with patis (fish sauce), and some variation of sliced meat, shrimp, chopped vegetable and eggs.
This was very good. I love it when I mixed everything together with the noodles. Spaghetti ($4.49): The spaghetti has bits of sausage and the marinara sauce is sweet. I love Filipino spaghetti and the banana ketchup because its extra sweet.

Mash potato side ($1.99): nothing special...
The Aloha burger ($7.69 with fries): has pineapple, cheese, bacon, mayo, and lettuces. It was good because I like pineapple in salty dishes like Hawaiian pizza or pineapple chicken. The pineapple gave the burger a very nice tangy and sweet taste.
Fries were crispy but not salted. Peach Mango Pie ($2.29): it was crispy and warm. The inside taste kind of like warm duck sauce with a bit of mango taste. It sounds funky but it wasn't bad. While eating it I couldn't stop thinking about how much it taste like duck sauce and Andy agreed with me too! interesting.....

The whole meal we spent around $45 and yes ate it all!! okay fine...we had a few chicken left over that we took home....
Would I come here again? YES!

Would I wait on the long line? Maybe...depends how much I crave the spaghetti and palabok
I hope they expand the menu and serve more of what they have on their website.
I can't wait to try the other items on the menu!

Everyone was posing and taking pics with Jollibee including me!

and of course Andy too...

Interesting convo with Justine, the girl who took our order:

Andy: I like your Jollibee hat.
Justine: Oh thanks....
Andy: Can we buy one?
Justine: Umm...no (laughing)
Andy: Can I work here to get one?
Justine: yea, sure if you get the job...
Andy: I might just do that...
Me: (laughing) (In my mind: he's so weird <3)
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Jollibee
62-29 Roosevelt Ave
Woodside, NY 11377

Big Filipino Breakfast:

We couldn’t get enough of Filipino food so we decided to go try out some Filipino breakfast at Ihawan. This is my favorite Filipino restaurant at the 69th street area. The place is really ghetto; the first floor is a small take-out counter and the narrow stairs lead up to the 2nd floor of the dining hall which is right next to a hair salon. You can smell the chemicals when you walk up the stairs but when you sit down to eat, you won’t smell anything because the eating area is far from the salon. What’s so special about this place? I think it’s very cozy, it’s a family run place so everyone is so friendly, the food is awesome especially their bbq on the stick. We usually order alot of food, sometimes even if we know that we won't be able finish everything we'll order it anyway so we can take home!

We never tried their breakfast menu because we never got there early enough to order it. The breakfast menu is served on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from open to 11am. We rushed there (getting there is another story!) and got there at 11:15ish. We asked them if they still serve the menu and they were nice enough to give it to us! They gave us two menus, one with the today’s specials and their breakfast menu:

I didn’t know some of the items on the menu but they were so nice they explained it to us:
Longanisa = Philippine Sausage
Tocino = cured meat product native to the Philipines. It is often in strips, reddish in color and has a sweetish taste.
Daing na Bangus = Milkfish Marinated in Vinegar and Garlic
Tinapa = fish cooked/preserved through the process of smoking

So what did we order? For starters we order my favorite lumpang shanghai and avocado heilo:

It was a little too early for such oily, fried and fatten food but we couldn't help ourselves! It was so good!

I order the # 5 (I change the fish to Tinapa)
1 pork BBQ, 1 piece of Tinapa, 2 eggs and fried rice:

The garlic fried rice was really good, very flavorful with a lot of garlic taste. I broke my poached egg and ate it with the rice, great combination! The bbq pork tasted good but it was a little chewy this time. The Tinapa was awesome! It had a smoky grilled taste, the skin slightly crisp, and the fish meat was kind of creamy.

Andy ordered #1:
1 piece of Daing na Bangus, 1 tocino, 2 eggs and fried rice:

The tocino was sweet and tasted some what like their pork bbq on a stick. The Daing na Bangus was a little too crispy and dry.

This was such a huge breakfast for me sinceI usually eat little or nothing in the morning. I was so full and couldn’t move but it’s all worth it! I can’t wait to go back again to try something else!
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Ihawan
40-06 70th St.
Woodside, NY 11377 nr. Roosevelt Ave.
MTA: 7 Train to 69th Street

Part II: Birthday Surprise!

This week I attended a surprise birthday dinner for a very special friend, Nadia. Cecille told Nadia she wanted to take her out for her birthday but she didn't know Cecille invited all of us. Nadia tried to email us to see if we could all go. Cecille told us ahead of time to tell her that we were unable to attend so I told Nadia I had to work. I kept telling her I was sorry and that I would make it up to her. I also tried to make other plans with her so she wouldn't get suspicious.

We plan to meet at Engeline's, a Filipino restaurant, by 7:45pm. And Cecille was suppose to bring Nadia there by 8:00pm. Some of us were running late so we were all texting each other, telling Cecille to stall her from going to the restaurant. Cecille and Jeri did a great job! When all of us arrived, we sat down at a big table and waited for them with the huge menu covering our heads. I bet the waiters and waitress were looking at us strangely. Then we heard them came in asking for a table. We sat there quietly, trying not to laugh and suddenly we heard Nadia said omg and came over to hug us. I guess when Cecille told her to sit at a table next to a bunch of people covering themselves with menus, that gave it away....Nadia's face = priceless!

After all the hugging and surprise we were all hungrily looking at the menu trying to decide what to order. I love Filipino food, I usually go to the Filipino restaurants near 69 Streets! I've never been to this restaurant before but I wanted to try everything! I order a few of my favorites, starting with my favorite Filipino desert (yes, I drink/eat it before my meal):

Avocado Con Hielo (avocado with milk and crushed ice) When I first had this drink, a few years ago, I was like gross avocado as a drink, wtf? But it turns out to be so delicious! The drink is so creamy but not very thick and the milk makes the avocado taste so sweet. The milk really brings out the avocado taste! This has become one of my favorite deserts:

Appetizers:

1) Lumpiang Shanghai: ground pork, shrimp, and vegetables wrapped in egg roll, deep fried, served with sweet and sour sauce. When you bite into these babies, the outside crust is crispy and hot and the inside is creamy! This is another one of my favorite and must have at any Filipino restaurant! We ordered 3 orders and finished it in no time!

2) Fried Calamari, the squid was dipped in batter, deep-fried and served with sweet and sour sauce. It was crispy and the sweet and sour sauce was a little spicy.

Entrees:
I ordered the Kare-Kare, a oxtail stew and tripe in peanut butter sauce with mixed tropical vegetables. I love this dish, thanks to my sister who introduced me to it! You probably thinking peanut butter in a stew? wtf? But the very nutty peanut taste and the stew being very creamy makes it awesome. The oxtail meat was very soft and tender, the meat slides off the bone. The portion from this place is huge! In the past, ordering from other Filipino restaurant, they usually give a smaller portion. I was happy because I ate alot and had some left to go!

Other people ordered the:

• Pork Barbecue (2 sticks): marinated pork slices in bamboo skewers
  
• Kalderetang Baka: stewed beef in tomato sauce with pepper and spices
• Nilagang baka: beef short rib with tamarind and vegetables in broth
• Beef Steak (Filipino Style) marinated beed with onion and vegetables

All of these were okay, the bbq on a stick wasn't as good as Ihawan (another Filipino restaurant I often go to) and it was more expensive. The meat in the kalderetang baka was very chewy but the sauce was very flavorful. The soup was kind of salty, very different from the Chinese soups which we put very little salt to preserve the natural taste of all the ingredients. The beef steak was pretty good, I think it was my 2nd best out of the entrees (my kare-kare was my #1).

After our meal, we sat around chatting and giggling. Me and Cecille was trying figure out how to surprise Nadia with her birthday cupcakes that we brought from Sugar Sweet Sunshine. We realized that we had a few problems:

• We didn't have a lighter to light the candle...
• How are we going to actually get the box of cupcakes from under the table and stick a candle on a cupcake without her knowing?

Me, Andy and Cecille slowly work our way to get all of these problem solved, team work baby! First, we try to signal Jen to ask the waiter for a lighter but she didn't get the cue. Cecille pretend to go ask the waiter for something and they gave her a big ass lighter used to light stoves but she hide it well behide her so Nadia (I hope) didn't notice it. Then I instructed Andy to slowly open the huge box of cupcakes from under the table. Apparently the boxed had alot of tape and was hard to open but he slowly teared it off! I slowly try to open the box of candles from under the table. I stick one candle on a cupcake that was the nearest and reachable which was one of the side cupcakes. Cecille saw it and start laughing, she whispered in my ear and told me I should've put the candle on the middle cupcake. We both started to laugh, at this point I wasn't sure if Nadia notice anything because she was siting right across from us and I thought we were being very obvious. Andy still holding the box of cupcake from under the table, I quickly removed the candle and put it in the middle cupcake and hoped that it was the middle one. After hassling with the candle, there was another problem. How the hell were we suppose to light the candle from under the table? We tried but we didn't want to burn the table so we just ended up whipping the box of cupcake out and start singing Happy Birthday to her!

We brought a variety of cupcake flavors: Sexy Red Velvet, Pistachio, Ooey Gooey Chocolate and Sunshine (yellow cake with vanilla buttercream). The cupcakes were so moist and yummi! I could eat a few at a sitting!

Good food, great friends, awesome night..... Happy Birthday Nadia!

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Engeline's, Restaurant & Bakeshop (Philippine Cuisine)
58-28 Roosevelt Ave.
Woodside, NY 11377
718:898-7878
MTA: 7 Train to 61 Street Woodside

Sugar Sweet Sunshine:
126 Rivington Street
(between Essex and Norfolk Street)
212-995-1960
MTA: J, M, F to Essex Street