Good yogurt is hard to come by in Manila, but please correct me if I am wrong because I would love to send Toto to college, but can't because she loves yogurt and eats it everyday. We end up buying the 1kg Total Fage greek yogurt from S&R that costs $25. Yes, you read that right. I looked online and found it for about $7. As we try and budget in order to save for a down payment on a house in DC (more on that later), we are looking for ways to save money. And no, weekend Starbucks lattes are not on the table.
On Friday, a colleague received a yogurt maker she had ordered and when she saw me staring longingly at it, let me borrow it during her 2-week vacation. All you need is a liter of boxed UHT milk (in Manila, but in America I would use fresh) and some yogurt or yogurt starter. After boiling and then cooling the milk, I mixed in some yogurt, then poured it in the 7 jars. The machine is currently plugged in and after 8 hours we should have delicious yogurt - for about $10.
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| Cheap-er yogurt. |
New Year, new recipes. I am getting sick of all the old recipes we used last year, so The Shark suggested this one - warm quinoa salad with tarragon and edamame. Had to make some substitutions because you can never find everything you need for a recipe in Manila, even if you go to 10 different stores. So, in stead of roasted red peppers, I used sweet pickled bell peppers. And there was no edamame to be found (I thought we were in Asia?!), so I used green garbanzos. That I didn't even know existed. In the end it was delicious.
My sister whipped up a quick and easy veggie lasagna in San Diego, so we threw together our own version. Layer one was brocoli, garlic and Japanese spinach (there are so many green leafy vegetables at the market that I had no idea which one to pick. A friendly Japanese woman told me the Japanese spinach was the best. She's probably biased, but I went with it anyway), and layer 2 was yellow zucchini and roasted tomatoes. Instead of pricey ricotta and parmesan, I went with less pricey mozzarella and cottage cheese. Perfect for a Sunday night.
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| Guess I gave away that the sauce wasn't homemade. |
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| A day's worth of veggies in one meal. |
1 comment:
I'll be interested to hear how the yogurt turned out and if our bean liked it. If it was made by her momma with love, I'm sure she did. The other recipes look good too, wish I could have dinner with you! Love, Mom
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