It was a bit of a mini reunion for us...
Thane and YSquared were in town to celebrate baby Thane's first birthday! The last time we saw the baby was last year during our roadtrip. The baby was only twelve days old! Anyhow, Thane and his extended family threw a birthday party for the baby which was held at a local rec center...
Of course this meant lots of Filipino food...
I was actually hoping to see some Chinese food (since YSquared is Chinese from Hong Kong), but no matter. The food was all good! All of it was made by a family friend...
Here we have Pancit Palabok - thick corn noodles with shrimp based sauce and toppings of boiled, sliced eggs, green onions, crushed pork rinds, and shrimp. Loved this! I don't make this too often myself so I appreciate that someone took the time to make this special dish...
Next to the palabok was Pancit Bihon. These are thin rice noodles flavored with soy sauce and citrus juice. The ingredients included julienned carrots, celery, onions, cabbage, and chicken. What was missing was a small plate or bowl of sliced lemons or calamansi to squeeze on top of your pancit. In any case, the pancit was chock full of actual meat and vegetables. It was not just filler cabbage and carrots!
Moving along were bbq pork skewers. These must have been grilled awhile ago since they weren't warm and were hard and dry. I didn't really like mine (if you're reading this Thane, sorry!).
Top tray - salt and pepper wings. Bottom tray - Beef Afritada - a tomato based sauced with red and yelow peppers, potatoes, and carrots. I liked the afritada better than the wings which were probably ordered somewhere. I can tell you for sure that those wings were NOT from Mandarin.
My stomach and eyes did a happy dance when I was these bad boys - Fresh Lumpia (Sariwang Lumpia)...I liked how the sauce was in a bucket! But seriously, these were so delicious. They were wrapped with paper and arranged so nicely. Whoever made these did a really great job. These are time consuming to make. Plus, if you don't eat them right away, they get soggy. These were nice and fresh!
These were fried squid. The pieces were kind of small and the batter looked like it was fried too dark, if that makes sense. I've had better. I liked the bigger pieces with the tentacles better. But I only had a few pieces of this since I didn't want to OD on fried foods.
Of course, a Filipino party isn't really a party unless it has lumpia! Someone was in the kitchen frying up batches whenever it got too low. These were inhaled by everyone, especially the kids.
My plate - I had a little of everything except for the rice and those chicken wings.
Here's the innards of that fresh lumpia - green beans, carrots, garbanzos, chicken, and lettuce...
The dessert table:
This was really refreshing. There were ice cubes, coconut strips, pandan jello cubes and coconut milk in here.
Two types of steamed white rice cake (puto) - the green was pandan; the purple was ube.
Cassava cake with coconut strings. The topping was nice and caramelized (condensed milk). I hijacked one of the corner....
Another type of dessert. This was a buttery based bread with a layer of cream cheese within and topped with buko (young coconut meat strips) and condensed milk. I don't think I've ever had this before. I thought it was another type of cassava cake so I was pleasantly surprised by the fluffiness of the bread.
Bert and I shared a little of everything. Do you see the dark and syrupy looking rice dessert? My full size shot of that was blurry, but that is a corner piece. The full shot can be seen in the overview of the desserts table. Anyways, that dessert is called Biko,which is a special dessert seen only during special occasions like Christmas or a birthday celebration such as this one! It's a rice cake that's topped with caramel or sometimes latik (coconut milk). My mom used to make this a lot and I used to love eating the caramelized edges of the dessert.
The other '87s who were present during the birthday party:
Tatonka, Mr. Saliva, the Taquitos and their kids, Mr. Drummer/his wife and their four kids (their oldest is now 17; he was still a baby when he was at our wedding nearly 17 years ago), Mr. Drum Major/his wife and kids, one of the Twins/her husband and baby boy, Ms. Lolly and her family, and surprise of all surprises, the Pyromaniac was there! He had recently cleaned up his life and is now drug free and engaged! This is a person I hadn't seen in years so it was cool that he showed up for this...
Recently Mr. Taquito had posted a photo of the Dalai Lama and his entourage during his San Diego visit last month. He said that he's a really funny guy, that he cracks a lot of jokes, and is very friendly. Mr. Taquito was part of the police force that escorted the Dalai Lama from the airport to UCSD. What an amazing opportunity...
Baby Thane has grown so much since we last saw him. He can walk (assisted) and will probably be walking on his own very soon. He's also very cute and very chubby! His thigh is bigger than my upper arm! It was a fun time and I'm glad that we got to see not only Thane and his wife, but our friends as well.
We joked that we would be seeing everyone again for our upcoming 25th year reunion in a few months! Bring it on!
No comments:
Post a Comment