December 2007 » Page 2 of 2 » Touched by An Angel

13Dec 2007

Holiday Rush in Divisoria

Christmas shopping is never complete without a visit to Divisoria to buy wholesale prices on Christmas wrappers, ribbons, and christmas decors. The sights and sounds are quite an experience. I also love the bargains on gift items especially bought on wholessale prices. This time around, my husband wasn’t too comfortable with me shopping alone after that earring robbery in Divisoria. I still went anyway. I left Lauren at 168 Mall to choose some trendy tops because bringing her along with me will just add to the maddening crowd.

Draping a messenger bag on my body, cellphone in my pants’ pocket, and a camera positioned on my cheek, I traversed the streets of Divisoria.

11Dec 2007

The Family That Cooks and Blogs Together

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 15 Comments

My dad often told me to look at the silver lining when the going gets rough. An old quote says that “THE OPTIMIST sees the doughnut; the pessimist sees the hole.” Two wonderful opportunities came out of the family’s financial challenges in 2004: (1) More Family Meals at home and (2) Butch learning to cook.

I learned to bake before I tried my hand at cooking because I grew up in a bake shop that mom started when I was nine years old. By the time I was 21, I lived off-campus with my dorm mates which forced me to learn how to cook. Even the sauteeing and frying scared the hell out of me. I learned from watching. Soon, I got tired living in apartments that I built a house with my dad’s funds by the time I was 23 years old. Having my own home paved the way for me to experiment on cooking fancy dishes. I relied on my mom’s dishes and experimented or innovated on existing recipes. Having a degree in BS Food Technology helped me to be more creative with recipes. Through the years, I’ve accumulated these perfected recipes in a black notebook.

Baking hit the peak of my life when the girls were very little. I baked and iced their birthday cakes because the commercial cakes tasted dry and ordinary. How my girls marvelled at my Barbie or Disney themed cakes. Not only did they look magical, my cake tasted special. These days, I bake simple pies or desserts. Recently, I purchased a convection oven which ensures even temperature throughout the baking. Friends often wished I start a bake shop but I believed the bake shop’ stress caused mom to die early from breast cancer. I vowed never to venture into a large scale bake shop operation like mom did. Maybe one day, I will open a small coffee shop with baked goodies.

09Dec 2007

The Candle Lighting

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 4 Comments

At 7:00 PM, The Compassionate Friends held the 11th Worldwide Candle Lighting event at the Ateneo Loyola Schools.

Our Candle Lighting Service is done with love,
A tribute to our children who have gone on above.
We light our candles so others will know,
We remember our children and we still love them so.

We will continue to cherish our children so dear,
Through this service of remembrance we have every year.
We validate the high place of honor our children still claim,
As with acclamations of pride we honor their names.

08Dec 2007

11th Worldwide Candle Lighting Event

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ Leave a Comment

candlelight A candle signifies life and light and so the burning of a candle brings light and life to the memory and to the hearts of the bereaved. It is not that a candle has any magical or mystical powers as it is not the candle itself that heals. The lighting of a small candle in the darkness somehow helps you to draw aside from the blaring distractions. It brings an err of calm and helps you focus on what is important at that time. Something very special happens when a large group lights candles. A feeling of unity and oneness occurs.

While candles burn in one time zone, they will be lit in the next as thousands of families around the world participate in a vigil tomorrow, on December 9 to honor their children and siblings. The annual Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting starts at 7 p.m.

New Zealand goes first.

08Dec 2007

The Internet Hoax and Suicide

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 15 Comments

megan I first read Megan Meier’s suicide from my husband’s entry Online Hoax Leads to Suicide of Teenage Girl. The sad story starts with an online friend, Josh Evans who Megan never met in real life. Josh became mean to Megan and told her ““The world would be a better place without you.”. Sobbing, Megan ran into her bedroom closet. Her mother found her there, just 15 minutes later, hanging from a belt, another fatal teen statistic.

Six weeks after Megan’s death, her parents learned that Josh Evans never existed. He was an online character created by Lori Drew, the 47-year old mother of Megan’s former best friend, who lived four houses down the street from the Meiers. Mrs. Drew created the character ““Josh Evans”, according to a neighbor, because she ““going to mess with Megan” for apparently breaking up the once-close friendship with her daughter. Lori Drew did more than that. She drove Megan Meir to kill herself.

06Dec 2007

A Magical Christmas Tradition

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 9 Comments

The Christmas tree is up. Hundreds of tiny lights are dancing around the trimmed Christmas tree. The girls’ Christmas stockings look perfect on the wall while pretty garlands line around the staircase. That should about signal the start of Christmas Season for my girls. But no… According to Lauren, it’s the baking of the Gingerbread Man Cookies that evokes Christmas memories.

When my mom has our helpers bring out the baking utensils from the cabinets and the aroma of gingerbread wafts out of the kitchen, that’s when I know that for the Dado family, the holiday season has begun.

The aroma of molasses, cinnamon and spices excited them as kids. ““We’re hungry, mom!”. I told them to be patient and promised to read them the Story of the Gingerbread Man as soon as the cookies were baked.

Lauren continues on with her Memories of Gingerbread Men Long Gone food entry:

As soon as my mom was done reading us the story, my sister and I would scramble to the plate, eager to eat the first gingerbread man of the year. To our surprise, the plate would be empty. ““The gingerbread man has escaped, find him!” After a mad search all over the room, we’d find the gingerbread man hiding among the books or by the computer keyboard.

My sister and I are adults now and much too old for gingerbread games. Many years later, my mom confessed that she’d have one of the helpers hide the gingerbread man while we were distracted by the story. (She also admitted to being Santa Claus.) That doesn’t keep me from feeling a little warm and fuzzy inside as gingerbread men bake in the oven and the house gets filled with the aroma of molasses and spice. I really should get around to learning how to make these cookies. This is a tradition I’d like to pass on to my children.

For the past 18 years, I bake Gingerbread Man Cookies only because my crazy tale and the warm fuzzy feeling of Christmas memories give my two older girls some comfort. The holidays are a wonderful time to fill my home with the aroma and fragrance of Christmas through baking Gingerbread Man and Christmas cookies. I Ã¢â‚¬Ëœve baked all sorts of Christmas goodies like Lemon Squares, Fruit Cake, Brandy Cake, Apple Pie, and other bar cookies but the demand of Gingerbread Man cookies are high on their list.

I was in Singapore when the first batch of cookies were baked by Luijoe’s yaya. Lucky for Lauren’s friends, they got to eat the first batch of cookies freshly baked from the oven. The Gingerbread cookies was not a Christmas tradition when I was a kid. Fruit cake was more like it but when I baked it for my kids, they didn’t like the taste.

I met the Gingerbread man cookies during my teen years when mom baked them for Christmas. We had a bake shop back then. I never knew the recipe but knowing my mom, she probably got it from Betty Crocker or in one of her baking books. So I modified it to call it my own since most gingerbread recipes had too much ginger. I tested all the recipes I could find and through frequent testing with my kids, I got the right mix. I never realized the baking of Gingerbread Man Cookies is such a magical Christmas tradition to my girls so I want to share this magic with you.

If you want to bake Gingerbread Man cookies, here is my GingerBread Man Cookies’ Recipe which I want to share to you all. And Fruitcake for the Holidays Recipe for bonus since that was my favorite Childhood Christmas tradition.

What Christmas tradition do you remember or observer or hope to pass on to your children one day?

03Dec 2007

Batanes (and Batanes, the movie)

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 16 Comments

When it comes to local showbiz scenes and Who’s Who?, I am totally clueless. Local Filipino movies just don’t interest me at all…unless I get invited by a friend or I know the people involved in the production. There is the movie The White Lady which we watched only because the director was Butch’s classmate in Law School. Then the last movie I watched was I’ve Fallen For You directed by Lino Cayetano because he is a family friend. This afternoon was a bit different. Together with some bloggers, I attended a grand press conference for Batanes, a love story co-directed by Dave Hukon and internationally acclaimed young indie-director Adolf Alix Jr. Written by Arah Badayos, the film is a love story between a Filipina and a Taiwanese and circles around how the waters of Batanes test their love and individualities.

The film stars Ken Zhu of the Taiwanese boy band F-4 fame and Iza Calzado. At the press conference, I felt really out of place amidst the showbiz reporters. Haha, I was laughing at myself as I embarked on this latest adventure as it is so out of character. But wait, I attended the Press Conference as my way of helping promote Batanes Islands. The fastest route to Batanes is through Asian Spirit which is the only airline that flies to Batanes and other remote islands in the Philippines. [tag]Asian Spirit[/tag] is also the major sponsor of Batanes which is really nice gesture on their part to support an indie film.

01Dec 2007

Meet-Up with Bloggers and the Asus Eee Pc

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 20 Comments

The great thing about blogger meet-ups is the fact that I am usually the oldest in the group.

Mingling with young bloggers means that I get to babble endlessly about techie topics which I can never really discuss with my husband or non-blogger friends. Oh I talk with my daughters but I seem to know more about computer gadgets and other tech topics than they do. Last night, Shai Coggins, co-founder of B5 Media took time off from her vacation to the Philippines for a meet and greet in Kape Isla at Serendra. Shai was one of the first bloggers that I often visited when I launched this blog. In fact, I lovingly stole her Tell Me About You idea which paved the way for me to explore other blog topics other than grief education. Meeting Shai and other blogger friends in the cozy cafe covered a lot of activities like ranting about Google’s Page Rank Penalty, the Trillanes Revolt , the curfew, Monetizing Blogs, raving over the B5 media Schwags, Shai’s personalized prints and Sasha’s fashion loot. But aside from the company of Shai Coggins and the bloggers, the other limelight of the party was this cute little thing…

01Dec 2007

Photo Hunt: Red

by Noemi Lardizabal-Dado ⋅ 11 Comments

What a timely theme for this week’s Photo Hunt, RED. It’s my favorite color of the Holiday Season. That’s Lauren, my daughter showing off her RED wordpress t-shirt. I am raffling off three red shirts for those who have FilipinaImages.com linked entries. Your old Filipina themed entries will do as long as you link them to FilipinaImages.com. I am giving away three shirts and the deadline is December 5. If you haven’t joined yet, sign up here.