Vietnamese Cooking..

Saigon, I was there!!
I'm learning to enjoy my trips. I travelled to Ho Chi Min on the first week of June for some work errands and made it a point to make my trip more educational too so I included learning a bit of vietnamese cuisine. I searched the web and found Saigon Culinary Arts Center. They offer short cooking courses, so I got into one of their half day course (VN 650,000 or US35.00). We started class at 9:00AM and ended with lunch at 12:00 noon. A Vitenamese Chef and an interpreter taught us to make a three course menu:
Tomato Soup (so refreshing) made from fresh tomatoes and chicken stock garnished with strips of spring onions and egg.
Vietnamese spring rolls (Cha Gio) made from shrimps, crab meat, taro which gave it a nice texture and wrapped in rice paper. The native tray serves as measuring guide while you wrap your rolls on rice paper, the grid makes the rolls of the same size. The rolls are deep fried in oil until golden brown. Tip: cook in low fire to make sure ingredients cook well. Serve with lettuce leaves, rice noodles and mint leaves - way to eat the rolls - wrap your fried roll onto a lettuce leaf together with some noodles and some mint leaves and serve with sweet sour sauce.

And the Caramelized Catfish cooked in Claypot (so good), pictures say it all. 

And here's me and my diploma!

FROM ME TO ALL OF YOU..

One of my most important learnings this 2009 goes this way " hindsight is always 20/20" Heard it from a Catholic priest. As we look back to the year about to pass, we might find ourselves thinking i could have done that, i shoudn't have said that, I could have, and so goes our coulds and woulds...Hindsight has the advantage of a more complete information and insights from a number of sources which we may not have had the luxury of at the moment we took that decision, that action, those moments of conversations or discussion.

At the end of the day, what matters is we did the best we could with the information on hand and available. This 2010 is another shot we've got at this journey. It is worth our while to be informed, easily accessible technologically; however have time to reflect and study the thousand available information so as to possess the right convictions so that all our 2009 hindsights become 2010 insights; which then become our guiding principles at every twist and turn of life. To my dear bloggers HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

A Step Ahead!!

What can you say about these wooden step stools or step ladders? Don't they look good for indoor use? You can leave them in the library, wardrobe or walk in closets, home office and they seem part of your furniture. Thus you would'nt need to carry them in and out of your room. These are home made ladders which i found in one of my clients' home.

I definitely like them over those steel step stools commercially available. Yes they serve well for utility purposes - in the kitchen, garage or while doing home repairs. However, you'll agree with me, they look ugly inside your beautiful home.

These wooden ladders are a great home idea i recommend!

Chandeliers with an ooomph!

Tagaytay Conference Center chandeliers  VERSUS Normal chandelier installation

I thought it's good to share this with you as it caught my attention that every chandelier and ceiling lamp in Tagaytay Conference Center were installed with a lamp base attached to the ceiling. Chandeliers were not really gorgeous but that detail added such fine taste to them. As compared to the very expensive chandelier in the next pic. Good idea.