Beauty Haul: Foreo Luna Mini, Elizabeth Arden Intervene, Chanel Vitalumiere Compact

I spent a little over 250€ last Friday for this beauty haul.  It is certainly  extravagant and somewhat excessive for my ordinarily thrifty lifestyle, but my skin´s been pretty bad lately, so bad that even my ever-reliable Guerlain Lingerie de Péau foundation could not cover the red splotches around my mouth and the tired pallor of my face.

And then there is the fact that the sale season in Europe has began, with 30% to 50% markdowns on goodies.  And so I got a little crazy and bought goodies which will hopefully help me in my beauty battle against stress and ageing.

The Haul: Foreo Luna Mini, Chanel Vitalumiere Compact Powder, Elizabeth Arden Intervene Products (Anti-Fatigue Eye Cream, Time FightingRadiance Serum, Skin Tone Perfecting Capsules), and my freebie of Smashbox Makeup Pouch 

Happy New Life 2015 Item 1: Driving for Dummies

Hello! I hope you had a blast celebrating the New Year!  I hope the holidays have energized each of us for the challenges ahead.

Of course we don't forget 2014 entirely,   that we might take stock of what was good, what made us sad and what we could do to make things better from this point onward.

While most people are back to their normal routines, to their jobs and joys of daily living,  I am still on vacation  in our tropical paradise.

                               The road to my hometown in Ilocos Norte

                                Ilocos Pride: Paoay Church, Ilocos Norte

Simple UK´s Mint Shower Gel is a Freshness Bomb

2009, Manila. My friend Di raved and raved about this amazing mint body wash she got from the UK.  It´s so refreshing, it leaves you tingly!  And so being the great friend that she is, she transferred a not inconsequential amount of her prized stash into a 100 ml container and gave it to me to try.

My friend Di´s fave: Original Source Mint and Tea Tree Shower Gel

               

It.was.so.icy.cold.on.the.skin.  In a good way. Actually, that´s an understatement. It was  more like, holy cow, this is amazing! Mint in a shower gel! This is perfect for the Philippines! We loved it so much we even hatched a plan of distributing these products in the Philippines.  But then, as most plans go, we got waylaid to other things, and I went back to Korea.

2014, Madrid.  I was out on a girl talk session with A, a friend who, before meeting her in Madrid, was a client of TLC Shop way back in 2009.   We were talking about travel, online shopping and such, and she mentioned in passing how she loves Simple, a UK skincare line which she orders from the UK.

So two ordinary  events years apart. Nothing to it, except I remember them now, silvery threads of happenstance leading to this post. Which is essentially about Simple and mint. Or to be blunt, this is a rave about a new product I bought a week ago from the Madrid branch of Dealz.

Shopping High: Finally! UK Treats On The Cheap in Madrid!

I woke up to an aubergine sky, perpetually wet streets and this mist-filled air. Hello, dreary saturday! You remind me so much of  London´s bed weather.

I was tempted to stay under the covers all day, catch up on Homeland, my current  series obsession, order greasy Chinese food and be the sloth that I am.  But N, my cheery and very reliable Pinay friend who comes to my flat twice a month to  clean, reorganize and straighten my stuff messaged me that she was arriving at half past two, so I had to move my lazy ass off the bed and get out of the flat while she did her cleaning magic.

I walked the cold, drizzling streets with a few tasks in mind.  First, get a replacement sim card for my phone, next, window shop for a  pair of winter boots.  I wasn´t in the mood to ride buses or the Metro so I  just walked to the nearest mobile phone shop. Closed.  Hmmm, okay, I suppose I have to go to the mobile phone shop´s bigger branch at the city center tomorrow.  And sige, I´ll do the window shopping for boots tomorrow na lang din.  Didn´t I tell you I am the laziest sloth ever? 

Instead of going off to accomplish the tasks above, I decided to just walk ahead and find  a coffee shop where I can have a hot cup of tea and a soft couch to laze on while I pass the time. So walk I did and that was how I stumbled upon a shop called Dealz.

Dealz? with a Z? Isn´t it a bit lame  for a shop name? In Filipino lingo, it is ohmygawd jologs!  But then I saw something that made me stop.  Dealz, Part of the Poundland Family. Huh? Poundland UK? And my memory turned to that delightful Poundland discount shop in Hounslow, London which I visited without fail every weekend in search of great deals.  I recall buying a lot of Neutrogena items, Toffifee, shortbread biscuits, and other sweets there on the cheap! I peeked inside  Dealz and saw a lot of people shopping, so of  course, my bargain hunter Amazonian self went in and attacked!

The first thing that´ll make anyone happy at Dealz  is the price.  All items are just 1.5€ each! The pricing makes sense since one British pound is roughly 1.3€ and in the UK, the shops are named Poundland.  Sure, there´s a bit of a price adjustment but 1.5€ is still cheap since it´s less than 100 Philippine Pesos!

                                        Tempting Sweets at Dealz  Image from economica.es

Guerlain Cosmetics: Indulgent, Pricey and Oh So Precious!

                                Guerlain´s candy colored Meteorites

Ah Guerlain, you, the queen of  ultra-expensive french luxury beauty brands, you have been on my must-try-at-least-once-in-my-life list for some time now.  But for years I have felt that you were really out of my league.  I´d like to think that I have always tried to be a practical person, and so  in a sea of  affordable and pretty Korean beauty products,  it seemed blasphemous and too pa-sosyal to try you out at uber-pricey Seoul prices.

To be honest, I was scared too, what if I tried your products and became hooked? How sad would that be knowing that at  your prices in Seoul, I would be reaching way beyond my budget.  Because you see,  in Seoul a precious pan of your Meteorites costs 80000 KRW which is roughly 59€ or PHP 3,500.  How can I, in all my practicality, pay for a highlighter that expensive when I can buy a highlighter of the same shimmery effect from Skinfood for only 5000 KRW(PHP 250.00) ?

     Guerlain Meteorites Blossom Price in Korea

But here I am now in Europe, where somehow, it feels okay to finally splurge with your products.
 It also helps that Guerlain products here are almost 40% cheaper than in Asia. And what excuse do I have not to buy you and satisfy this secret longing when even my Pinay hairstylist at my favorite salon in Madrid brandishes her Meteorites Blossom Pearls and gushes about them like a secret love?

So one day, while I was particularly feeling blah,  I walked and walked and walked until  I found myself at my neighborhood Bodybell shop.  And what do you know, there was an additional 10% off all Guerlain products ! The Goddesses of All Things Kikay have conspired! A sign, a gentle push, a whisper:  Go, bumili ka na ng magtigil ka na sa obsession mong yan!

Caudalie´s Fleur de Vigne Reminds Me of the Light and Shimmer of Country Summer Days

   A perfect summer day out in a vineyard  (Photo from expatweddingamsterdam.com)

A light breeze, the sun´s rays prickling your skin just enough to feel warm, alive and happy.  I imagine myself in a cotton maxi dress, with a book or a friend, idling around, enjoying the greeneries,  the scent of leaves,  of harvest, of fruit and life.  Ah, my perfect summer day.  Out in the countryside, or perhaps, closer to home, back in my mother´s house in Ilocos, under the ancient Mango tree, perched on the bamboo slat bed of my childhood summers, with a book or a cousin or two, enjoying the hours of a beautiful day.

But alas,  I am in the middle of the city, beautiful as it is.   Still, I tell myself,  soon, soon I will have my fill of perfect summer days.

And so perhaps, it is partly because of  my  longing for these kinds of summer days that I am smitten with Caudalie´s Fleur de Vigne  Eau Fresh.

It is described as a delicate scent of grapefruit, pink pepper, white rose, mandarin cedar, and the precious grape blossom known as flour de vigne, precious because flour de vigne only blossoms once a year.

At first whiff it is the musky character of  pink pepper and white rose that dominate, but in a minute  the delicious grape and citrus scent so reminiscent of summer follows through.  It is this light, yet complex and earthy fragrance that I love about Fleur de Vigne.

The sillage is low and the lasting power of this scent is three hours maximum.  And to my mind, it is not the kind of fragrance you´d wear to captivate,  for that, one is better off with Parfum Divin .  But for  a scent to transport me to daydreams of vineyards and summer days,  to carefree hours in the sun, there is nothing more apt, more complementary than a whiff of  this fresh fragrance.

A 50 ml bottle for Caudalie´s Fleur de Vigne is about 25.50€  at Caudalie Europe but  there´s a current limited edition gift set for Fleur de Vigne that includes a 100 ml Shower Gel for free so I got it instead.

Of course a scent cannot take the place of sun and summery breezes but until I get the chance to go home or visit a vineyard,  I shall fill my senses with the promise of summer joys with a spritz or two of this fragrance.

MY DIVINE FRAGRANCE: CAUDALIE PARFUM DIVIN

The  Search for The Perfect Summer Scent
Summer in Spain:  40 deg Celsius dry heat and a sun that rises at 6:30 AM and sets at 10 PM.

Yes, the heat is definitely on in Europe!

So a month ago I felt I was in dire need of a new perfume, something long-wearing but not overpowering,with a good musky undertone.  The fragrance I was using, a RL Polo Big Pony 3 (Yellow),  just wasn´t cutting it.  I felt that it wasn´t really that long-lasting and  was just meeeh. 

Off I went to fragrantica.com  to search for a perfume that´s musky, warm, perfect for summer, and long lasting.

Oh just in case, note that fragrantica.com is not a perfume shop, it´s like a make-up forum where users rate the items they´ve tried,  but instead of make-ups,  the talk´s all focused on scents and fragrances.  What I like about the site is the variety of reviews,  even small artisanal perfumes from Europe  are reviewed not just the big perfume brands.


Enter Caudalie
After reading on a lot of reviews,  I finally settled on Caudalie´s new fragrance,  Parfum Divin, which was released just this year (2014).  What sold me on this perfume?  Let me enumerate:

1.  It´s a vanilla-based, musky perfume that isn´t  fruity.  I have had it with fruity and citrusy perfumes, they tend to be not so long lasting become slightly sour on my skin after a few hours.

2.  It got amazing reviews both in fragrantica  and in blogs.  It was described by The Sunday Girl so perfectly:

 "Parfum Divin de Caudalie is what I imagine the chic women in the likes of the south of France would use to douse themselves in. A simple but romantic blend of rose, musk and vanilla that is both comforting and oddly uplifting too. I don't tend to enjoy floral fragrances but the simple and soft tones of Parfum Divine de Caudalie is something else. It is almost dreamy in a sense. It's not everyday that a fragrance comes along in which I believe will talk to all ages but Parfum Divine de Caudalie is it. Of course it is similar to the scent used within Caudalie's Divine Oil but it is a little  softer and more refined with a stronger musk kick in my experience. In a nutshell Parfum Divine de Caudalie is a suit all wear everywhere fragrance in one of the most beautiful bottles I have seen this side of 2014."
    
 3.  Although Caudalie is considered a luxury brand in Europe  (up there among the ranks of Clarins, Chanel, Guerlain),  the perfume´s price wasn´t that bad  at about 50€  for a 50 ml bottle.  Definitely more affordable than Chanel perfumes which are 20-30€ more expensive.


Power and Sillage
I purchased my Parfum Divin from the Caudalie online shop in Spain,  and got the item in just four days!

The Parfum Divin comes in a beautiful golden bottle with a wooden cap! Even the bottle looks elegant and understated.

And the smell?  Yes, in a word,  it is divine.

It is warm, sweet, musky,  but not overpowering.  You know how there are perfumes that are good but  are just too strong ( Poison and most Nina Ricci fragrances come to mind)?  Parfum Divin isn´t one of them.  It settles on the skin pretty well, and at the end of the day,  what is left behind is a delectable musky scent that feels oh-so classy.  The sillage isn´t too bad, just moderate, which is good because who wants to be labelled as the walking perfume bomb?  Sillage, in case you haven´t heard of the word,  is a fragrance term used to describe the fragrance trail left by the wearer.  A strong sillage means that it diffuses well around the wearer, meaning it can be smelled by those around her.  But note that sillage has nothing to do with wether the perfume smells great.

I found solid proof of Caudalie´s long lasting smell one Friday when hours after spritzing the perfume, while I was all sweaty and klutzy in my 8 PM fitness class,  I smelled the Perfum Divin on myself.  My though was,  Bongga!  Amoy Perfum Divin ang pawis ko!

Caudalie also has this somewhat cool thing.  Whenever one purchases a Caudalie product,  a code is hidden in the product´s box which you enter in your myCaudalie personal online account,  every product corresponds to some points.  A purchase of Perfum Divin corresponds to 40 points.  And when I reach 120 points  I get to have one fullsized item from  Caudalie´s skincare line sent to me with my next order for free.  Cool, huh!

I honestly think Parfum Divin is my holy grail for perfumes.  Expensive but not unreasonably so.  It is potent so you don´t have to spray too much.  And the smell, oh the smell, its name is so perfect for this product.

Love and Reorder

How much do I love this perfume?  So much that I just ordered a set of Parfum Divin + Huille Divin (Divine Oil) again. 

Why? Because Caudalie has a promo now that for every  purchase of two items of Divin products (except the travel kits) , one gets a free  Sac Divin ( Divine Bag) oh and yes,  I want to try their skincare products (which are really expensive).  And  Caudalie do give free samplers for every purchase.

That Divin bag  is so pretty, no? I rationalize of course:  If by December I still haven´t used up my Parfum Divin,  I can always turn my extra Parfum Divin  into a gift for someone special! 

So, how about you?  What´s the perfume you´re currently loving at the moment?  Do you want to try Caudalie´s  Parfum Divin? :)

P.S.  A Short Note on The Brand

Caudalie (pronounced as kodali) is an upmarket French beauty brand based in Bordeaux, France,   known for its philosophy of making natural, preservative-free cosmetics.  Caudalie,  which has its roots in the vineyard owned by its founders, currently holds patents for Resveratrol, grapeseed polyphenols and Vineferine, potent beauty compounds extracted from grape plants.  

As per Caudalie´s site:

The brand uses natural and environmentally friendly active ingredients with raw materials of controlled origin and Ecocert-certified preservatives. No Caudalie product contains phenoxyethanols, phthalates, mineral oils, sodium laureth sulfate, synthetic colorings or animal ingredients and the products are not tested on animals. In 2005, the company went even further by removing all parabens from its products, and setting up a huge operation to reduce waste by optimizing transport, packaging and waste products to reduce its annual CO2 emissions (-4.7 tonnes of CO2 per year). In general, the cardboard boxes and PCR plastic tubes used to contain the products are recycled by around 50%. 

Reading Without Boundaries: How Scribd Changed My Reading Habits

Warning: This post is all about books and reading!

                                            The last titles I bought prior to switching to Scribd

If you are like me whose secret dream is to hoard books and read as many book  titles as possible but who, in real life, has a book budget that´s really pitiful, then read on!  Maybe you´d also benefit from a recent discovery of mine.

But no, this isn´t about downloading books illegally.  And yes, I hate Amazon Kindle´s book library and Apple´s iBooks store.  Because, really, why would I buy an ebook for 10€  when I can read all the books I want, synced to all my devices, for a monthly subscription fee of only 9US$?

Yes 9 US$ a month allows me to read all the  books  I want, in all the genres possible.  This is heaven for a book hoarder like me. It means that I can start as many books as I want and switch from one book to another depending on my mood. And I only have to pay a small monthly fee  for this indulgence.

Last year,  I ordered books from  Amazon UK  a couple of times.  English books in Spain are expensive and it was still cheaper to buy from Amazon UK  even with the additional shipping fee.  I would buy 2-3 books at a time and have them shipped to Madrid.  With most books costing at least 10€ each,  I think I spent close to 150€ last year just on my Amazon book purchases  and that only corresponds to the twelve books I could afford to buy.  But what can a book lover do? Beggars can´t be choosers :-(.



Ah but my reading life has changed  oh so gloriously.

                                               Oh there are so many fishes in the ocean!



Thanks to  Scribd´s digital book subscription,  my world of reading is now filled with infinite possibilities, limited only by the time I have for reading.  After three months of being a Scribd digital book subscriber,  I now fill small gaps of time with precious reading rituals:

In the morning, before I prepare for work, I spend thirty minutes reading books on writing.

                                            Stephen King´s On Writing


My travel time from my flat to the office takes forty minutes.  That´s forty minutes of reading mostly business and entrepreneur-slanted books.  These titles inspire me to think up of possible small ventures; soul food for  the hungry wannabe-entrepreneur in me.

Gary Vaynerchuk´s totally fun and irreverent book on finding your niche in business



My closet foodie gourmet self has her fill of foodie-related titles too.  I usually read food and travel titles on my way home from work.  There are titles from Anthony Bourdain,  Mario Batalli and Rachael Ray (if you like her,  I don´t).  Through Scribd, I have read books on how  big food brands such as Hershey´s and Mars,  In-N-Out Burgers and Ben and Jerry´s started from small, backyard businesses into what they are now.   At the moment though,  I am preoccupied with Rick Bayless´s Mexican Cookbook.  Here´s me hoping to make  authentic mexican tacos and mole soon!

And then of course, there are  the book titles we have long wanted to read but could not find:

                        I have finally read this book. It is  book that´s funny, sad and a little frustrating at times. But yeah,  it deserves all the praises that´s been heaped upon it.


And there´s no shortage of chick flicks, historical romance novels (if that´s your thing), and those laugh out loud reads  that are not really good for the mind but are oh so enjoyable:

Yes!  I am beyond happy (try ecstatic) with Scribd´s book subscription service.

You do need to know a couple of things before you decide if this service is for you:

-Because all the titles are in electronic form, you need a compatible reader/tablet/phone to use this service.  I use an iPad Mini  but I know it also works on iPhones and Android devices.  Note that for Kindle devices, only Kindle Fire models can use the Scribd subscription service.

-While  the 9$ monthly subscription fee isn´t that expensive,  you have to at least read two or three books a month to  make this service really cost-effective for you.  For heavy readers like me, this is a value for money service.  So assess your reading needs first and make sure that you will have the time to read books.  The good thing is, you can always cancel your Scribd subscription anytime.

-Scribd offers a month-long free trial of its subscription service so you can check if it´s for you.  They will request for a credit or debit card though but it will not be charged until after the month-long trial is over.  Here´s the link to the Scribd free trial offer:  http://www.scribd.com/subscribe


So that´s it!  Try Scribd and happy reading!


P.S.  I do sound like a sales rep for Scribd, no?  But  hey, I get nothing for promoting their subscription service.  I am just an extremely pleased bookworm who thinks  I need to spread the good word about their awesome service and let people know that there´s an alternative to Amazon´s Kindle Library and Apple´s iBooks.

March Food Finds: Tart, Sweet, Smokin´Hot and Chips That Are Supposed to Be Good For You

Hello!  So I have been busy the past few weeks with a day job, the shop and a super secret project I am working on during weekends.  But, hey,  that doesn´t mean I have stopped gathering things to write about.   It´s nearly the end of March!  The past  weekends, a friend visited from Holland, I had two new Pinay friends come to my flat for some chika moments,  an uncle died, plus of course there were the pre-buy sessions at TLCShop.  Wheew,  I can´t wait for April!  Because it´s Semana Santa on the 3rd week of April,  I´d have four days of vacation.  And I am all set to go to someplace colder.  These are countries I´ve never visited before so  I am really excited!

In  the meantime, let´s have  some food porn, if you don´t mind :)  Presenting, my four yummy food finds for March 2014!



 Hacendado Capricho  Lemon Meringue Pie:  My ideal version of Brazo de Mercedes

Fresh from my still ongoing obsession with Robertson´s Lemon Curd,  I was excited to see this lemon dessert on the refrigerated section of my neighborhood supermarket.   It was inexpensive ( at 2€ for a pack of four single serve containers).  The closet dieter in me was also happy to see that a single serving had relatively low calories at only  190 kcal per serving.

Okay so the actual product has a disproportionately thicker merengue layer than the image on the packaging, but it was surprisingly not  a bad thing.  The merengue wasn´t  too sweet, the lemon curd layer and the bottom graham cracker crust  provided the expected zing of lemon and  just enough sweetness.  Mmmmm,  this is is the taste of  my ideal brazo de mercedes!  A thick and fluffy merengue with a tart lemon curd filling instead of the usual sickly sweet custard.  Totally addicting.  Proof?  I´ve bought a pack of this every Sunday,for the past two weeks and each time,  the four serving pack only lasts  for two days in my house.  Yes, I eat two  servings a day.  Truth, I can eat the four serving pack in a day, but I still have some self control :)


 Snatt´s NatuChips:  The (Supposedly)  Good Chips

I admit, I bought a bag of Snatt´s not because these chips are supposed to be good for you,  but because they were on sale for only  1€  from the regular retail price of 1.45€.  But okay, these chips are supposed to be the best chips to snack on because they are made from  a "healthy¨mix of rice, potato starch and soya bean starch.  These are also baked, not fried ant there´s  no gluten in this snack so Celiac sufferers and those with gluten intolerance can eat this.  An 85 g bag contains only 300 kcals compared to  the 550 kcals of a bag of potato chips.

The big question is, does it taste good?  Well, that depends.  These chips  can never be as delicious as my favorite Ruffles potato chips, but they aren´t that bad.   The texture of the chips is a cross between a puffed cereal chip such as PopCorners ( which I hate for their bland flavors)  and a chip made from potato starch such as Pringles.  The flavor (Barbecue) is actually good.   It´s the in-between texture of the chips that might prove to be a little bit off for some snackers.  But for me, the 250 kcal difference between these and the regular potato chips is enough incentive  to  stick with these NatuChips for my chip cravings.


Dark Chocolate-covered Orange Peel :  A Delicious,  Not Too Sweet Treat from Tiger

I went to Tiger a couple of Sundays ago to buy  pencils, a sketch pad  plus some drawing tools and saw boxes of their new chocolate goodies.  I picked up a box of the  Dark Chocolate Covered Orange Peel (2€).  I was intrigued because I like citrusy flavors and I don´t really like too sweet goodies.  The combination of Dark Chocolate and Orange Flavor seemed promising.

And it is a delightful flavor mix!  Strips of candied orange peel, full of that slightly astringent citrus flavor, are covered with a very mild yet creamy  bittersweet chocolate. This is perfect for the occasional craving for chocs.  A few choco-covered strips are all I need to feel choco happy.  At 2€ for a small 70g box, this isn´t the cheapest way to get your cacao fix,  but this treat has a slightly sophisticated riff on the usual choc treats, so to me, it is well worth it.

Wasabi Almond:  Smokin´  Hot Nuts!

Almond, my favorite kind of nut, toasted and coated with the most perfect wasabi flavor ever.  To say that it is simply delicious is an understatement.  I. love. wasabi. almonds.

What makes this snack perfect is the on point flavor of wasabi -- it hits your senses subtly, with a slight heat  and then the flavor goes through your nose, and there it is, the smokey kick of wasabi without the usual teary eyed after effect.   The folks at Lidl, who makes this Deluxe Wasabi Almond snack,  hit the flavor jackppot with this product.  It isb´t that cheap.  At close to 2€ of a small can, but,  for the wasabi flavor alone,  I  shall remind myself  to buy another can this weekend.

That´s it for my March snack finds.  What about you? What´s your current snack addiction(s)?

Food Fave: Robertson´s Lemon Curd

Today, while buying chocolates and cookies, I espied a few jars of Robertson´s  Lemon Curd at  Supercor, a grocery that´s about twenty minutes away from my flat.  I went jogging earlier and passed by the grocery to buy some additional chocolates, and  that´s when I saw them .  Of course,  I bought a jar .   Not for the shop, nor for the fambam, but for one selfish lemon curd lover I know and love, moi, haha!

                     Sunshiney Spread!

Opening my jar of sunshine,  I  sigh happily at the pale yellow spread.  I spoon some and excitedly suck it in, the smooth texture and  that air of tangy sweetness, delicious!  It brought  me back to mornings during my vacation in the Philippines a few months ago.  Waking up to a breakfast table of hot pan de sal, bright red TJ hotdogs, eggs  and an array of sweet spreads— the requisite sugarfree fruit jam for my mother, a jar of Nocilla, and  our lone jar of Robertson´s Lemon Curd.   Surprisingly, it was the lemon curd that won us over.  Sweet yet tart, it was perfect  for the crusty, bland pan de sal.    Even my cousin, who professes a love for Nocilla’s hazelnut and chocolate sweetness, enjoyed it.  Thus, among all the jars of jams and spreads I brought home with me to Pinas, it was the lemon curd that was finished off first. 

                                My simple comforts: Soft buns with a thick layer of lemon curd

I like that there´s a tang to this spread  that goes beyond sour and sweet.  And the texture, smooth and pudding-like,  is way different from those of jams and marmalades, perhaps because the curd is made using butter in a  process that is not too different from that of making custards.  

Strange to think how our small, interconnected world goes now.  A lemon curd made in the UK, which I bought in Spain, brought home and first tasted in the Philippines is now my standby breakfast spread.  How it has turned into a memento from home, a metaphor for  those morning rituals with the family.   Strange too how we associate the people we love with the food we eat.   Thus to me, my breakfast (and at times, dinner) of crusty rolls spread with a thick layer of lemon curd  brings comfort both for its deliciousness and for the memories it has come to represent. 

Robertson´s Lemon Curd

Made in the UK

2.50€ for a  320 gram jar

Order through TLC Shop Philippines

Sweets for Breakfast: Crownfield Milk Pillows Cereals

For someone who lives alone, breakfast is a five minute rush. A slice of bread,  some butter, and a mug of juice glugged  in one go.  But there are days when all we want is some stillness.  A breakfast meant to remind us  what the new day represents:  another journey in search for happiness. 

Weekends are the perfect time for unhurried breakfast. Sometimes, I get this  from a plate of Churros and a mug of thick chocolate.  

But  that would entail that I leave the warmth of my flat.  So mostly, I take the more economical and lazier route:  A bowl of my favourite cereal.

Pillows of wheats with a smidgen of milk cream inside.   This reminds  me of the little snacks back home called Oishi Pillows.  

The  pilllows' texture reminds me of Chex cereals: with the right blend of wheat and heft.

With milk, these cereals do not squish oh so easily into cereal mush.  The pillows' cream center is sweet yet  perfect as the skimmed milk diffuses what could be a  too intense a sugar rush.  I sometimes eat the pillows on their own, like  a snack, but to be honest, after a few handfuls, the sweetness of the cream centers makes my mouth taste like a sugar bomb.   So it is still with milk for me.   Simple.  Comforting. Delicious. 

Where to buy:  Available in Europe's Lidl Stores

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Grocery Shopping: What 23€ Can Buy in Madrid

Last December, when I went home to Manila, I was shocked at the high prices of grocery items.  I thought, wow, the prices of goodies here aren't much different from the prices in Spain!  It may well be a subjective reaction on my part.  Maybe, I was just being forgetful of how the prices of goodies have gone up in recent years.  I don't really know.  Today, after I bought my one week grocery supply,  I decided to list down the prices of the goods.  Just to check if it is a fair assessment to say that grocery prices in Madrid are not that high compared to the Philippines and are definitely lower compared to other EU countries.  Here are the goodies I bought with their prices.  Am I right to think that the prices of goods in Manila have gone way up and are close to the prices in Madrid?  Let me know your opinion!

    Contents of my shopping bag

A pack of Bacon (1.40 € /  84 PhP); A  pack of 6 Chicken-Turkey Burger Patties ( 3.90€ / 234 PhP) ; A big pack of Crabsticks ( 1.95 €/ 117 PhP)

A basket of Lemons ( 1.50€ / 90 PhP) ; A pack of four Avocados ( 3.13€ / 188 PhP)

A tube of white onions (0.95€ / 57 PhP);    A big Californian Salad complete with a dressing packet, croutons, ham and raisins (2.50€ / 150 PhP)

A bottle of Salad Dressing ( 1.80€ / 108 PhP); A pack of Butter (1.10€/ 66 PhP); A box of Stevia Natural Sweetener ( 1.90€/ 114 PhP);    a jar of Sea Salt with Herbs ( 1.55€ / 93 PhP

Two packs of Mini Pizza Crackers ( 0.90€ / 54 PhP);  A pack of Cortezas Cerdo or chicharon in Filipino  (0.75€ / 45 PhP)

My total grocery bill   was 23.33€,which is about 1,400 PhP.   Pretty low by European standards.  In the more expensive Euro  cities, Paris and Amsterdam for example, 23€ would only get you one decent lunch meal at a neighborhood restaurant.

BOOKS: A Reflection on Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland

“Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.”

This is Gauri's life. A professor of philosophy in California. Successful, alone. But before this life, somewhere in New England, she was a mother, an unhappy wife. And before that life, in India, she was the young idealist who, for the love of a man, became an accomplice to murder.

It is easy to hate Gauri. Having been given a second chance at life in the US. How could she be so selfish to leave her child and husband in pursuit of her dreams.?How could a mother leave a daughter so easily? And could she be so coldhearted as to repay her husband's kindness by disappearing?

And so goes the plot for the second part The Lowland. I am a Jhumpa Lahiri reader from way back, so this is not really a book review but a reflection sparked by the book. I think of Ms. Lahiri's short stories as truly mesmerizing pieces whose short but shimmering plots stay with me for years. But her first novel, The Namesake, which came out a few years ago, was a disappointment. There was a disjoint in that novel. It became short flashes of beautiful writing and distressed characters that never came together fully.

Fortunately, The Lowland, her second attempt at penning novels, was a more rewarding read. It is in fact like reading two novels. The first part is set in India and is about two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, growing up in a small town in Calcutta. Both are academically brilliant, but Udayan uses his gifts to join a radical communist movement, while the older, more responsible and duller Subhash works on his studies and gets a study grant to the United States.

The second part is set in a seaside town in New England, where Subhash is based. The catalyst for the second part is the violent death of Udayan, who leaves behind a pregnant wife, Gauri. The older brother, for reasons still not fully explained, proposes and then marries Gauri and brings her to the US to allow her to start a new life. Except that the new life Gauri wanted was really a life without a daughter and a husband, and so one day she disappears out of Subhash and her daughter Bela's life.

Jhumpa Lahiri's writing is lyrical yet sparse. And her plots might not appeal to those who are used to fast paced thriller or cliffhanger novels. This book is the kind that one reads for the insights to the characters' inner lives. It is the kind that one reads in silence, with a glass of aperitif and quiet contemplation as the novel will inevitably lead the reader to a door, where we sigh to reflect on the puzzles of our own imperfect lives.

Jhumpa Lahiri's protagonists, Subhash and Gauri are successful in that they have achieved the american dream of stable, professional lives. But beneath these blankets of security is their own wonderment on how incomplete, how fractured their lives are. How there is always something, the past, a painful truth, that draws them to the fringes of sadness.

Still, towards the tail end of the novel, Lahiri offers hope. Subhash, the dutiful brother, the husband who was left behind, finds happiness with Bela's high school teacher and discovers stable, romantic love in his seventies. And Bela, who have shunned any good relations with her mother, gives Gauri hope in a letter:

Meghna asks about you. Maybe she senses something…It's too soon to tell her the story now. But one day I'll explain to her who you are, and what you did. My daughter will know the truth about you. Nothing more, nothing less. If then, she still wants you, and to have a relationship with you, I'm willing to facilitate that.


***The Lowland is shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. The winner will be announced on Oct.15 2013.

Food Finds: Nocilla, Tyrrell's and Danone Griego

I was browsing through my photos, deleting most of the images to free up some disk space and noticed that I've taken pictures of most of my yummy food finds from Madrid's supermarkets but have forgotten to write about them. Here's some of my recent food finds from Spain and the rest of Europe. Enjoy!

Nocilla Duo Hazelnut Spread
Nocilla is a chocolate hazelnut spread made locally in Spain. This is an old brand, churning our hazelnut spreads since 1962. Here in Spain it is preferred over the more globally known Nutella.

I have tried Nocilla's original chocolate hazelnut spread months ago but because I have been buying jars and jars of these for Pinas the past few weeks, the temptation to savour Nocilla's sweet spread was just too great. I bought one Nocilla Duo jar for myself last week and this has been my daily breakfast treat.

Nocilla Duo Hazelnut Chocolate Spread

Nocilla on buttered and lightly toasted bread is a great way to break the (evening) fast!

Nocilla is not as sweet or as hazelnutty as Nutella, but the chocolate flavor is more pronounced. I prefer the black and white Nocilla Duo variant more than the original chocolate flavor because the duo has the white milky spread section with a very pronounced vanilla flavor which I really like.

Tyrell's UK Hand cooked Crisps
If you love Kettle Chips, a US brand of kettle fried potato chips, then you will most certainly like Tyrrell's. I have long wanted to try Tyrell's but it always slips out of my mind to pick up a bag when I'm at the grocery. But last week, after a particularly long day at work, I roamed through the grocery to pick up dinner ingredients and then I saw the Tyrrell's goodies and picked a bag:

Tyrrell's come in different flavors: Sea Salt, Sweet Chili & Red Pepper, Mature Cheddar and Pickled Onion, and Honey Roast Ham & Cranberry. I picked up Mature Cheddar and Pickled Onion because it seems that this is the closest to Sour Cream and Onion. And I was pleasantly proven right!

The chips themselves are obviously handout potatoes wit the potato skins still intact. These are extremely crunchy chips! Maybe too crunchy for some, but I liked how they shattered, a loud crack in every bite. However, the best part of these UK made chips is the flavor. The tang of cheese and the slight sourness of the pickled onion was spot on delicious. I would definitely buy another bag of this Tyrrell's flavor soon. But first I'll try the intriguing Honey Roast Ham & Cranberry first then compare which one is more scrumptious.


Danone Griego Greek Yoghurt Mediterraneo
Ever since I've tried the thick, creamy, tart deliciousness of Greek style yoghurt I have eschewed other types. To my mind, nothing really compares to the thick, almost cheesy consistency of greek yoghurt.

What's the difference between greek style yogurt and the conventional yogurt? Well they are almost the same, except that there's an additional step in the making of greek style yogurts. The greek style yoghurts are strained to remove most of the liquids, the lactose and the sugar, thus leaving it with a less sweet, less calorie laden, more protein rich yoghurt. That and the super creamy, thick consistency.

Because Greek yoghurt is really tangy, most greek style yoghurt here are swirled with a little amount of sweetened fruit marmalade which acts as sweet syrupy foil to provide a sweet balance to the tang of greek yoghurt.

There are greek yoghurts with chocolate swirls, raspberry swirls, and even blueberry swirls but after months of trying out these different greek yoghurt variants, my favorite is still this greek yoghurt with a citrus swirl. A slightly sour, sweet fruit swirl of lemon and oranges. Delicious!