Monthly Archives: November 2006

For Lauren:

We only went to one location yesterday — the outlet mall. I really didn’t intend to get anything, I just wanted to enjoy the party atmosphere of the shoppers. Once we got into “Gap”, I changed my mind. This was the most frenetic place in the whole outlet mall, and once I saw the prices I understood why. I picked and dug a little and ended up getting two shirts. One was $10, and one was $8. I needed some long sleeve shirts for the winter anyway, so this worked out well. The others got some stuff from there, too. A quick stop at “Harry and David” for some over-priced snacks, and we were headed home.

Thanksgiving dinner came off well. The travelers were late to arrive, so the turkey was in the oven for about eight hours. It sure was tender when it finally came out. Apparently, people from the Philippines don’t usually eat turkey, so Denis made some kind of sour pork dish for everyone as a back-up meat. Everyone at least tried the turkey. Some of them liked it.

The big hit of the evening was desert. Of course there was pumpkin pie, but there were also a variety of Filipino deserts. Everyone had it all.

THE OBLIGATORY BEFORE AND AFTER TURKEY PICS:

Here are the deserts. They include flan, cassava cake, rice something-or-other, gelatinous disks of something, and chewy things sprinkled with toasted coconut.
I had pumpkin pie.

So my roommate Denis is having some of his friends come for Thanksgiving. He wants them to experience traditional Thanksgiving food, so we’ve gotten the turkey and mashed potatoes and all that. But he also wanted some other food for later, so he went to a Filipino store and got an assortment of strange items.

In this picture are two vacuum-packed bags of fish. I don’t really know how he’ll cook the tiny ones. In the aluminum container are some fried fish jerky-things. They are crunchy and salty, and they have a REALLY strong fish smell. They are not for the faint-of-heart. Denis says they are everyone’s favorite. We’ll see…