Under The Cherry Blossoms

Hanami is an ancient Japanese tradition of celebrating the cherry blossom season. It is dubbed as the "New York City Rite of Spring". I didn't want to miss out on this so yesterday, knowing from the forecast that the weather would be a "park perfect" day, we headed to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens to experience this! My friend Celine already visited the park last weekend and absolutely adored it (http://networkedblogs.com/32wZf).   

The Garden displays 42 varieties of these cherry blossoms (supposedly the largest collection outside of Japan!) and no one variety blooms for more than 10 days. So for those who are planning to see it, I highly suggest that you do it very soon while the bloom is at its prettiest. Joel and I walked under the amazingly beautiful cherry blossom canopies holding hands and pushing the bugaboo where Henri was quietly seated. We looked up and took sheer pleasure in the beauty all around. Nature at is finest! *sigh*

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

900 Washington Ave (Eastern Parkway)
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
718-6237200
http://www.bbg.org/

Introducing Filipino Cuisine

For the last three months, I have been using this book called "Top 100 Baby Purees" by Annabel Karmel to guide me in creating a variety of purees and dishes for Henri. This week, I decided to start introducing two classic Filipino viands to my little one : Tinolang Manok and Nilaga. Both are very simple and basic Filipino dishes that I grew up eating. Tinola is chicken ginger stew with vegetables, in this case, I used sayote/chayote. Nilaga is the most basic Filipino beef stew. It's made by sauteing some garlic and onions and putting beef chunks (I used smaller cubes to let it cook faster) and letting it boil until tender. Since I don't want Henri to get used to salt yet, I refrained from using patis (fish sauce) and salt itself for both recipes. But bland as it may sound, both stews were a hit!

 I can't wait to make him try Sinigang which is my favorite comfort food!

Slighty pureed Beef Nilaga and Rice

Hungry boy

First taste of Beef

The titas feeding Henri Tinola and Chayote (Henri's baon when we went to Tita Coco's apartment)