Happy Food

People ask me what I'm making lihi (craving) to, and I can't really say. I eat the same things I usually eat, and I don't suddenly want weird stuff like peanut butter and bagoong sandwiches or sinigang with mayonnaise. While I can't stand the smell of cooking fish, I still eat it. I think I'm easy. I would also like to think that I'm not giving The Hubby a hard time; I don't send him out at 2AM in the pouring rain to look for things like pickled balut and sinkamas na itim.

There are foods that make me extremely happy though. When my mom was here a couple of weeks ago, she treated me to a CPK salad. I was beside myself with joy. Every bite was sheer pleasure. I get goosebumps thinking about that salad. I think that's the only thing I constantly ask The Hubby for. Salad. The more exotic, the better (though I'd settle for a Caesar's from Wendy's). I love CPK salads, which have stuff like cilantro and jicama (what ever is jicama?) and Monterey Jack cheese and walnuts and avocado. And the dressings! Blue cheese, honey mustard, raspberry vinaigrette! Just the thought makes me drool. Then my friend Selina comes up with a salad like this. Ooh la la.

The thing is, I don't like homemade salads (at least the usual lettuce-tomato-onions-thousand-island-dressing kind). One time I asked The Hubby to bring me home a salad, and he said he was passing by the grocery to buy greens instead. I was sooo disappointed. My hopes went up when he said the veggies were ugly (am so bad!), but he still didn't bring me salad. I enjoyed the fruits he got for me though. Homemade salads--or at least the common ones--don't turn me on. It just isn't happy food.

Another happy food for me is pasta. I am so grateful that my seester Rix, the OFW, sent me half a kilo of sundried tomatoes and a quarter kilo of parmesan cheese. Oh happy, happy, joy, joy! When I cook my pasta, I can splurge on the ingredients. Actually, the pasta I like eating, I can easily whip up at home. It's just lots of garlic sauteed in olive oil (I make my own flavored olive oil--adds lovely taste to almost anything), lots of fresh tomatoes, lots of basil and freshly cracked pepper, and thanks to Rix, lots of sundried tomatoes and parmesan cheese. Super quick, super yummy. I still enjoy other pastas, like the Quattro Formaggio at Cafe Puccini, or the El Telefono at Cibo. A good pesto anywhere is also such a treat. What I'm not into though, is the typical spaghetti, the regular tomato meat sauce, bolognese. In fact, at Cafe Puccini, I had to move the steaming plate of bolognese away from me--the aroma made me really queasy.

I also discovered another happy food yesterday--tuna (I've been eating the Century with calamansi) on whole wheat bread, sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Now this is so much easier to get and prepare. Just open the can, pour the tuna in a bowl, pop it in the micro for a few seconds, spoon it over the bread, add the cheese and viola! Happiness in a sandwich.

The funny thing is, it's The Hubby who's been looking for all sorts of things. The Hubby, who usually eats because he has to (unlike my clan, who eat for the joy of it), has turned into a serial muncher. After dinner, he will scrounge around for dessert, usually some chocolate (I haven't been into chocolate and sweets these days, so The Hubby feels 'obliged' to finish them). Then when we get into bed, he gets up to get a glass of milk, and maybe some crackers. Then maybe a bit more chocolate. Or a peanut butter sandwich. Or some juice. Or some of my super sour jelly tape (great discovery--jelly tape helps ward off queasiness!). He's constantly hungry and looking for food.

Just the other night, at about midnight, he turned to me and said, "I want balut." I'm just so glad he didn't send me out in the pouring rain to get it.