I initially thought of doing home cooking and to bring ‘baon’ to my workplace ever since I started to learn some of the local dishes. This is one of the ways to tighten my budget and also to control what food I eat. This is highly possible since the ‘super’ market, which basically got all the ingredients I need, is just two blocks away from my bhaus. The next question is: how much cooking budget do I need for the week?

Let us start by figuring out what is the menu for the week. That is planning out the dishes to cook and is specific on the range of consumption in the number of days. Here are some quick steps:

1. Monday menu – What dish to cook and then the no. of times of its consumption (lunch, dinner, etc)?
2. Assuming it will reach until Wednesday’s lunch, the next dish will be cooked that night. What is the dish again and its consumption period?
3. By Thursday night, I will then cook for Friday and Saturday. That Saturday’s market goods will be for the menu on Sunday-Monday.

I will then plan the expected range of prices of the ingredients and total them according to my budget. I would base those on my previous grocery and market receipts & then I’d usually cut those unnecessary components as I am not really choosy on the dish I cook if it is by some sort of standard or something like that. I range the budget to about P300 per dish that is good for 4 to 5 meals. The dish variance is pretty basic lutong-bahay such as Adobo, Laswa, Pancit and the like.

The next concern is time. Since it is now a full-blown work schedule at the office as compared to the GCQ days in the previous months, I would then need to drop by the supermarket after work, buy the ingredients, and then cook them right after arriving at home. Before that though, I would need to thoroughly clean each one that was exposed or open with the plastic cover.

Since we are using the traditional uling stove, this will take additional time to setup plus the messy smoke pollution. Anyhow, preparation and cooking time usually takes about two hours for common dishes and so I will just eat some for dinner. The rest are placed in small containers for refrigeration and serves as ‘baon’ for the next day.

I have not yet come up with a menu list but I will try to do so for the remaining of this week. Please wish me luck that I can pull this through and post a cost breakdown by next week.

Until then.

The nightly video marathon watching Ramen cooking recipes has led me to order on Shopee some authentic Ramen ingredients. Luckily, I found one online store wherein they sell various DIY Ramen recipes including the pre-cooked noodles, sauce, and spices. I immediately ordered three types of the available Ramen based on the soup, one pack of the Japan Kagoshima Pork Tonkotsu instant Ramen and also some Japanese Udon noodles that I will later on use for the next hotpot session. Each DIY Ramen costs around 90 to 110 pesos while the Udon noodles cost 50 pesos per pack.

The problem though was the order took almost two weeks to arrive. Good thing I was not really impatient though I was surprised that it took that long for the shipping period. Anyhow, after receiving the package that day, I decided to try cooking one DIY recipe. Unfortunately, I got busy on the remaining weeknights so the next plan was that weekend.

Come Sunday, I got a few extra hours after doing the laundry that morning so I started preparing the ingredients. I got them out of the plastic container of the package and separate the soup base, the noodles and the spices contained into sealed cups. There was also some dried seaweed included and sachets of green tea.

I just literally followed the cooking instructions written in the product description posted at Shopee. Good thing it was nearly lunchtime so a housemate was already preparing the food. There was one stove available and the charcoals were already burning and so I borrowed one pot, filled it half with water and placed it on the stove. I then unwrapped one pack of the noodles, got one egg and placed them on the boiling water. I was unable to buy sliced pork belly so the boiled egg was the only ingredient added aside from the ones included in the package. I then cooked the soup base on boiling water after taking out and draining the noodles.

Here below is what the final dish look like.

I placed too much water instead of the recommended one cup so the soup looks too thin but the Shoyu Ramen taste is still there. The noodles were surprisingly firm given that I extended the cooking time beyond 5 minutes. I only forgot to rinse it in cold water so there were some sticky parts. My final personal rating: 4/10.

My next plan is to learn how to cook Pork Chashu which I think is an essential part of a Ramen dish. I have already watched a few tutorial videos on Youtube and I will be opting for the simpler version of cooking as I did not have enough utensils at the moment to do the ideal cooking procedure.

That is a wrap. Until the next blog post.

*header image from Fork Knife Swoon