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I like canned corned beef - it's comfort food for me. (Why, yes, I AM filipina!)

1) Saute garlic and onions till onions are translucent. Add tomatoes and cook till tomatoes are basically liquified. Add corned beef and mash around. Taste - if it needs salt, I use a couple of dashes of fish sauce. Eat over rice with a fried egg. Ok, I'm kinda hungry now.

2) We used to do this to make food stretch out: make corned beef soup! Same deal: saute garlic, onion, tomato. Add corned beef, couple of dashes of fish sauce. Add low sodium chicken or beef broth/stock/buillon (if using buillion, don't use fish sauce). When boiling, add macaroni noodles. Once noods are done, turn off heat, add a dollop of milk/cream/half and half/evap milk (whatever you've got in the fridge), add shredded cabbage and shredded carrots. Serves a LOT of people.

3) Corned beef fried rice: sautee (lots. This is key. You need lots and lots and lots of) garlic, some chopped up onions. Add corned beef and mash around to separate. Add lots of cold white rice. Stir around, salt and pepper to taste.

My aunt's grilled pork belly is ridiculous, and I have yet to finagle the recipe. All I know is it involves oil, garlic, cracked pepper, salt, a bit of lime and some secret ingredient that I have yet to figure out. All I know is that as soon as she pulls that slab of pork belly off the grill, it's gone in minutes.

oh my goodness, $1k for knives? Are you getting a full set of swords to go along with that?

Get ye to a marshalls/homegoods/tjmaxx and scour their kitchen goods section. I lucked out and got a set of Henckels - the heavy weight, professional set - for less than $60. Granted, it didn't have the kitchen shears it was supposed to come with, but who cares? I got a chef's knife, a paring knife and a utility knife. I bought the shears separately for less than $15. Now I'm on the lookout for a santoku, and am even considering getting a lighter weight chef's knife now that I've got carpal tunnel.

lemon + sugar syrup + fizzy water + ice = what I live on during the summer. Sometimes, I throw in some mint. Sometimes i use lime instead. But lemonade is what makes summer bearable.

ChelleyD01 I don't mind Monin's low shelf life - I'll end up keeping them in the fridge anyway.

Thanks for the advice to seek out a local coffee supplier. Genius. Thank you!

dbcurrie I was looking at Monin's stranger flavours: like Jasmine or Violet. I have no idea how I'd use that in a drink (or on shaved ice), but it looks fascinating. But thanks for the heads up re: Marshalls. I need to check that out and see if they have bottles I can play with. I just don't want to spend upwards of $8.00 plus shipping just to find that it sucks.

ag3208 - I think (U.S.) Coke Zero uses Splenda as a sweetener, and (U.S.) Diet Coke uses Nutrasweet (or a Nutrasweet/saccharin mix). I hate them both. Coke Zero is, oddly enough, too sweet (with a bitter finish). Diet Coke has this weird chemical/metallic taste to it no matter how cold you drink it.

Coke Light, on the other hand, tastes so much like regular coke. You only notice the fake sugar if you drink it lukewarm. But served over ice? AMAZING. I'd drink this everyday if I could.

Need.Coke.Light.in my life.

Grumpy Old Man - I just juiced some limes, and made a ginger-sugar syrup for the ginger/lime fizz. The cran-apple and the pineapple juice were store bought (the last dregs from my last grocery run). The fresh juice definitely tasted better, but the cran-apple was surprisingly refreshing too. The doohickey is ridiculously easy to clean. I make a bottle of fizzy water, then pour it into a pitcher with the juices/syrups/whatever. That way, the bottle just needs a quick rinse before i refill with filtered water for my next round of fizzies.

Chew on That, yes it came with a whole bunch of free flavour packs. I'm not a huge fan (I've tried the orange and the berry, and they were just ok.)

Adam Kuban Thank you! I just bought a copy off amazon. Woohoo!

Seina I'm gonna have to hit the grocery store to get some Pom to play with. I also just found some recipes to make blueberry and raspberry syrups. Om nom nom.

I love my Soda Stream. Forget the cokes and sprites and what nots. Hello, delicious fruity (and alcoholic) fizzies!

onedaylingers, I'm no coffee connoisseur by any means (this from the girl who drinks instant semi-regularly.) I guess barako tastes a little like really strong, deep, earthy chicory coffee. An aunt gifted me with a bag of it (ground already, unfortch) and I brewed a pot. It was all kinds of good: deep and strong, but without that overly roasted, bitter taste I hate.

Girl, if we lived close to each other, we'd each be 600 lbs, and we'd be on the 6 o'clock news as those chicks whose walls had to be taken down so they could winch us out of the kitchen and brought to the hospital on a flatbed truck. DANGER, WILL ROBINSON.

You guys are fabulous. I usually buy mung bean sprouts, but I think soy bean sprouts taste amazing. I'm going to try the gado-gado for sure. It's awesome used in stir fry, but I bought a huge bag of the stuff (it was so cheap!) and I want to use it up before it gets mooshy and rotten.

Wooohoooo! I'm glad you have joined the cult of hot chocolate w/peanut butter. It is magical stuff.

Peanut butter + tsokolate is legit, at least it my town it is. When the cacao is ground up, toasted peanuts are added to the mortar thingie to give the tableas heft and...well...to stretch it out.

If you've got left over tsokolate (ha! Like that would happen), use it to make champorado (sweet rice cooked in tsokolate, then drizzle with a bit of condensed milk for extra calories and extra deliciousness). A slightly healthier version? Use the left over tsokolate and cook your plain oatmeal with it. YUM.

Definitely NO need for a batidor. I cheat and use my blender or stick blender or whathaveyou (I find the blender gives me crazy froth).

It's a longish process, but worth it.

What I do is put cold water in a heavy saucepan, add a pinch of salt and add your tableas (do you have the largeish tablets or the home-made balls of tsokolate? I use the balls - a neighbor from the town I grew up in makes them and I brought a bag of it back to the US. The balls are bigger than a golfball, and 1 ball= 1 cup of water. So my instructions might not work as well as the tableas are processed much more finely. The balls that I use are hand ground with peanuts so it's awesomely gritty.) If you have the tablets, use less water - 1/2 to 3/4 cup for a tablet?

Turn on the heat to medium. And then leave your tableas and water alone. Just let the water heat up and start dissolving the tableas. Once the water starts to boil and you start getting bubbles on the surface, stir and break up the rest of your tableas. Stir till fully dissolved and it's nice and hot.

It'll be dark, bitter and gritty. If it's not, turn the heat down, and add a couple more tableas. It needs to be really dark and bitter to cut the supersweetness of the condensed milk. I actually add a teaspoon or so of chunky peanut butter into the mixture at this point. My grandma drinks it straight up like this (and makes it w/about half the water I use). None of that pansy-ass sugar business for her. It tastes like smokey espresso, with peanuty undertones when drunk like this.

Pour into a blender and start pulsing it while adding the condensed milk till it gets to the 1) taste 2) consistency 3) color that you like. For almost 4 cups of tsokolate, I use anywhere from 1/2 - 3/4 of a can of condensed milk. (I'm pansy ass, I like it sweet).

Other variations: rather than peanut butter, add some cinnamon and chile powder (not the taco seasoning stuff, but the spicy hot stuff.) Awesomesauce.

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

When I don't have condensed milk, I just cook the tsokolate with skim milk, and then add sugar when I'm frothing it. Not as thick in the mouth though.

Vanilla cookie with a pistachio filling. OMG.