I’ll be the first one to turn my nose up at anything sugar free. To my mind, partaking of anything devoid of sugar is sacrilegious to my devotion to dessert. It’s like missing the point entirely.But I think that I may have been converted. Almost.In what may be a landmark move, the first and perhaps the world’s only sugar free bakery-café has been set up in Manila, just last June 16 at The Podium. Aptly called sugarnot! – yes, lowercase letters all and an accompanying exclamation point – it’s like a candy store for the diabetic (uh, bad pun) and those similarly sugar-deprived. cake case at sugarnot!My jaw promptly drops open as I gape at the wide array of cakes, pastries, cookies, donuts, and breads. I’m handed a menu and there I see that I can even have a full meal here – my choice of pasta, salads, soups, sandwiches. Hey, I can even have a sundae, (made with ice cream from BTIC). All sugar free too. (!)While ...

The recent spate of comments regarding my post on Myron’s took me by surprise because of the extremely opposing views of the people who had dined there. The reviews were so mixed that blogger Anton even wrote a post about it and so did Marketman. Both bloggers mentioned my article.I’m dismayed and concerned about how vastly different my meal at Myron’s was compared to other people. It’s almost like I was talking about a whole other restaurant. I was going to keep quiet about it until I got this anonymous comment last night about Myron’s, which I reprint here:Honesty, I've become quite careful of what you review, Lor. I think I'm captivated by the writing and the photos more than anything. One of the restos you reviewed called Sakae (owned by UCC) super sucks says my foodie friends. The Cello's donuts were a disappointment too. It tastes day-old even when it's fresh out of the oven. The latest is Myron's which got terrible reviews from a good number of friends I have. In fact, a friend clutched my arm tightly to dissuade me from ever going there. At the end of the day, I know that food ...

Hanging on the donut (mug) treeEverybody likes donuts and if you tell me that you don’t, you either haven’t had a good one or you’re lying. There’s so much to like in a donut, whether it be crispy-tender or chewy-soft. Growing up, I thought that all donuts were cakey (a rise attributed to baking powder or baking soda), and I often regarded Dunkin’ Donuts as the best of them all; they were my reward-treat to myself all throughout high school.Raised doughnuts a la Krispy Kreme or Gonuts Donuts, are lighter and fluffier because of yeast. These take longer to make, but are well worth every effort. It just depends on which texture I’m in the mood for. The donuts I buy from the neighborhood panaderia (bakery) are the old-fashioned, doughy types, which is what I make today.I must say that while I love fried food, I never expected to make donuts. I hate to fry. But I’ve been asked to formulate a “fried dough” recipe, and because the term could mean any of a thousand things, I decide to make donuts....

Ice cream by Ian, creations by LoriHe’s Ian Carandang, 31-year old modern-day sorbetero. (It’s actually pronounced “EYE-yan,” but with his permission, I call him “EE-yan.” (Old pronunciation habits die hard.) It was Ian’s seemingly innocent purchase of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s at Duty Free Philippines five years ago that launched his life’s mission: better, bigger ice cream. “I had heard of Ben & Jerry’s before, but had never had the chance to try them until then. I was blown away by the names, the flavors, and the sheer sense of FUN that the ice cream was imbued with.” He talks animatedly with lots of hand movements. When you meet Ian, it’s easy to understand why the concept of “fun” in food is so attractive to him. The guy is loud and large, with an even larger sense of humor. I can’t stop laughing when I’m with him. mmmmelting Mango-Sans Rival, but you can see how sizable the chunks areI once had a craving for his ice cream so compelling that I rearranged my ...

I had hoped to get to M Café by 9:30 in the morning, but my Bin tends to get obsessive-compulsive whenever he’s busy with something. He’s recently acquired a power drill and is busy making holes in the walls for god-knows-what and for only god-knows-how-long.But it’s true what they say that all good things come to those who wait, and as some Singaporean affirmed to me: “Good food must wait”. At M Café this weekend, I may have just had the best breakfast I’ve had in a very long time. Food that takes my breath away is always worth the wait.Of course M Café is the Ayala Museum Café, situated in uber-upscale Greenbelt 4. In the early days of this website, I actually had a chef from M Café use my kitchen for a photo shoot. While I don’t know if said chef is still working at M, I can only hope and pray that my food won’t be manhandled the way the food for the shoot was.Anyway.M Café is like its surroundings: clean lines, glass and ...

prepping for a food shoot“But I really think that white plates work well in photos!” I say quite adamantly.“No, kalaban sila ng camera,” (they contrast too much with the camera) the photographer replies. “Go and look at any cookbook and you’ll see that there are hardly any white plates used.” (I did do just that, and I beg to differ, my man.)This is a conversation that I had last week with a photographer. He and I have been commissioned by a major food company to style and shoot for one of its projects. At the pre-prod (pre-production) meeting last week, we got along pretty well, except that we had issues over using white plates. I love my white plates, whereas he insists on texture and color, including black, which I’ve found difficulty shooting on. potatoes and chicken in various degrees of donenessAnyway, at the shoot today, I do end up styling on two white plates. It works well enough from what I see on the photographer’s iMac. The photographer clicks away, but not before ...

The metal bowl of my sister’s ice cream maker has been sitting in my freezer for the last 365+ days. Initially, I detested the fact that it was taking up valuable real estate in my freezer, and then as time went on, I forgot about it.Fast forward one year later, and I’m browsing through some new cookbooks of mine that for some reason, have an abundance of ice cream recipes. I usually bypass these things because: a) I’ve always thought that buying my own ice cream is faster than making it myself and b) I don’t own an ice cream maker.Er, at least until now.After I shoot a text message to my sister that I’m taking over her ice cream maker for the day, I flurry about getting things together for the flavor I’ve decided to make: a vanilla malted. I’ve talked about my professed passion for anything that has malted milk powder in it – it’s one of those things that I make sure to have ample stock of in my pantry, thanks to my Bin, who lugs back at least two ...

People at the gym I go to think that avocados are fattening. Thirty grams of an avocado contains 55 calories and 5 fat grams. I hardly think that’s fattening at all. The power-lifters at the gym may want to re-think the avocado, I think, because it has the highest source of protein among all fruits, as much as 30%. Now that’s a lot of power. Hello South Beach Diet, or has it been dethroned by the Shangri-la Diet?Avocados are of course, a no-brainer when it comes to eating Mexican food, especially the Mexican-California type. I read a thread once in some online food forum that some Western cultures salt their avocados instead of sweetening it, the way most Asians would. To each his own. I was astounded when my mother-in-law served guacamole at the table with the large avocado stone sitting smack in the center. Odd looking though it was, she insisted that it would keep the guacamole green. Years later, I still haven’t made up my mind whether to believe her or not.I see avocados in the market now, and two things come to mind: avocado shakes and avocado slices on ...