Lahat ng Tungkol sa Aking Ina

Shoutout to my mother who reads my blog every now and then.

Busy life means an inability to keep in contact with everyone living a distance greater than 100 miles away. Its awful.

Anyways, it was very nice talking to her and letting her know what's up with my life. But she'd basically pieced together bits and pieces of it through her expert internet researching abilities. Even though she reads up on me, we're still not facebook friends. That's just far too intimate.

Been blogging more in my free-time. Hmm... oh, that's right, because now that summer school is over and The Daily Texan has wrapped up until the start of the fall semester, I've got a little bit of time on my hands. Magnifique. Unfortunately, I've pretty much given up on blogging strictly about food. It's such a process.

Not much else going on. Gonna have to start making this ratatouille soon. My vegetables are getting kinda old now. I don't know how to make a classic ratatouille at all, but I'm just gonna... well... make my own version of it.

I wonder if she cares that I'm posting up her [facebook profile] picture?
This is my mother, whom I adore.

Croque-mariage

[The title's supposed to make sense when you see the second picture]

I prepared croques again today! But this time, I wanted to try just a regular croque-monsieur.

Rachel made herself a croque-madame. We used different cheeses for our own respective Béchamel sauces and this time, I did not burn our sandwiches during the broil! I used Dijon mustard also to keep it closer to the original French way of preparing this sandwich but Rachel didn't like it (wah wah wah). I put a little too much on mine though. But it was so so delicious still. I just love the sauce on top with all the melted cheese and the crunchiness of the bread (croque translates to crunch in English).

Et voilà (and there it is!) -- a croque-madame and a croque-monsieur... in a croque-mariage!

Croque-madame

Ya, I've been watching a lot of Food Network and I've got this bug to cook. I mean, most of the stuff I've been making is pretty simple. This one was a little more difficult, but it was worth every bit of the hard work. I originally set out to make a Croque-monsieur (French toasted ham and cheese sandwich) but since I burnt it during the broil, I decided to add a poached egg on top in hopes of perhaps covering up the burnt taste a little more. And voila! Croque-madame!









Next time, I'll be careful to not burn my sandwich when I go to broil. Also, I'm gonna put more ham in there. I mean, it was delicious and all but I could've put more ham in my sandwich. I was being a pansy (actually, I wanted the main taste to be the Béchamel sauce/Gruyère cheese). Does this look good? Yes, I'm sure it does. I'm definitely going to make another one of these in the future. I've got enough cheese to do another, I think. It's absolutely delicious. I can't stop thinking about it.