From Garden to Table

One of the most charming things in living in Alfonso is the easy access to herbs and vegetables and that's why garden to table dining is pretty much in fashion here.  My neighbor Aling Emma cultivates an herb garden.  She specializes in tarragon, providing abundant supply for Sonya's Garden's tarragon tea and also some of the basic herbs we use in our kitchen.  Here's a picture of her tarragon which she sells at 3 for PhP 100.  Not bad at all!  

Tarragon tea is so easy to make.  Get half a handful and just throw into your teapot of hot water.  Wait for at least 5 minutes and you have a great natural digestive tea.  She also grows a local mint and it's really great for salads and when you do some Asian dishes like fresh Vietnamese spring rolls.

I couldn't show you her lavender this time because they all got destroyed by the recent typhoon Maring.  I felt bad about it because they actually cost PhP 150 per seedling so I gladly helped her out in her recovery plan with a bag of organic fertilizer called vermi-cast (read: earthworm poo) which I got from Father Giovanni, an Italian Canossian priest who runs Talita Kumi, another lovely place you should all visit here in Alfonso.  I think she appreciated the gesture so much that she's giving me my much awaited green peppercorn vines.   

I'll be using these lovelies to make Thai spaghetti which I loved so much from Greyhound Cafe in Bangkok.  You can toss them in prior to serving and every bite of these green peppercorns give a nice little kick to the pasta.  

In true garden to table dining fashion, we also tried growing our own vegetables in our backyard.  We started by planting white corn and pechay just to test the soil and nature did the rest.  Here's my 3 year old daughter Maya helping with the harvest.  
  

And here's what Dada whipped up.  Chicken adobo with corn, pechay, egg and capers on lemon rice.  It has a nice sweet salty flavor brought about by the muscovado sugar he used and it was perfect with lime juice.  
   

I did receive a request from my niece Ella to post some recipes and so I shall in the next blogs.  For now, I'd like to introduce you to Alfonso and all its wonderful facets that make us fall in love with suburban life.

Happy Sunday!
Mutya

Curious House Guests

Our list of surprise guest appearances grows by the day here in Alfonso.  All very pleasant encounters with farm and forest creatures and the kids are delighted to meet each and everyone of them.  It's a great live learning experience for the kids.  We teach them about animals, insects and the colors they come in and we try to document as much as we could.   More importantly, we also teach our children how to respect and set them free.  Here are some of our curious house guests - the ones that came even before family and friends did.

Introducing, the green crested lizard otherwise known as bronchocela cristatella, a rarely seen creature endemic to the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries.  This little guy suddenly appeared in our backyard and started out brown and agitated before turning into a bright green color.  And that's because he loved posing for photos.

I never got used to how gregarious my husband Jinggoy could be when it came to animals.  He just loves every kind and doesn't hesitate to touch or hold them even if he knows they come from the wild.  I tried to give a gentle reminder, "Ok, babe, we know what happened to Steve Irwin, right?" but that fell on deaf ears.  Next thing I knew, he was posing with the little guy taking selfie shots.  Later, the little guy didn't even want to leave him and was funnily looking back at Jinggoy despite being set free on a tree nearby.

We also see a lot of lovely dragonflies in various colors and sizes but mostly the tutubing kalabaw kind.  We've seen the magenta one, green, turquoise, yellow and white one - yes there's a white one.  I love how they all play around and hover over the pool in the summer.  

Take a look at this unique beetle as well with seemingly engineered lines.    

Or this grasshopper.  Mind you, we have the gigantic kind.

This next one's for the books and I need someone out there to help me identify what this creature really is.  It looks like a scorpion-spider of some sort.  Do you see its claws?  We saw a pair of them in the backyard and of course, this one, we didn't show to the kids.   Strictly for adults only.

Living in Alfonso really does give us a closer connection with nature.  We love the night sounds of birds and the crickets.  They are all so relaxing to listen to and we do sleep a lot better except when we hear Homer, our Boston Terrier, snore.   In the morning, we always wonder what we would discover next...and you really never know.  Just the other day, we had a quail right outside our private garden and that was priceless.

Keep exploring!
Mutya

The Black House

Life in Alfonso starts with the house.  From the very beginning, Jinggoy and I dreamt of having a black cube house in the woods and thankfully, the land we bought in Buck Estate gave us that canvas.

The black house is a creative collaboration between Architect Rey Ylagan and Jinggoy who insisted on black on the outside through and through.  Jinggoy's concept was a house that fell on a forest where trees naturally shot up from different parts of the house.  Currently, we have planted around 10 eucalyptus trees in different pockets but unfortunately, only 4 survived so we shall try again.    

The house is still largely a work in progress and we are far from ready but we decided to move in early and enjoy the transformation.  We are just about to start the interiors and are pacing ourselves one room at a time so check out future blogs where I'll share some room projects and other photos of the house.

Right now, we are simply enjoying the view and the wide space for walking, playing and running around with the kids and dogs.  And that's more than enough.

  

A lot of people ask us, why black?  It seems rather radical to have a whole house in black but we say why not?  Black to us provides a creative environment which Jinggoy as an artist needs, it is sophisticated and timeless, it is sexy and has that distinctive and non-conformist feel to it.  Black means infinite possibilities and no matter how many times this has been said, it is true that black is beautiful.

Ciao for now,

Mutya

The Move to Southern Suburbia

Living in Singapore for 3 years rewires you.  My husband Jinggoy and I enjoyed our time there as we started a family with our 2 mini-schnauzers Noah and Isaac and Mayumi, our first child.  We loved the lush greenery, the clean air and the fauna, which we enjoyed even while living at the heart of the city.  It's a great place to raise a family and pregnant expats at every square meter in Tanglin Mall proved that point.

When we decided to move back to the Philippines, we said that quality of life was a non-negotiable.  We're done dealing with traffic and pollution and we'd like to be able to give our kids an alternative life, similar to the kind of childhood Jinggoy had while growing up in Samal, Bataan where kids can simply be kids.  

And so we were bent on getting a place in Tagaytay but went slightly farther than that in a charming town called Alfonso.  To a lot of people, Tagaytay and Alfonso are dream retirement places.  Some said we were crazy for choosing to live this far away but who says you can't live your retirement as early as now?  We call this country club living. Moreover, the travel time from Alfonso to Bonifacio Global City where I work is just an hour and a half away, which is the same time it takes to travel from Quezon City to BGC without the stress.  Not bad at all.  It's a choice between kilometers of green vs. waiting in traffic.

Today, I wake up excited.  I look forward to going to work in the city and I look forward to going home in the suburbs.  Weekends are bliss when you live in one of the Philippines' top vacation spots because there's loads to discover.  This blog exists to share the journey with you and tickle you a little bit on what the new Philippine suburban life could be. 

Cheers to life!

Mutya