Sweet Pea

Sweet Pea at Venice Piazza at McKinley Hill was a nice surprise. The only time that we get to explore restaurants there is when we have lunch with my husband's parents. Jay and I usually let them pick where to eat and they usually pick a place where I can eat safely (too many allergies!).

So today they chose to try out "Sweet Pea" and my-oh-my they had a hefty menu! I had a hard time choosing what to eat because everything looked delicious. I must have changed my choice five times before I settled for the lasagna (my mantra now is to eat something that I don't cook whenever we are out). My original choice was salisbury steak, then I wanted ham and cheese omelette, then fish and chips, then... anyway check out their menu I'm sure you'll get confused too because they had enticing photos!

Our drinks were served with really cute and colorful straws! Here's Sweetie's pink lemonade (I had a rootbeer float).

We started off with some quesadilla with cheese and bell pepper.

Miguel's chicken fingers quickly disappeared.

Sweetie's mustard salmon fish was enormous!

I must've gained 5 pounds from the sauce-rich lasagna.

I super loved the hawaiian potato salad! (Okay, okay I admit I didn't eat the pineapples hehe but I really loved how they made it).

And I promptly forgot to take a photo of what my FIL and MIL ordered. The short ribs steak which I got to sample. It was absolutely delicious too.

Please forgive me for using the words "delicious" and "love" so many times in this post. I'm still in food heaven right now.

Sweet Pea (map)
Ground Floor, Venice Piazza
McKinley Hill, Taguig City

Must have: potato salad and the steak

Price range: PhP500/head; found it pricey but servings were good and I like the homey feel of the resto (just don't sit near the window where the air purifier is located, it'll make you dizzy)

Lakwatsera Rating: will come back! Just need to save up for it.

Singapore: Shiraz, Persian Cuisine

Whenever I'm around my friend from Pakistan I end up experiencing new things. Last January he brought me and other friends to an Iranian restaurant. He insisted we go there because he wanted to make sure that all the food served was halal. Aside from the delicious food he said that there was a belly dancer in the resto.

I honestly had no inkling about the different dishes so I just to my friend about my allergies and left the ordering to him. Here's what we had:

For starters, we had hummus, garbanzo beans mixed with tahina garlic, lemon and touch of olive oil. I took a tentative dip, but soon gobbled up at lot of it!

We also had the Chef's Signature Platter, a combination of 4 all time favorites. I loved the spinach,  meatball and eggplant. I actually finished off the platter when everyone was focusing on the main meal. Teehee.

For our main dish we had a platter of food, filled with lamb, beef, chicken and some seafood. I forgot already what it's called, but I sampled everything I wasn't allergic too and got one of the huge grilled tomatoes. It was definitely a sumptuous meal and even though there were six of us we weren't able to finish off the whole platter.

I had a lovely evening with friends from different countries. It was entirely a new and exciting experience for me to try out persian cuisine and it's something I'm on the lookout for locally now. I'm definitely hooked to kebab and grilled tomatoes now.

Oh, and here's the authentic belly dancer!



Shiraz (map)
Clarke Quay,
Singapore

Singapore Philatelic Museum

I've been meaning to visit the Singapore Philatelic Museum since 2009, but I've just been terribly busy every time I'm in Singapore. I finally got the chance to visit last January because I took an early morning flight, so after checking in at the hotel and eating lunch I took a short walk to the museum.

I've been looking forward to visiting the museum because I wanted to relive the days when I was an avid stamp collector. I have quite a lot of stamps. I got most of them from my Kuya and the others from being a member of our school Philatelic club and my Mom's friends who'd collect and pass on their stamps to me (special thanks to Fr. Bernard!). Anyway, I hope I find time to unearth my collection sometime this year.

An old-style mail box greeted me as I entered the museum. After paying SG$5 I immediately went through the exhibits on the first floor. The first exhibit detailed how stamps are made. It's quite a long tedious process. I realized though that nowadays only a handful of kids are probably collecting stamps since not many people send snail mail anymore.

What excited me a lot was seeing the Penny Black (one famous rare stamp) in the flesh! I probably peeked through the magnifying glass for about five minutes. I only moved on because a kid stepped inside the room and I kinda got embarrassed. Haha. Anyway, I've seen the Penny Black in magazines/write-ups only, so it was my first time to actually see one. (Hyperventilating!!!).

Other things of interest were old mail boxes and post office paraphernalia in the Room of Rarities. I was disturbed with how long postal mail took to deliver in the past. I remember sending my sister snail mail to the US when I was a kid and she relayed to me that it would take at least 2-3 weeks for her letters to reach her husband (back then her boyfriend). Now it just takes a split second for our mail to reach anyone in the US. Communication has definitely changed a lot in the past three decades!

I wanted to bring home a replica of an old-style mailbox, but I found it quite expensive. I guess I'll save up for it so I can match it with my locker replica. In good time. Anyway, I just got myself a copy of a 2009 Singapore-Philippines joint issue.

Hope to find my collection soon!

Singapore Philatelic Museum (map)
Open hours: Monday 1-7pm; Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 7pm
Admission: adult SG$5; Senior citizen/child SG$4
It's just a 5-minute walk from City Hall MRT and is just one tawid from Funan IT Mall