Just letting everybody who might be interested know that this year’s Philippine Fiesta in Melbourne will be held in the Philippine Community Centre at Laverton tomorrow and Sunday (November 25-26). So, if you’re a Pinoy expat missing the Philippines, here’s your chance to go to a fiesta here in Melbourne. Just go to their website for more information.

If you are Roman Catholic and live in the West area (well, even if you aren’t), there is a Filipino Mass at the St Peter Apostle Mission Parish located at 31-33 Guinane Ave., Hoppers Crossing (Melway 206 F1) this coming Sunday at 12 noon. Actually, according to Mass schedule, there is a Filipino Mass every fourth Sunday of the month at noon. But this coming Sunday though, according to a friend of mine, there is also a free lunch made up of Filipino dishes after the Mass.

So, some friends of ours intend to hear Mass at St Peter this coming Sunday and have lunch there before going to the Philippine Fiesta at Laverton (which is just a few minutes car ride from Hoppers Crossing).

Although we’ll be attending Mass at Hoppers, Raquel and I might not go on to the fiesta with our friends. We decided that we’ll just give this year’s fiesta a miss since we’ll be flying home to the Philippines in December for Christmas anyway.

Instead, we’re heading off to the 2006 Spring Harvest Picnic at Werribee Park at K Road, Werribee (Melway 201B4) for something different. It’s from 9 am to 5 pm this coming Sunday only. Here’s a description of the event from their website:

Food and wine producers from all over Victoria will gather in the grounds of Werribee Park to sample, showcase and sell their tasty products. This is a wonderful day for the family and will feature music and dance on stage throughout the day, cooking demonstrations by well known chefs and lots of activities for kids.

Bring a picnic blanket and basket, and create a picnic from the delicious array of goods on offer. Stock the pantry in time for Christmas, or buy Christmas presents for all your food-loving friends. Ticket covers admission to the Spring Harvest Picnic, Werribee Mansion, the Victoria State Rose Garden and access to the Winemaker’s Cup polo tournament.

So, although we don’t really care much for wine, we care a lot about food. Also, we haven’t seen the Werribee Mansion yet (which is one of Werribee’s tourist attractions), so this is a good excuse to go visit it since the admission for it is also included in the admission for the picnic.

Anyway, this weekend is looking to be a busy and fun-filled couple of days for us. Thank God. I’m so looking forward to doing something leisurely after all the work I’m doing.

I’ve just accepted a challenge my dear wife Raquel has thrown at me. The challenge was that, starting tomorrow, I’m not to eat any chocolates for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, we’ll finid out if I’ll lose any weight because of my abstinence from chocolates.

We got the idea from watching a recent episode of What’s Good For You on Channel 9. They had a little experiment where four blokes who were asked to stop drinking beer for a period of time. At the end of the experiment, they’ll find out if they’ve lost weight and a few inches from their belly.

In our experiment, instead of beer, I’m abstaining from chocolates (since I don’t really drink). I wouldn’t do anything different in terms of exercise or diet except for not eating chocolate. At the end of two weeks, hopefully, I’d be a little slimmer than today.

We were in the vicinity of the newly opened Krispy Kreme shop near Spencer Street yesterday and thought we ought to at least check out the new place. The end of the queue was just outside the door so we figured it won’t be a long wait. Although the shop mostly sells their doughnuts by the dozen, people who want to try only one of the sweet treats could by it singly. $2.00 for original glazed and $2.50 for one of the assorted kinds. We decided to get an original glazed and shared it.

We liked the soft and tasty dough but didn’t like the glaze (we found it too sweet for our liking). If there’s a non-glazed/plain Krispy Kreme doughnut, then it would be just perfect. Hmmm… maybe we ought to go back and see if they have those. On the other hand, it may be better (for our hips and hip pocket) not to, those doughnuts have the potential to be addictive.

Every weekend, Raquel would ask me what dishes I wanted to eat the coming week. I have a list of my current favourite dishes with me so that I wouldn’t forget. However, one dish I loved so much when I was younger was unfortunately absent from my list.

Growing up, I loved it when my grandma or my mum would cook Bistek (Filipino Beef Steak). The dish is basically dried beef steaks cooked in soy sauce and some onions (our family cooks it with potatoes, too). Unfortunately, since Raquel and I have both cut down on eating beef and pork (and lamb) for a over a year now, I haven’t tasted Bistek in a long long time.

One day, Raquel tried cooking a dish that usually needs lamb but replaced it with turkey instead. The end result was that the texture of the turkey was similar to that of the texture of Bistek beef. So, Raquel and I thought that maybe she could try cooking Bistek with turkey chops in place of beef.

And that’s what she did. She boiled the turkey chops first until they were cooked and then she fried them and that was used in place of beef in the Bistek dish. Since there is no beef in this variant of the old Pinoy dish, we couldn’t rightfully call it bistek anymore. So, we dubbed the dish Terstek (get it? Turkey Steak?).

It was easy to forget that I wasn’t eating beef. I absolutely love it. Well, this dish is certainly going into my favourite dishes list.

For those of you who’re curious to try Krispy Kreme donuts to see if it really lives up to the hype but find the Narre Warren store a long distance to go, Krispy Kreme just opened its new store at Melbourne’s CBD a couple of days ago. The new shop is located at Collins corner Spencer streets in the city.

Bananas here in Oz are still quite expensive at $11.98 per kilogram last time we looked. All because of a cyclone that devastated Queensland earlier this year where most bananas are grown. Meanwhile, the Australian government still refuses to lift the prohibition on importing bananas from countries such as the Philippines. Supposedly, it is to protect the bananas grown here from possible pests that could be hiding in imported bananas, which might hurt the local banana production. I wouldn’t be surprised though if the actual reason for the ban is really to protect the financial interests of the local banana farmers.

Anyway, the law is the law. If I really want to eat bananas, I guess I just have to bear the price on these bananas for now. My main complaint about these dear bananas is that they aren’t the best quality bananas. Most of those on sale have a lot of dark and soft spots already (I can’t think of a better translation for lamog at the moment). Not very appetising.

There is a cheaper option though. Banana chips. Sure, they’re not the same as the real deal but at least they still taste good and are cheaper, too. One 400g bag costs $2.98 at Coles. That’s like $7.45 per kilogram. Oh, and by the way, the chips were made from Philippine bananas. I guess sugar coating them makes them safer for importation.

So, if you don’t mind eating banana chips as opposed to the real thing, you can probably save some money by buying them instead until the price of bananas come down again.

One great thing about working in the city is the vast number of shops and restaurants we could go to during lunch breaks. Having gotten tired of our favourite shops, we decided to try a Japanese take-away shop tucked away in an alley accessible from Little Bourke Street called Nori Nori. We’ve passed by the shop several times before and have noticed that it’s always packed during lunch hour. Last week, we finally went in and tried it. I ordered the Oyako Don (which was so-so) and Geejay had the Teriyaki Chicken (also quite average). Prices for mains range from $8.50 to $12.50. While eating, we heard two customers separately ask for the Crispy Chicken with Rice and planned to order that next time.

The Crispy Chicken turned out to be small pieces of chicken dipped in what looked and tasted like tempura batter then deep-fried. It was served with a smattering of sweet-chilli sauce with two pieces of broccoli on the side. I usually don’t like deep-fried food but enjoyed this dish. All food are made to order and while waiting for our food to arrive, we surmised that the shop’s stir-fried noodles must be quite popular too, judging from the numerous plates of them being delivered to several tables. I stopped counting at nine plates delivered to four tables in a span of a couple of minutes. This time, I promised myself that I would try one of their noodle box offerings when we dine there again.

After polishing off the chicken, we went for a short walk along Bourke street and saw this new Asian shop near the corner of Russell Street. With its bright yellow sign and big, red Chinese characters, it’s pretty hard to miss. We went in to check it out and found that they sell CDs and DVDs from different Asian countries - Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. There are rows and rows of games, films and audio CDs to choose from. Only problem is we don’t have any ideas of which titles are good enough to purchase so we went out empty-handed. However, it would be a great place to shop for a dose of Asian pop culture. Maybe some friends or readers could recommend some titles?