Banana bread

It's my little ones favorite. BANANA. It may be the fruit itself, make it a bread or even a yogurt. To please him with something to eat,you can never go wrong with banana flavor. The all time favorite:) It's actually difficult for me to have stocks of ripe bananas. At home, these are consumed right away. You can now imagine how we love bananas. What i usually do, is freeze the ripe banana until I could accumulate 4 pieces of it. As soon as I have four, I can bake banana bread right away. This recipe calls for 1 teaspoon baking soda, unfortunately I don't have any so I substituted it with 3 teaspoon of baking powder. And it still turned out great. Here's the recipe.

1 cup ripe bananas (usually 4 pcs medium size)
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 pcs eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees celsius. Mix all the dry ingredients, flour, sugar,salt,and baking powder. If everything is thoroughly mixed, then combine the rest of the ingredients, the bananas,vegetable oil and vanilla. Mix everything together, I used electric mixer until batter is formed. Pour the mixture into a greased loaf pan and bake for an hour. Let it cool and grab a slice. Enjoy!

Glad to be back!

I was out of the blogging world for while. We were in Ireland for almost 3 weeks. Ireland is our favorite destination during holidays because this is the nearest place where I can find people closest to the heart...my sister and her family. Me, with the unending exchange of thoughts with my sister while the little one enjoying the company of his cousins, and my hubby of course enjoying his holiday with the family and being off from work. It's always been a delightful experience to be in the company of people you care and love. This is just a small-scale experience, I can only imagine how joyous it would be if it would be my entire family, all together in one place. Every time I think of it, it always painted a smile on my face. Happiness really comes from simple joys. I think i posted a lot of times already about Ireland, but every time we are there, there's always something to tell.I'd like to share some photos we had.

 watching happy feet

(my sister with the kids)

 a ride for tourist

 balbriggan harbour

 my sister and I

dublin city at night

My Parent's Visit

Looking back how young and vigorous they were before,and seeing them now, with wrinkles on their faces, the back pains and even having arthritis, gave you the strong desire to do something that would paint a smile on their faces. Being together, and sharing memories together are the priceless gifts one can give to their love ones. It is of course, with God's providence and grace that my parent's visit made possible.And the combination of efforts from all of us. All the siblings did the share to process everything until it became a reality. Filipino citizens are required a visa to enter Germany and The Republic of Ireland, so their efforts started of course from applying visa to the embassies of the countries mentioned above. Germany-- so they can visit me and my family and Ireland-- to visit my sister and her family.

It was a fulfilling and reflective moments for me, for I was given the chance to take care of them, do some cooking, cleaning, and some other mundane stuffs that one could have done, if you live in the same place. One instance was I was able to color mama's hair, had their nails trimmed, and prepared a nice warm bath for them to enjoy. It was indeed a lovely time together. To be away from your home is both a challenge and opportunity. There are always trade off for the choices we made. And a visit like this was definitely rewarding.

Here are some photos we had:

this was taken at Nymphenburg Castle in Munich

at the BMW Museum

Allianz Arena

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

Munich Center

Freising

These are significant events in our lives, and I think every minute spent with someone we deeply care are always moments to remember. It reminds me of the saying that "It's not the sugar that makes the coffee/tea sweet, it's the STIRRING". We may all have what we need to be sweet and happy, yet if we forget to stir it, then it will be nothing.

Yey!I got my "Führerschein"

Yey! Finally, I have my driving license today. My heart is leaping with joy and so much gladness. I praise God and thank Him for it. My (driving) practical exam lasted for about 35 minutes. I was a little nervous as I get hold of the key and adjusting the mirrors. The examiner and the driving instructor got inside the car. The examiner then gave me instruction on how the examination goes. Before he instructed me to start driving he asked a question (of course in german) if I know where the hazard light located and if I know how to turn it on. Of course I knew it, but the problem was, I didn't understand his question. He sounded like saying "veh-nen", I said to myself, what word is that? What does it mean? I thanked God that the examiner was a bit patient with me, and complimented it with action, then I realized that he was saying "warnen" which means warning. Btw, in German "w" is pronounced as "v". As I got it, I just showed the hazard light switch and that actually break the ice. They were laughing at me, knowing that it's not that I don't know about it but I don't understand the question itself. I did a good start, it was when we were in the Motorway that I screwed up (just a little bit). You can really see that the driving instructor and the examiner were in full attention on how would I enter the motorway. I think, I did it right, I heard the examiner saying "Jawohl" which means "yes, indeed!" It was when he asked me to exit in the direction to Stuttgart that I did the mistake. I exited correctly, but as I reached the exit, there were two lanes, and it was so bad of me not see that the right lane is leading to an emergency bay. I was so focused on the idea that I should use the right lane, and I was wrong. But it's not too late anyway, I noticed that it will lead me to dead end, perhaps with all the angels backing up I was so calm, and was able to think right, I managed to change to the left lane which leads me to the right direction. I really thought that was it. It's over. That was a sign of poor observation of course, but I just continue to do my best. As we exit the motor way, we went to some federal roads, and residential areas, did parallel parking and headed back to the driving school. As I glanced at the back, the examiner was smiling at me, ask me to sign something and handed me my license, what a relief, whew! It was a wonderful day. In my head I was shouting yehey! I did it.

I would like to talk about driving in Germany and that includes getting a license, but I would need a separate post for that so I can put more details about it.

latte macchiato

my caramel latte macchiato at home

Sky is gray, chilly and everything looks gloomy. A warm drink can fill it anyway.I like to drink coffee occasionally but my hubby totally does not, so it's not practical for us to buy a coffee machine if its only for me and of course for some guest. I want something that all of us can enjoy and use it. So we started checking out the small coffee/drink machines. We compare functionality and prices, until we came up with a winner. We finally have our coffee machine, no wait, not just coffee but tea machine as well. We both enjoy it,having coffee occasionally and enjoying tea time together. I like my coffee mild and with lots of milk, it doesn't sound coffee anymore right? but it is... latte macchiato just suits well to my taste. I don't need to go to coffeeshops anymore to enjoy it. I could now do it at home.