McDONALD’s Frontera Verde

Location : Julia Vargas, Ortigas, Pasig City

A very cozy branch of McDonald’s, I must say this is a very good example of what a McDonald’s store should be. It opened middle of 2009, and yet it has become one of our favorites.  It is a 24-hour store.

They have Mc Café inside, so while children are having their own favorite McDonald’s Meal, parents can have a decent cup of coffee with a delicious pastry.

This branch has a big open-air space upstairs, also ideal for hanging out at night or for children’s party as well. It has ample parking space outside for free, and if that’s full, there’s an adjacent big pay parking lot beside it. And to top it all, there’s FREE wi-fi.

My daughter had a blast in the  McDonald’s Kiddie Crew Program here last summer and looking forward to the next one...

it's a sweet sweet memory  ...

3rd Meatball Recipe : SPAGHETTI WITH MEATBALLS

And lastly, we’ll use the 3rd portion of the meatballs we’ve set aside. Once the meatballs are ready, fry them in medium heat till a bit brown and well cooked. Don’t over fry them or they will turn our dry and loose its juices. Set aside, we’ll use them later.

Ingredients for the spaghetti sauce:

2 tbsps Cooking Oil

1 tbsp Garlic, chopped

3 medium Onion, chopped

½ kilo Ground Lean Pork

½ kilo Sweet & Juicy Swifts Hotdogs, sliced diagonally

1 pouch Spaghetti Sauce (Filipino Sauce)

1 pouch Hunt’s Spaghetti Sauce (Regular type)

1 pouch Tomato Sauce

¼ - ½ cup water

4-6 tbsps Soy Sauce

Salt, Pepper & Sugar for seasoning

Procedure:

In a pan, sauté garlic in cooking oil till fragrant, then add onion, stir well, then put the ground pork, saute till the pork turns pale in color, add soy sauce and pepper, sauté very well and let it cook for a few minutes. Then add all the spaghetti sauce and tomato sauce, add water, bring to a boil and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes. Then season to taste, if it needs salt and sugar, adjust according to your taste. Lastly, add the fried meatballs and simmer for a few minutes more and its ready to be mixed with boiled spaghetti noodles. Topped with grated cheese. Bon appetite!

Note: If you want, you may decrease the amout of ground pork and just add ¼ kilo since it already has meatballs, and add more hotdog instead.

2nd Meatball Recipe : MEATBALLS W/ SWEET & SOUR SAUCE

For this recipe, we’ll use the second portion that we have set aside in the freezer. Thaw it if it’s still frozen, and form again into balls. Once ready, fry them in medium heat till a bit brown and well cooked. Don’t over fry them or they will turn our dry and loose its juices. Set aside, we’ll use them later.

Ingredients for the Sweet & Sour Sauce:
2 medium, Onion, sliced in chuncks
2 medium, Tomatoes, sliced
1 medium, Green Bellpepper, sliced
1 medium, Carrot, sliced
2 tbsps Cooking Oil
1 cup water
4-6 tbsps. Banana Catsup
2 tbsps. Vinegar
½ cup Brown sugar
Salt & Pepper to taste
¼ cup Cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsp water

Procedure:
In a saucepan, sauté onion, and tomatoes, then add carrots cook for a few minutes, them add the bellpepper. Saute them for awhile, then set aside in another container. In the same saucepan, put the water, banana catsup, vinegar, brown sugar, salt (about a pinch) and pepper. Mix well and bring to a simmer over low fire, taste if it needs more sugar and salt. Then thicken with cornstarch dissolved in water and gently simmer again. Lastly, put back the stir fried vegetables into the sauce, and when ready to serve, add sauce into the fried meatballs. Enjoy!

1st Meatball Recipe : ALMONDIGAS

Soup type of dish with Meatballs in Miswa and Patola, another comfort food...
(Miswa is a very thin variety of Chinese noodle. Cooking miswa usually takes less than 2 minutes and sometimes significantly less.)

Ingredients:
3 tbsp Vegetable cooking oil
1 tbsp Chopped Garlic
2 medium size onion, sliced thinly
3-4 pcs. Medium sized, tomatoes, sliced thinly
½ cup Fish Sauce
1 pc. Pork Cube
200 gms. Miswa Noodles (more or less)
Sliced Patola
4-6 cups Water
30 pcs. Pork Meatballs

Procedure:
In a pot, saute garlic till light brown, then put onion, then the tomato. Saute well, then put fish sauce, let cook some more. After a few minutes, add 4 cups water, let it boil over medium heat, and add the pork cube. Once it boils again, drop the meatballs one by one in different points in the pot so as to avoid the meatballs from sticking with one another. Let it simmer over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, then add the separated miswa noodles and shortly add the sliced patola. Simmer again for 2-3 minutes then turn off the fire and serve while still hot.

Note: There are times, when I choose to add less meatballs, I add peeled boiled eggs into this soup dish. Just add it in the last part of the cooking process. You can serve soysauce with calamansi in it as added seasoning on the side. The amount of Miswa noodles will vary depending on how thick you want your soup to be, the more miswa you add, the thicker the soup will be.

FOR MEATBALL LOVERS

We’re at my sister’s house now for a supposed to be a short visit, but my daughter and my nephew need more bonding moments that’s why we decided to stay a little longer. These gave us an opportunity to cook some “old-time favorites”, foods our mother used to prepare when we were kids. A few days ago I made a big batch of meatball mixture, I did it on purpose cause I have 3 different recipes in mind using meatballs. It’s one of those days when you just have that “meatballs craving”.

‘Am also posting the following 3 recipes as a tribute to our mother, who made sure that while all of us her kids are growing up she prepared nutritious and delicious food everyday. Delicious to us then doesn’t mean expensive food, our “Nanay” made simple dishes seems special to us. Back then, she would prepare a simple soup and pair this with fried tofu with dipping sauce on the side, and we learned to love tofu so much that it’s a regular in our dishes until now. “Nanay” is my first teacher in the kitchen, much of the recipes I know now are mostly her recipes and also our father “Tatay” is a food lover and a good cook as well. I will have to do a separate “tribute” for Tatay’s delicious recipes.

BASIC MEATBALL MIXTUREIngredients:
1 kilo ground lean pork
2-4 pcs Whole eggs
1-2 cups Bread Crumbs
2-3 tsp Salt
1 ½ tsp pepper
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup carrot, chopped
¼ cup spring onions, chopped

Mix everything in a bowl. When well mixed, fry 2 small patties. (I always do this when making meatballs or burger, to taste if I needed to add any salt or pepper, and also to test if the bread crumbs I added is enough to make a patty or a meatballs. Season some more if needed.

When you’re satisfied with the taste of the meatball mixture, divide it into three, and put aside the other two (2) portions in 2 separate containers and keep them in the freezer. You may choose to make balls before freezing them, so whenever you will need to cook another meatball dish, they are ready.

For the 1st Recipe, we’ll just use 1/3 of the mixture. This portion will yield around 30 meatballs or more, depending on the size of your meatballs.

I'm Back!

I wasn't able to blog for many days, my laptop was out of order, I felt so helpless :( … its a good thing I have an external drive where I stored all my files for backup, I was able to salvage all my files and lost nothing. I miss blogging, I felt as if I missed alot. So for the following days I will be featuring again more recipes. Yeey!!!

For those who left a message, please bear with me and I'll try to catch up on your messages, and hopefully everything will be back to normal real soon.

I Miss Blogging!

Sorry guys I wasn't able to post any new recipes or articles lately, my laptop went dead, but it will be up soon. Watch out for more recipes! I miss blogging so much... thanks for dropping by and leaving your friendly comments.