In my previous post, I told you about how I was contacted by Maggi Philippines to "challenge" me to cook. Me being me, there was nothing else to do but say yes (and pray to high heavens that I don't mess it up). Thankfully, I had friends who made sure I didn't mess it up d(-_^) 

For our main dish, let me share with you how we made a Magic Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna by following the Magic Recipe Card found here. Check out the recipe to see the exact measurements of ingredients.

Multi-tasking: precooking lasagna noodles and while boiling spinach

Add the spinach to the drained cottage cheese after squeezing it dry.

Add one sachet of Maggi Magic Sarap. Mix well.

Set the bowl aside and get to work on your mushroom mixture.

Heat olive oil and saute onions and garlic until fragrant, after which you can add the mushrooms. After cooking for about five minutes, add the spaghetti sauce and dried herbs.

Season with Maggi Magic Sarap and pepper and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Now you're almost done!

Spread about two tablespoons of the spaghetti sauce mixture on the bottom of your baking dish.

Lay your lasagna noodles on top.

Add your cottage cheese/ spinach layer.

Repeat for the next two layers, and then top with grated quick melting cheese.

Bake in a pre-heated oven until cheese is melted or is golden brown. In our case, we were toooo hungry we didn't even care ٩(^ᴗ^)۶ 

Here are photos of the finished product. I understand that the photos don't look too appetizing - forgive my camera for that. I can attest though that for a first timer, our Magic Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna was done perfectly! The lasagna was al dente, the mushroom/ spaghetti sauce mixture was tasty, and the cottage cheese/ spinach layer added a nice texture to it. I honestly thought cooking is too exhausting (LOL, I seriously appreciated my mom and grandmothers a lot more after this), but I would love to make this again for my family!

This doesn't have meat so it's a healthy alternative to try! Perfect to prepare and serve to your vegetarian friends and family members, too.

Next time I'd also like to try this Bacon Cheeseburger Lasagna recipe. Yep, apparently I enjoyed this enough that I am looking forward to another shot at it LOL. My next post will describe how me made our own Magic Egg, Bacon, and Cheese Cups!

Disclosure: This is not a paid post. Maggi sent me a gift pack containing their many different products but the money for the ingredients came from my and my friends' pockets.

Aside from frying eggs and bacon, making pancakes, and cooking rice, I never learned how to cook. In the How I Met Your Mother universe, that is my "But umm..." You can ask for my help in your schoolwork or even make me join trivia games, but please don't ask me to cook sinigang or kare-kare for you.

When I was still living independently, my roommates cooked for us all the time. And then, when I had to live alone for almost two years, I subsisted entirely on takeout food ( ˘▽˘)っ♨ My old apartment had a spacious kitchen but I didn't have a stove, and instead of groceries and ready-to-cook meals, my kitchen cupboards housed bath and beauty products.

When Maggi contacted me about cooking using Maggi products and writing about it in my blog, I was predisposed to say no. But then, as I am wont to do, I squared my shoulders and said, "Challenge accepted!" Of course I made sure I enlisted my friends' help first ha ha.

A couple of weeks ago, my happily married friends Eric and Erica went with me to wreak havoc in use our friend-who-cooks-so-well Anne's kitchen. Before that, we had a lot of fun choosing the dishes we want to cook for our mini party of five humans (including Anne's boyfriend Chad) and three fat cats. I love Maggi Philippines' website because it's a treasure trove of Maggi Magic Recipe Cards - healthy and easy-to-make recipes you can prepare for your family and friends! Yep, they are all fool-proof even for me. Among all the many choices of recipes available, we decided on these two: Magic Egg, Bacon, and Cheese Cup and Magic Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna.

Click here for the original post in Maggi's Facebook page Click here to read my post about the process of cooking it

Just some of the ingredients we used

So, how did it go? Watch for my next post (^_−)☆

Disclosure: This is not a paid post. Maggi sent me a gift pack containing their many different products but the money for the ingredients came from my and my friends' pockets.

I finished reading Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl this afternoon and I just, umm, well, I don't know what to do with my life right now.

Rainbow probably really slides down rainbows on her spare time because I find her writing magical. She doesn't even write about fantasy worlds (okay yeah, maybe in Fangirl she does, but only a little), but she writes so well! She manages to string words and combine them to write something very refreshing and quirky and fun and unique. Simple, but tugs at your heartstrings with its honesty and innocence. She also wrote Eleanor & Park, also one of my favorite reads this year, and I just love how she fleshes out her characters. I have yet to read Attachments but I'm already sure I'm going to love it, too.


One of my favorite things about having a Kindle is being able to virtually highlight my favorite passages without worrying about defacing a book. Out of everything I've read via Max the Kindle (and I have already read a lot), Fangirl has the most number of quotes I highlighted. I just love the individual voices of the characters and relate with Cather so much. I do think we have a lot of things in common.

Also, there's really something to be said about being inspired. After watching Catching Fire (read my spoiler-free review here) the other day, I came up with another great (maybe) idea for my future book! If you remember, I shot down the original idea I wanted to work with as it turns out to have been made into a movie already seven years ago! It came to me immediately after I woke up on Friday morning that I'm not sure whether it was from a dream or not, and I'm so excited to work on it that I won't wait for NaNoWriMo 2014 to begin!

Anyway, since we're on the subject of fangirl-ing, let me show with you something I saw about a week ago and found too cute, funny, and relateable (at least to me!) not to share.

I am very passionate and can be a little lot intense sometimes most of the time and I guess that permeates through my interests as well. I can line up for hours just for a few minutes of shy conversation with my idols, I can go on and on about how I love a specific fictional character, going to a concert of one of my favorite artists leaves me entranced for weeks, and I can even wax lyrical about my idols' mundane quirks!

You already know about my never-ending love for Batman. Now, here are a couple of people I am deeply engrossed with.

Two weeks ago, Alvin went to the POPtastik Pinoy conference in Ayala Museum. I wanted to go but I wasn't able to because of work. In there, he met Manix Abrera (remember how I lined up for more than six hours for his autograph? And remember how he remembered me the next time he met me?) and I was blown out of my socks when he sent me a message that night with this:


It doesn't end there. On Facebook, I tagged Manix and Alvin to thank them for this sweet gesture, and imagine my delight when Manix replied! It was 5 in the morning when I read that notification so that reeeally woke me up!



Next is my love Nate Ruess of the band Fun. because why not?


He's funny, smart, witty, has a really good voice that I find my heart breaking every time I hear him sing, carries himself well, dresses well, and is mightily sexy. He is also a very good songwriter. God I love him so much.

Current wallpaper, what up.

I love how something I originally intended to write as a book review became an instant confession-fest of my fangirl feels. I apologize for going beyond my intended word count, but, you know, no regrets.

The night is young. What to read next?

A few months ago, we were introduced to Tokyo Tokyo's three new variants of ramen ─ Braised Pork, Spicy Chicken, and Tempura Miso ─ the newest additions to Tokyo Tokyo's expanding menu of delicious and affordable Japanese dishes. A hot bowl of ramen is one of my preferred comfort foods especially in this cold weather and among the three, I like Spicy Chicken the most.

Because Tokyo Tokyo is awesome, they are giving you guys a chance to win P1,500 worth of Tokyo Tokyo gift certificates so you can treat your family and friends to a nice Japanese feast. All you have to do is join this fun giveaway!


Side story: Can I just say I'm a total personality quiz nerd? I wasted spent hours of my life trying to learn which ice cream flavor or which Sex and the City character or which shoe style I am, so this giveaway is right up my alley (´▽`ʃƪ) Of course, it goes without saying that I also took this quiz. I got this result:

And I must say it's very fitting! Would you want to know yours and get a chance to win P1,500 worth of Tokyo Tokyo GCs in the process? Check out the Rafflecopter widget below!

Please note that taking the quiz and posting the screenshot of your result on your Facebook wall is mandatory. This giveaway is open to everyone residing in the Philippines and will end on December 2. I will announce the lucky winner on December 3. Hope you enjoy learning what your Ramen Personality is! Good luck!

I spent a lot of waking days waiting for this moment, and now that it has finally come, how could I possibly explain how it feels?

It's like getting the wind knocked out of you. It's like one of those moments when you hold your breath and you feel like you ran out of oxygen. It's like you can't breathe out of sheer anticipation. I've been trying to think of other ways to describe it as succinctly as possible but my thoughts are all over the place.

I'm reacting like this because I saw Catching Fire on its first screening earlier today and man, it left me speechless!

The whole train ride going to the office after was spent taking down notes of my 'feels' and being enveloped in the movie's awesomeness. I'm trying to think if I'm just being biased - Catching Fire is my favorite book in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy after all - but no, I seriously think the movie's flawless.

It certainly helps when the movie that precedes yours becomes a blockbuster since it's almost always given a no holds barred budget. Even by watching the trailers, you can tell that no expense is spared in making this. Rightfully so, as I feel that even though I think the first movie was great (I watched it thrice in the big screen!), I didn't think the divide between the Capitol and the rest of the other districts in Panem was displayed that much. Here, the Capitol is much grander, more ostentatious, more boisterous. The costumes are a lot better, too. But like the first movie, this one is another condensed, yet expanded version of the book, since the book is told through Katniss Everdeen's point of view. You'll know when you see it.

I am not a purist when it comes to book-to-movie adaptations but I do agree that you can only do so much with the source material. As it is, let me tell you that The Hunger Games : Catching Fire is probably the best book-to-movie adaptation I have seen. EVER. I've reread the book fairly recently and watching the scenes unfold in the cinema earlier was like having the book read to me again, only this time it has visuals! There are some things they had to change due to time constraints and everything but they were all very minor. Given the circumstances, the director Francis Lawrence and the rest of the producing team, the cast, and crew did a great job in staying faithful to the book. 

I hate giving spoilers, but please give me this. I get a special thrill when characters break down the fourth wall, and when that happened so bravely, so defiantly, well, I wanted to stand up and clap my hands so bad.

Now I'm looking forward to the last two movies (since Mockingjay is going to be divided into two). See that is what I'm talking about when I said you should never run out of things to get excited about. ;) But before that, I'm going to another screening of the movie tonight care of Nuffnang Philippines and PLDT Home. I've seen movies more than once before, but this is the first time I'm actually seeing one twice on the same day.

Took the Catching Fire geekery a little bit further by wearing my

Come and make sure to catch the movie! Even if you haven't read the books, just make sure you saw the first movie and you're set.

Happy Quarter Quell!

Heya, everyone! For all electronic music fans out there, I have great news for you. I have a flash giveaway to tomorrow's United Republic Music Fest care of SM Accessories!

The upcoming EDM festival UNITED REPUBLIQ will be donating all proceeds to the victims of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan). With producers WORLDWIDE WOMB and DRIVEN with VIBER and TATTOO powered by GLOBE, and SM Accessories. The festival is bringing in superstar international DJs Axwell, Nicky Romero, and NO_ID along with local favorites DJs Ace Ramos, Marc Naval, Martin Pulgar and Mars Miranda on November 21, 2013, 6 PM at the Mall of Asia Concert Grounds for this massive Electronic Music Assembly for a Cause.

All international and local DJs have decided to pull together and contribute their talent fees in an effort to provide relief for this national tragedy pledging an estimated Php 7,000,000.

Would you like that pair of Silver tickets? Just check out the Rafflecopter widget below to join:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
The winner should be able to claim his/ her prize from SM Accessories' office. I will announce the winner immediately after the giveaway ends. Good luck and enjoy!