Weekend chores and merienda

These days, I prefer to stay at home during weekends enjoying my "me" time together with the dorgs while the Clairvoyant is away. I take the weekends as an opportunity to recover from a week's worth of hard work, though I must admit I also tend to use the weekends to correct the examination papers of my students. Still, I get to enjoy doing stuff not at all related to work like general cleaning, car maintenance, and putting some order to a variety of things at home.

Last weekend, I had one of our office staff who is an electrician help me change the lighting fixtures in two rooms. I had a nasty experience with electricity back when I was a kid so I generally stay out of such matters unless I know exactly what to do. I also took the opportunity of cleaning shoes, taking advantage of the clear weather to "sun-out" my leathers while the running shoes were safely being dried out in the shade. I deliberately place sports shoes in the shade as I had the experience where the shoes were ruined by exposure to intense sunlight.

To fuel myself for my activities last weekend, I picked up a box of small bibingkas right after I did the groceries. Bibingkas  are rice cakes formulated like pancakes and cooked in a conventional oven (pugon) using charcoal. It is not to be mistaken for puto, another rice cake that is cooked through steaming. I usually purchase bibingkas from Bibingkinitan, a name which is a play on the bibingka and the modifier for small items.

The bibingkas are perfect with hot coffee or hot chocolate (I prefer the latter). But since I was working and it was quite hot last weekend, I instead took some cold orange juice with my merienda. You know they're really good based on the smell alone, and our Lab Troy will just sit beside us to patiently wait for crumbs or the occasional taste tests.

Of course, weekends are also opportunities to visit family and we usually do visit our parents' homes on Sundays to have lunch or dinner with them. That, of course, is another story to be told and retold in future posts.