What's your Sunday best?

A beautiful dress? An elegant pair of shoes? Or the best food you can cook and serve? San Miguel Great Food Club challenged cooks all over the country to do their respective Sunday’s Best dishes and submit them to an innovative search for a perfect Sunday meal. This culminated in a cook-out where the top choice was proclaimed winner.

The unique competition was conducted online. Those wanting to join the competition were asked to record themselves executing their recipes.

After an elimination round, five contestants – four ladies and a young gentleman – were selected as finalists. It was this group who came to the San Mig headquarters in Pasig to cook their respective entries live, witnessed by their families, friends, organizers and a trio of judges. While not very original, the dishes had the personal stamp of the contestants, twists that made them new. Of the five, two are students, one a housewife, another is a food research officer and the lone gentleman is a Business Management graduate.

Their skills and techniques evidently need some polishing, but they came out with flavorful and creatively plated dishes. The winner, Geraldine Feliciano, a Hotel and Restaurant student at UP-Diliman, produced a chicken croquette, done not with minced chicken meat but with breast fillet. She made them bigger than the usual size, which made it quite filling as a main course. In these days when all of us are pressured by lack of time and work, a simple substantial and flavorful meal is most practical to prepare at home.

The other finalists were Mercedita Madrona who did a tediously complex but delicious pastry-wrapped chicken bacon roulade; Belinda Evangelista with her chili minced meat in bell pepper; Jessica Dizon with chicken cordon bleu and Harold Gumabay who did adobo paella.

The competition confirmed that food (business and otherwise) is a promising endeavor and there are a lot of talented chefs whose creativity is still untapped.

Kudos to San Miguel for this encouraging venture. Needless to say, their products including dressed chicken, processed meat and the luscious fiesta ham, plus their cheeses, rank high among consumer choices.

Now, you can touch, feel and sniff chocolate, like you do wine, then enjoy its flavors and smooth consistency. This we found out at the recent event held by the makers of Van Houten (pronounced Hawten) at the Society Lounge in Makati.

Actually, we grew up with this brand. We would hide them under our pillow for fear of being reprimanded for taking too much.

The love and passion for chocolates is called “cocoaphilia” and the person who indulges is a “cocoaphile.” Van Houten has been in the business for 180 years, starting in Amsterdam and eventually conquering the world of cocoaphiles.They have just partnered with Hershey’s.

Good choco products come from carefully selected beans, a premuim blend and expertise in perfecting the art and science of chocolate making. And who will argue the fact that a piece of chocolate can ease one’s nerves, give a soothing respite with the pleasure of savoring a smooth and creamy dessert or snack? Get a bar and relax.

One must be very careful when buying pre-packed food items, especially fruit and vegetables. You might end up, as we did, with lovely looking apples which are rotten inside. Keep your receipts as the store will certainly ask for them when you return the items. Refrain from buying mangoes these days. They normally look good on the outside, but are spoiled inside. Some stores mix their nearly-spoiled vegetables with the good ones. For onions and others, it is best to choose from the mound.

We are very concerned about teen-age crimes that have been committed lately. Every time we pass the curve under the fly-over at corner Shaw Boulevard and EDSA, we see very young boys, sometimes accompanied by adults, sniffing from plastic or paper bags, in full view of motorists and pedestrians.

How come the policemen/traffic aides in the area do not accost them? Do we now have an indifferent police force who conveniently forget that their duties include safeguarding the community from illegal activities? Let’s help our kids have a more decent life and future. Protect them from the bad elements of society.

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