It has been six weeks, nearing seven, since the enhanced community quarantine has been put in place. Well, the days have blurred together since. Looking at my drafts for the March roundup some of my little updates didn’t look as engaging, so I’ve taken the most interesting and joined them together here along with April.
I understand it’s not the time to be productive, but I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed staying home and was thriving in my routine.
Large strides in home cooking
It’s remarkable how much I’ve leaned into home cooking out of necessity. I enjoy the usual takeaways, and ordering in on a Friday or Saturday night had always been a guilty pleasure between me and Ben. But that wasn’t going to work long-term.
Here’s a slew of my handiwork. Ben helped me here and there with cutting vegetables and cleaning up:





Breakfast—hers and his. I found a brand of Australian pork sausages at Rustan’s—Gotzinger Cafe Chipolata. Ben likes it, although he said traditionally they have breakfast sausages made from beef?
Full breakfasts are a weekend thing. On weekdays we normally have the Spamsilog for brunch and eat little servings of milk and cereal to tide through the morning hunger.

Not pictured—chicken nuggets. McNuggets are Ben’s most-ordered food for deliveries, I would hazard. I bought him frozen nuggets once and it’s become a comfort food. Just pop them in the oven and it smells so good!

Lamb is now our mainstay dinner. With enough pre-prep, I can make lamb and roast vegetables (carrots, broccoli, and potate) in under 30 minutes.
Lamb is not actually a common meat here, but I got home from grocery-shopping one afternoon and told Ben I found a chunk of Australian frozen lamb cuts in bulk buy-one-take-one packaging. It yielded 12 pieces (depicted above) for PHP 800, which brought the cost of a lamb dinner to PHP 67 per person. I don’t really spoil Ben with two pieces, unless we had an odd-numbered piece or if it was smaller than the rest.
Ben enjoyed the lamb so much he found the same bulk buy-one-take-one deal when he went shopping last.
Some small milestones in home cooking:
Learned to cook steak!
For the abovementioned lamb, a good 70 seconds each side and not a second longer. It produces juicy, medium-cooked lamb. Heat the oil to its smoke point before you put the meat in.
I no longer trust recipes online. Unless you’re dealing with a rich, thicc cut of steak that’s thicker than your face, do not follow any recipe that tells you to salt liberally, or to cook 4–5 minutes each side for medium. That is how I ended up serving my husband a well-done lump of salt. Twice.
Learned to crack an egg without fuss
I suppose you progress in your learning curve much more rapidly when you’re cracking about three eggs a day. Cracking eggs used to give me so much grief and I couldn’t trust myself to not mess it up. (I get really upset when I break the yolk, because I want the best damn eggs for my husband.) That has changed now. I was idly watching Rachel and Jun on YouTube and I came across a video where Rachel was making dinner. She tentatively paused before cracking an egg and asked Jun the basic motion for it. Honestly, you should watch it. Her elation was amusing, but it was the same elation I felt when I surprised myself by cracking an egg clean with one hand on the first try!
It’s honestly a discovery for me. Cracking an egg on the counter produces a very clean, but fine circumferential fissure. It’s much better than my past methods of aggressively-but-gingerly tapping on an egg with a fork or a table knife. All that did was puncture holes into the egg while failing to break the membrane.
I have a home office!
Ben knows how little I enjoy working from home because I feel like there’s no space to set me in the right mood for work. I thrive in a structured environment, which is probably why I was always a good student.
Early in the quarantine Ben invited me to move some furniture around and then…
Voila! I have a home office!
We moved my desk into the spare room, and everything just seemed to fall into place.
Balcony garden
Around Holy Week, I gave my plants their much-needed and long-overdue love. I pruned leggy shrubs and repotted a few plants that have had to contend with their polyethylene bags for months. Cleaned up dead and idle planter boxes, removed dead leaves, and finally cleared our plastic balcony table of unwanted debris. Our balcony became a much more enjoyable place to lounge, and I spend much more time there, either being a helicopter plant parent, eating the weekend breakfast with Ben, or watching the sunset.
I have been gardening with a black thumb for five years, now. And I found a great place to learn high-quality, in-depth advice on plant care: YouTube. I no longer trust little Pinterest hacks or short blogs from people who can’t really tell you what ‘bright light’ is or what ‘water infrequently’ means. Seriously. If you have a plant, the first step is to know its name, then look up ‘<plant name> care / watering / sun / propagation’ on YouTube.
Plant care is a bit nuanced. On the one hand, most plants follow the basic care principles to watch out for: sun, water, food, soil, pests, and diseases. On the other hand, their profiles can vary dramatically. I have a post lined up for my own points in beginner plant care, but for the meantime, Sadia of Pick Up Limes delivers a holistic, well-rounded approach:
Learned to solve a Rubik’s cube!
I have cheap little knock-off Rubik’s cube that’s been with me since freshman year. A dormmate, I cannot recall who now, gave one to me and others as a Christmas present.
I tried fiddling with it but quickly realised I didn’t have a penchant for the kind of creative thinking and logical projection of algorithms and isometric views required to genuinely enjoy it, so I left it alone and in the rare occasions it got messed up I relied on the odd classmate to fix it for me.
The cube stayed with me throughout the years, because it didn’t take much space and resolved itself to become something of a memento of my early UP days. A few months ago my niece decided to play with it and messed it up.
After reading Digital Minimalism last January, I figured instead of burning hours in social media I could ‘learn a new skill’, picked up the cube, and looked up resources for how to solve it. After all, people told me it was ‘just an algorithm’ with no secret trick to it:
I got quite far along Ruwix, but it fell short in some cases in the second and third layers. That’s when I relied on Ryan’s Tutorials. The latter is also much, much better at handling the final layer. Ruwix just tells you you’ll mess it up, then provide exaggeratedly long algorithms and reassured you that you’re doing great even if it looks like you messed up your cube.

Like I mentioned, I ended up getting really far before I lost myself in the convoluted final step of Ruwix’s guide. I got a bit agitated and gave up, before starting over, then leaning more towards’ Ryan’s tutorial. Overall it took me three hours. It felt really good. I can’t wait for someone to mess up my cube again.
First wedding anniversary
Last Monday the 27th marked one year of married life between me and Ben. Time flies! It only feel like a few months ago that I had seen and spent time with my mom and sisters. My gown and bridesmaids dresses will now have been cluttering our apartment for a year. I believe it’s time to stop trying to sell them and to simply give them away.
Ben was incredibly creative and gifted me this:

Because the first anniversary is a paper anniversary, he gave me a print. I had nothing for him, except the promise of Australian rib-eye steak for dinner. 🙁
I don’t feel too bad, because Ben is a functional minimalist (he doesn’t need the label and doesn’t really buy into the trend right now). And I believe my love language simply isn’t gifting. When I give gifts they’re few and far between, if because I prefer to give an insanely thoughtful and personalised gift, or no gift at all.
Nonetheless, it’s been a wonderful year of ups and downs, more laughter and inside jokes than upsets or arguments. My view of our relationship definitely changed since we got married, as I sort of take my marriage vows and role as wife seriously. I still fall short often but life is so forgiving to me and to us both.
Whether this quarantine ends in a few weeks, or the pandemic dies down in the next several months, I feel optimistic about life.
To my small readership, I hope life is treating you well, too. Stay safe. Have a lovely weekend.