D.I.Y.

Time crawls when you are a kid, and the three-month summer vacations in the Philippines seem looooong and tedious. I remember being a very creative kid, taking on a lot of craft projects that took my fancy. I remember making my own pasta when I was 10. I also made my own drawstring bags made of discarded pant legs at the time cut-off shorts were the rage. Though sewing wasn't my strongest suit, I sewed and crocheted several dresses for my Barbies when I was 11. I ate self made pasta for a week when I was 13. I've collected (and lost) several recipe collections, and baked up a storm when I was 15. Made a collage/photo album when I was 14.

I guess this is what led to cosplay. For those who didn't know me before 2006, I was an active cosplayer in the Philippines, making costumes of my favorite characters.



This is perhaps one of my favorite costumes, because I made it myself, with a little help from my family. I was always good at making props, I never really excelled at sewing. This costume is made of spray painted paper mache, wire, and cloth. That it turned out so well was my reward in itself.

For some reason, I felt I lost touch with my creative self in Germany because I was so preoccupied in learning German, then Spanish.

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and I have been cooking, cooking, cooking for the past couple of months.

After my first months of pregnancy, when I couldn't even stand the smell of food, I began cooking. A lot. First I got started with Filipino food.



I already started when I first came to Germany, but my zealousness went to high gear in my fourth month of pregnancy. I never thought that my favorite Filipino snacks were so easy to make! Because I am not allowed to eat raw food, sushi was out of the question. It would have driven me mad if it were not for Surimi, fake crab meat, which is actually made of cooked fish. I've made my own sushi before, so why not? So I made my own maki rolls. Then I realized that I missed Shrimp Tempura, which is weirdly enough not standard in Japanese restaurants in Thuringia. I have seen tempura in menus in Hamburg and Frankfurt, but they were prohibitively expensive. They were soooo easy to make! Then I remembered, hey, I haven't seen green tea ice cream in menus here. So I decided to make my own ice cream.

The Germans said that my ice cream tasted more like cookie dough than green tea, maybe I put too much cream? But I was sufficiently satisfied with the results that I decided to make chocolate ice cream. Take note that I don't have an ice cream machine.



Thomas and I, being freelancers, aren't faring so well in this economy. Gifts to friends are mostly now mostly self-made, hopefully they will be appreciated just as much as store bought ones. I have been preparing a small planter that I've filled with herbs for a couple of months now as a going-away present for a friend. We needed a rug for the balcony, and my bag of pairless socks went to good use. Part of me wishes that we were more flush financially, but a part of me asks whether I would be this motivated to be thrifty/creative if we were.