Hooked on Porto's Streudels

When our group has a gathering, people always look forward to someone bringing in Porto's Bakery pastries. They are really good and always come fresh. I had always wondered where it was, but it was only recently that I finally went online and searched for it.

It is about five minutes away from where we hold our vigil adorations. We went there one morning after the vigil and there must have been hundreds of people that packed the place. All their tables were occupied, they had two lines for ordering baked goods, and one line for picking up pre-ordered goodies. All the lines were long!

I talked to one of the patrons and she said it was this way even during the middle of the week!

We have tried ordering meat pies, cheese streudel, guava streudel, guava & cheese streudel, and ham & cheese croissant. I think it is the pastry bread that makes the treats special. It is just flaky enough without disintegrating, it does not harden and it has a distinct flavor that complements the filling.

We got the cake we brought to my mother-in-law last mother's day from here as well, a mango mousse which you cannot find in just any commercial bakery. I used to have mango cakes all the time in the Philippines, but this tastes totally different! It has just the right amount of sweetness blended with the mango's natural sourness to make it delectable. The mousse is light and totally goes with the soft spongy cake that has a flavor all on its own.

You must try it if you are in the Glendale or Burbank area! Their treats are truly amazing.

Pinay Devotions

I have been wanting to start this blog for a long time. As I mature I have found myself more and more interested in books about faith, strengthening your Christian marriage and devotionals.

I have helped friends write sermons when they preach and thought a blog on my reflections on faith would better contain this than my life blog, OC Pinay, which I use to basically tell my friends and family about my everyday life here in the OC.

Pinay Devotions is a peek into my walk of faith. I hope it helps you in some way...

Three Outfits and One Wonderful Day

My sister and I started our day with a swim in the Hyatt's fully landscaped pool area. My sister was very tempted to try the water slides which was built for kids from 1 to maybe 8 years old only. We were joined by several families with kids and a few vacationing tourists who basked in what little sun there was. The pool was pleasantly heated, but the hot tub was too crowded so we didn't get to it that morning.

We did a quick wardrobe change and went to have breakfast at the Blue Pearl where a fellow pinay greeted us at the door. They had a great breakfast selection of pancakes, omelettes, waffles, french toast and my personal favorite, eggs benedict. The coffee wasn't too bad either!

We then used our funcard to spend the afternoon in Sea World. We watched the killer whales playing in their tanks, leisurely browsed through the souvenir shops, watched the Dolphin Discovery show, and of course Shamu's Believe (front row and center, at the 2nd to the last row of the soak zone). My sister was curious about the arcade and fell in love with the many stuffed animals there. We chose this game where you had to shoot baseballs into a jug, we paid ten dollars for ten balls and got a free pillow automatically. The game looked easy, but it wasn't really by the sixth ball I was getting worried that my sister would be disappointed. And then she threw the seventh ball, the sound of the ball plopping down into the jug had me jumping up and down. Lea did it! And she chose this giant plum-colored teddy bear wearing a t-shirt that had Spoiled written up front. That made her day, I will post the pictures later:) We left at around 6 PM when the park closed for the day.

We decided to stay an additional night in San Diego and I used priceline again to get the same rate for my third night's stay. I called the front desk to confirm that I had made the reservation.

We then donned our dresses to go downtown for dinner. We found Lotus Thai at the corner of Market St. and Ninth. The ambiance was a modern take on traditional Thai decor - I liked it very much. The tables had what looked like candles in a glass vase, but was actually a small gas lamp in the center. It looked like a fine dining restaurant without the fine dining prices. I have never seen Thai food served so beautifully (and we dine in Hollywood's Thai town every chance we get)! My favorite tom kah kai was deliciously authentic. The pad thai was delightfully tasty. I had never seen so much crab in crab fried rice before! And the spicy egg plant dish, which I had cooked before, was excellently done. The chicken satay wasn't all that bad either - although this was not my favorite version of the dish.

We decided to pass on the night scene in the Gaslamp Quarter and ended our evening on a wonderful note. As I am writing this, I look forward to another beautiful day in San Diego...

Online Vacation Planning

I usually do the vacation planning for me and my husband. And for someone who works 12-hour days, this is not easy. Thankfully, like most of the things nowadays I found help online.

My boss once said she got $75 hotel reservations for downtown LA at priceline.com - so I decided to give it a try. I was able to book a room at the 4-star Hyatt Regency Spa and Marina for the same price as a 3-star hotel in the San Diego area only 2 miles away from Seaworld.

Then after I found out what hotel accepted my bid, I looked for reviews about that hotel and found out that the best rooms are in the tower for just a couple of dollars in upgrade. The reviewer had even indicated the exact price for the upgrade so I was prepared when I checked in. It was a really sweet deal! A great little getaway spot...

This is why I love my line of work. The internet just makes life a lot easier for busy people who are more often than not tied to their office! So if you're ever trying to plan a getaway and want a great deal on a hotel, instead of skimping try bidding on priceline.com...

Movie Night: Made of Honor

My silver movie pass would not have let us see Made of Honor for at least another weekend. We originally exchanged my passes to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but an hour or so into the movie the film got entangled and there would be no time to finish untangling it before the next screening. The customer service representative gave us re-admission passes and said we could exchange our tickets for any movie we wanted to see that day.

We went to see Made of Honor. Patrick Dempsey is McDreamy in Grey's Anatomy, personally I think it was that role that made him a hollywood hottie, and plays the lead role in this romantic comedy.

McDreamy was the typical bad boy who invented the coffee collar that Starbucks uses and gets a dime for every one used. He was the local college's Casanova who jumped into bed with the wrong girl during a costume party and ended up becoming her bestfriend. They grew up she worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts and he lived on the proceeds of his coffee collar invention.

He slept around, living on the no-strings philosophy, and she was his weekly Sunday girl who enjoyed being with and taking to all six of his father's weddings. At his father's wedding, Hannah dropped hints that she had feelings for Tom, but Tom seemed oblivious to it. When Hannah left for Scotland on a business trip for six weeks, both of them went crazy trying to talk to each other on the phone. One very early morning call when Tom called Hannah as they were hanging up Hannah half-asleep said "I love you" to Tom, which he never heard of course.

Six weeks later she came back engaged to a seemingly perfect Scottish Duke named Colin. She asked Tom to be her Maid of Honor, he accepted fully intending to stop the wedding from within.

Yes, it did remind me of My Bestfriend's Wedding - except for the fact that I didn't want the same ending.

In the end, the MOH gets the girl - and they lived happily ever after!

Again, it's a feel-good romantic comedy that was really a step up from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Nothing life-changing to write home about, but it made me laugh and made me appreciate my relationship with my husband more. I think it's worth seeing - especially with your significant other. And for the men out there who stumbled upon this blog post, it may be worth going with your wife to see this - you'll know what I mean when you go see it:)

God's Masterpiece: Shamu

Have you ever seen a creature so beautiful it left you in awe of how great an artist God is? This killer whale in all its glory, so endearing to kids from 1 to 92 is simply magnificent.

They still call them Shamu - although the real Shamu died in the wild several years ago. To Seaworld, these magnificent creatures that draw thousands of people to their theme park everyday will always be Shamu.

We watched both the Shamu Believe show and the Shamu Rocks show last weekend. We watched them swim in the viewing aquarium and from the walkway above their tanks. Even without their trainers they entertained the people who stopped to peer at them in the walkway.

Just watching these creatures brought you a sense of peacefulness no amount of money could buy. So if you're ever in California, stop by San Diego to say hi to these God-given gifts!