For those who are unfamiliar, Tocino is a Filipino breakfast staple—it is cured, sweet and savory pork. Tocino is always served with sinangag or fried garlic rice, the egg of your choice, and probably some side of fresh or pickled vegetable or fruit. And good coffee. That combination is called Tosilog (tocino + sinangag + itlog or egg) and is ubiquitous in many restaurant menus throughout the country.

Over here we’ve got a certified Tocino monster in Caroline. She just loves that stuff. But my problem has always been that the tocino we get from the grocery and in many restaurants is almost unrecognizable as meat and is made with saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to preserve it and keep the red color. It’s the same chemical compound used in sausages, bacon etc. Some major non-food uses are in fireworks and fertilizer (?!?). So obviously, I wanted a version of tocino that did not include saltpeter in the recipe.

Renowned for its antioxidants and numerous health benefits, green tea is considered to be one of the healthiest drinks on the planet, if not THE HEALTHIEST. Some say it’s the top anti-ageing beverage, because of its impact on brain and heart health, as well as on your bones and eyes. So why aren’t we drinking more of it?

Milk drinkers will love Carabao’s (water buffalo) milk for its creamier taste and slightly thicker consistency. It is also higher in calcium and protein and has less cholesterol than cow’s milk. In the Philippines, carabaos are practically revered for their faithfulness in the farm and are largely grass-fed. It is a simple diet free from hormones or antibiotics. Years ago this milk was a rare thing at the grocery and a challenge to transport and keep from spoiling. We find it far more easily these days and is thankfully pasteurized. It is the milk of choice for local artisan makers of cheese, ice cream or butter (Read: next level butter). We have many plans for this milk and to start we used it to make the rich custard of our French Toast. You’re welcome.

When you have piles of scratch paper lying around and you can only do so much paper mache you’re not about to throw it all into the trash. Because we are notoriously dependent on notepads, these cute handmade notepads came to be. Our scrap paper was mostly bond paper (with at least one side unused) and we thought this was perfect to make minimalist white notepads for memos and reminders and to do lists. All that’s essential is a cutting tool and some regular Elmer’s glue (yes, no need for fancy padding compound) We recommend a guillotine paper cutter which is as scary as it sounds but does the job of cutting all that paper to size really fast. Although a simple exacto knife could do the job too. You could also paint the finished note pads with any beautiful acrylic paint color to personalize them further. IDEA: Make a whole bunch of these notepads and color code them for the notepad addicts in your life using the acrylic paint which is totally OC, kind of geeky, but also sexy.

These chocolate chip cookies are everything that we want: crisp on the edges, soft and chewy everywhere else, with a hint of salt and just enough warm, melty chocolate. They are great just moments from the oven, but the cookies are even chewier, with a more pronounced butterscotch flavor, after the dough sits overnight in the fridge (not the freezer). You add just under a cup of chocolate chips, but you can also customize each cookie by adding more chips, walnuts (YES. Or no) to each cookie, to please everyone. Which is exactly what these cookies will do.