food

A Greek feast at Cyma

Jody Alarva3 Comments

cymaSunday morning. I had like 2 hours of sleep under my belt. I had to go to mass. With two words, Joannaman perked me up instantly. “Cyma tayo“. I dragged my tired body and even if I wanted to crawl under a rock and wake up the next day, went to mass earlier than I planned (I was planning to just go by myself later in the day) coz of the promise of the lunch after it. See I loved Cyma the first time we went. Clearly evidenced by my blog post found here. And nothing can soothe my tired soul like a good meal. Ordered basically the same things, and since we had mom along, ordered a couple more. Tonnos salad is feta cheese, olive oil, tomatoes, and a whole lotta other stuff with seared tuna. Got the solo coz we knew from experience that the solo was enough for two people. Also ordered the tzatziki, which is cucumber dip, with pita bread. This was my favorite. Joannaman’s too. We both said we wanted to come back to Cyma and just eat that. Ordered the flaming sausages just so we could order an OPA! thing on the menu. (When it’s marked with an OPA! on the menu it means the dish is flaming and all the servers shout OPA! when they serve it) And since mom couldn’t get the chicken gyro she originally wanted, she ordered the Roka pasta instead.

Everything was gooooooood. The clean flavor of the tzatziki was the perfect contrast to the greek sausages we ordered which I can only describe as hearty. The pasta with arugula and pine nuts and olive oil, way oily but good oily. The salad, bliss. And in true form, we tasted each dish but couldn’t finish a single one. We ended up taking home a little bit of everything. All in all a hazy meal but a good one, which I washed down with their iced tea, which is one of my favorite blends of iced teas out there.

All in all a perfect ending to a whirlwind weekend.

food · Jodythinks

Has anyone been to the Chocolate Kiss lately?

Jody Alarva9 Comments

chockissThe Chocolate Kiss Cafe in UP Diliman is one of my favorite haunts. This is clearly evidenced by my former blogposts here and here. It’s quiet. It’s like a hop skip and a jump away from our house. It has simple, unassuming food that’s not too expensive. It has my favorite blueberry cheesecake.

But my last visit two Sundays ago with the family had me sorely disappointed at the quality of the food there now. I haven’t gone in a while (like a couple months) and the triumphant return I envisioned was a bitter defeat. I don’t know if they changed the chef, or they’re just using lesser quality ingredients, but gawd. Everything was different from what we knew. Ordered the usual Hungarian sausage and penne pasta, baby back ribs, and chix in a basket. All our usual favorite orders. The sausage in the pasta was different, the ribs were lesser quality and smaller, only the chix in a basket was almost the same quality. And that’s only coz we almost never order it.

Thank God the cake was the same. But we left feeling gypped. What happened to Chockiss?

Jodythinks

I’m still figuring all this out (so sue me)

Jody Alarva4 Comments

confused I have not told everyone I know to visit this blog yet. I am still at the stage where I’m figuring things out, and until I have, I will not be linkbuilding, ym-statusing, or anything. Of course I want to debut this blog at its finest and that includes full design and descriptions. And as i am a newbie at this, it’s taking a bit more time to fully comprehend.

As is my new job. I’m a little lost and I’m still finding my way, but I’m love it. I love the excitement of learning new things and the idea that I’m going to be more involved in the inner workings of the office just thrills me. Call me a geek but that’s just how I am. I was like a giddy little nerd nodding away at the things I now needed to absorb. Not that I’m dissing my former job. I loved being an Internet Marketing Specialist (AKA IMS), but this is something I’ve been quite fascinated with for a while and I hope to someday be as able to answer as much questions as Sarah my teammate did earlier today, in the meeting where I was nodding my head not really understanding what was happening around me.

Tucked away in “exile island” I never really noticed how interactive people at the office were. IMS kind of works by itself, we get our work from our team leads who get it from the Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) team, but everyone else, from the Design team, to the Copywriting team all kind of mush together and coordinate every so often in a week that they’re sort of one collage of a team. I’m kinda sad that the IMS team didn’t work with other teams more often, but why would they need to? They’re kind of self-sufficient and aren’t really dependent on other teams to do their work.

Guess that’s just how things work.

Yes I miss being in the thick of the gaggle that is the IMS team. I was in the middle of the testosterone charged everyday conversation, due to the geographical location of my workstation. It was silly it was weird it was sometimes demeaning but I loved it. Now I have to walk all the way to the other side of the room to hear it, but it’s worth it to get the laughs I get. Even if sometimes it’s at my expense.

And i do realize so far all i’ve posted about is me me me. But until I get all this figured out, I won’t be sharing my usual food reviews, movie reviews, and rantings and ravings about anything.

Thanks

So what’s new?

Jody Alarva6 Comments

hello!
I’m turning over a new leaf.

I have a new job. From a yearlong stint as an Internet Marketing Specialist I find myself facing a whole different terrain. I am now a User Experience Specialist (in training). This is definitely something that’s making me way excited but also ants in my pants nervous at the same time. I still work in the same office, but in a different team, a different workstation.

New lifestyle too. Or at least trying to. In tune with my doctor’s orders, I’m going to start working out. I was told to get back to my usual weight just so she can rule out a few things. I definitely won’t be dieting or anything like that, but I’m gonna move more.

This way I can justify all the food trips I’m gonna go on the near future. I already have a script going on, “I’m not trying to lose weight, I’m doing this for my health. ” Or “Do i look like I can go on a diet?” Or “If you were my friend you’d go get ice cream with me.” (Wait that’s a different script entirely)

Basically it’s still the same old me with a few different upgrades.

I have Ms. Pink SEO to thank for this domain. Even if I did abandon her when I changed jobs, (Haha I kid I kid) she took me under her wing and hosted this blog. I am extremely grateful and hope to live up to the hype.

After 5 years of blogging you’d think I’d know what to do by now, but this is the domain that’s mine all mine and I’m going nuts (happy nuts but still) with all the options. Bear with me on all the changes that gonna come in later when I figure all this out.

Why jodyalarva.com? I figure my food blog became more of a smattering of topics under the sun, I don’t think i can keep up a food blog for long. So this is gonna be a blog about anything and everything I come in contact with. It’ll be your choice of whether I really think or not. Coz in my case, it’s usually the latter. Especially when it comes to certain four letter words… Life. Love. Food. It’s do first, bang your head into the wall for doing that in the heat of the moment later.

So welcome!