Kitchen Tips

Yan ang Jolly Love: 5 Recipes that are Sure to be Your Family’s Next Favorites

Do you know what your love language is? For those of you not familiar with it, a love language refers to the ways that we prefer to give and receive affection. There are five different types of love languages—words of affirmation, receiving gifts, quality time, physical touch, and acts of service. All these are very different from each other, which can also make one think: is there one particular love language that can encompass all these five and roll them into one?

Well, the answer is yes. Shockingly enough, this type of expression of love is something you might be doing on a regular basis. What is it you might ask?

It’s cooking, plain and simple.

For a culture that is so centered and grounded in family and community, Filipinos have always used food as a direct way to show their care for their loved ones. Cooking is so common and mundane that it can sometimes come off as routine, but you can see how love is woven through every step of doing it. When you think of a good recipe to make for your family, that’s a sign of love. When you put the time and effort into making a dish healthy and delicious, that’s a show of affection. When you put great food on the table for the rest of the family to enjoy, it’s a gift. And finally, when your loved ones let you know how much they appreciate all of it, that’s affirmation.

One brand that perfectly encapsulates this love language is Jolly. As a consistent leader in the packaged vegetables category, the brand has made it easier for homemakers to be more creative with their cooking by making freshly packed ingredients accessible to everyone. Now on its 25th year, Jolly offers a wide range of kitchen pantry favorites from their best-selling canned mushrooms and corn, packaged fruits, to their canned soups and other condiments.

For Jolly, love can be felt the most in actions. ‘Yan ang Jolly Love’ is when you take the time to cook delicious and healthy dishes for your family. It’s when you take the extra mile to make sure that you never run out of ideas in the kitchen and when you use your creativity to create the most amazing recipes. As a kitchen favorite, Jolly wants to help every homemaker who wants to express their affection by providing products that they can turn into delicious expressions of love.

And since we’re already talking about food as the best way to touch someone’s heart, here are some recipes that you can create for your family as a show of your affection. Fair warning: they are so easy to do and so delicious that they are most likely going to be your next meal favorites!

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Importance of a Weekly Menu Plan

I am very fortunate, if I may say, that I am able to wake up without thinking what food to prepare for my family. How is this so? Because my mother-in-law is in charge of cooking, which has its own pros and cons. The downside of having a meal already prepared for you can be a long list but I do not dwell on it anymore. I decided to just be thankful for not being stressed in the morning due to meal preparation.

Well actually, a mom, or any home-maker can be free from stress about meal preparation if there is a planned weekly menu. This saves us from thinking every day what to prepare and also helps us manage our expenditure on our groceries. There are many more reasons why having a planned weekly menu is important like the following.

1. Having a weekly menu ensures that we are not serving the same dish more than once a week to our family.

2. A carefully planned menu helps us, parents, see if we are providing our family the right amount of nutrients they need in the food that we prepare.

3. A planned menu helps us take into consideration our family members’ vaying needs. If one is diabetic, another is hypertensive, one works in a very physical job, preschoolers who needs not only energy-boosting but also loads of brain foods and even infants who are just starting to learn how to eat, all these are taken into account when planning a meal.

4. A planned menu saves lots of time since we can prepare ingredients ahead of time when we have nothing to do and just refrigerate them.

Having a planned menu is something I have tried before and it really works. However, since I am not the regular cook, it is not practiced all the time. But now, I am determined to start cooking regularly. And as a start, I am putting here the food pyramid to serve as my guide, along with the others already posted in our refrigerator.

Where Should I Put My Baking Pan Inside the Oven?

Today I learned something new.

The hubby gifted me with a Kyowa 35L Electric Oven last Christmas. Grabe almost a year na ang oven namin at di ko pa xa napo-post dito!!!! Anyway, we have used the oven many times already, mostly for baking. We have tried cooking American ribs in it a few weeks ago and it was a huge success!!

Anyway. So today, I learned that what I have been doing is wrong. You see, every time I bake, cupcakes, cookies, cakes, brownies, I always put my baking pan on the black pan that came along with my oven. I put it on the middle section yes, but when I bake cupcakes, the cupcake pan does not fit well on the black pan. Gets? Lagpas yung cupcake pan sa black pan so yung cupcakes near the oven window, sort of elevated sila. Instead of using that black pan (dipping pan), you should use the wire rack. Baking pans on the wire rack on the middle section of the oven, that is how it should look like. The black pan is typically used to catch drippings when you use your oven to roast something.

Well, at least I know now and I have time to correct my wrong practice. 🙂