When we lived in the Philippines, I was really surprised to find out how much Filipinos love fried chicken.
Fried chicken is EVERYWHERE - at all restaurants and fast food places and even sold by vendors from little carts on the street. CSC is no exception! Fried chicken is a hit with all the kids.
This picture just cracks me up: it's the big plastic bucket where the aunties marinate the chicken. It's labeled "Monday".
After you marinate the chicken, you put it into a pan of hot oil. Auntie Elvira kept the heat really low to cook the chicken long and slow. I was also really interested to find out that they weren't putting any breading on the chicken. The marinating and the crispy skin are enough to flavor the chicken after it's been fried.
Fried Chicken
Recipe from the Cherne house
2 lb. chicken drumsticks
1-2 teaspoon minced garlic
1-2 teaspoon minced onion
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon seasoning mix*
1 egg
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1-2 cups oil for frying
1.
Place the raw chicken in a large bowl. Add the garlic, onion, oyster
sauce, black pepper, salt, seasoning mix, egg, and cornstarch. Stir
until the chicken is evenly coated.
2. Heat oil in a large pot over
medium heat. When the oil is hot, place the chicken in the oil. The oil
should cover the chicken pieces almost completely and it will bubble
gently as the chicken cooks. Continue to fry the chicken until the skin
is golden brown and crispy. The amount of time you’ll need depends on
the temperature of the oil. Auntie Elvira keeps the heat low and fries
each piece for at least 15 minutes.
3. Remove from the oil and set on paper towels to drain excess oil.
*The seasoning mix that they use is called Magic Sarap and it basically adds a very salty flavor. You could use any kind of seasoning salt you like to give the chicken more flavor.
J-O-Y!
Loving life....and more specifically....hackysacks! :)
Thank you to our visitors for giving every kid their very own hackysack---as you can see, they were eagerly received!
SRA Day!
Last Friday was SRA Day at school! SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling! We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things the kids had learned in SRA throughout the year. It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA. Then we had a cheer competition. The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading. It was cool to see what they came up with!
After the cheering competition was the spelling contest! The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned. They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied. Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.
The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids. The Level A students performed sang "The Alphabet Song". Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading! Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of "America the Beautiful", a song they learned in one of their reading units. Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.
Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!
Friends
Friendships are an important part of life at CSC. Although most of our children have siblings at CSC (about two thirds), they all seek out friends in their age group and enjoy hanging out, playing, making music and talking about life. Our kids can easily find friends who have similar backgrounds and can understand and accept what they have gone through in life. Some friendships can go on for several years, depending on how long the children stay at CSC. When a child leaves for adoption there are often sad friends left behind who wonder if they'll ever see them again. In some cases, friendships that began at CSC can pick up later on when children are placed in the same geographical area. Check out a few pictures of friends at CSC:
Movie Night
One of the things we often hear at CSC is laughter, and one of the best places to hear it is during a movie night.
It's hard to organize a trip to the movie theater, so often times staff will gather up a group of kids and setup the projector in the library at the school. The movie night below was a "girl's night out" that Teacher Lindsay organized. However, being the IT guy, I was allowed to attend because I had to setup the screen and projector. :)
The movie was Mr. Popper's Penguins.
It's hard to see much in the video below, but it's really fun to listen to the laughter of the kids.
The Littlest Waveboarder
Waveboarding is the cool thing to do during playtime here at CSC. Lots of the older kids got waveboards for Christmas, but recently more and more of the little kids want to try the waveboards as well. The other day I noticed this little lady trying out her older sister's waveboard in the driveway and I couldn't stop laughing - it was so cute! And she's so good at it!