Tinolang Free Range Chicken

I wrote an article on free range chicken farming because I heard a lot of positive things about free range chicken.  Aside from the health benefits that one will get from eating chicken raised as natural as possible, advocates of healthy living said that this kind of chicken tastes more natural and is tastier.  

When speaking about healthy chicken what always comes to mind is the native chicken.  Filipinos who spent their growing up years in the provinces know only of one variety of chicken, the native one.  These fend for themselves and propagate naturally.  Their meat is sought after for tinola, chicken ginger soup with green papaya and chili leaves.

Magnolia chicken came out with their own line of free range chicken lately.  I welcomed this development as the bird only costs P145/kilo, a price much lower than my expectation.  Native chickens from the wet markets cost more.  At least, eating healthy chicken has become affordable compared to the other brands that are pricey.  Not all supermarkets carry free range chicken, though.  

I bought two pieces from HiTop Supermarket, one for tinola and the other one I intend to do as adobo.  The meat looks leaner than the ordinary dressed chicken which is plump.  The ordinary one also comes whiter than the free range one which is reddish.  I was surprised that the healthy chicken cooked easily like the ordinary one.  No need to use the pressure cooker to have tender chicken.  Come dinner time, I cooked tinola and paired it with grilled milkfish.  What a hearty and healthy dinner we had.

Bon appetit!

My Foray Into Blogging

My love affair with blogging began not on a rosy start.  One day I found myself one of the participants in a one and a half day-seminar held at the Cubao branch of a known internet cafe chain.  The basic of blogging using Blogger as the platform, how to earn through Google Adsense and some stuff which I later found out to be email marketing parlance were cramped into that span of time.  To cut the story short, I went home not knowing where and how to start if I will do blogging on my own.  That was in 2008.  My initial attempt at blogging was sad to say just an attempt.  

Fast forward to 2009.  I enrolled for the Certified Digital Marketing Program (CDMP) at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business.  For the first module, Digital Wiki, we were to submit an essay that has to be uploaded via a blog website.  Making the article was a breeze but how to upload?  Fortunately for me I had a partner for this project and he took care of the technical side.  After that incident, I promised myself that I have to do something to conquer my feeling of inadequacy.

Seven months after Digital Wiki, I was at the Blog Revolution module under Janette Toral, an institution in the Philippine blogging world.  To pass the module, my group mates and I have to submit a blog that we started from scratch.  That exercise of creating a blog from thin air was very useful and gave birth to my blog about green business and entrepreneurship, There's Money in Green.  Weeks after the blog module has ended, my new found confidence kept me busy updating my new blog with new articles. 

There's Money in Green

I did not stop with the CDMP.  One month after the eleventh and final module of the CDMP, I again enrolled for a three-month special course on blogging, the Certified Blog Entrepreneur Program (CBEP).  This course takes a more in depth study of blogging.   I learned a lot about blogging specially the technical side from Janette Toral.  Out of the first module, I was able to create  My Life as a "Couples for Christ" on my lonesome.  Yes you can say that I am now more comfortable with the platform.

My Life as a "Couples for Christ"

To date, I am maintaining four blog sites, each blog talking about a different theme.  The challenge for me is not the technical issues anymore but on how to come up with a new article every week for each blog.  I keep my creative juices flowing by digging into past experiences, by reading and through research.