You probably made a refrigerator cake last Christmas using Graham Crackers as crust. You didn’t finish the pack so now you have a couple of pieces lying around in the cupboard, gathering (hopefully not) dust. Well, I’ve a Graham recipe that’ll not only give you your money’s worth, but also satisfy your sudden sweet cravings. It only takes 10 minutes to make!

What you’ll need (serves two):

• 5 long crackers (has three squares each)
• Condensed milk
• Evaporated milk
• Butter
• Mortar & Pestle or food processor
• Bowl
• Oven Toaster

Step 1: Beat It

Using your mortar and pestle, pound your crackers until they’re fine. This may take a while so if you have a food processor in the kitchen, utlize it and save time prepping the balls.

Step 2: Mix It Up

In a bowl, pour 3 tablespoons condensed milk, and 3 tablespoon evaporated milk. Put in the powdered crackers and start mixing. The dough should be wet enough to be compacted, but dry enough to hold a shape.

Step 3: Rolling in the Deep

Line your tray with aluminum foil. Start shaping your dough into balls, roll them in liquid butter, and line them up. The size of your balls depend on how “bite-size” you want them. I made mine about 3/4 inch in diameter. That’s two-bites big for me.

Step 4: Toast!

Toast your balls for 4 minutes or until your butter has completely dried up. The butter also helps hold the shape of the balls. It acts as a sort of crust and adds flavor.

Plate your balls up and enjoy! Best served with a glass of cold milk. Yum!

It’s un-ball-ievably easy!

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Stay busy in the kitchen,

Kit

I’m someone who watches my weight but don’t have the patience to count the calories of every single thing I eat, every day of the week. I have been using this app called Calorific (free to download from the Android Market) before the year even began and it has helped me to be more healthy with my food choices. The app looks beautiful and the user interface is simple. It uses pie charts to give you visual information on just how much and how healthy you’re taking in. The best part? It’s so easy to stick with.

We believe that most people want to eat well, and just need a little extra push to think twice about their food decisions. Having a way to record your food makes you more accountable, and if it’s only three categories, it’s easy to stick with it. Traditional calorie trackers require lots of work to search for the correct food item, amking it hard to stick with it… there are always dozens of versions of ketchup in these lists of food—how complicated should it be to select ketchup?

- Charlie Sneath, Work Smart Labs, Inc.

You’ll start with a customizable profile to input your age, weight, height, and how much weight you want to lose per week. The app also asks for your “daily activity level” to determine your daily recommended calorie budget. Pretty easy, right?

When you input food items, it gives you a star rating depending on how close your food ratio is to the IDEAL. Really, the goal now is to make your pie chart ooze with green.

If you’re not sure whether your food is green, yellow, or red, there’s no need to fuss. Calorific has a food search you can use. Just select the size of your portion and the calories are counted for you.

Accuracy isn’t important. It actually discourages me if I have to log exact measurements of what I eat. It takes away the pleasure of food, and makes losing weight a burden. What encourages me to log my meals is seeing, at the end of the day, precisely how healthy I ate just by looking at the star rating of my pie chart. In the same window, I immediately know precisely how below or above my daily recommended calorie budget I am. It’s a fun and easy way of tracking my meals, a start to having a healthier lifestyle.

Perfect for summer (or just maintaining your already fab bod), Calorific will surely help you in making leaner and healthier food choices.

With you in your journey to fitness and health,

Kit

Photos by Cynch and Kit

Ortigas Home Depot is a nest for supplies and accessories for the house, and a haven for diners, with its countless establishments. Hence, Toile is the perfect fit. It is both a furniture and accessories showroom and a cafe. Unique enough, if in showrooms you can’t “use” the furniture, in Toile, there’s nothing else to use (which we didn’t mind, of course)!

Toile is an unfinished French cloth, usually linen, where patterns are tested on, for the final product. Toile de Juoy on the other hand, is cloth with a French scenic print. From both definitions, Toile is a base for beautiful art.

(Pillowcases are one of Toile’s specialty pieces)

(An industrial-looking light fixture from Abode and Co. and Toile)

(Painting)

(Custom antler fixtures from Abode and Co. and Toile)

Upon entering the little cafe, you’d be disoriented at how non-traditional it looks. There’s a high dining table acting as a countertop right in front of the bar area where the sink is, and where the food is prepared. Going farther in, vignettes and snippets of a home occupy the three walls. It’s a nice suprise from the identical interiors other cafes have.

(Butterscotch Coffee with Butterscotch cookie on the side)

(Cynch’s beef sandwich)

(My Salmon Turnover with my Butterscotch Coffee)

Our orders came with chips and a refreshing dip with cilantro, cream cheese and a house blend. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, finishing everything until the last crumb.

(We claimed two of their little garden tables as our own that afternoon)

(Aki’s Blueberry Cheesecake was not too sweet, and very thick—yum!)

(Instagramming this newfound treasure!)

(Toile is also a showroom of Abode & Co., an interior design studio owned by the manager’s wife)

We had a nice chat with the owner and manager of Toile, Mike Magturo. He explained why they named the showroom cafe Toile. He said that since Toile could be different kinds of fabric whose pattern and design could be anything, it was essentially “something for everybody”. They wanted to capture that meaning and welcome everyone into their cafe.

I think the thing that we most loved about this place was how warm and engaging the people were. Mike was such a host. He told us a little bit of Toile’s story and chat us up from the moment we entered. He made sure we were enjoying our food. He was interested in our opinion on art and design (and business matters) that he asked about how they could expand their menu and maybe put up a blog and social pages for the little coffee house.

We loved our short stay in Toile. If we didn’t have other errands that day, we would’ve stayed longer. I’m sure you’ll take in the charm of the place, too, when you visit them. Keep us in the loop on your adventures! If you happen to go to Toile, take pictures and send them to our email thegirlsroomonline@gmail.com and we’ll be more than happy to feature them on our Facebook Page. Hashtag#thegirlsroomonline on Twitter and Instagram to share with us anything!

`Til the next foodventure!

Kit of The Girls’ Room

* * *

Toile Showroom & Cafe / Abode & Co. Custom Furniture Accessories
Unit C-25, Building B
CW Ortigas Home Depot Complex
Julia Vargas Cor. Meralco Avenue
Pasig City

Photos by Cynch and Kit
As Valentine’s Day approaches, boys and girls alike scramble for ideas that would make their special someone feel like “their one and only” on the most romantic holiday. Make your life easier and show off your cooking skills by surprising them with simple yet hearty Pancakes! This recipe is candy to the eyes and the tummy!  

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

The original recipe is from BBC. We slightly modified it for this specific pancake mix.

• 200 grams of all-purpose flour
• 350 ml of milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp of canola oil
• Canola oil for frying
• 1/2 bar of chopped chocolates
• 1/2 cup of chopped dried cranberries
• Heart-shaped cookie cutters
• 5 drops of red food coloring (optional)

1. Whisked Away!
First, quickly whisk milk and eggs together. Mix this in with the flour. Then, add vanilla extract and canola oil and whisk them all together until you have smooth batter.

2. Chocolate and Cranberries

Portion the batter in two by pouring one half into another bowl. Place your chopped cranberries in one bowl and the chocolates into the other. Mix the cranberries well with the batter but take it easy with the chocolates. You want to have little bits of it intact.

3. Pink Please

Pick a batter (chocolate/cranberry-mixed) you want to be pink and add 5 drops of red food coloring.If you prefer a baby pink shade, add 2 - 3 drops only.

4. Turn Up the Heat!

Spread the canola oil evenly in a frying pan over medium heat. Carefully pour a ladleful of batter in the pan. Flip the pancake over once its underside is golden-brown. This should probably take a good two minutes total depending on the size of your cake.

5. Playing Cupid

Stack two pink and two golden-brown pancakes alternately.. Using your heart-shaped (or any other shaped) cookie cutter, press down and cut your stacked pancakes. You will end up with a nice four-layered treat!  

To finish the look, place your stacked pancake hearts on a beautiful dessert plate and top it off with some dried cranberries. Pair this with hot milk or tea. Serve and enjoy with your better half.

Happy Valentine’s Day! You deserve it!

Much love,

Aki of the Girls’ Room

Images and recipes courtesy of <fitsugar.com>, <wholeliving.com>, <goodtoknow.co.uk>, Google Images

Shedding the holiday weight can prove to be a difficult task—your metabolism has slowed and your appetite has grown. Even though at the start of the season you stayed away from the food and the sweets, binging on Noche Buena and Media Noche put all of that effort to waste. Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to get rid of that food baby to a healthier, cleaner, and leaner 2013.

FOR BREAKFAST

Muesli (toasted oats) with Almonds and Cinnamon

Oats, sunflower seeds, apple, fresh berries, and yogurt (recipe here)

Substitutes: cereal, macadamia nuts, grapes, melons, and bananas

Debloating Chia Seed Supergreens Drink

Coconut water, chia seeds, and supergreens (recipe here)

Buckwheat Porridge

Buckwheat groats, soy milk/low-fat milk, water, banana (recipe here)

Substitutes: leftover brown rice, hot milk, mixed fruits and vegetables

FOR LUNCH

Roast Tomato and Orange Soup

Tomatoes, garlic, onion, carrots, celery, vegetable stock, fresh orange juice, orange zest (recipe here)

Substitutes: pumpkins/squashes for a pumpkin soup

Avocado Couscous Salad

Avocados, couscous, lemon juice, chickpeas, pepper, pomengranate, orange juice, parsley, pine nuts (recipe here)

Tomato and Bean Salad with Grilled Tuna

Tomatoes, beans, tarragon leaves, lemon juice, scallions, tuna steaks (recipe here)

FOR DINNER

Asparagus and Polenta

Polenta (coarse ground corn meal), cheese, asparagus, fava beans (recipe here)

Substitutes: mashed potatoes (done by hand) for polenta

Jumping Jack Smoothie

Pear, soya milk, banana, yogurt, flaxseed (recipe here)

Substitutes: any fruit

Chicken and Roasted Vegetable Pasta

Chicken fillets (cut), bell peppers, onion, tomatoes, pasta (recipe here)

FOR DESSERT

Vegan Mint Chocolate Green Shake

Raw cacao nibs, mint, dairy-free vanilla ice cream, soy milk, salt (recipe here)

Substitutes: cocoa tablets or dairy-free chocolate ice cream for the taste

Cherry Chocolate Granola Bites

Butter, whole-wheat flour, dried coconut, unsweetened chocolate, dried cherries, chocolate chips, almonds, granola (recipe here)

Substitutes: dried mangoes, oranges, or strawberries for cherries.

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Choose your meals wisely. Remember that fiber in fruits, vegetables, and grains help cleanse your body and keep you fit and healthy. Don’t omit your carbohydrates altogether—you need them to fuel your activities throughout the day. Instead, cut down your carbs and increase your intake of greens (eg. 1/2 cup of rice for every cup of vegetables)

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If you like this article, write on our wall, or tweet us!

Have any suggestions or personal detox meals you’d like to share? send us a photo and the recipe at thegirlsroomonline@gmail.com, or tweet us!

Join me as I go into a healthier new year,

Kit of The Girls’ Room