I dream in SUGAR

I always swore I'd try anything once. And through the years, my mom has rolled her eyes at my various experiments. Admittedly the list is a bit long and a tad.... eclectic. Sports covers: tennis, badminton, softball then baseball, then soccer, and now long-distance running and of course, scuba diving... there was once horseback riding, painting, pottery, even Ashtanga and Bikram yoga... boxing, Bakbakan and capoeira... believe it or not, my youth also dabbled in the performance arts: piano, voice, ballet, jazz, tap, and a looooooong loooooooong time ago, the hula. Stop laughing, you might hurt yourself! One thing I am NOT is boring.

There continues a yearning to explore, discover, experience. Most you thirty-somethings get what I mean, right? The itch to be this, and to be that. To be MORE.

One perennial dream is to learn the fine art of SUGAR PULLING. Include casting, and blowing. Fingers crossed, it now seems soon that would be another dream fulfilled.

At MAFBEX 2008, one of the events I helped organize was SUGAR SHOWPIECE. The top tandem was to be Waterfront Manila Pavilion's Mel Avino and Ador Mendoza. Chef Mel is a veteran in all types of culinary artistry, sweeping competitions from fruit and vegetable carving, to ice and snow sculpting both here and abroad. Chef Ador just did the country proud with his Pastry Showpiece bronze medal coup in the recently concluded Food Hotel Asia Culinary Challenge in Singapore as part of the Les Toques Blanches Philippines Culinary Team. Arrangements are being made to have Ador share his expertise in class and I am securing the top slot for myself!


Wandering the city of Beijing last summer, Sabrina Gan and I stumbled upon a street artist who awed with his primitive version of BLOWN SUGAR. A basket of brown taffy kept warm by a kerosene lamp was his only prop. It was so amazing precisely because of its rawness. Move over, Ewald Notter!