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04/29/2003 Entry: "Home again"

Back home again. Life here is so different that I sometimes wonder: "Did Paris really happen or was it just a dream?" Nevertheless, it's great to be home. Was starting to get sick of all the Sundays spent alone doing laundry. I spent my first Sunday swimming with my niece and nephews -- my 3 year old niece Yanna loved it so much, she didn't want to get out of the pool till it was dark out.

Just spent the night in Tagaytay with my mom. It's an hour and a half drive from Manila and probably 10 degrees cooler, especially at night. My mom's staff and their families spent the afternoon swimming, sunbathing, and eating there -- it was a summer excursion, and most companies usually give one yearly as a treat to their employees. After everybody went home, my mom and I checked out the local market -- lots of fruit stands around but my mom always frequents this one place, I think it's called John and Kim or something like that. For them, she is a suki (loyal customer), and once you've established that relationship with them, you can expect to always get a better price. You, in turn, have an unspoken promise to choose them over all the other fruit stands in that area. So my mom filled our big van with fruits and vegetables -- chicos, mangoes, watermelons, bananas, sweet potatoes, pineapples, okras, upo, papayas, etc. After that, we walked around our village for an hour and went to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Massimo. Since it was a weeknight, there were only two reservations, and I think that's what made the food so great. My mom and I enjoyed tomato soup, yellow tomato and arugula salad with feta cheese (they grow their own veggies), tarragon chicken (suprisingly juicy and very tasty), sea bass with risotto (i think it's better to order something else because this is a bit too pricey for what it's worth). For dessert, we had a creamy panna cotta with dulce de leche, and then we finished it off with chamomile and mint tea. We chatted with the chef for another half hour and headed back home -- a 3 minute walk away.

Now am back in Manila and just finished an hour long workout. I am aiming for a bikini body by May 8 because my brother and his girlfriend, KC, invited me to go with them to Boracay. Must have flat abs by then! Heh.

Replies: 4 comments

As pastry chef at HARROD'S I enjoyed the photos and descriptions you used very interestingly.

Posted by bill mccarrick @ 07/16/2003 05:45 AM PST

Iraq needs you! From guardian.co.uk:

Pastry Chef Flown in on Iraq Mission

Tuesday May 6, 2003 8:49 AM

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Pastry chef Yves Reynaud, with French colors on his collar, flew in a U.S. Air Force transport to Baghdad on a vital mission. Any search for peace goes better with cream puffs.

History is often in the details, such as the dramatic culinary operation mounted by Reynaud's ad hoc aid group, which he might well call Patissiers Sans Frontieres (Pastrymakers Without Borders).

Last week, 350 Iraqis and Americans met for a two-day conclave in Baghdad on how to lead Iraq out of chaos - but the freshly liberated capital is in such disarray that no one could find food to feed them properly.

``They asked if we could help, and I told them we could,'' said Reynaud, pastry chef at Kuwait's Crowne Plaza Hotel. ``I wasn't that afraid. I've been baking in war zones for much of my life.''

Reynaud took over the whole operation, not only the Black Forest cake and gooey meringues but also the steak au poivre and the Daoud Pasha lamb stew.

Almost everything was prepared in Kuwait and sent in refrigerated trucks, with an armed escort, on a 36-hour ride to Baghdad. Then Reynaud and his 24 helpers boarded an aircraft.

Counting breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee break, the flying kitchen crew produced 1,400 servings.

``A few elders worried there might be pork, and some people balked at unfamiliar things, but mostly I think it was a hit,'' he said. In any case, diners gave him rousing applause.

Tall, slim and graying at 48, Reynaud is the very picture of a French patissier. He wears a tall white toque, small France flags on his white tunic collars and de rigueur black clogs.

He learned his art in Provence, near Montelimar. Then, feeling wanderlust, he took his show on the road. He worked five years until 1983 at the Caravelle in Benin on the troubled West African coast.

After a year in France, Reynaud got restless again. He finished the 1980s in Dubai and then went to the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991 to the newly renovated Metropole, Moscow's first five-star hotel.

``We were having an aperitif on the terrace when the tanks rumbled by,'' he said. ``That livened up the day.'' Moments later, Boris Yeltsin scrambled atop one of those tanks to declare Russia free.

Reynaud moved on to the Zagreb Intercontinental, and Croatia exploded in warfare around him. After two years, he shifted to Indonesia, in the hectic heart of Jakarta.

For six years, he and his Scottish wife ran a pastry shop and bakery in Fort Williams, Scotland. But the cold drizzle and the calm were too much to handle.

In 2000, the couple packed up their two sons, then aged 6 and 9, and came to the Kuwait Crowne Plaza. There, despite 16-hour days and catering parties for 1,000 people, he relaxed and took his boys to the beach.

About his only hardship in the thriving but alcohol-free emirate was suffering through fine dinners with nothing more than bootleg homemade wine. Then another war landed in his lap.

``When I was asked to do this trip, I told my family only that I would be in Iraq,'' Reynaud said. ``But my older son is at that age. When he found out it was actually Baghdad, he said, 'Cool.'''

After French President Jacques Chirac refused to back an immediate invasion, Reynaud caught some half-amused ragging from hawkish colleagues. Kuwait, hardly fond of Saddam, mostly backed the war.

``I don't see why the Americans couldn't have waited a few more weeks and gotten everyone else behind them,'' he said. But, he added, his domain was pastry, not politics.

Still, the Baghdad banquet included one of his favorites, a pastry made of egg yolk and sugar syrup. In French, it is called pate aux bombes.

Posted by Keith @ 05/06/2003 11:24 AM PST

wow. cool. congratulations dawn! ;)
yup, am going back to sf later this month. ivy, what's your cell number?

Posted by Karen @ 05/02/2003 03:20 AM PST

Hi Karen,

So you're back in Manila! Dawn gave birth to a boy last April. Lorenzo Joaquin Yu Aquino. Are you leaving the country again?

Posted by ivy @ 04/30/2003 04:52 AM PST