Baguio Food Trip Part 1: Tea House Restaurant and Bakeshop

Baguio really holds a special place in my heart. I have always loved going to Baguio. This is where my parents met, this is where I was born, this is where I spent my infant and toddler years, this is where I usually spent my summers and this is where I had a lot of memories.  This is why I will do my best to tour you virtually around the summer capital of the world. All year long, I will visit Baguio from time to time and will bring you back reports on various gastronomic experiences I had. 

The Tea House Restaurant and Bakeshop is old and it has existed back when I was a child. It is a hole-in-the-wall along Session road. Their famed snow cake used to be the automatic pasalubong request I had for my relative from Baguio who'd be visiting. It is now replaced with the lighter option, Strawberry cake from Appleblossoms. The Tea House may be small but it is always so busy with diners and people simply buying their cakes. You could even encounter people walking along Session Road with boxes of cakes from Tea House. I haven't eaten anything else from Tea House besides their Snow Cake and Mocha Streamline cake. I will try to taste some of their food someday and finally grab a bite of the well-reviewed Chona's delight and their delectable looking pies bulging with filling.

Snow Cake

The last time I went to Baguio, I decided to buy snow cake for my brother who didn't go with us since he had classes. Their snow cake is my absolute favorite and a constant must buy whenever we visit Baguio. It has a very chocolate-y cake with thin custard in between and thick gops of sweet boiled icing. I really love the snow cake for its icing. That absurdly sweet sugary icing is to die for. Now, I wouldn't try to give you any highfalutin  description of the cake. It's something really sweet and that's good enough for me. It is also relatively cheap. A roll of snow cake is about 300 pesos and is already huge for that price. Try it whenever you go to Baguio and have a taste of simple sugary heaven.

Though my photography skills didn't do it justice, the icing is really thick.

The cake didn't survive the commute home. 

Beer and Bacon Pancakes

Perhaps the manliest pancake recipe ever. Beer and bacon pancakes!

Ingredients:

• Pancake mix
• Other ingredients needed by your chosen pancake mix brand (butter, egg, oil, etc.)
• Beer (it could be whatever you want but I prefer SMB Super Dry or Cervesa Negra)
• Bacon (as much as you want)
• Butter and Syrup (again, as much as you want)

Procedure:

1. Cut your bacon into small pieces depending on how big you want them to be. Then cook them by putting them in a heated non-stick pan. No need to add any oil as the bacon will produce enough grease when cooked, adding oil is the last thing you need. DO NOT THROW AWAY THE BACON GREASE.
2. Make your pancake batter according to the instructions on the packages. Replace 1/3 of the liquid called for with Beer. Mix. Then add your bacon. Mix.
3. Cook your pancake however you want it but use the bacon grease to oil your pan. In my case, I used a Hello Kitty Pan I got from Daiso for only 88 pesos.
4. Add syrup and butter. Enjoy.

I cooked additional bacon for more bacon goodness.

Realizing too late that I added to little bacon in the batter. Lesson learned: when it comes to bacon, there is no such thing as too much. LOL.

Science and Religion

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. –Albert Einstein

Almost all interaction of Science and Religion has always been that of conflict. Though there are only two things where reason and faith disagreed, namely the heliocentric theory and evolution, there is undeniably a tension between them. I believe that the only reason they fought over two things is that the Bible doesn’t contain everything. If the Bible contained a passage on light that says, “God created light and it was neither wave nor particle”, then there might be more conflict between them. Their main criticisms of each other are base on their differences on methodology. Science bases its truths on reason while religion bases its truths on faith. One of the ongoing conflicts between science and religion is the Theory of Evolution versus Creationism. One of the main arguments of the Darwinians is that the improbability of the existence of God while Creationists argue that everything in this world is designed so purposefully that there must be a “great designer” behind all these.
This conflict has created three types of people. The first type is those who relies solely on Science to explain his world and rejects Religion as mindless. The next type is those who is satisfied with what Religion has to say with his world and rejects Science as heartless. The last type is the most common of all which is people who are in the middle ground. These people are those who want access to pacemakers and miracles. There usually are negative connotations about people standing in the middle ground that they are spineless people who cannot take a stand but I believe otherwise. I believe that these people are right in believing that there is a harmony between science and God. They often rely on both science and religion to explain our world. Taking what the Church tells them and hold it as truth based on faith while we also take what Science tells them and believe it as the truth based on reason. The only problem arises is if Science comes up with something that contradicts a teaching of the Church. As mentioned before, there are only two conflicts in history. I personally, am on the middle ground. I support Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and a front liner on the argument of the common ground, when he said that the theory of Evolution does not necessarily contradict Creationism because God is outside of space and time and that it could be His doing that evolution occurred. I agree with this because what the Church teaches is the interpretation of text. I also believe in the existence of God. Non-believers would think that God’s existence is irrational or illogical but that doesn’t disprove His existence. In the words of Nietzsche, “The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.”
I do not believe that Science and Religion should oppose each other and that they must work together. Each has its own faults and must supplement each other. I agree with Galileo that Science must take precedence in times of conflict because of the nature that Church creates its truths. The Church could take to reexamine its scriptures in cases that Science claims something that is not like what the Church teaches. The Bible was created by people who have never heard of an atom or dinosaurs. If the Bible was written by a modern man, would it have been any different? Science is all about explaining the world, God’s creation. Religion is about one’s relationship to God. One can learn things about the Creator through his creation therefore Religion could learn from Science.