Happy New Year 2010!

Happy New Year to everyone! The year 2010 has just arrived and I’m pretty sure that most of us have our own New Year’s resolution to keep. Before anything else, please allow me to extend my warm appreciation to each and everyone for all your support. The year 2009 won’t be a good one and a good start for Panlasang Pinoy without you, our treasured friends.

Panlasang Pinoy is a very young website; this started out as a personal blog that aims to document Filipino foods and how they are prepared (hoping that Filipino foods will be recognized in the international food scene someday). I understand and expected a lot of planning, hard work, and patience is necessary to achieve my goal. I prepared myself for the challenges ahead and started sailing on the last week of February 2009 with my very first post (Pork Menudo). This was a test voyage to see if the waters will lead me somewhere. Back then, I was using a free WordPress account for hosting the blog: the domain Panlasang Pinoy dot com does not even exist yet. A few days have elapsed and the posts are not going anywhere so I added videos to each of the new posts on March 2009 to see if this will catch the interest of the public; it did. From then on, almost all the posts have accompanying How to DIY cooking videos to provide more guidance to the readers. After reviewing the visitor statistics and noticed that the wind is enough to lead me somewhere, I purchased the domain Panlasangpinoy.com and subscribed to a paid hosting account on May 2009 (we will be celebrating our first birthday this May, you are all invited). I still don’t know when I’ll arrive to my destination; the boat is moving and this can take me somewhere and I just need to work harder and wait.

Cooking, filming, composing articles, and taking pictures almost all at the same time is not an easy task (considering that I don’t do this for a living). In fact, it is very time consuming and a lot of patience and hard work is necessary to complete a single post (good thing my wife and kids are always supportive). I remember almost staying-up late everyday to complete every featured post and getting-up early the next morning to go to work (so that I can have the money to buy the ingredients and pay the heating bills 🙂 ) Though it sounds hard, this did not stop me from doing the very same thing over and over again (and it did not even have any negative effect on my performance in my real job). After a few months, I got used to it and considered the tasks to be part of my daily routine.

Here we are now still focusing on the very same goal. We are still in the middle of the ocean but the weather is good and the wind is more than enough. I am still optimistic as I was that someday our ultimate goal will be achieved. Back in the days, there was just me, my wife, and my kids but now we have all of you by our side. From 1,000 page views a day last May 2009 to almost 34,536 page views a day on Dec 31, 2009, the year 2009 is indeed a blessing for us. A good year has ended (Good bye and thank you 2009) but a new and promising year just came (hello and welcome 2010). Let’s all do what we do best and continue sharing and helping each other.

We welcomed 2010 by sharing a simple family dinner. We served thirteen (13) different fruits; oranges, apples, grapes, persimmons, peaches, pears, mangoes, cantaloupe, clementine, pineapple, nectarines, grapefruit, and pomegranate. This is a Chinese tradition that we Filipinos embraced for the hopes of bringing prosperity and joy for the whole year to come. As for the dishes, we had shrimp croquettes and potato salad for starters. Spaghetti and meatballs, Morcon in tomato sauce, and double smoked ham were served for the main course. We also shared the delicious custard cake for dessert.

Let’s enjoy life and be thankful for what we have. Thanks for all your support and have a happy and prosperous 2010!