Every year, our family troops to the Good Shepherd Convent in Baguio City to buy several jars of Alfajor cookies, an absolutely sinful Latin-American dessert that makes you want to seek culinary penance long after the holidays. None of the other Good Shepherd convents make it and I've never seen a patisserie in Manila offering Alfajores. It's basically like melt-in-your-mouth butter cookies with a caramel filling and confectionery sugar coating. Below, I'm reposting 2 versions of recipes from both Wikicookbooks and Foodnetwork.com. Thank you very much to Mattbites and Pip in the City for the photos.

Alfajores Recipe (Wiki)

• 1/2 cup butter,
• 1 cup sugar,
• 1 egg,
• 2 egg yolks,
• 1 tsp. vanilla,
• 2 tsp. lemon rind, grated,
• 1 1/2 cup cornstarch,
• 1/2 cup flour,
• 1 tsp. baking powder, and
• 1/4 tsp. salt.

Cream butter; add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg and egg yolks, one at a time, beating well. Beat in vanilla and lemon rind. Sift together cornstarch, flour, baking powder and salt. Add to mixture and ...

-Surprise Christmas Party for Atty. Ronald Chua's Special Proceedings Class, right after Atty. Disini's Labor2 party.

-Sumptuous meals and heartwarming KrisKringle at Darwin Padlan's condo with Bébé's Titos and Titas and Ninongs and Ninangs! Don't you just love parties with people who matter? :-) Thanks to all the gifts, friends! Lablabs!

Photographs stolen from: Ethel

Ways to Keep Christ in Christmas
By Mary Fairchild, About.com

Keeping Christ in Christmas:
The number one way to keep Jesus Christ in your Christmas celebrations is to have him present in your daily life. If you're not sure what it means to become a believer in Christ, check out this article on "How to Become a Christian." If you've already accepted Jesus as your Savior and made him the center of your life, keeping Christ in Christmas is more about the way you live your life than the things you say—such as "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays."

Keeping Christ in Christmas means daily revealing the character, love and spirit of Christ that dwells in you, by allowing these traits to shine through your actions. Here are simple ways to keep Christ the central focus of your life this Christmas season.

1) Give God one very special gift just from you to him:
Let this gift be something personal that no one else needs to know about, and let it be a sacrifice. David said in 2 Samuel 24 that he wo...

One sunny day in August, 2010 an old man approached the Malacañang Palace
gate. He spoke to the Philippine Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President GMA."

The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, GMA is no longer president and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached Malacanang again and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President GMA.

The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, GMA is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached Malacanang Palace and spoke to the very same Philippine Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President GMA."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to GMA.  I've told you already that GMA
is no l...

[N.B. First Published in Barkada Magazine (a Catholic Mass Media Awardee for High School Literature) November Issue]

His heart beats faster, pulse racing and palms sweating, he clicks the mouse with a fierce intensity and navigates through the map with his left hand. He glances at the screen and sees the enemy hordes approaching. Quickly, he sends a message to the rest of the team on their attack strategy. He monitors his gold resources and the strength of his electronic Hero. In a few seconds, a triple kill combo decimates the rest of the enemy team. He looks up and whoops out a congratulatory yell as his team’s winning statistics flash on the screen.

Sounds familiar? 

For the typical massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) fanatic, it sounds like another electronic victory out of several rounds of creating a virtual world of computer network battles. Is such a campaign really worth all the time and effort? Does winning a computer game an indicator of real life...