Category: Excluded

Have a Merry Cremas with Alaska Crema!

All year round, especially during the cold months of December and January, we find ourselves longing for some good ol’ comfort food. But not just any kind of comfort food, we crave for something rich, hearty, delectable and, most of the time, creamy. That’s why, they say, calories don’t count during the holidays. 😉

Merry Cremas Food Bazaar at Eastwood by Alaska Crema

We were invited as judges at the Merry Cremas Food Bazaar in Eastwood last month. Good thing it was a Sunday so Ken and I were able to go together.

We know, from personal experience, that there’s a wide range of dishes you can prepare using Alaska Crema all-purpose cream. We knew there’ll be a ton of desserts and pastries there, but we were really hoping to see more savory dishes. There were only a few who did. Thankfully, they were all quite successful with their dishes too along with the food purveyors who served desserts.

Red Velvet brownies

With that said, let’s begin with our top favorites from the Merry Cremas Food Bazaar in Eastwood. These might help you with recipe ideas for your celebrations or any holiday, especially for Noche Buena and Media Noche.

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Bizu Patisserie’s Christmas 2013 Collection

We may be weeks away from Christmas 2013 and New Year’s Eve, but you can still feel the holiday because of the cold weather we’re experiencing the past few days. And there’s Chinese New Year coming up. If you’re still in the mood for some foodie gift-giving, Bizu Patisserie’s Christmas 2013 collection of treats are still available for you and your loved ones.

Bizu Cheese Tarts

Bizu is well-known for their delectable pastries and their yearly holiday goodies. We blogged about them here and here. They usually have a theme, and for 2013, it’s Tchaikovsky’s Land of the Sweets (from The Nutcracker). You can check the list of their 2013 holiday collection below this post. Most of them are still sold at your favorite Bizu store, so make sure to inquire if there’s something you fancy.

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J.CO Donuts Jolly Merry Treats

When you’re at the mall and you see this long queue of people at a store, you’re most likely looking at a J.CO Donuts & Coffee store. People can’t help but love their donuts, and we completely understand all the hype.

J.CO offers a wide variety of flavor choices for donut lovers

If you’re looking for the perfect gift this holiday season for your favorite foodie, falling in line at a J.CO store for a box of their Jolly Merry Treats might just do the trick.

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Pizza Hut Cheesy 7 : For a Merry Cheesemas!

If you’ve been following us on Instagram or Facebook, you probably already know how much we love pizza. One of the pizza joints we frequent is Pizza Hut. When we found out about Cheesy 7, their new pizza in time for Christmas, we knew we just had to try it.

Pizza Hut Cheesy 7 pizza

Last week, they sent us a box of Pizza Hut’s Cheesy 7 family-sized pizza. We couldn’t wait to devour the whole thing! 😀 We are true-blue cheese lovers, so imagine how excited we were to have a taste.

The pizza was named Cheesy 7 because it’s topped with 7 imported cheeses that will definitely make any cheese lover’s mouth water: mozzarella, parmesan, provolone, Monterey Jack, Romano, Cheddar and balls of cream cheese. *wipes drool* 😀

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Tokyo Tokyo Ramen : What’s Your Ramen Personality?

Dining at Tokyo Tokyo has been one of our guilty pleasures, even though we haven’t written much about it on the blog. I just can’t count the number of times my favorite Fried Chicken Karaage has comforted me during the toughest of days. And I still remember being sorely heartbroken when I found out that they no longer offer the Chicken Yakitori that I always ordered when I was still in college. Now we’ve found another reason to frequent Tokyo Tokyo for their Ramen, which comes in three flavors: Braised Pork, Spicy Chicken, and Tempura Miso.

Tokyo Tokyo Ramen comes in 3 flavors - Braised Pork, Spicy Chicken and Tempura Miso

As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.” Tokyo Tokyo took that to heart and came up with a short quiz to determine which flavor of Ramen best fits your personality. I took the personality test and the result I got was really spot on!

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Jollibee Mix-in with Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Kisses

I don’t know anyone who is not fond of Hershey’s Kisses. I prefer to enjoy them by letting them linger on my tongue as the chocolate goodness melts in my mouth. So, when we found out Jollibee came out with their new Sundae Mix-in with Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Kisses, we immediately wanted to try it.

Jollibee Sundae Mix-in with Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses

Good thing there’s a nearby Jollibee here in Malabon. Okay, not really nearby – a tricycle and a jeep away is what we meant by that. 😀 We received gift certificates to try their new Mix-in, so we had lunch with my BFF Jasmin and our nanay’s BFF, Tita Beth. We all were eager to try the mix-ins, but we haven’t had lunch yet so we decided to order their chicken meals first.

We were all surprised to know that Jollibee now offers buttered corn and mashed potato alongside your ChickenJoy with rice orders (SuperValue Meal also comes with a drink and sundae). They also have bucket meals now that include these side dishes. Of course, Ken and I picked 2-piece ChickenJoy with rice. 😀

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Go Bananas over Sugar Stop’s Minion Cupcakes!

The sold-out stock of collectible toy versions of these cuties, the nonstop posts from people who can’t seem to get enough of them and the thousands who lined up on the first week of Despicable Me 2‘s screening are clear indications of the minion mania here in the Philippines. Adults and kids alike LOVE them and couldn’t resist their cuteness, so it was just inevitable that edible versions of these minions will soon take over our newsfeed. On our top favorites are definitely Sugar Stop’s Minion Cupcakes.

Sugar Stop Minion Cupcakes - so darn cute!!

If you’ve watched Despicable Me 1 and 2, you’d see how much more screen time the minions got in the sequel. Universal Pictures knew it, we all fell in love with the multi-lingual minions (yes, we paid attention 😀 ), so much so that people are now demanding for a movie featuring only the minions. Well, we think that’s a crazy idea, but let’s get back to the Minion Cupcakes by Sugar Stop.

We found out about them through Twitter. They sent us a tweet telling us to check out their minion cupcakes. Ken and I are both in love with these minions, so when I saw the photo, the first thought that came to me was, “How can anyone eat them?!?! They’re too darn cute!!”.

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Krispy Kreme Speculoos Cookie Butter Doughnuts

With all the hype surrounding the Cookie Butter these days (and it’s for good reason!), it was inevitable that people will start thinking of various ways of enjoying and sharing these heavenly cookie butter spreads. We’ve only had a chance to taste Biscoff‘s, and we’re still on a long queue of frantic foodies clamoring for a taste of Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie Butter, so we thought that our closest chance to finding out how it measures up to the other brand was with Krispy Kreme’s Speculoos Cookie Butter Doughnuts.

Krispy Kreme Speculoos Cookie Butter Doughnuts and Original Glazed

We were at Ortigas last Monday and I insisted that we drop by the Krispy Kreme store in Robinsons Galleria. Sadly, they ran out of the Speculoos doughnuts (at 8pm, what was I thinking?! 😀 ), but I had no issues ending up with a dozen of Krispy Kreme’s Original Glazed doughnuts. We love, love, love them! Argh. Writing about this makes my mouth water. Too bad I ate the last one this morning. Pfftt. 🙁

Imagine my glee when we came home and found out Krispy Kreme delivered a box of doughnuts for us to enjoy. I was supposed to rest for a bit before work, but how can I when there’s a dozen of these yummy treats waiting for me?!?! 😀

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Innovative Social Media Ad Campaigns

The rapid growth of social media has made it common for unique and innovative ad campaigns to appear on a regular basis. Hiring an advertising agency, with an emphasis in social media outreach, is a crucial make or break for your brand.

Some of these have been hugely successful, and some not so successful. Due to the constant evolution of social media platforms, however, testing and tweaking any campaign is always essential. Let’s take a look at three social media campaigns that have created a real stir.

1. ‘Do Us A Flavor’ – Lay’s

Lay’s the popular chip maker, created a great crowd sourcing campaign as part of their 75th anniversary. Through a highly successful interactive campaign, they offered people the chance to create a new flavor for their potato chips.

Do us a flavor

Followers were given the chance to submit their own flavors via their Facebook page, with a couple of well known celebrities – Eva Longoria, and Michael Symon – choosing the winners. Not only is this a great way to create crowd interaction, but it gave the winners either $1 million as first prize, or 1% of the total sales of the new flavor over 2013 – whichever turns out to be bigger.

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Wee Nam Kee Yellow Chicken Festival and Other Scrumptious Dishes

For a limited time only (til June 30th, but hopefully they’ll extend or make this a regular item), Wee Nam Kee is serving up the Wagyu, Kobe and Kurobuta of chicken – the imported Yellow Chicken from Malaysia.

Wee Nam Kee Yellow Chicken roasted and steamed or Hainanese

You might have heard about Wee Nam Kee’s Yellow Chicken and thought it’s just a fancy, overrated version of the regular poultry we enjoy. When they invited us to get a taste of this, along with other Wee Nam Kee dishes, we can guarantee that it’s far from your ordinary chicken.

Wee Nam Kee yellow chicken vs white chicken

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