I didn't realize that 2010 slid by without a post from yours truly! I think I was stuck in a food rut for so long that I ended up serving the same old recipes on an endless rotation --- pork and chicken adobo, baked salmon or tilapia, spaghetti with Italian sausage, chicken tinola, and beef laga. Enough for a meal or two (or sometimes three!), plus lunch for Nico. But we must be doing fine since I heard that one of Nico's schoolmates checks his lunch daily; maybe pining for a home-cooked meal since he has to eat school lunch every day! One of the comfort foods I grew up with is Lugaw (or Lugao), a rice-based soup similar to the Cantonese congee, only thicker since the rice isn't boiled to a mushy texture similar to grits, but somewhat similar to that of risotto only with more liquid. (An aside: I smile as I write at the number of cultures that sentence involved --- Spanish, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, and the Southern United States.) The rice is usually boiled in chicken ...