Dos and Donts with cooking the Cabanatuan longganisa

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I am biased but ever since living in Metro Manila I never bought a single longganisa from the public market or grocery chains to be cooked at home. It has always been always the Cabanatuan longganisa (or “langgonisa” as it is called in most areas in Nueva Ecija) or bust in our household. There is already a few posts on how to cook it so here is just the quick rundown of what to do and what to avoid with this recado sausage. 🙂

  • DO use a pan that you can scrub after for cleanup. Trust me, those non-stick pans are not going to last. 🙂
  • DONT just fry the longganisa links in oil. That is not how to properly cook it and in most cases you wont need to add the extra oil.
  • DO cook the longganisa in water. About 1/4 to 1/3 or the links should be submerged in tap water, and turn it over now and then until all the water evaporates.
  • DO prick the skin of the longganisa once all the water has evaporated so that the rendered oil can get into the pan.
  • DO toast the skin but dont burn them.
  • DO put day-old rice into the pan to get all those toasty goodness into a fried rice to accompany the logganisa. And since the Cabanatuan longganisa is recado (“garlicky”) then there is no need to add anything except a bit of salt to your fried rice.

Caveat:  We now cook the longganisa in the air fryer. I just put a parchment paper under it for easy cleanup and oil extraction since we have those circular basket type. I still put in water at the start. 15 minutes at 160 degrees centigrade, flip and then 7-8 minutes more  at 170 degrees.  Another benefit of this cooking route is that the logganisa can go straight from the freezer to the airfryer basket, just ensure there is a single layer of sausage so they all get boiled first.

NNTO and EOM

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Context: Saving this emailed message I sent to one of my previous project teams. That project engagement (including the client and other providers) have a penchant for using NNTO, EOM, PFB and PFA in email conversations.

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Subject: [Did you know that…] NNTO and EOM are only intended for emails that does not need to be opened?

NNTO is the abbreviation for “No Need To Open” and EOM stands for “End of Message”.

These are employed in subject headers to save the recipient time and the hassle of downloading the message and opening it up. The intent is that the recipient will be able to grasp the whole message by only reading the subject line.

With the same regard, if you respond to an email that initially had the NNTO and EOM in the subject line by writing in the email body then it is common netiquette to remove the NNTO or EOM from the subject of your response email, otherwise the recipient has less of an obligation to even open up your response to read your message.

Email netiquette also calls for limiting the use of abbreviations in the body of your email messages. Those are useful for limited input mediums like SMS, or limited devices like a GPRS-only handset but does not add a value to email communication. Contrary to popular belief in this project, PFB and PFA are not publicly used initialsms. Spare your recipients the additional hassle and type the whole phrase. Your communication karma points will get an upgrade if you do this.

“There is no need for perfection, but there is always room for improvement.” – Unknown

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Illusion of Choice

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Lately I am seeing attestation forms in the projects I am working in wherein the contents are split across multiple checkboxes followed by a submit button. The beef I have is that the submit button will only be valid/enabled if all checkboxes are set to checked/true.

The problem with this approach is that it gives the wrong perception that you can say I dont agree to one or more of the provided options and you can still proceed. I assume the intent was to increase the possibility that the reader goes through each line but this is still bad form. The assumed intent does not guarantee that readers actually read the lines. All this does is increase the frustration of doing 5 more unnecessary clicks to the form.

If it was up to me, I will just list down the lines and then just put a checkbox at the bottom that states that the reader confirms to reading all the lines and agrees to follow them. It bears the same weight and legality, with 5 lesser clicks.