“Aah, ginilu! Your Lola always made that on Good Friday.” My uncle was nostalgic while watching me cube the jelly. That was also how I remember it. On Good Friday, the adults fasted but could partake of the beverage. It has been more than a decade since we had it. And it has almost been a decade since I was home for Holy Week (Maleldo in Kapampangan, a contraction of Mal a Aldo, literally Holy Days, Mahal na Araw in Tagalog, also still in use, the Spanish Semana Santa).

Ginilu is a refreshing beverage, perfect for sweltering summer days. What puzzles me is why we only had it on Good Friday when it doesn’t take much to make. My mom doesn’t have the answer but the most probable explanation is that the coconut milk used for it is the excess of what is used to make bico, another traditional Holy Week food, which would make one think - meatless but rich nonetheless.

Good Friday fasting in the Philippines always had hints of a feast. How can we consider fish as a Lenten penitential food, when it basically makes up our everyday fare? Whenever Filipino families come together, it always has connotations of a feast. And on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday evenings, we await the processions of religious statues depicting the Lord’s passion. This takes on the scale of a full baroque pageant, with the carros (carro, sing., life-sized tableau, from the original Spanish ‘car’) decorated with flowers and lights, the religious images in full bejewelled gowns, not too different from what Katia and Ronald’s account of Easter in Ispica in their Via Ritiro N. 7 Diary. In our town and many others, violins and a full choir singing the Stabat Mater only adds more to the spectacle. In a way, it is both solemn and dramatic.

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Maki at I was just really hungry hosts this month’s IMBB with the theme My Little Cupcake (or muffin). As soon as I read the announcement, I had decided on something with tomatoes, whether sweet or savoury. Alas, when the deadline drew near, I was in another part of the country yet I didn’t forget.

And so there I was in Albay, the day before the deadline, on the way home on a bus (no more plane tickets available, everyone’s going home at this time) planning my entry for this month’s IMBB. Maundy Thursday cooking never was more different than it is this year. For one, I’m home and not in a silent retreat. And I have never baked muffins before. After the last SHF and the confections I was fed in Legaspi, I don’t think I’d like to work on anything pervasively sweet for a while. I wanted to bake some tomato and basil muffins but there is no basil in Santa Rita where it’s practically unheard of. Well, creativity never killed me, it just gets me into trouble now and then. Oh, I’m rambling. I should finish this entry before I’m no longer lucid.

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Between sweet and savoury, I’d pick the latter but when Debbie at words to eat by announced caramel as this month’s theme for Sugar High Fridays (SHF), I thought it was too good to pass up. SHF is a spin-off of the now-famous IMBB? and was created by Jennifer at the Domestic Goddess, and I’m entering an entry for the first time.

And so I began my (mental) search for a recipe. Caramel, oh caramel! Something commemorative although it’s two days after 16 March.

Filipino schoolchildren know the date 16 March 1521 is when Magellan landed in what he called the Archipelago of St. Lazarus. It was not until 1565 that the islands were colonised and subsequently named after Felipe II. Thus began three centuries of Spanish rule in the country now known as the Philippines.

Philip II was a Catholic king who not only concerned himself with the temporal but also the spiritual affairs of his subjects. It was this fervour which made the conquest of the Philippines that of the Sword and the Cross.
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