Unbelievable! Is it March already? Wasn’t it only Christmas the other day? I can’t believe how much time has passed. This blog has way too much backlog, hehehe!

I’ll write down what posts are to be expected in the next few weeks:

1. Bacolod escapade: featuring the famous sweets and hunting down more than just chicken inasal;
2. Fruits galore;
3. Finding the lineage of our hometown suclati (chocolate); and
4. Farm and marketplace adventures or how I make a pest of myself in the name of research.

Stay tuned or nag me to make sure I do write.

Just in case you find some posts down or without pictures, don’t be surprised as I’m doing a bit of spring cleaning. I realised how my earliest posts were meant for friends abroad - mostly cooking for the first time out of necessity - and see how my initial recipes were tailored for them. These were simplified versions of classics they requested.

This blog is not exactly meant for just that anymore and so I’m revising the recipes to reflect how they are supposed to be cooked in a traditional kitchen, with my usual rambling annotation if time permits. Notes for the harried cook will be provided towards the end.

By the way, I’ve also updated the second duman post with a link to the video of pounding the roasted rice. Click on this link to view. Make sure to turn on your speakers! I hope you like it!

In an attempt to efficiently enforce taxation, on 21 November 1849, the Spanish Governor General Narciso Clavería ordered a systematic distribution of surnames for the native population. Names from the Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos were assigned to families in all towns. The distribution was in alphabetical order and caused some small towns with only a few families to end up with all names starting with the same letter.

To the outside world, Filipinos may seem to be almost Hispanic, with surnames, food and other legacies of the 333 years of Spanish rule. But there is more than meets the eye, something more complex. A cursory glance at something as plebeian as our streetfood is already an indication. Take for example our tamales. It has a deceptively Mexican name but its essence can only be Filipino.
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