The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

Shrimp ceviche

Gaiety and spontaneity are trademarks of most Filipino societies. Being very sociable, camaraderie is at the heart of many relationships. Perhaps it also comes from the nature of our traditional occupations – farming and fishing. Our ways of living rely on being with others, helping and sharing in the labour and the harvests.

This camaraderie is even more apparent when unwinding after a day or night’s toil. It is then when beverages come out. And when there are spirits, of course there is pulutan!

For January, Ting Aling at World Class Cuiscene is graciously hosting Lasang Pinoy with the theme Let’s Wash it Down with Booze!! That, dear friends, is another way of saying you don’t have to be a drinker to indulge in drinking food.

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Vinegar-stewed catfish
Today we post our entries for the second edition of Lasang Pinoy, the Filipino food blogging event. Our month’s host is Celia Kusinera at English Patis with the theme Cooking Up a Storm! It’s a very fitting topic since normally, September is towards the end of the monsoon season. With drastic climatic shifts however, it seems like typhoons are now intermittent occurences, unlike in recent years when we were able to distinguish a period when they were most frequent.Time was when the opening of classes coincided with the rainy season. A few weeks into the school year, chances were classes would be called off due to typhoons. The storms would range from mild to very strong, from Signal No. 1-3, before Signal No. 4 was added to the system very recently.

I loved the onset of the rainy season. Not too long after the showers started, the stream beside our house would be flowing more rapidly and we’d float our paper boats. Rains also meant playing and taking a bath in the rain, watching the mamadúas on the bridge over the stream. A padúas is a short bamboo fishing pole, mamadúas is both the verb, act of fishing, and the noun the person(s) fishing.
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Note: revising still but comments welcome

We chose to launch Lasang Pinoy, a Filipino food blogging event, on Ninoy Aquino Day to commemorate the death of our most well-known modern-day hero. Today, Filipino food bloggers and friends in many parts of the world will post their thoughts on being Filipino and the food that go with them.

Try as I might, I cannot recall what I was doing on 21 August 1983. Perhaps it was my typical child’s day of play, homework, raiding bookshelves, piano lessons, cartoons and whatever a nine-year old third grader would do. The day after is what I vividly remember.

My mother was reading the papers early in the evening, and in a tense and troubled voice confirmed: “Mete ne pin y Ninoy” which is Kapampangan for “Ninoy is really dead”. I had no idea who Ninoy was but it seemed that he was someone my mom knew very well. Could he be a relative or a very close friend? I was sure he was either one.
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I wonder if Carlo at my latest supper was thinking of the adage “one man’s meat is another’s poison” when he chose the theme of this month’s Is My Blog Burning? What a way to celebrate the 12th instalment and 1st anniversary of Alberto’s original idea! Something taboo or disgusting – in our part of the world, what could that be short of cannibalism? I didn’t want to argue, or be legalistic around the rules yet I also didn’t want to break the Philippine Animal Welfare law.

It took me a long time to finally decide on this month’s entry. For a while I thought of skipping it but my friend Catsudon, who is the genie of my blogs, admonished me not to chicken out. So, back to the rules. I’ll just pick bits and pieces from Carlo’s stipulations since taken as a whole, they seem to eliminate everything from this side of the world. And because I work on my food entries from Pampanga, a province known for many exotic delicacies even for Philippine standards, close to nothing qualifies as taboo or forbidden.

But as for sharing our unusual food and recording the reactions of those who try it, I had a lot of pictures! I found one taken in December and shows May-May, a four-year old who ate tâgiló like oatmeal where others cringe. However, she wasn’t a “willing victim” but practically begged to have a taste. Does that qualify? Perhaps I should then go back through time, not limited with this IMBB’s timeframe.
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