Breakfast is perhaps the simplest of the day’s meals but just like Joey, this month’s Lasang Pinoy host, it has a very special place in my gut, er, heart. My problem though was what to post for Gising na! ALMUSAL! not for a lack of ideas but for having too much!

The traditional Filipino breakfast is quite flexible in that it can consist of the previous day’s leftovers, something cooked especially for the day’s first meal or odds and ends procured from early morning vendors. It has to be ready before people go out to the fields or to the sea. This has been the case for centuries, it is still true at present. Nowadays though, factories and offices can be added to the list of workplaces.

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Second of two parts

How did this tradition of harvesting unripe rice begin? Could it have been an experiment during the early period of agriculture? Traipsing along the fields one stormy day in early November got me thinking it could have been a similar time centuries ago when the rice plants had to be saved from wrathful weather way before harvest season.

The town of Santa Rita, Pampanga is known for its turrones de casoy, sans rival and other sweets but towards the end of the year, starting in November, everything is eclipsed as the town anticipates the Christmas season with the sweet smell of duman in the air. A delicacy once known only to a few has now caught a lot of attention during the Duman Festival, partly to revive a vanishing tradition and partly to celebrate life after devastation.

Duman is a seasonal rice cereal still produced the old way in our town. This may have been in existence in pre-Hispanic Capampangan society since duman was already mentioned by Fray Diego Bergaño – “El grano del arroz tierno cerca de madurar” – in Vocabulario de la Lengua Pampanga originally published in the 1700s. It could have happened other towns produced duman in the olden days but Sta. Rita’s is what has endured.
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We were told to value every grain. Every single precious one was handled with reverence. We could not indulge in it for it was no ordinary cereal. Duman, the delight of my childhood, my current unfolding mystery. Little did I know that it would take me home and send me searching the world for clues to the past - of relations forged across the seas. Or were there?

My personal pledge last year to learn how duman gets to the table from the field was fortunately accomplished. Quite fortuitous too that for this year’s Duman Festival, Arti Sta. Rita held an exhibit to better understand how duman is made. It took several weekends for me, Terence and Herbert, two of Arti Sta. Rita’s multi-talented members, to get the right pictures of lacatan malutu (red-husked glutinous rice), the specific variety from which duman is made. With our literal “field trips” we realised how special these plants are. There was a very precise method sustaining this tradition.
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