Even if it’s not the best version I’ve tried, I still delight whenever I eat halo-halo.
justkalinaw
An adventure in peacebuilding
Category Archives: Daily Life
The Balut Adventure
“It’s just soup, it’s just soup, it’s just soup.”
“It’s just a hardboiled egg…well, with a taste of chicken…”
“Just don’t look…” “But you’re putting vinegar on your hands!” “I’m not looking!!”
(hover on pictures for explanatory captions – not that much explanation is needed)
Unpretentious killer delicacy station
It’s better if you add salt…
It’s just soup, it’s just soup
Cracking up at the craziness of Ketty’s gung-ho approach
I’m actually doing this?
DON’T remind me what I’m eating!
slowly but surely
I’m not looking at it!
In for the last
Christmas arrives in the “ber” months
As a dear friend of mine likes to say, Christmas is celebrated in the Philippines in the “ber” months – September, October, November, and December. Indeed, the Christmas music began in the beginning of September and Christmas displays in the department stores were set up around the same time. So before it becomes culturally indistinguishable from other parts of the Christmas-celebrating world, here are a few (poorly taken) snaps from a few days ago in one of the local malls, just to “prove” this early celebration preparation:
Pinakbet
One of the dishes I really enjo
y here is Pinakbet. Probably because it includes green beans and squash, two great vegetables. It was also the main veggie-heavy dish I had at my first restaurant experience on my second day in Davao, so that may be part of the reason also. I haven’t been trying specific recipes very much, but last night I tried this one. It uses shrimp paste, something I bought because I noticed it was in a lot of Filipino dishes. As you can see from the coloring in the photo, I put quite a bit in it. But surprisingly, once I could get past the color (most pinakbet does NOT look pink), it actually was pretty good and tasted remarkably (relatively) similar to pinakbet. I’ll call it a success, and nonetheless, I still very much enjoy my green beans and squash. 🙂 (This version I also added tofu. Traditional pinakbet also includes other vegetables like okra. Seasoning ingredients I used were onions, garlic, ginger, shrimp paste, tomatoes.)
Daily Views
The views you see day in and day out … these are a few of mine:
View of Mt Apo/Mt Talomo looking west from the road outside our house:
View out the window from my office cubicle:
My cubicle: Yes, it’s that exciting. 🙂
An Ode to Creamy Fruits
Today I tasted fresh Guyabano for the first time, which reminded me of the fabulous new genre of fruits in the Philippines – what I call “creamy fruits.” These are fruits I’ve NEVER had before in my life, and which are all, well, creamy!
They include: Durian, Mangosteen, Marang, Guyabano, Jackfruit (perhaps semi-creamy) … they’re all delicious!
Jackfruit images: [fruits] courtesy of SOMMAI / FreeDigitalPhotos.net [on tree] courtesy of scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Grocery Meditation
For Sharon: On how to meditate in a grocery line
It happens every time.
You’re a go-and-get shopper.
You enter stores with purpose, an agenda, and while you may allow distraction, you generally come and go quickly. You don’t find a lot of “soul” or “spirit” or “comfort” in stores, so they’re more like a necessary evil in your life.
You may pause in the grocery aisle to compare which container will provide the cheapest option for the most nutritious value – this one is cheaper but has MSG, that one is bigger but has no price, this looks great except it has hydrogenated ingredients…but it would be too much to suggest that it’s akin to meditation. More like calculus.
But most of the time, you enter the store on your way home from work as it’s en route, and therefore you’re anxious to get the few items you need and head home. But it’s always the same.
The store is in a new design (it’s under renovation). Every single day, new aisles appear out of nowhere, and new walls stop you in your tracks. One week the shampoo was on one end of the store, this time it’s hidden around a corner you hadn’t seen before. So regardless of your attempt to spend short periods of time, you’re stuck hunting the aisles for the same 3 things you get each week.
And you’re battling major crowds. All of Davao has done the same thing as you – gone to pick up their evening groceries. But you feel confident in your speed, darting between people, and only occasionally being stopped by a wandering child or slow-moving elder.
Once you’ve finally located your items, you breathe a sigh of relief and head to the lines to pay.
And oh the lines! Can it be true! While you just mastered the feat of a lifetime – navigating a store with completely rearranged aisles, locating your three items in record efficient manner, and making it to the line in less than 10 minutes, you now arrive at what seems improbable. Dozens of lines all backed up with at least 5 people in each. And all you have is a small basket, but you stand in line with the dozens of people with small baskets, in fact at least half the shoppers only have a small basket. But they fill their baskets with a week’s worth of groceries, just so that they can go through the baskets-only line. Whereas you have no escape with your three items.
Here you have a choice. The obvious choice is to sigh deeply, look anxiously for a sign that another line will go faster (a worldwide phenomenon that never, ever works in your favor if you switch lines), tap your feet, and allow small rivers of anger to rise up inside of you, frustrated that you are forced to spend another 10 minutes just waiting in line to pay, when you could walk promptly out the door. Not least that currently you really should be doing that, because you’re not supposed to spend much time in public spaces as a foreigner with your current status as wanted target in this near-warring land. And this is not to mention the additional 5 minutes you have to wait while the bagger bags your goods – in their special Philippine store way – in a plastic bag with a piece of cardboard as a base (ingenious actually), folded over top and with your receipt stapled to your bag, thereby rendering your bag useless for reuse because inevitably you will rip massive holes in your bag attempting to remove the receipt.
But it is here I suggest another choice: meditation.
Breathe in and out deeply. Allow your anxieties to melt. Because here you are forced into a world beyond your control. You cannot make the line go faster. You will not be able to choose a faster line. If you don’t want to abandon your mission, or your goods, than this is your place in the world for this moment. Set your basket at your feet, stand solidly on the ground, let your hands drop to their sides and relax. This is your place for this moment. Breathe in and out. This is life.
Recent Food Adventures
I discovered coconut cream! I had picked some up at the store in my search for regular cream for the mango float I wanted to make from my freshly chosen mangoes, and decided to throw it in a dish. (picture right) Delicious!
Mango float, a layered dessert of mangos, cream/condensed milk mixture, and graham crackers … pictured far left. A dessert I can make without an oven!
Here’s a photo of some rambutans – a lychee type fruit that’s quite tasty on the inside (white fruit around a seed) and quite hairy on the outside (as can be seen)
On my recent trip “to the field” I learned that these adventures also include picking up favorite treats and cheap fruits/veg. We stopped at Mers, a favorite pastry shop and I dutifully bought a number of things I’d never eaten before: (clockwise from top, skipping the fresh food) rice cakes (Mers’ specialty), mango rolls, ube oatmeal bar, Jo-Ann’s (yes this came from elsewhere) famous cakes (forget the name – had mung beans inside I think), pooh cakes (chinese-style red bean cakes), and bukayo (coconut sweet snack). We obviously also picked up some fresh things: mangoes (we tried 3 kilos for 100p but only got them at 110p), unripe avocados at 10 or 15p/kilo (still have to learn how to eat this best), camote (sweet potatoes – this one was a purple sweet potato, also got yellow ones, still have yet to see my favorite orange ones).
Living with creatures
Learning about interdependence from “pest” infestations… a glimpse into my daily mental gymnastics courtesy of my wacky and value-laden worldview…
The commentary:
I live with creatures. Hundreds, and thousands of them. When I first arrived in the Philippines and began to settle into my house, I quickly noticed the “house lizards.” That’s my scientific name for the small lizards that I increasingly see in and around houses/occupied spaces. Being from a land where I rarely saw, let alone lived with lizards, I was freaked out at first, but also of course thought it was cool.
Then I noticed small ant-like creatures. Running along the wood of my bed frame, I began to worry if they were of an identifiable variety or of a suspicious crawling type that might eat through wood or bite me or other such damage. Then came the kitchen ants, not as big as the sugar ants in kitchens I’ve encountered before; these were smaller, but just as vicious. Then came the roaches. Huge massively freaky cockroaches. I hadn’t seen these since I was a small child in Florida, and all I remember is that I didn’t like them. As our kitchen increasingly became a den for these creatures, I had enough and went to the store to find my weapons.
Normally I’m a chemical-free, catch-and-release insect/pest kind of person. Recall, for those of you who may, my peanut butter + cardboard tube live mouse trap. Or my cricket in two cups technique. But this time urgency and convenience overruled and since I didn’t get a chance to do my natural-insect-killer research online before I was at the store, I bought up ant and roach traps. Only to discover upon arriving home and setting them up, a small corner of mouse excrements. AHHH!!!
The reflection:
As I cleaned out cupboards and tried to flex my out-of-shape anti-pest (just don’t show yourself!) prayer muscles, I began reflecting on my reaction. Here’s my recap of the internal conversation:
I’m a naturally organic-leaning person, yet I went straight to the store and bought the killer poison after I “had enough” of the ants in the kitchen.
I’m an environmentalist and love/appreciate animals (hence the live traps)…
… but only when they’re in their appropriate environment.
My desire for live traps is partly from my sense that all creatures are interdependent.
But wouldn’t the epitome of interdependence be in the fact that we are sharing living space, and that you can’t separate out the “pests”’ home from your own home? That you can’t barricade your life away from “nature”, and then go visit it as if it’s a bonus to your life?
Perhaps living with creatures is one way to be reminded of this interdependence. For now, the traps are set, and a kitchen without ants/roaches/mice sounds too good to stop the chemical poisoning. Besides, if I was to stop now, I already purchased and opened the products, it’d only be going undiluted into landfills, so I might as well dilute it into animals first? In any case, thanks to my mental gymnastics, I’m already appreciating interdependence with these “pests” more.
New foods!
Unfortunately this was a slideshow but I have yet to figure out how best to embed things. For now, just click the link and view it yourself as a slideshow if you like.
Lots of new foods!
justkalinaw 