It was years ago in Iloilo when I learned about how Norway and the Philippines were connected. It was at a resort where we ate the specialties of the province. On the beach, instead of swimmers, were a group of lifesavers. It was explained that those were students at John B. Lacson Maritime School, and the school was in partnership with Norway’s maritime industry.
Mother’s Day can be considered a commercial event much like Valentine’s Day. But if it does remind us what the mother is to a family, then it is a worthwhile event.
As I sweat on my chair even with the fan directed at my body, I dream of Baguio. Not the mountain city of long ago when one could still smell the pine trees and sweaters were worn regularly—but today’s Baguio with its traffic and population explosion and ancient pine trees that have lost their wonderful smell.
Almost every last Friday of the month, there’s Wine and Tapas Night at the Mandarin Oriental Manila Deli. It isn’t a formal, sniff-sniff sort of affair with costumed attendees in long gowns and black ties. It’s informal, with drink-all-you-can on the featured wines and eat-all-you-can appetizers.
There is something attractive about doing the right cut of meat. The slices come out neat. The pieces will cook uniformly at the same time. If there are bones, they will be harmless and will help in the presentation.
The late Digon Vocalan told me how sardines figure prominently in the Holy Week menu of the residents of Angono. The canned cooked fish is the main ingredient for soup, as sahog (ingredient) for pancit or eaten by itself, the sauce soaking the rice with its rich tomato flavor.
Two Israeli women active in the culinary world were here recently. They can be said to personify eye candy celebrities because both are in television, hosting and judging.
Siling duwag: I thought that best described the green chili before me. It looked like the ordinary siling haba or siling pang-sigang, but you could eat it and not feel the stinging heat.
One way to persuade people to visit your province is to make it easy for the traveler to get there. For Cavite, it’s through Cavitex, the expressway that zooms you there and cuts travel by something like an hour. We bypassed what I used to call the hell highway, suffering through traffic every time we passed there.
I had promised myself that I should see the Banaue Rice Terraces, and soon. My nationalistic conscience bothered me when friends from foreign lands would ask me if I had been to this wonder of the world. When that happens, I change the subject matter to other places like Batanes and Tawi-Tawi, faraway places I had been to, which, at the time, almost no one had visited yet.
My batchmates at the College of the Holy Spirit Manila felt like conspirators when we decided not to eat lunch in school during a recent grand reunion to celebrate its centennial. But only because there was an interesting alternative—La Cocina de Tita Moning.
-01-FA.jpg)