A Few Notes on Food

As I've noted in a previous article, I'd love to travel around the world with the Travel Channel stars, eating all sorts of strange foods from all sorts of cultures.  Traveling in the Philippines gave me a chance to sample some things not readily available in New Mexico.  I've always enjoyed seafood, and the Philippines is surely the perfect place to do that.  Although Bohol is a large island, it's still an island -- so everything that you find for sale in the marketplace is fresh.

Fresh squid

I can't remember everything that we ate there.  Our cook, Ms. Novelinda, kept us well fed with a tasty variety of traditional Filipino food.  I also had the chance to dine in some nice restaurants as well as some "eateries" (I'm not sure what to call them): crab, shrimp, crayfish, squid, shellfish . . . and a couple of things unknown.  It was all excellent.  I'm a little disappointed being back in Albuquerque, as we just don't have the selection and the freshness available in the Philippines.

Some of the other things I enjoyed included mango, ube (a purple potato), bananas, pineapple, coconut, papaya and more -- all fresh. We had truckloads of cassava driving by the construction site, but I never got the chance to try some cassava bread . . . which is what most Filipinos eat instead of wheat-based bread.  For those who don't think they know anything about cassava, it's where we get tapioca from.  

Baking cassava bread

Before I left for the Philippines, I thought I would try to make some Filipino recipes I had found on the internet.  So when our cook presented some "puto" for a between meals snack, they were all surprised when I knew what it was and how they made it.  And when I said that I had made it home, they were all laughing with amusement that some "kano" would try to make one of their traditional foods.  Puto is nothing more than a cake that is steamed, rather than baked.  I used a bamboo steamer that I picked up at the local Asian market, where as the Filipinos all have big electric steamers . . .hmmm, and here I thought I was doing it the "traditional" way.  So how did mine compare to theirs?  Actually, it was very close.  I had a problem with condensation on top of the cakes that they didn't seem to have, but taste-wise mine were comparable to theirs.

Halo-halo

There were two things that I didn't try.  I did not try the infamous balut.  There were a few of the Americans who found some and tried it . . . but I was visiting the Christian school in Ubay when  they were exploring other places on the island.  I also didn't try a halo-halo for desert.  Although it was readily available, I was just never in the mood for a big desert item -- I think the steady diet of rice kept me full enough that I didn't crave something like halo-halo.  Made from coconut, palm fruit, jackfruit, flan, sweet beans, bananas, ube, and ice cream, this local favorite always seemed just a little too rich for my taste.   Some of  my travel companions had some at the Cebu airport before we returned to the States -- but I opted not to try something with too much sweet and ice cream before going for 27 hours crammed in an airplane with hundreds of other travelers.  One of my Filipino friends said that it gave me an excuse to come  back the Philippines.  Sounds good to me!