food trip

Since the start of this month, I’ve been doing something I really enjoy, no, make that LOVE doing. I’ve been food tripping.

Tita Cora, who’s from Australia, came back to the Philippines for a month-long vacation. Since her arrival, we’ve been to different places: sight-seeing, shopping and food-tripping. I haven’t actually tried any new food lately, but I’ve realized that the company of the people you eat with, the ambience and the presentation of the dishes can do wonders to make ordinary food not so mundane.

The food tripping started with the good old Australian steak. Now, for a carnivore like me, this is a piece of heaven on earth. Tita always makes it a point to bring home several kilos of steak, and right away, we sampled what she brought. There’s nothing special with how we cook it…we just grill some slabs of the meat and then eat it without gravy or any spices. Just a bit of salt, and some mashed potatoes. I can easily consume two big slices of steak. Heaven.

Then we took her to Tiendesitas for some shopping, and we also brought along Tita Laura, who brought her “baby” Bud to his grooming place. While Bud the Shih Tzu was being bathed and groomed, we sat down for merienda. As usual, we each had a cup of the rich thick native chocolate drink: tsokolate-eh. They ate suman, bibingka and puto bumbong, while I had some Ilocos empanada. We finished off with some fresh suha, so sweet that even a carnivore like me couldn’t stop eating it.

On her first weekend here, we went to Villa Escudero in Quezon. We first went to the museum there, then took a carabao-pulled ride to the recreation area, where we made ourselves hungry by rafting on the lake. Lunch was at the falls, where we ate with our feet submerged in the water. The food wasn’t spectacular: liempo, inihaw na tilapia, lechon manok, plain rice and camote-cue. Still, eating in a place like that made all the difference.

The next major eating trip was in Puerto Galera. Again, there was nothing special about the food; this time, the beach atmosphere made us enjoy the meal. After two days at the beach eating grilled fish, kebabs, liempo and green mangoes, we went home satisfied, munching on panutsas.

We then went to Taal, Batangas, where I bought a kilo of kapeng barako. Tita Lilia, Tita Asi and Lolo Dodong came with us. We had lunch in Silang, Cavite, where we had a sumptuous meal of sizzling bulalo, kare-kare and fried bangus. That was a really good meal, made more fun with the endless chatter. After lunch, Tita Lilia took us to this quaint coffee shop in Tagaytay, where we each had a mug of really good coffee and some really good pies. Before going home, we stopped by the Good Shepherd Convent, where we bought some pasalubong: buko pie, ube jam and ube dimples. These we enjoyed eating at home.

One Saturday, I took them to this breakfast buffet in Eastwood, where we feasted on daing na bangus, adobo, longganisa, tocino, scrambled eggs, pancakes, cheesedogs and palitaw. Mother even had a bowl of lugaw. We were so full that our next meal for that day was dinner; since we all were quite hungry then, we had a meal of lechon baboy.

Today we had lunch in the boodle place in Market! Market! It was really great. We had java rice, liempo, grilled squid, grilled tilapia, laing (something I didn’t eat), chicken-scratch shells and crab (served with Singaporean chili). Busog nanaman.

In between the trips, we were also eating really good pinoy snacks: suman and kalamay from Antipolo, orange puto with cheese (Marikina’s specialty), tikoy, Eng Bee Tin and Polland hopia, and various Australian goodies that Tita brought. So I can really say I haven’t felt hunger for the past month. I’ve gained two pounds in the process, but the Kodak moments made it all worth it.