donger need food.

Kumakain Ako

It’s freakin’ hot out here.

I swear, one of my crazy prankster cousins must’ve gotten someone to stick a rooster right outside my bedroom window.

…And I’m on the second floor.

On this Saturday morning, my attempts at getting more sleep are thwarted by this conspiring rooster: “ah-ah-aaaaaaaaah-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!” (I wonder if he knows what my favorite baked poultry is). And even before this crazy bird, it was the tricycles. 3AM, 4AM, 6AM…whenever…you can hear ‘em fire up their two stroke motors (75cc?) and revving into the night: “vroom vroom!”. Then there’s the vendors; with fresh breakfast ingredients at your door: “Baluuuuuut.” “Tilaaaa-pia, tinaaaa-pa.” And then there’s the packs of screaming kids, playing and running outside, yelling at each other in tagalog. Grrr. (Lest I should forget that crazy clock my Dad bought that plays little corny melodies every hour) All kidding aside, it sure makes for quite an experience, one I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. After a few minutes of this, I decide I’ve finally had enough and roll myself out of this mattress (that has one – and only one – bad spring that just happens to be sticking me at the one – and only one – part of my back that hurts).

My brothers and I spent the past two days at my cousin-in-law’s parents’ place in Queen’s Row Cavite. (They were kind enough to invite us along to ma-masyal since all of us were getting cooped up in this tiny barrio sitting waaay out on the coast of Laguna de Bay.) During the drive throughout, we witnessed an economic and social parity similar to the scenic and agricultural parity that runs rampant in California. Just as you have the majestic Sierras towering over the depths of the valley floor, there are multi-million-peso residential estates towering over the neighboring hollow-block homes of the poor and lower class. It’s quite amazing, really, the disparity between the social classes here. You have the ultra-mega-rich, and the ultra-mega-poor. I can’t seem to find the “middle class” (yet). But enough of that… This is about the food. And hot-damn, was it good.

It’s too bad that the grease-laden breakfast from Monday forced me to reach into my supply of those magical wonder pills laden with loperamide. (Mental note: don’t eat sunny side up eggs here!!) I’ve been gun-shy with food since then, hesitant to go all out and dive in to all the dishes. But our first stop was at Max’s Restaurant in Cavite, so I indulged – if only a little bit. Due to our group size (eighteen people – gotta love us Filipinos!) we were thrown into the Music Room. (Think karaoke, but with a REALLY loud sound system, disco lights, and a hostess that sings songs in-between patrons). We had friend chicken, sisig (kinda weird stuff…it had mayo of all things!), kare-kare, sinigang, fried bangus (yum), lechon kawali (hell yeah) and to top it all off was buko pandan.

The next day started off with a breakfast of corned beef swimming (and I mean bathing in a pool of oil) with eggs sunny side up, fried spam, fried hot dogs, pandesal, and sinaag (fried rice). I can’t get over the Magnolia butter here – so damned good because they’re ultra salted! Later that day was a stop at Leslie’s after horseback riding in People’s Picnicgrounds in Tagaytay. Hot-damn, this stuff kicked ass. Perched high above Taal Lake and the volcano (you can make it out in the hazy distance if you look hard) was this restaurant adorned with a dried wood roof and solid hand-carved wood tables & chairs. Complementing the amazing view was a similarly amazing lunch of mango salad, BBQ chicken, beef sinigang, sweet & sour seafood (good clams!), pork sisig (our absolute best so far) and utterly satisfying crispy pata. There was also beef adobo…it was a bit on the dry side, but they have potatoes! So ha! All you people out there (cough-Randy-cough) that have been clowning on my style…We ain’t the only family that does it like that!

(I’d share pictures, but this dial-up isn’t as conducive to uploads of five megapixel images)

I wonder what the food will be like at today’s wedding – at 3PM – thank goodness I don’t have to dress up in this heat. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain anytime soon (in fact, it’s quite sunny outside) so I’m sure it’s going to be really freakin’ hot. Maybe I should go back and relax at Jollibee to have my blood pressure tested again (for free) by that cute young nursing student.

posted by VirtualErn @ 7:41 AM

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