prasantrin

Hi Doddie! No, it's not dilis. We've been wracking our brains over it. It sounded like dalang or diwang or. . .

Day 9 I ended up having nothing for breakfast, and nothing for lunch. I curse you Peter Green! But we had a long drive ahead of us. We were going out to S's farm for a visit, so we dropped by the pharmacy to get some Cipro for me to snack on. S's farm is only about 30 miles from Manila, but it seems like a world away. There's a swinery, a chicken farm, mango groves, etc. His primary business, however, is raising cocks for cock fighting. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera along, but if anyone decides to go to the Philippines, I would suggest getting out of the city as quickly as possible, and spending as much time as possible in the countryside. It's like a completely different country. On the way back, we stopped by Antipolo, a small town where cashews are grown. I've seen pictures of how cashews are harvested, and I really wanted to see a real cashew tree. But it was dark by now, and we couldn't find any cashews at all--not even at the market! Dinner was at Max's. Jaymes may know it--it's a fried chicken joint that opened in 1945, and is now a chain. It's not fried chicken like KFC, but they just season chickens and fry them whole. I only had a little of the skin off my mom's chicken, and I had beef (with three little granules of ground beef in it) and cabbage soup. Max's seems to be a place for the up-and-comers to go out and have a "fancy meal" (a lot of graduation dinners were being held there that night), but I wouldn't suggest it unless there's absolutely nothing else around. And now I'm all caught up! We'll see what today brings--hopefully a better stomach and therefore better food!

This was the rest of the menu. Bagoong like I’ve never seen before. It’s made with dried shrimp, and Sylvia adds tomatoes, pork, and other things to hers. I’ve never liked bagoong, but I really liked this. It was served as a condiment to the kare kare vegetables, but I could have eaten it all by itself on some crackers. The kare kare vegetables were eggplant, green beans, and either spinach or kangkong (swamp cabbage?) or some other leafy green. They’re covered with the sauce from the kare kare. Unlike most vegetables in the Philippines, these were not overcooked at all. Kare kare is a kind of stewed beef dish. It’s a little like Massaman curry because it uses peanuts, and it tends to be a good introduction to Filipino food for foreigners. I don’t know any non-Filipino who doesn’t like kare kare. We weren’t sure if this was beef or ox-tail, but the meat was so tender I could cut it with a spoon (Filipinos eat with forks and spoons, much like Thais do). This was tilapia wrapped in banana leaves and grilled. I’ve got a close-up later on. Filipino-style paella. They often use achiote or turmeric instead of saffron for the colour. I didn’t try any of this, but my mother and Tita said it was really good. Grilled shrimp. I didn’t have this, either, but it looked good. My mother said it was dry. And the lechon! Look at that skin! And that fatty porky goodness! There wasn’t a lot of fat on this pig, and the meat was juicy and flavourful. “Oh no! My foot fell off!” This was my plate. Pitiful, isn’t it? But I wasn’t feeling that well by this time. Too much pâté I guess. I could have eaten more if I had tried, but it was going to be a 2-hour (minimum) trip back home, so it was best not to risk it. Plus the rice was crappy, and I tend to eat less when the rice isn’t good. Does the skin look crispy to you? I assure you, it was. Here’s the tilapia. To my mother’s surprise, it was also stuffed! And although she was already stuffed, she ate every last morsel of it (except the head, which I know she really wanted to gnaw on). Dessert was turon (a special banana wrapped in lumpia wrappers, then fried and coated in caramel) and a very non-Filipino dessert. It was sort of like tiramisu, but the flavour was more like mocha. It was very rich. I’d have liked to have eaten more turon, but the whipped cream from the cake-thing did me in. Almost everyone had left already, but some of us hung around a little longer. My group sat at a great table (there were three tables of about 10 people each) and talked about food the whole time with our tablemates. The two people on the left of the table are ethnic Chinese Filipinos, so they knew a lot about Chinese food (and history) in the Philippines, and they also gave us some travel advice (I think it’ll be Taiwan and Shanghai in December!). The husband-half of the owners, Carlos Rodriguez, is standing on the far right of the picture, and his wife, Sylvia, is sitting just off to the right of him. What a great time, but I really suffered after that lunch, and dinner ended up being ginger tea. Today I think I’ll be having Cipro. Yum!

Day 8 I’m starting to wear out. My tummy was better, but I stuck with oatmeal that morning with no Imodium. But then the longganisa my mother was eating looked so delicious, I just had to have a couple of links! And then there was mangosteen! Who doesn’t love mangosteen? It looks a bit dry in the picture, but I assure you it wasn't. Yet another busy eating day. Earlier this month while browsing blogs for eating advice, I saw an entry on Our Awesome Planet advertising a special reservation-only lechon lunch at Sylvia Miguel’s Garden. Lechon, or roast pig, is one of my favourite foods in the world, so of course I had to go. After e-mailing and texting the organizers back and forth, I was finally able to transfer the payment (this was our most expensive meal at P1500 per person), and we were all set! My Tita Lita (Mom’s cousin—“tita” means “aunt”, but it’s basically used for any relative in about the age group of your parents, or for close family friends about that age) was coming with us, too, and she’s a foodie extraordinaire! The meeting place was at 10 am at a Starbuck’s at a highway rest stop somewhere along the Southern Luzon Expressway (SLEX). We got there about an hour early, so what could we do but have some cake while we waited? We also made the mistake of getting some coffee. While Starbuck’s food items are adapted to suit local tastes, the coffee is the same everywhere. Interpret that as you wish. I had heard raves about the chocolate cake at Starbuck’s in Manila, so I wanted to try it, but they had so many! I ended up getting the Roca, thinking it would be something like Almond Roca. It wasn’t, but it was still delicious! It was surprisingly light and not too sweet. I would have preferred less chocolate ganache, and I didn’t care for the thick chocolate surrounding the cake, but my mom and Tita gobbled those parts up. Everyone finally showed up, and we left caravan-style for Tagaytay. Tagaytay is a rural area about an hour or so from Manila. The drive was quite beautiful, and many of the wealthy have built their retirement homes or second homes in the area because of the lush greenery and the clean air. It was much like La Trinidad where Eve’s Garden was. We were at the tail-end of the caravan, and our driver, not familiar with Manila or the surrounding rural areas, got left behind, so we missed the turn off. Oops. It took a bit of work to catch up with the others—the roads are narrow and confusing, and signage is not a priority is this particular country (plus our driver, not Tita’s usual driver, kind of sucked). Oh well. We made it, and it was well worth the wait! The Rodriguez family built their house just a few years ago, and it’s absolutely beautiful. They really gave a lot of thought to how they wanted to use the property. They’ve got 2 ½ hectares, and part has already been developed as a farm where they grow vegetables (and maybe raise some animals). They’re still thinking about what to do with the rest of the property, but for their house, rather than rooms they’ve got separate buildings for each section, joined by covered walkways. I don’t have pictures of the buildings because I wanted to respect their privacy, but it was really something else. The smokehouse where the lechon was cooked was another little tiny building uphill from the living room (living house?), and I thought I had a picture of it, but no such luck Sylvia Rodriguez loves to cook, and she comes from a long line of food-lovers. Her maternal grandfather was the first Spanish pastry chef in the Philippines, and her father came from a family that insisted on eight dishes at every meal (plus four desserts). Both of her sons are chefs (one in Australia, and the other in Manila) who worked their way up in the kitchen by staging across Europe. Our meal was held on the patio of the living room building. Like Eve’s Garden, Sylvia Rodriguez’s Garden is a private restaurant. Sylvia only does this as a hobby, and only when she feels like it. We started with a fish spread, and a duck and chicken pâté. Everyone loved the fish spread, because it’s not commonly found, and it's difficult to do well. I can’t remember the name of the fish, but they’re small and the word starts with “d” (any help out there?). It’s not easy to get fresh ones at the market (which is why the dish isn't commonly found), and Sylvia will only make this when the fish are absolutely fresh—she said they have to be really white. She adds chile, rosemary, parsley, and I can’t remember what else. It was delicious. The pâté was equally delicious. She uses 75% duck liver and 25% chicken, because if you use all duck it’s too rich, she said. It was so smooth and although you knew you were eating hundreds of calories with each schmear, it didn’t seem heavy at all. My mother, Tita, and I each bought a crock to take home. It was only P395 (it would go for 4-5 times that much in Japan, I’m sure) and came in a reusable crock! How could we resist? It was an hour or so before the main guest arrived from his private quarters. A month before our party, he was sequestered and fed only organic grains, which would supposedly give his meat a cleaner flavour. I don’t know much about raising pigs, but I can tell you he was delicious! Sometimes lechon can be dry, but not a single part of him (that any of my group tried) was.

Just a correction to an above post which is too old to edit--the flowers in our salad at Eve's Garden were nasturtium, not watercress. The owner told us watercress, but my mother said they were definitely nasturtium.

Here’s a bit of what we had. The huge shrimp in the middle were just steamed or boiled. Nothing special about them, though you could get them in soup or any other way you wanted. Pork lengua (tongue). It’s cooked in tomato sauce with spices, and it’s delicious! Sometimes tongue has some hard bits running through it, but this one had no such bits. It was tender through and through. This one wasn’t a Kapampangan specialty, but was Spanish-influenced, but it was a request of my mother’s. This was sort of like an oyster ceviche. I think the very tiny oysters are marinated in vinegar, onions, and maybe some calamansi juice (calamansi are little tart citrus fruits—like limes, but better). Crickets adobo-style. My mom’s friend really attacked this plate when it arrived. I tried to find the least offensive looking piece to take a picture of. I did eat one and as a matter of fact, I think I ate this particular piece (least offensive looking, remember). It was OK. Tasted kind of fatty, I thought. I probably won’t be craving it in the future. Sizzling sisig is another dish Pampanga is very well known for. If you watched No Reservations, you saw AB eat it with gusto. It’s pig cheek and snout that’s grilled, then chopped to bits with some chicken liver, onions, calamansi, and a bit of chile. Delicious, but much too rich for us (if that’s possible). I also had my coconut. They cut it differently here, so it kind of reminded me of that scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies where they cut the skull off a monkey and eat the brains. Not so appetizing a thought, but the coconut was good! Oh, and fresh lumpia. I can’t remember what this had in it, because I didn’t eat much of it. I’ve never cared for Filipino-style fresh lumpia, and this was no exception. The wrapper was dry, as was the filling (I only remember shrimp and green papaya in there, but there was other stuff, too). We also had Sylvana for dessert. Sylvana is similar to Sans Rival which is layers of cashew meringue and buttercream. Sylvana is often made with scraps of meringue and cakes which are held together with buttercream. I made sure this was made with real butter before buying it. It was soooo delicious! We ended up buying a couple more—they were only P12! That’s just 25 cents! Above the Sylvanas is turrones de casoy, or cashew torrone. It’s similar to the French or Italian-style torrone, but different. The candy is not quite as chewy as the Italian/French-style, and in this case, it was brown not white. The actual candy is quite tiny, while the rice paper is wrapped quite thickly around the candy. You really need to eat a lot before you feel satisfied (or at least we do), so I think we finished off the package while we were sitting around and talking. There were also mangos, which were perfectly ripe, and paksiw, which is a very delicious tart fish soup. I don’t know why I don’t have a picture of that one, because it was my second favourite dish (the tongue was first, and the sigsig was third). After Everybody’s Café, we made a stop for pasalubong at Susie’s. Susie’s is another Pampanga institution, this one known for its kakanin (rice-based desserts). They have an assortment of both sweet and savoury goods, and also a lot of pasalubong from companies in the area. We really only came here for one thing, the tibok-tibok. This was the carbao milk “candy” or “pudding” I mentioned in an earlier post, and it’s also called “maja blanca”. I did some research, and it’s more like a pudding, often compared to panna cotta. We ended up with much more, however. On the left is the tibok-tibok. In the little bag is latik, which is sweetened fried coconut. You sprinkle some of the latik on the tibok-tibok when you eat it. Same with the ube macapuno next to it. Ube is a purple yam, and macapuno is a type of coconut. Once the plastic has been removed, you can see how creamy the tibok-tibok looks, compared to the denseness of the ube macapuno. We also got, from left to right, pandan-flavoured pastillas de leche (a kind of candy, often made with carabao milk, but I think this one was made with cow’s milk), pili boat tarts, puto pao (I’m not sure what this one is, yet, but puto is a steamed rice cake), and an assortment of pastillas. This is what the tibok-tibok and ube macapuno look like with the latik. I really liked the latik, but fried sweetened coconut is definitely not something for daily consumption. I loved the tibok-tibok, but could do with out the ube macapuno (I’ve never cared for ube). I was expecting something really different from carabao’s milk, but it tasted like a very rich cow’s milk dessert. No dinner for me that night. I was plain tuckered out from all that eating!

Day 7 I spent another slightly less fitful night, so I gave up on having my favourite pork-based Filipino breakfast for some oatmeal. It was going to be a big eating day for us, and I needed to save my strength. I felt better, but I was still concerned so I had an Imodium chaser before we left. My mother started the day with suman (sticky rice) and mango, though. Or maybe this was tamales. I can't remember now. My mother’s friend, S, and his wife, H, picked us up bright and early (Filipino-style—we left at 9:30am) to go to Pampanga! Pampanga is famous for its food, and its people are known foodies. S is a Kapampangan (I’m not sure if I spelled that correctly, but it means “someone from Pamapanga”), so he was going to be the perfect guide for us. Eve of Eve’s Garden, the restaurant we had lunch at in Baguio, was also from Pampanga, and her husband used that as the main reason she wanted to open the restaurant (“She’s from Pampanga, and you know, they like their food,” is what he said). Pampanga was also featured in the No Reservations: Philippines episode. We had planned to lunch at Claude Tayag’s Bale Dutung (which means “House of Food” in the local language), which is where Anthony Bourdain had dinner, but there were some hitches (the main one being that no one knew where it was, and we later found out from S’s sister-in-law, a relative of Claude Tayag’s, that it’s open by reservation only), so we went to Everybody’s Café instead. Everybody’s Café is famous for being one of the oldest restaurants in the Pampanga area. It started as a tiny eatery and then expanded into a very large restaurant with two branches. The original branch is still doing very well, though the smaller branch is suffering a bit. It’s sort of like a cafeteria, in that you order at a counter where the food is held (like buffet-style), but it’s served to you at the table. We let S do the ordering, since we didn’t know much about specialties from the area. Here’s a sampling of what they had on offer that day. I can’t remember what everything is, but the second picture has crickets cooked adobo-style (in a magazine it was called “mole crickets”), and the fourth and fifth pictures are different frog dishes. You could also buy pasalubong at the restaurant from various Pampanga-based companies (and others). Way too many pics in this post, so I'll continue in a new post.

Day 6 I spent a fitful night with some kind of stomach ailment. I think I got it from Peter Green. See that? You roll with dogs and you’re going to get fleas! It really wasn’t too bad since I could still eat (and wanted to eat), but since we had a 5-hour bus ride back to Manila, I decided to play it safe by not eating much except Imodium. We made a quick trip to the Pink Sisters Church, so called because the sisters wear pink habits, before we left. My mother used to live almost right next door, but their house is now gone, probably flattened by the earthquake. A cousin who used to spend holidays at their house in Baguio told her that when he realized the house was gone, he cried. Everyone had good times in Baguio back then. Just outside the church they were selling some pili nut goods. Pili nuts are, I think, exclusive to the Philippines. They’re most commonly likened to cashews or almonds, but I don't think they're anything like either of them. They’re very light, not dense like almonds, and when you bite into them, it’s almost like you’re eating nothing. That’s not necessarily a good thing, because before you know it, they’re all gone! We bought two kinds—a sweetened one with sesame seeds, and salted garlic pili. Look how big those garlic slices are! (garlic on top, pili on the bottom) By the time we reached my lola’s house, I was starving. We were having spaghetti for dinner, and this worried me because the last time I had spaghetti at a Filipino person’s house, it had canned corned beef in it. But I needn’t have worried, because although it was a might bit sweet (Filipinos like sweet spaghetti sauce, I find), it was made with ground beef (or maybe pork). We also had fried lumpia made with fresh lumpia wrappers. Fresh lumpia wrappers really make a world of difference in fried lumpia. The wrappers fry up so light and almost greaseless. I love the crispiness of them. Then of course I had a mango for dessert. Not such a good idea given the condition of my stomach, but one must make sacrifices, you know!

Day 5 continued We went back to Baguio Market so my mother could stock up on vegetables to bring back to Bacolod. She ended up with 7 1/2 kgs of assorted veggies, and a very large basket of strawberries. I had planned on getting some lard, but was too tired to be bothered looking for it again. Maybe I’ll be able to find some good lard in Manila before I leave. We had a short siesta at our hotel then went back up to Camp John Hay. Although we were still a bit full from lunch, I wanted to catch the camp while there was still light out. There are still some of the original buildings from when the Camp was being used by the US Armed Forces. The white houses with green trim were a symbol of Baguio, and back in my mother’s day, all the houses had the same colour combination. Our destination was Choco-late de Batirol on Scout Hill, famous for its native chocolate. It’s a quaint little outdoor restaurant with just some patio umbrellas and a bit of siding used as a roof to shade customers from the sun and protect them from the rain. It actually rained that night while we were there, but we barely got wet at all. The restaurant is located next to what is now a cafeteria, but my mother doesn’t remember it being a mess hall when she used to come here. They’ve also built some condos around there, and I suspect many of them are owned by Koreans (one of the old homes has been converted to a Korean church, so I think many Koreans live in the area). The native chocolate did not disappoint. It tasted freshly roasted, and it wasn’t too watery or too thick, or too sweet. I wanted to buy some of the chocolate paste they use, but it was in large heavy jars—too big for me to bring back. A little friend joined us for dinner. Poor little baby was starving, so I snuck her some of my leftovers at the end of the night. My mother had taba ng talangka, which means “fat of crab” (my mother says “talangka” is specifically those little crabs pictured in my Baguio Market post). I had read that Choco-late did an excellent version of this dish, and my mother thought it would be similar to the Thai version of scraped out crab fat. But this was nothing like that, and she was sorely disappointed. I don’t know what she expected, because I’ve never had the Thai version, but it just tasted salty and a bit fishy to me. I had barbeque pork. I have a firm belief that in the Philippines, when in doubt, stick to the pork. I was proven right yet again. This had just the right amount of fat, and was moist but crispy (the charred bits were excellent!). My mother liked my food better than hers, a rare occurrence. We were much too full for dessert, but we made the sacrifice and ordered bibingka—my first of the trip! This was warm and comforting, but the actual bibingka wasn’t coconut-y enough for me, and I thought it would have been better Thai-style, with slightly salted sweet coconut cream on top. We had to walk down the hill to try to find a taxi. We passed by a very pathetic looking picnic area. I don’t understand why Filipinos tend to squander the wonderful opportunities they are given. This could be such a nice place for people to come and relax with their families, but look at all that litter. Is it really too much to throw away your own garbage? Perhaps I need to make a trip to the cemetery to bury all my negativism. Jaymes—do you remember that Cemetery of Negativism being around when you were in Baguio? My mother doesn’t remember it at all.

Day 5 We didn’t get breakfast this morning. I love breakfast, and it’s the most important meal of the day! But I suppose it is better that we didn’t have breakfast, because we had a very good lunch waiting for us. I had read about Eve’s Garden on someone’s blog, and when my mother was going through my research, it was one of the places she really wanted to try. It’s only open for lunch, and only by reservation, so we called first thing that morning. After visiting with my mother’s childhood friend again, we took a taxi up to La Trinidad. La Trinidad is even further in the mountains than Baguio, up a long winding road. Eve’s Garden is really out of the way, and you really need a car to go there. Our taxi driver charged us an additional P50 for the ride (beyond the meter fare), and he wanted an additional P200 to wait so he could bring us back (and he was only willing to wait one hour). The owner of Eve’s Garden said no way, and he offered to drive us down to the main area after lunch, so we could catch a taxi there. We were the first guests to arrive, so we were able to talk to the owner quite a bit. The restaurant is a hobby of his wife’s. They originally bought the property as a vacation home, and then decided to live there permanently. I could understand why, because the air is fresh and the lush mountains provide a view that’s a far cry from the ugly polluted cities of the Philippines (including Baguio). As soon as we sat down, we were served pineapple juice with lemon juice, mint, sage, and muscovado sugar. It reminded me of coconut-flavoured rum, which I hate, but I still managed to finish mine. Eve's family is originally from Pampanga, just north of Manila, but her family has a strawberry farm in the Baguio area. They sell wine, pastillas, and jams from the farm at the restaurant. Then we had onion soup with seven kinds of herbs, the predominant of which was sage. This tasted creamy and rich, but it was really quite light. Next they brought a centerpiece. Pretty, isn’t it? Actually, it was our salad! We each had a beautiful plate of greens like this. Normally I find salad to be a waste of stomach space. Seriously, why would I waste my valuable eating time eating grass? But this was a very special salad. Made with 10 different organic greens (they grow about 14 different types on the property), watercress flowers (who knew watercress flowers were so beautiful?), walnuts, raisins, jicama, and carrots, we ate this “Baguio farm-style”, as the owner liked to say. Take a bunch of leaves, add whatever extras you want, roll, dip in the sauce, and eat. The sauce was made with flax oil, and it was similar to Caesar salad dressing in flavour. I could only manage about 2/3 of the salad before I gave up. I was getting much too full, plus grass is a waste of stomach space. Our main course was grilled chicken breast, whole wheat pasta, and croutons. This dish was less successful, in my opinion. It’s not that this dish was bad, because it wasn’t, but it just wasn’t very interesting. The chicken was on the border of being too dry, and it was chicken breast! Also a waste of stomach space, in my opinion. The chickens used were free-range, purchased from a nearby farmer, and they were only fed organic grains. The only redeeming parts of this dish were the croutons, in my opinion. The provided a nice texture contrast, and a welcome bit of fat to the dish (fat is good). Finally, coffee and tea. The tea was ginger and ginseng, and the coffee was some kind of Filipino coffee. I feared the coffee would be too strong for me, but it was actually a nice, smooth brew. The bar was an oatmeal coconut raisin bar. It was the best homemade granola bar I’ve ever had. After lunch we sat around outside on their patio down below and took in the view. The owner came out and chatted with my mother about the history of the place. Eve’s Garden is only 3 1/2 years old, and when they first started they served dinner, too. Unfortunately, their very first guests, a party of eight, overstayed their welcome and they were still there at 5am. After that, they decided to open for lunch only. Not only that, but because it’s just a hobby for them, they often tell people who call that they’re full, when in fact they just want to take a break. In a few years they’re planning on opening a bed and breakfast, as well. I’d definitely stay there, but only if I had a car. The owner drove us down the hill to try to catch a taxi (We picked up a little boy who lives across the street. He was on his way to school, and it usually takes him 2 hours down the winding roads to walk to school!). We decided to take a jeepney, instead. Traditionally, jeepneys are old US jeeps converted to be used as public transportation. I like taking them, but my mother doesn’t. Still, it was only P14.50 vs. more than P80 for the taxi, and we’d probably have been waiting for a taxi for a looooooong time!

Day 4 continued Three and one-half hours after meeting with her friends, my mother finally returned to our room. I was starving by this point, so we made a couple of phone calls to help us decide where to have dinner. We wanted to try the Baguio Country Club, but we were told you had to be a member or be with a member to dine there. Darn! So then we called The Manor at Camp John Hay and made our dinner reservations there. Camp John Hay was used as an R&R place for US servicemen across the Philippines, for whom Baguio was the vacation area of choice. Several years ago, ownership of the Camp reverted to the Philippine government, and it was turned into a hotel and convention area, so even Filipinos could enjoy the area. Luckily for my mother, she had known Camp John Hay very well when she lived in Baguio, since her father was one of the few Filipinos to be issued a pass to the Camp (he was friends with some of the servicemen who had authority to issue passes). The Camp was the only place at which her family ever ate outside their home, and they would often entertain out-of-town guests there. They’ve completely renovated the buildings, and the main restaurant, Le Chef, is where the officer’s mess (or officer’s club? I’m not sure) used to be. There's a nice garden beyond the restaurant. My mother didn't remember that being there before. They promote Filipino artists and have sculptures, etc. out on display, all available for purchasing if you wish. Le Chef is supposed to be the best restaurant in Baguio. After our previous visits to “best” places, we were prepared to be disappointed. The food, however, is actually quite good. We started with freshly squeezed juices. Mine was called “Four Seasons” and my mother’s was Valencia orange. I think my juice had pineapple, mango, orange, and guava juices, but I’m not sure. We were given one small bun and one slice of French bread, each. No refills. I thought the butter was pretty. We both really liked the vegetable dip thing on the side. It was just olive oil, green peppers, tomatoes, garlic, shallots and a wee bit of balsamic. My mother had Bangus Belly with Stir-fried Spicy Laing topped with Coconut Cream. Laing (pronounced with two separate syllables “la-ing”) is gabi leaves. Gabi is a type of root vegetable which my mother thinks is taro. Her bangus was succulent and perfectly cooked. It was even better than the one at Club Filipino, because the skin was very crispy! And look at the belly fat! The belly fat is the best part, you know. She let me have a piece, but just one. I had Pan-fried Philippine Sea Bass with Berlinnoise Sauce and Penne Pomodoro. I just wanted to try the Philippine sea bass. Is it different from Chilean sea bass? Our waiter actually offered Chilean sea bass to me, but my mother reminded me that CSB is endangered, so I stuck with the PSB. Anyone know what makes berlinnoise sauce berlinnoise? The carrots? It was well executed, and the penne pomodoro didn’t clash as much with the fish as I thought it would. It wasn’t, however, a dish that will stand out in my memory as one of the best I’ve ever had (my mother’s bangus is definitely the best bangus I’ve ever had, though). My mother was sad to leave (she tried to look sad, but we couldn't stop laughing).

Day 4 Still in Baguio, we spent the morning out and about. First we went to Good Shepherd Convent. The Convent is part of the reason my mother ended up in Baguio. Tiay Tita had joined the convent (she was a nun at one time), and my grandfather insisted that if my mother go away to school, it should be to a place where they knew people. Since there was also a high-level girls school in Baguio, it was decided that was where my mother would go. Then my grandfather was so impressed with Baguio that he moved the entire family there. Good Shepherd Convent is famous for its pasalubong. Its ube jam is especially famous, as are its nut brittles. We bought up a storm, leaving with jars of jam, peanut butter, and a lot of peanut and cashew brittles. Every purchase helps send young girls who want to better their educations to school. They work at the Convent at the shops, the bakery, the candy-making kitchen, or elsewhere, and their salary goes toward their tuition. My mother by chance met the Mother Superior while we where there--she had worked with Tiay Tita, and she also knew another Sister who had played a role in my mother’s moving to New Mexico in 1963 (’62?). Unfortunately, that Sister passed away a few years ago. We didn’t have a way to get back down the hill (the Convent is a long way from downtown), so Mother Superior told us to wait around until a taxi dropped someone else off. Since we had time to kill, we decided to get a snack—what else is there to do when there’s nothing to do, but eat? Clockwise from top, we got ensaimada, a chicken empanada, an adobo bun, and calamansi and lemon juice with strawberry syrup. The drink was excellent—lightly sweetened, not too tart, and very refreshing. The ensaimada was the more modern-style. It was too soft and cakey for my tastes, but for that style of ensaimada, it was a very good example; it was worlds better than the Goldilock’s version, anyway. The chicken empanada was quite good, too—it had just enough filling, and the crust stood up to the filling wonderfully. I didn’t like the adobo bun as much. The bread was very good, but the filling was dry and not very flavourful. We were finally able to catch a taxi back to town, and we spotted PNKY Café on the way back, so we had the taxi stop. I had read about it on several Philippines-based blogs, so I thought we should try it. It’s a cute little café, but I found the food was perhaps over-rated on the blogs I read. My mother had schnitzel. It was quite thin and a bit on the dry side. I didn’t think it was that bad. Since we had, fewer than 30 minutes earlier, already had a snack, I decided to go light by having carrot soup and Belgian frites. I’m not sure what was so Belgian about the Belgian frites. They most definitely weren’t double fried, but I think they may have been boiled, then dusted with flour or cornstarch, and finally fried. They weren’t very crispy, but Baguio potatoes are very good. The frites were so creamy and flavourful that they made me realize how dry and flavourless Japanese potatoes really were. PNKY’s chocolate de tablea (hot chocolate made with native chocolate tablets) and chocolate cake were supposed to be very good, so I ordered those, as well (even “eating light” can include hot chocolate and chocolate cake!). The chocolate de tablea was watery and tasted of commercial chocolate tablets that aren’t very good. The chocolate cake was hard and dry, and was reminiscent of a denser boxed cake mix. What a disappointment! In order to work off some of the calories from our snack and lunch, we visited Baguio Cathedral. We really just wanted to visit the St. Louis Silver Factory which was located next door, but my mother and her family used to go to church at Baguio Cathedral, so I wanted to see it. It’s up on one of Baguio’s many hills, off Session Road, so the location is quite central, but it’s still a bit of a climb. Not there, yet. My poor mother had to take a rest half-way up. The stairs were too steep and plentiful for her to climb easily. In case you were wondering, Adam was an Igorot (native Filipino from the Cordilleras. “Igorot” is actually a somewhat derogatory word, much like the word “Eskimo” is to the Inuit, but it seems to be a little more acceptable now than when my mother lived here), and Eve was probably Spanish. I guess their children were the first mestizo (mixed blood) of the Philippines. The Cathedral is surprisingly pretty and very well taken care of (most building in the Philippines seem to fall into disrepair within a decade or so). Although we went up around 1:30, there was a mass being held and there were quite a lot of people there. My mother joined the mass while I walked around the property. The Cathedral also sells rice. This rice is earmarked for economically disadvantaged people, so it’s very cheap (37 cents per kilo), but I’m sure it’s not very tasty rice. Our main purpose for visiting the Cathedral was to visit the St. Louis Silver School. Darn it all! It closed a few years ago! We couldn’t find out what happened to it, but we were very disappointed; we love looking at pretty things! To temper our disappointment, we went back to Star Café to get some pineapple pie. My aunt (real aunt) texted my mother asking if we had tried pineapple pie, yet. She suggested the pie at Star Café, so who are we to argue? We should have argued. I thought it sucked. If you look at the bottom crust, it looks a bit uncooked, and it tasted uncooked, too. I’d never had chewy pie crust before, but there’s always a first time! Who knows, though. Maybe it was supposed to be that way??? It didn’t have much pineapple flavour, either. We bought a couple of old-style looking pan de sal, though, so that may make up for the crappy pie. We went back to our hotel so my mother could meet up with her old classmates from her high school days, and I caught up on e-mail and eG posts; I really think I’m going to beat Peter this time! I don't know what's up with ImageGullet, but i'm having a hell of a time uploading pics. I'm going to post without pics, and will edit them in tomorrow.

Jaymes--we went to Camp John Hay last night, and I thought of you! I finished my write-up, but don't have time to upload the pics and my post right now. Will do it later this afternoon, I hope. Doddie--Is fish snot "lukot"? Marketman wrote about it during his visit to Bacolod. People eat fish poop? Ick! My mother says coconut is palm, but then I reminded her that there are many types of palm trees. Peter--don't worry, once I get back to Manila, my postings will slow down a bit, and you'll have time to catch up! I might be witnessing some cricket eating this weekend, and will think of you if I do.

That sounds so much better! Anything fried is good, I say. I didn't realize ibus was the same as suman. I've heard of suman, but I can't remember if I've ever tried it. Thanks! I went back and corrected my post (hope i got all of them!). The one my great-aunt had was really bad. It said it was processed, but I'm not sure if that word was meant to mean "not fresh" or if it meant "cheese-food-type cheese". Oh, and Marketman likens Queso de Bola to Edam, not Gouda, but I always thought it was supposed to be more like Gouda. Oh well, the one we had was still crappy! (I think it was made by Aro or something like that.)

Day 3 Part 2 Finally, breakfast! It was about 9am when we finally made it back to Star Café. Star Café is something of an institution in Baguio, having opened in 1940. I wanted to eat here because I thought it would be fun for my mother to eat somewhere she had eaten 50 years ago. I asked her, “Did you come here a lot when you lived here?” And she replied with some amount of disgust, “No way! Are you kidding?” Her family didn’t eat at places like this, so this was a new experience for her. Well, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger! The front of the store looks like an old-style panaderia, except they not only have Filipino-style baked goods, but also some American-style breads like cinnamon buns. The baked goods area was mostly empty when we arrived, but it filled up during our stay there. They have a small breakfast menu, but they also have a larger menu that looks as though it hasn’t changed much over the years. Items like egg foo yeung, shark fin fried rice, etc. are still on the menu. My mother started talking to a man behind the counter, and he turned out to be the son of the original owners. The family still owns the place, and he told her that their restaurant was the last of the old-time businesses. They were originally located somewhere nearby (which is what my mother remembered), but after the earthquake in the ‘80’s, they moved to their new location right on Session Road. They didn’t run in the same crowd back then (I think he was several years younger than my mother), but they knew some of the same families, so they gossiped a bit until our food arrived. My mother had a Spanish omelette. I can’t remember what was in it. She said it was ok, but nothing special. I had the bangus breakfast. The bangus was too dry, and there was barely any fatty stomach. What’s the point of bangus if there’s no fatty stomach? As we were sitting there, I noticed they had put out some ensaimada. They use margarine which is unfortunate, because the margarine has a strange flavour. The ensaimada, itself, was very good. It was like old-style ensaimada, so it was more bread-like. It was nice because the crust was a bit crusty unlike more modern ensaimada, but the innards were tender. I liked it a lot, and it was only P10! I’m going to get another one before we leave on Friday, so I can eat it on the bus! After our late breakfast, we still couldn’t check in, so we went to SM Baguio, a large shopping center. We wandered around a bit, trying to find an internet café, but as is common in the Philippines, there were problems with connections, so none of the cafés were useable. What else was there to do but have a pedicure and then eat lunch? I won’t tell you where we ate lunch because you’ll probably be even more disappointed than we were (it was really awful). But I will show you a picture of our beverages! I had a bottomless glass of root beer, and my mother had a single glass. The Philippines is, I think, the only Asian country that has embraced root beer, so I need to drink as much as I can while I’m here. Although my glass was refillable, it was much larger than my mother’s and she was very jealous! Here she is, looking longingly at my extra large glass of root beer. After lunch it was finally time to check in. We spent the rest of the day sleeping, and didn’t even go out for dinner. I just had some of those sad cardboard-y strawberries and some stale bread, and I was out for the rest of the night. Poor me!

Day 3—Baguio is best! Our deluxe bus sped along and arrived in Bagiuo at shortly after 4 am. It was much earlier than we had expected, since we had read it would take roughly six hours to get there. Not much traffic at night, though, so the bus driver sped along. My mother lived in Baguio for several years after WWII. After she finished elementary school, she was sent to boarding school in Baguio and the rest of her family followed four months later. Way back then (she first came in 1949), Baguio was a small city of about 25 000, but it was also a very international city. There were people not only from different part of the Philippines, but also a lot of non-Filipinos, mostly Americans because of a nearby American Armed Forces base, thus the lingua franca was English. It was also a very egalitarian city. People still had maids and such, but the differences between rich and not-so-rich were not as strong as they were elsewhere. In Baguio my mother and her siblings made friends with people with whom they probably would not have been able to associate (or with whom they may not have had any chances to associate) had they been in Bacolod. Things have changed a lot, and it’s now a city of 600 000, and English is no longer as widely spoken as it once was. She left Baguio in 1952 to do her senior year of high school in Manila, and then returned in 1957 to teach at her old school here (her family still lived here, as well). This visit marks her first time back after she finally left Baguio in 1960. We hung around the bus depot for a bit before going to our hotel. We couldn’t check in until 2:00pm and it was only 6am, so we sat around for a bit and then walked down Session Road. Session Road was one of the few roads in Baguio when my mother lived here. Our first stop didn’t open until 7:10 (what an odd opening time!), so we walked down a bit more. Luckily, we found something very interesting to do for a few hours—the Baguio Market! A lot of fruits and vegetables are produced in the Baguio area, so what you can buy here is much fresher than that in the provinces like Negros. With transportation conditions as they are, most of the goods are wilted and anaemic by the time they reach the provinces. As we were walking through the market, my mother kept saying, “Oh! I have to buy some of that before I go back! And some of that! And some of that!” She only has a 15kg luggage allowance on her flight back to Bacolod, so I don’t know how she’s going to pack all her stuff! Mangos and chicos—goodies for me and goodies for her! Avocados, soursop, bananas, and papaya. The bananas are 2 pesos each, not per bunch, but 2 pesos is only about US 4 cents! And those papaya! I’d love to bring one back to Japan with me. Little tiny Hawaiian papaya are about Y800 in Japan, and these Filipino papaya are much cheaper. The smallest one in front is only P18—that’s only 36 cents (it’s roughly P50 per US$1). We came across the rice area. In general, I don’t care for Filipino rice; I find a lot of what’s sold to be old and it cooks up very hard and dry. This shop seems to have a lot of specialty rices from different areas. The red rice, quite expensive abroad, is only P60 per kg (US$1.20)! Considering I pay the equivalent to US$40 for 5kg of Thai jasmine rice, I wish I could take some of the red rice, brown, and black rice back with me. Not food, but flowers. These are called “Everlasting” or something like that. They never die, and when my mother lived here, the Negrenses (people from Negros) used to buy them by the boxfuls to put on their household statues (of the Virgin Mary, for example) and such. Ubod on the left is used to make lumpia. They’re coconut shoots, and other than lumpia, they can also be used in stir fries. My mother doesn’t know anything else it’s used for. It doesn’t taste like anything, really, but it gives a nice crunch to things like bamboo shoots do. The sprouts on the left are also used for lumpia. Baguio is also known for strawberries which are grown nearby. I brought some strawberries from Japan as pasalubong (gifts or souvenirs) for my relatives, but some of them asked us to bring strawberries from Baguio, too. After trying some of the Japanese ones, I think they’re going to be very disappointed with the Baguio ones. We bought just a wee bit, and though juicy, they tasted like cardboard. Still, we have been given a task, and we will bring back as many strawberries as they want. Sundot Kulangot. I thought these were some kind of nut or fruit, but I knew “kulangot” meant “snot”. After trying to ask the vendor (who spoke a different dialect than any my mother knew), my mother finally realized they were ground sticky rice cooked in condensed milk or coconut milk and sugar. They’re rolled up in little balls and are very sticky, hence the name which my mother thinks means “fish out snot”. It’s just like snot fresh from your nose! A meat shop with nothing kept under refrigeration. Baguio is cooler than Manila or Bacolod because it’s in the mountains, but still. . . gotta have good stomach bacteria around here. I doubt I’d be eating any of the processed meats. The hot dogs in the middle were bright red and looked like mush inside. Lots of native beans, salt, sugar, dried mushrooms, spices, etc. Lard! I’m buying some of this to take back to Japan with me. It’s a good thing I brought my handy dandy mini vacuum sealer with me! Fish and mussels, probably freshly caught that morning. We finally found the shallots my mother was looking for. She bought a few packs of these which were already sprouting. She’s going to plant them so they can have shallots all the time. I think they were only P5 a pack. We found some nicer ones later one, which she also bought for cooking when she returns. In the bucket below are a couple of catfish. She wanted to buy one, but we don’t have a kitchen here. Too bad! She really really wanted to buy some of those crabs in the middle. Oxtail, anyone? In this area, people buy blocks of ice just as I remember seeing on Little House on the Prairie! Except I don’t think they chopped the blocks in the middle of the street on a dirty road, and then put them in dirty rice bags in LHotP. This is why my mother never gets ice in her drinks in the Philippines. Huge cows feet (hooves?) hanging up, and smaller pigs feet on the table. I’ve never seen cows feet for sale before. What are they used for, other than stock making? Mangosteen for only US$1 per 1/2 kilo! That’s much cheaper than they were charging in Cambodia. We bought 1/2 a kilo to share, and we might pick up some more before we return. These were some beautiful flowers someone was selling on the pedestrian overpass. I think he was charging only P200 for the whole bunch. I loved the market, as did my mother. We’re going back to the market Friday morning, just before we leave for Manila. A lot of the stalls open at 6am, so we can do a lot of shopping before we leave.

Day 2—I love Filipino breakfasts! My great-aunt had a great breakfast prepared for us. Filipinos are big on protein for breakfast with mostly fried fatty meats. We had longganisa this time. I like longanisa almost as much as I like tocino, and this was very good longganisa. We also had fried eggs (Filipino breakfasts almost always include fried eggs), rice (of course), queso de bola (sort of like gouda cheese, but this one was kind of crappy), panettone (not usual, but there’s often some kind of bread), and ibus (the long green things). Ibus (pronounced like “ee-bus”) is sticky rice wrapped in palm leaf, my mother thinks. It has a different name in Tagalog (Manila and vicinity), but because my mother’s family is from Negros Occidental (the western half of the island of Negros) where they speak Hiligaynon, they call it “ibus” (an aside—although the Filipino languages are called “dialects”, they really are distinct languages as they are not mutually intelligible—a person who speaks Tagalog won’t be able to understand Hiligaynon or Cebuano, for example). We didn’t have any, so I don’t know how it tasted, but my mother says she doesn’t like it. And we had fruit. Lots and lots of fruit! March is a great time for Filipino fruits. The papaya we had wasn’t so sweet, but the mango was perfect! There were also two kinds of bananas, pineapple, native oranges, two other varieties of Filipino mangos, and grapefruit and navel oranges. I brought the grapefruit and navel oranges from Japan, as those are more difficult to get in the Philippines and are a bit of a treat. (Can you see the Stove Top Stuffing in the background?) I love Filipino lunches, too! After an arduous morning of running around and getting nothing done (a not-so-unusual day in the Philippines), we went to visit my mother’s cousin and she had lunch prepared for us. I wasn’t expecting much, but she prepared a lot of my favourite foods. I spent a lot of time with Tiay Tita when I lived in Bacolod, so it was nice catching up with her. The full spread: We had tocino—this one was excellent! It was from Pampanga and we got to take home the leftovers and some raw stuff to cook later, too. It was nicely glazed (the one at Club Filipino wasn’t glazed at all), and had some charring. I’d have liked it to be a little more charred, but the meat was moist and tender. (By the way, note the corelle--the fine dining favourite of the elite ) There was also pork belly, marinated and then grilled. I thought it was more like a fatty pork chop, but my mother said it was just a meatier pork belly. Pork belly is always good. I think this was marinated in soy sauce, patis (fish sauce) and garlic, but I could be wrong. I didn’t care for the shrimp too much—it was sweeter than I would have liked, but my mother really enjoyed it. And she paid for it later. Sinigang is a very common soup, usually made with fish and always with lots of overcooked vegetables. It’s a bit tart. In my mother’s area, they usually use batwan, a kind of citrus fruit (I think), as the souring agent, but in Tagalog, they use another kind of citrus (my mother calls it “iba”, but she doesn’t know the Tagalog name) or tamarind. I find Filipinos tend to really boil their vegetables to death. But the fish was really nicely cooked—it was still moist and flavourful, so they must have added it after the vegetables had been boiled to death. For dessert we had mangos again—I can’t get enough of these. And we had some really delicious leche flan (no picture). It was a bit sweet for my tastes, but it was so rich and creamy. When we come back to Manila from Baguio, the maid is going to teach us how to make it, too! After lunch I was stuffed, and my mother started to have a reaction to the shrimp she ate. She’s sort of allergic to shellfish, but she loves all shellfish so much, that she can’t help herself. The fresher it is, the less likely she’ll have a reaction, and this time wasn’t so bad, but her eyes started to get a bit droopy. So we took a little siesta and when we awoke, another of my mother’s cousins arrived to take us home. Along with the tocino, Tiay Tita also sent us home with some mangos and half a dozen ensaimada (a kind of sweet bread topped with butter, sugar, and sometimes queso de bola). I had mentioned that old-style ensaimada was one of the things I was most looking forward to eating, so she sent one of the maids out to get some. The panaderia (bread shop) with the best ensaimada in her area was closed on Mondays, so the maid came back with Goldilocks. I hate Goldilocks, and cannot fathom why people think it’s good (it’s filled with artificial flavours, preservatives, etc., kind of like the McD’s of bakeries), but I was happy for the gesture. Before heading home, we went to Mall of Asia. We didn’t really do anything there, except I was finally able to change my US$ traveller’s cheques (if you go to the Philippines, DO NOT bring traveller’s cheques. The hassle of changing them outweighs any kind of feelings of safety they may provide you), and we had a little snack. My mother and I had halo halo, and my tita had a kind of candy (pudding?) made with carabao’s milk. I didn’t get a picture of her candy, but I’ll get one by the end of my trip. The halo halo sucked. I don’t really understand the point of halo halo, but I thought this was a particularly bad version. There were a couple of kinds of sweetened beans in there, jelly, nata de coco, and I can’t remember what else, then it was topped with crushed ice and sugar syrup and evaporated milk were poured over the ice. This also had a bit of leche flan as a topper. I thought the crushed ice and evaporated milk were good, but the rest of the ingredients weren’t of very good quality, and I thought they added too much sugar syrup. After spending more than an hour in Monday night rush hour traffic (in good conditions, it shouldn’t have taken more than 20 minutes) watching drivers use a 4-lane highway as a 5-car and 2-motorcycle lane highway, we finally arrived home. We had a light dinner of leftovers and mangos, and then packed before catching an overnight bus to Baguio leaving at midnight.

In a desperate attempt to redeem myself after getting my butt kicked by Peter Green, I’m trying to post in almost real time! Maybe not real time, but at least not 3 months late. . . Day 1—Manila After a sleepless night and a not-too-long flight, I arrived in the heat and humidity of Manila. I hate Manila—have I ever mentioned that before? Actually, I have a very dim view of the Philippines in general, which stems from having lived there for a year when I was ten years old. I made a short trip to Bacolod (where I lived way back then, and in the general area of my mother’s ancestral home) back in 2006, but I’ve really had no longing to return to the Philippines at all. That being said, as my mother ages, I feel more of a need to connect to her history. In 1999, I made a trip to Bangkok with my father (the place of both his birth and mine), and I learned more about him during that trip than I had ever known. My mother and I are very close, but my trips to the Philippines with her are a way for me to connect with her in a different way. On to the food. I don’t have any pictures of Day 1 food. We had a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant near my great-aunt’s condo. Gloria Maris at Greenhills Shopping Center is quite popular with Filipinos, and I was told it was a “very good restaurant.” It wasn’t anything to write home about, but at least it was better than the average food court Chinese food in North America, and the duck was cheap! Expensive for the Philippines, but very cheap compared to Japanese prices! If the skin had been crispier and the meat hadn’t been so tough, it would have been really good, too. For dinner we went to a private club with one of my mother’s old beaus and his cousin. It’s very strange to meet someone who was in love with your mother, but who isn’t your father. They’re still good friends after all these years, and it was interesting to watch them interact. We had dinner at Club Filipino. We were told Club Filipino was one of the oldest (or the oldest) private clubs in the Philippines, having been founded in 1898 during Spanish colonial times. It was also made famous during the overthrow of Marcos since it was used as the headquarters of the revolution and Cory Aquino was sworn in there. It’s a comfortable place, and I didn’t feel it was pretentious, but the service and quality of the food wasn’t quite up to snuff for that sort of place. I’m not even comparing it to similar venues in Japan, but to similar venues in SE Asia—Raffles in Singapore and Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, for example. While Club Filipino is not attached to a prestigious hotel, it very much has the feel of colonial times. I imagine at one time it would have been the place to be seen for the rich and powerful, and to some degree, it still is. But it certainly does not have the feel of money and power, at least not to me, while places like Raffles and Oriental still do. I had tocino. Tocino is usually eaten for breakfast, but I had been thinking tocino for such a long time, that when I saw it on the menu, I had to order it. I was disappointed, to say the least. Tocino is basically pork marinated in sugar, vinegar, garlic, saltpetre, and maybe paprika. It’s just sweet, but good tocino has hints of something else. The tocino at Club Filipino was just sweet. It wasn’t even nicely charred, and the crispy bits are the best part of tocino. My mother had grilled bangus (milkfish). Mmmmm. This was the best dish of the bunch, and I really wish I had a picture of it. Fatty fish stomach is one of the best foods in the world, right next to fried chicken skin and pork rinds. And fried fish skin. The fish she received had a huge fatty stomach, and she even shared some of the tummy with me—a big sacrifice for her. My mother’s friend had some kind of omelette that looked rather sad, and his cousin had a chef’s salad that looked even sadder. You have to be a member of Club Filipino, or be with a member, to be able to dine there, but I don’t think you’ll be missing much in terms of food if you can’t. Unfortunately, you won’t even be able to step foot into the place, and the history of the place, alone, makes it a worthwhile visit.

manton--did anyone ask about the value (or lack of value) of triple cooking fries? Boil, fry at 300-325F, then second fry at a higher heat? In my experiments, I've liked triple cooked fries better than double cooked fries. Just to make sure, were the fries cooked twice at 300F? I'm trying to figure out how they would turn golden and crispy when cooked at 300F.

This may not be in the spirit of things, but many airlines ban the consumption of any alcohol not purchased on board. I once witnessed a heated argument between a flight attendant and a man who had brought his own flask. In such situations, the flight attendant always wins, even if the guy is twice her size.

howsmatt--ouch!!! You need a parental advisory warning in really big print above and below those pictures. I really hope it doesn't hurt as much as it looks like it hurts. Ouch ouch ouch!

Interesting. I'd never heard anything about his background. It doesn't surprise me that he had been told he would never make it. In general, the Japanese are very rule-governed, and if you colour outside the lines, you'll never "make it". It's unfortunate about the buy-out, but completely understandable. I thought, but wasn't sure, that Yoku Moku had always had a hand in Henri Le Roux's Japanese operations. I noticed the Yoku Moku name on the labels of his stuff.

Dorie Greenspan wrote about working at a restaurant in NYC. Her job was to make a particular cake for which the restaurant was famous. One day, she took a few liberties with the recipe, and although the outcome was successful, she was fired for "creative subordination". I've never worked BOH, but I would agree that being able to take orders from superiors and carry them out is high on the list of basic skills. edited for correct reason for firing, and here's the link to her story.

Did you try looking up "heat sealer"? http://www.starpak.ca/products.php?page=Heat%20Sealers

Good girl! You'll always be a member of my club. We're seriously considering burgers at Smokey's here in Seoul sometime soon. ← I'm planning on having homemade potato chips and a milkshake in the Philippines! If I can get to the right places, that is (I have a list and made my very own google map!). BTW, the area around Sisowat Quay still seems like a bit of a mess. We didn't spend much time around there, so no coffee for us! Both PP and SR were quite dusty. I think being exposed to all the fine dust led to the nasty case of bronchitis I had. Next time I go to Cambodia, I'm bringing masks to wear! (surgical type, not Halloween type)