Skip to main content

Breakfast on the Island: Rice and more Rice

Filipinos are people with a big appetite. Average, people on the island eat five times a day. It all starts with breakfast over a snack around 10 am to keep them going till lunch. A merienda, or afternoon snack, will bridge lunch to dinner.

Filipinos are fervent rice eaters and have with a consumption of 118 kilos per capita/year(babies and children included) on of the highest consumption in Asia. Rice is ‘the’ staple food for breakfast, lunch and dinner but also for a lot of snacks they eat between the meals.

A basic breakfast is simple: rice, egg sunny side up or scrambled and soy sauce. Next to rice Filipinos are huge egg eaters and consume minimum one egg a day. A lot of mamas buy eggs with a complete tray at the time.

Talking to the locals I found out that the most popular breakfast is rice with bulad (fried dried fish) eaten with vinegar and fried egg. The fried fish is salty, the vinegar sour and they accompany this breakfast with hot chocolate made of local Tablea, pure cocoa.

Why is this breakfast so popular? 

I think there are several reasons. First this breakfast dish combines the favorite tastes of the Filipino: the salty crispy fried fish, the vinegar (here on the island most people use the local ‘tuba’, fermented juice they tap from the coconut trees), the egg and... it is cheap.

Popular also is fried rice (the leftover rice of the day before fried with salt and garlic) with fried egg and corned beef sautéed with onions. Sometimes small potato cubes are added. Children like also to eat rice with fried egg and hotdog before going to school.

For those who have some extra money, they will buy longanisa (a sweet version of chorizo) or tocino (pork meat cured with sugar). The meats are fried in oil and together with a fried egg, rice and some soy sauce. A luxury breakfast!


Note that the bulad, the corn beef, the hotdog, tocino or longaniza are not the star of the breakfast, a status reserved for the rice. It is common that adults eat 150 to 200 grams of cooked rice for breakfast. All the other breakfast elements are ‘side dishes’.

On rainy days champorado is also a favorite on the breakfast table. A rice porridge with tablea chocolate, a breakfast dish all kids, but also their mamas and papas, like much.

In the more urban centers there are Filipinos who are eating bread for breakfast too. The ‘national’ bread is pandasal (bread from salt) and is sold really early morning and eaten nearly straight out of the oven with coffee. But for people whom live in the countryside where there are no bakeshops, pandasal is not a regular breakfast option!

In the cities there are the fast-food giants such as McDonalds or Jollibee, the Filipino answer on American fast food. Both are offering their special breakfast menus. But also on these breakfast options you find the classics: longanisa, corned beef, hotdog all served with rice and egg. Most popular breakfast drink with these breakfast are coffee and hot cocoa. Next to the traditional dishes they offer also the Americanized breakfast like sandwiches with a patty and egg offered with hash brown and a hot drink. And don’t forget the pancakes with butter and a load of syrup!

And my breakfast on the island? 

Even after all those years rice is not really my thing for every day, surely not for breakfast. 

I stay with my toasted baguette with butter and coffee. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer on the island

At last summer is back! Bright blue skies, a sea breeze, and nature abundantly green and fresh after all those weeks of grey sky, drizzle and night and days of heavy downpours. Climate change is real and not a hoax as some world leaders are saying. Summer is back, there is no school anymore and Holy Week is just around the corner. And all this is changing life on the island. Holy week is the start of the vacationing season for the Filipinos. In the week before Easter, Holy Week, everything is different. Banks are closed from Thursday till the Monday after Easter.  You better prepare your cash because the ATM will be empty and nobody of the bank staff available to refill. Malls and grocery stores are closed on Thursday and Friday also. Even the market has less activity on those two days. Better get your provisions ahead. You can imagine the face of many, first time foreign tourists….no cash in the ATM, stores closed and your credit cards are of no use. T...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jacques, the soup vendor

Writing about my memories on the horrible school canteen of my youth I remembered ‘Jacques Soup’. He was a soup merchant selling fresh soup out of his car from door-to door in the small town I lived. And he delivered also the soup at the school refectory. And I remembered that his car had a huge bronze bell to let the house wives know that he was on his way and that they had to prepare their pots and be standby at their door! He was always dressed in a spic and span white coat complete with shirt and tie. But that was almost all I got out of my deep memory as help was just around the corner.  I emailed the ‘Aarschot Historical Society’, whom has as objective to keep the history of our small town alive for the generations to come and the next morning I had a reaction and a few hours later a second one, with picture this time. The next morning a new update. One of the board members of the society had contacted, the daughter of ‘Jacques Soup’ as everybody called him wit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Martino

Every country has their famous ‘national’ sandwich. The Americans have their burgers and hotdogs, the French are very proud on their Croque Monsieur, a baked sandwich with cheese and ham, and their fresh baguettes with ham, the famous 'jambon beurre' , the Italians like their Panini as the Vietnamese have their favorite Banh Mi sandwich. And the Belgians have their Martino sandwich. "Invented" in 1951 by a former soccer player, Albert De Hert, who was running the small sandwich bar named  Quick at the famous De Coninckplein in Antwerp.  The story goes that one evening another soccer player nicknamed ‘Martino’, came in after drinking obviously a few beers too much and asked for a sandwich with ‘everything’ and it had to be spicy. In the kitchen Albert got a half baguette, spread it with ‘filet americain’ (minced raw beef mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, some capers, pepper and salt) and topped it with minced onion, chopped pickles, tabasco sauce, some ket...
Post a Comment
Read more