My Life, My Food, My Places

Food, an important issue in the daily life of the Filipinos and surely also for the expats living on the island. For our fresh food we can only go to the market because the island doesn’t have any supermarkets as there are in the city where you can by different meats, cheeses and a variety of fresh vegetables. The offer in the market is very limited and offers only the basic veggies the islanders use to prepare their meals such as eggplant, onions, bitter gourd, some string beans and pumpkin. Completed with some local greens. Meat is limited to pork, very fat pork meat except on Sundays where there is some beef. Only problem is that the beef has not matured and the butchers don’t know how to cut the meat. Chicken, pork, beef and the fish are put on open benches without any form of refrigeration. And flies are always around. But as everyone on the island, three times a week I go to the market to see what ‘goodies’ I can buy. Every time I buy at the same stall run by a y...

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...

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...