A few of my favorite things
Prompted by the destruction of yukitsu's fragile childhood memories, I thought of listing down some of the tasty treats I used to spend my money on when I was just a wee little fagling.
Lugaw
When I was just a little boy (in Sweden! Sorry, inside joke), my summers would usually be spent in my province of Marinduque. Aside from owning the place where I stayed in for two months, my relatives also had a sari-sari store and a butcher's stall in the local market. If I was in a good mood and hadn't spent all night reading, I would get the privilege of accompanying my relatives to market and help them set up.
And believe me, it really was a privilege. There was the minor discomfort of having to wake up at the break of dawn, but I always got to ride my uncle's motorcycle. When you're seven and you've got the cold morning air blowing through your hair as you're riding a motorcycle, nothing can ever, ever be wrong.
Oftentimes, I would help set up the sari-sari store, and if there was still time I could watch the day's pigs get slaughtered. Oddly enough, this never disturbed me (there's a story there that may be TMI for most of you folks), and I guess my high threshold for blood can be attributed to this.
The real highlight of that early morning would of course be my breakfast of hot lugaw. Lugaw, as Wikipedia defines it, is "very similar to Cantonese style congee, lúgao is typically of a thicker consistency, retaining the shape of the rice while achieving the same type of texture."
My favorite uncle would buy it from the local vendor (who had a crush on him, by the way), and it always came wrapped in a plastic bag. Out would come the dishes kept inside the store specifically for that purpose, and I would put so much ground pepper on mine because I loved the burning feeling at the back of my throat.
Suman
Later on in the day, when the sun was already up and the customers had finally thinned out (the majority of them usually come early in the morning to buy their meat and groceries), the same uncle that bought me lugaw would then buy me suman, a local sticky rice dessert.
Unlike my lugaw, I preferred my suman to be sweet. I would usually unwrap it from its banana leaf wrapping, lay them all in neat little rows on a small platter and cut them into little squares. On one corner of the platter would be a generous mound of sugar, which is where the suman would find itself marinating before it met its sticky, delicious end inside my mouth.
If my relatives were particularly generous, they would give me a 20-peso bill to do with as I wished. While you could hardly buy anything with a 20-peso bill these days, back then it was enough to get you a Snickers bar, which was a luxury for the farmers and butchers of the province.
And boy did I revel in that luxury every chance I could get! The store right beside my relatives' house -- the only store that sold Snickers' bars -- would always be my first destination once given that bounty, and nothing could ever stop me. I once tripped and got a huge gash on my knee in my hurry to buy myself one. Of course, it didn't matter, because once I bit into that nutty, caramel-rich piece of heaven I knew that I would feel the same way I did straddling my uncle's motorcycle on the way to the market, so very early in the morning.
Lugaw
When I was just a little boy (in Sweden! Sorry, inside joke), my summers would usually be spent in my province of Marinduque. Aside from owning the place where I stayed in for two months, my relatives also had a sari-sari store and a butcher's stall in the local market. If I was in a good mood and hadn't spent all night reading, I would get the privilege of accompanying my relatives to market and help them set up.
And believe me, it really was a privilege. There was the minor discomfort of having to wake up at the break of dawn, but I always got to ride my uncle's motorcycle. When you're seven and you've got the cold morning air blowing through your hair as you're riding a motorcycle, nothing can ever, ever be wrong.
Oftentimes, I would help set up the sari-sari store, and if there was still time I could watch the day's pigs get slaughtered. Oddly enough, this never disturbed me (there's a story there that may be TMI for most of you folks), and I guess my high threshold for blood can be attributed to this.
The real highlight of that early morning would of course be my breakfast of hot lugaw. Lugaw, as Wikipedia defines it, is "very similar to Cantonese style congee, lúgao is typically of a thicker consistency, retaining the shape of the rice while achieving the same type of texture."
My favorite uncle would buy it from the local vendor (who had a crush on him, by the way), and it always came wrapped in a plastic bag. Out would come the dishes kept inside the store specifically for that purpose, and I would put so much ground pepper on mine because I loved the burning feeling at the back of my throat.
Suman
Later on in the day, when the sun was already up and the customers had finally thinned out (the majority of them usually come early in the morning to buy their meat and groceries), the same uncle that bought me lugaw would then buy me suman, a local sticky rice dessert.
Unlike my lugaw, I preferred my suman to be sweet. I would usually unwrap it from its banana leaf wrapping, lay them all in neat little rows on a small platter and cut them into little squares. On one corner of the platter would be a generous mound of sugar, which is where the suman would find itself marinating before it met its sticky, delicious end inside my mouth.
If my relatives were particularly generous, they would give me a 20-peso bill to do with as I wished. While you could hardly buy anything with a 20-peso bill these days, back then it was enough to get you a Snickers bar, which was a luxury for the farmers and butchers of the province.
And boy did I revel in that luxury every chance I could get! The store right beside my relatives' house -- the only store that sold Snickers' bars -- would always be my first destination once given that bounty, and nothing could ever stop me. I once tripped and got a huge gash on my knee in my hurry to buy myself one. Of course, it didn't matter, because once I bit into that nutty, caramel-rich piece of heaven I knew that I would feel the same way I did straddling my uncle's motorcycle on the way to the market, so very early in the morning.