I ♥ CEBU FOOD-- Part 1

I ♥ CEBU food

Part 1

A short history.....

....on learning to love local food...

Ever since I was a kid, I have a high appreciation for food. It probably started off as me-- a kid forced by my parents to finish everything on my plate and whether I like it or not, I should eat. That was when I started to be more daring in my attempts in exploring new tastes. And what could be a good start to explore than those food readily accessible and easily prepared. As a kid, I prefer eating food that are homemade as snacks rather than junkfood and softdrinks. Credits go to my Lola Maria-- my grandmother...who took good care of us cousins and siblings when we were young. She was the first to introduce us to the many different kinds of originally pinoy food and pinoy style of eating.

*by the way guys, terms I will be using especially those in italics are in bisaya or cebuano terms...terms vary in different dialects, but since I am Cebuana, you can learn some Cebuano terms too... ^_^

Savory Sepia Moments...

Lola made us eat our meals with ripe banana or ripe mango-- like it is really included in each spoonful of rice and viand. Weird as it tastes at first, especially when you're eating it with inan-unan (a dish of fish cooked in vinegar, onions, garlic, ginger and sili espada), but eventually I got used to it, but kept on wondering why my Lola does that. All I remember is her explaining that it helps us in digesting the food that we eat, and how it will help prevent us from getting tummyache no matter how much and how many different kinds of food we eat at the same time. And it indeed works! As to the detailed chemical dynamics-- I am not so sure about the explanation. It could also be a psychological factor, but yeah, I don't get empacho or indigestion. Until now, I'd prefer to have banana with my meals. And though mangoes are quite costly these days, it's a special delight to have one in your meals.

Other foods I remember that my lola introduced to us were champorado, bibingka, banana-cue, camote-cue, linung-ag na camote and saging, sinugbang mais, puto (sometimes eaten with buwad and sikwati)... and many more...

As I grew older, went to school and etc. I learned about other pinoy delicacies in which I delight-- cassava cake, palitaw, budbud, linusak, pinaypay and others...( these were actually my favorite snacks after my swimming lessons back when I was in Grade 1 and 2)

Salty foods are one of my early cravings too like buwad, ginamos, uyap and mani. Fruits sold on the sidewalk ready to eat include indian mango, singkamas, bayabas, tambis, santol, kapayas and manggang hilaw...sliced and sometimes tinuhog with a stick.

....Kinamot

Yes-- a lot of pinoy food are on a stick, or in bite-sized servings. Reason is because Pinoys love to eat using their bare hands-- not using much utensils. Kinamot is a favorite way to eat and it's not really a hard skill to do. You just have to pick or punit the food and hungit-- place in your mouth. Okay okay...some foreigners find it hard..and that's most likely because they find it awkward-- it's not really about the skill that they find kinamot difficult.

So I will end my PART 1 here...just a little childhood background on the food I have tried. The food I mentioned above are also available elsewhere in the Philippines. But on the next article.. I ♥ CEBU food PART 2 , I would begin focusing on CEBUANO food...

... Mabuhay!

^___^