Saturday eight o'clock in the morning, clear skies and a bit humid already. But here in the Philippines, this kind of weather had been God's answer to many Filipinos' desperate prayer for sunshine and dry ground as the country experienced almost two-weeks of non-stop rains. And although we are located in a city province which was not hardly hit by the monsoon rains, we felt for those Metro Manila residents whose homes and streets where inundated by tons and tons of garbage at the onslaught of this week's heavy downpour.
So, waking up this morning to see my daughter taking photos and videos of her latest Saturday fun-time activity had been a clear indication that we're expecting a fine sunny weekend. My daughter's contagious smile and the smell of freshly cooked rice greeted me as I stepped out of the veranda. So her headline goes that she was able to cook rice in her new set of miniature clay pots successfully and her matching earthen kalan worked just as good. "And Mom, I'm going to eat the rice for lunch! Finally, a rice that I was able to cook in a real palayok. And finally, I now know how rice tasted when cooked in a palayok, hah!"
My daughter was so inspired by the fact that at school we talked a lot about how our Filipino ancestors lived and managed their households during their time; what kinds of food they ate; where they get their food supplies; what kinds of kitchen implements they utilized or how they handled kitchen affairs. We discussed that food had always been a part of our culture, the way we prepared it, the way we cooked it, the way we served and ate it. In fact, our food defines our unique identity as Filipinos despite having been colonized by the Spaniards, the Americans, and the Japanese. "Do we still have our own identity as Filipinos after having been ruled by these countries for centuries?" "What can we do to preserve our Filipino culture at this modern Internet Age?" Rich discussions and questions such as these would arise as we tried unearthing our precious history, the connection we get was always priceless.
Driven by her curiosity to connect more with our own heritage, my daughter suggested that we buy the palayok and the kalan that I always referred to each time we talk about the old days. She wanted to learn for herself how to cook the old-fashioned way; the nitty gritty of charcoal and firewood cooking. And then I thought, where else do we buy these clay vessels but at the lumang palengke, our marketplace. I felt hesitant saying "yes" at first because I dreaded the traffic at our market place, I dreaded the parking spaces we have there, I dreaded the smoke pollution there, I also dreaded our security going there. I don't know what I was thinking that time, but it's an embarrassment to think that perhaps old age was the culprit for having my hesitations. Whatever happened to that girl a few decades ago that used to call the palengke her piece of paradise?
Prior to the construction of huge malls and supermarkets in our city province, the palengke used to be the only place where you go to shop for daily supplies, it was the only center of commerce for most Batanguenyos where the "rich" and the "poor" brushed shoulders with each other, a haven for shoppers of banig, kapeng barako, sitsirya, suka, komiks, vegetables, clothes. How I loved to go to the palengke with my Inay and get rewarded by the orange-colored butchi and the nilupak wrapped in banana leaf that we bought from the peddlers which lined the side walk. So that afternoon, not wanting to zap my children's enthusiasm, we braved going to the palengke.
Here are our precious finds.
 |
| A set of earthen cooking pot and tungko, PhP 50.00, a little over $1.00 dollar. |
 |
| An oldschool slingshot we call tirador PhP 40.00, that's almost a dollar! |
 |
A pair of Nora slippers at PhP 70.00 or US$ 1.60..JPG) |
Incidentally, August is a month-long celebration of the Buwan ng Wika at our schools. It is a campaign to use the Filipino language as a medium of communication. Most schools would culminate in festive celebration by having their students wear the Filipino national costumes such as the barong tagalog for boys and the baro't saya or the patadyong for girls. As homeschoolers, our version of celebrating the Buwan ng Wika is slightly different from the mainstream. Going to the palengke alone that afternoon was enough to speak to us how we ourselves help preserve our unique identity even when it's not Buwan ng Wika. My girl found a clay cooking set and paid for it with her own allowance. It was the same kind of cooking pots that I used to play with as a girl. My boy for his part saw this green slingshot we call tirador which he immediately hung around his neck. While we were at the palengke, I took the opportunity to drop by at our favorite Chinese panciteria and ordered a take out, dinner was solved that day as it was getting dark already. We bought the palayok, my son wore the tirador around his neck, we ordered the pancit wanam to-go, my daughter successfully cooked rice in the palayok in a charcoal-fueled tungko all by herself...now, were these Filipino enough?
It's a palayok, so lining it with a banana leaf was just the natural thing to do. My daughter admitted that although she considers her first attempt at clay pot cooking a success, the rice was not that soft as compared to the ones that we cook in the electric cooker.
The Internet Age:
I think that learning to cook the old-fashioned way which begins by starting a fire with charcoal and wood fuel are basic survival skills that the internet generation should learn. Whew! That's quite a challenge I abhorred when I was a kid myself. But at least Moms, we should show our kids an alternative source of energy for cooking besides the LPG or the electricity. And if you're like me, who consequently did not learn this basic survival skill, our ever reliable house helpers are always around to pitch in for us.
