Battle of the Balls…
How did a dry, salty and sharp Dutch cheese originally from the city of Edam, 
shaped like a ball and coated in red paraffin become standard fare at Christmas gatherings in this far off Catholic country controlled by the Spaniards??? I really don’t know. Some superficial rooting around the internet yielded the basics of the cheese’s origin, the fact that it was hardy and often shipped to distant locales such as Dutch controlled Batavia or Jakarta, Indonesia, and that it got saltier and drier with age. Very close to another well-known cheese named Gouda, Edam has a lower fat and moisture content and unique shape which apparently worked better on long voyages at sea. The balls were sometimes used as cannonballs in the Caribbean (and they don’t only come wrapped in red wax but also black and yellow)! Others also site a story that Edam got salty since they were used as ballast on ships and were sloshing about in sea water. In the late 1600’s and early 1700’s the Dutch were probably sending lots of Edam to Indonesia, but how they made their way to the Philippines is a mystery to me…
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U.S., Australia, Europe, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan are being delivered across the Philippine archipelago to delighted recipients. Unlike any other nation in the world, Filipinos ship a phenomenal amount of cargo back home…boxes filled with canned corned beef and luncheon meat, Canadian rice, candy, pampers, clothing, shoes, candy, small appliances, pasalubongs, etc. If only 1 out of 10 Filipinos abroad send just 1 balikbayan box home a year weighing 50 lbs, that would be about 50,000,000 pounds of goods or roughly ½ pound for every man, woman and child on the archipelago! The “bbox” system is both a testament to our incredible generosity to relatives and families back home or a sad sign of the dependency many of us have on those earning a living abroad… I won’t get into the politics, I just want to know what was in your balikbayan box(es) this year…
YIKES, am I behind schedule this year or what? I am normally very put together around the holiday season and by this time I am concentrating on cooking and dinner parties. Instead, I haven’t done an ounce of Christmas shopping for my own family (I think I have finished everyone else) and all of my heightened business related activity down South in the past 6 weeks has really screwed up my holiday schedule. By now I am usually thrilled to get up early to attend misa de gallo to be followed by 2-3 hours of undisturbed decorating of my annual gingerbread house or baking ensaimada or cookies. The ovens have been fired only once this week…to bake a batch of Christmas cookies for my daughter’s last day of school tomorrow. Worse, I have photos for maybe 20-30 Christmas related posts for this website but I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write.
I have attended Christmas parties all over the world and none of them come close to the sheer fiesta mentality that takes over any Pinoy office party! And for some reason, there are always games, prizes, contests… Last weekend I had to fly down to Bohol to host (together with my two brothers) a party for 40 or so employees of the family companies held at a small hotel on Alona Beach, Panglao. These are some of the photos for your amusement and for the rest of my family who live abroad and couldn’t experience it first hand…of course there was dancing on stage for various groups vying for the top prize…
buri/raffia fabrics made from fiber of the buri palm tree. A huge palm tree, the buri palm is the source of three natural fibers: buri, raffia and buntal, according to the Philippine government Dept. of Agriculture website. The fibers are then dyed and in some cases, woven on a loom. Buntal was also well know as a hat material in the 1960’s and 70’s. What struck me about this buri fabric were the stunning color combinations. Sometimes I am at odds with the color combinations used in our local crafts and textiles (not always)…but in this case the color combinations were noticeably different. You could almost see them in a European textile catalogue but interpreted in local materials…
I have so far opted to suggest imported bottled honeys as they seem to have the most consistent quality and attention to detail regarding say the source of the honey such as a particular flower on some Italian mountainside. So I was just bowled over, incredibly thrilled and amazed when we sampled the honey at the Bohol Bee Farm over the weekend. They had three different types of 100% pure honey made the old-fashioned way… a dark coconut honey made from the flowers of coconut trees that I found a bit molassey in nature, a lighter colored acacia honey that was good and incredibly sweet, and my favorite of the visit, a Molave honey that was an incredible flavor standout!
Even the decor is sometimes made of food. Inspired by a recent photo sent to me of western topiaries made of lemons and apples, I decided to see if I could make one out of local produce. The results were really quite stunning…dalandan topiary christmas tree a la marketman.
It is Christmas, after all. A three foot tall topiary made with over 300 large blooms of dark red roses was my personal beacon that the holidays were in full swing at our house. On the back of a successful dalandan topiary, I decided to use the same wooden base to create a holiday centerpiece made entirely of red roses. The results were really rather stunning. Put side by side with the dalandan topiary this is a sight to behold. And bottom line, it cost far less than a really good bottle of red wine.