Market Manila

All of you have been hearing about my diet. Many of you were surprised that I visually did not appear terribly out of proportion. But what you didn’t know is that my cholesterol was way off the charts and so was my sugar, many months ago. So part of the diet was also to get these numbers back under control. I exercised like mad, I dropped nearly all refined sugars except for marketmanila posts (of which there were a lot), dropped the chocolate and ice cream and walked briskly whenever I got the chance. So yesterday I had my blood tests and today….YAHOO!!! My cholesterol is down a whopping 35% or to well near the bottom range (good) of the numbers. I am amazed, a 35% reduction in cholesterol! My sugar is fine. My other measures say I am kicking butt. So I ran to Starbucks and had a sugar glazed doughnut! Heeheehee. And now I can put this post on jam as I will indulge this weekend, no doubt, before returning to yucky oatmeal on Monday…

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Just a quick post to update any of you who are curious, have been following this blog for over a year and want to know what actual action was taken on the issues raised. Last Christmas, I did a post to wish everyone well and promised that for every comment left on that post I would donate a book to a school or orphanage. Folks must have been away for the holidays then because only 70 folks left comments. But RM, a friend of ours, doubled the offer, so essentially we were supposed to donate 140 books. Well, in February 2006, Marketmanila donated roughly 400 books (or 3x the promised amount) to a school in Tondo, Manila. Hopefully, thousands of kids will benefit from those books over the years. A few months ago, after the oil spill from the Petron tanker off the coast of Guimaras, I received a plea from Unicef for some help. I have donated to other Unicef causes before and I wanted to do so again. In my post, I promised to give 2 bubud kabogs worth (at cost) for every comment received from readers. I received a near record 279 comments on that post, short of the 500 I was hoping for (possibly affected by four days of lights out following Milenyo, the storm). But well over 50 lurkers came out of the woodwork for Guimaras, and I thank them. A few weeks later, Marketmanila donated 500 comments worth and quickly received a thank you from the Unicef folks…they are so organized with their fundraising efforts. Also, in a somewhat related move, since so many trees were felled by the recent typhoon Milenyo, Marketmanila has donated 50 live mahogany trees to a school in Batangas, hoping in some small way to make up for the shortfall in oxygen as a result of fewer trees on Luzon (actually a fallacy as most of the earth’s oxygen is produced in the sea, I think). And finally, on the advertisement(s) regarding the shittybank episode, I am still working on that and will let all of the readers know when I finally get the ads out… Again, many thanks to the readers of Marketmanila!

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Creating floral arrangements for public spaces is a little bit more challenging than doing stuff for one’s home because of the scale and need for presence or the “golpe de gulat” factor. Before the eyeball last Saturday, I had planned to make 3-4 large arrangements for Gourdo’s, but the lack of flowers in the markets forced me to scale back those plans. Instead, I opted for a large grouping or arrangement on an outdoor bar and one grouping for the indoor dessert buffet table. I miscalculated in that I expected most of the guests to get food indoors and move outdoors to sit and chat. But the lure of airconditioning was far stronger than the pain of standing for several hours at cocktail tables…then again, most folks were younger than me. Nevertheless, the larger and more intense arrangement was actually outdoors and most folks missed that; passersby at the Fort were probably wondering what the occasion was that warranted the flowers… In case you were curious, here is the arrangement that was outdoors and instructions on how to make it. I had to disassemble the arrangement to take it home and re-did it the following morning for these photos.

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Yahoo!!! Price Smart at the Fort is re-opening November 9, 2006 at 11 am!!! I am really thrilled that someone (the owners of Pure Gold, but it will be run as a separate entity) is raising that phoenix from the ashes. I have had Price Smart withdrawal symptoms since it closed a few months ago. I missed their meat section. I liked their frozen foods section and their fruit. I purchased all our liquid detergent there and of course, Charmin toilet paper. What would life be without massive containers of Q-tips, after all. And where else could you purchase 19,000 calories worth of chocolate in a single aisle? I took a brief tour of the facility a few hours ago so I could see what was going to be on the shelves when it opens tomorrow…

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What is it with the chickens in this country? Why are they so small and boney??? Why are they the fowl equivalent of those underweight runway models that have now been banned in Spain and other European countries? I realize that the Western chickens are probably high on steroids and force-fed, not to mention blinded as chicks so they don’t attack their roommates, but why are ours like recent escapees from a North Korean detention camp? Finding a chicken here that exceeds 1.5 kilograms is like looking for a sumo wrestler in Ethiopia. I recall a relative in Cebu that used to have a pet chicken in their yard that weighed a good 15 pounds, or larger than most turkeys in the grocery today… And as for capons, is it just me or are they impossible to find in Manila groceries these days? In fact, I have an amusing story which you will simply not believe, but it is entirely true. Several years ago I hired a driver who was, shall we say, more senior in age. I figured he would be calmer and less likely to speed unnecessarily. But after several weeks it became apparent that he wasn’t quite all there and several bizarre incidents culminated in a week where he got ill and I made sure he had a full run of antibiotics to help him get better. A few days later, I asked him if he finished the medicine and he said “No, I stopped after the third day and didn’t finish the medicine because my wife said I would go DEAF if I finished the anitbiotics…” So I explained that he should have finished the medicine because it was actually worse to partially consume it and he answered, “Sir, kasi na-kapon na po ako.” Now, I admit, my tagalog is not too fluent but I think I got that loud and clear. Not sure what the connection to antibiotics and deafness was but there you have it, it’s actually statistically easier to find a human capon than a castrated chicken in Manila these days…

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Here is Marketmanila’s final piece on Budbud Kabog. Seems most of the guests at the EB who have left a comment enjoyed the budbud kabog that I gave out as a parting present. I wasn’t going to post this recipe until early December as part of my Christmas entries, but I figured I should put it earlier in case you wanted to practice. I made that batch of around 300 pieces from a recipe taught to me my Manang Lima, a budbud vendor in Mandaue, Cebu who has been selling this delicacy for 30+ years. A few weeks ago she graciously agreed to come to my office in Cebu and in our makeshift kitchen out back, she spent 4 hours teaching me how to make her special budbud from start to finish with lots of helpful tips in between. She also graciously agreed that I could publish her recipe and felt strongly, as I do, that delicacies such as these should be preserved for future generations. This type of suman is her most expensive retail item, and as such, fewer and fewer people are purchasing it… but she still makes it 2-3 times a week and for special orders of 100 pieces or more. At PHP7 each retail, and less if you buy by the hundred (PHP500-600), her budbuds are among the best I have tasted, clearly a hand-made labor of love. Readers in Cebu or those passing through that city are strongly encouraged to give her a call (details below) to order this specialty for the upcoming holidays. A more genuine, humble, passionate and dedicated food artisan, I have rarely come across…

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My wife and I are at the age that we have started to read the obituaries every so often. Not so much for folks our age that have passed away (though there are a few) but friends of older siblings, parents, etc. instead. I have also noted with interest several unconventional obituaries in the past, mostly related to families that had well, multiple families or spouses. I regret not clipping some of the more outrageous ones as they are truly article material. But today, my wife spotted this obituary on page B7 of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and frankly, it brought a smile to our faces… it reads, in part:

“Jundy was called by the Executive Chef to the big buffet in the sky to feast with HIM and his brother, Jody, in eternity. He will be sorely missed by his wife… parents… and sister…”

Bravo to the family of Jundy, who I don’t know from Adam, for having such a sense of lightness and of respect for the wishes of their dearly departed. I will say a prayer and I hope that many others do as well, as a Chef in Heaven with unlimited produce, foie, caviar, really good olive oil and balsamic vinegar, champagne, etc. and presumably no ill effects on our fragile bodies…is a dream come true. Life is fleeting…go through it with at least a sense of humour!

I am still vascillating what my own obituary might read… but a simple “Fed Up” might do… heehee, get the pun?

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What did you think!? Last year, the general consensus was short, fat and old and maybe jolly. But this year there were too many people for me to ask the same question…and I was probably too embarrassed to hear the answers. You just had to be there. That is the best way to describe the Second Market Manila Eyeball… But I will attempt to give you an overview of the evening and I hope that many of the guests leave their own impressions in comments on this post…that way, readers in the Philippines and around the globe can get a better picture of what really went on…

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