Comments on: Eat with Your Hand 101 / Kamayan Tutorial a la Marketman

By: dann

dann — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:55:08 +0000

Me, my brother and a friend of mine had formed this habit of eating lunch on a banana leaf buffet style, just like in the olden days, every other day. We eat standing up with one foot propped on a low chair or anywhere else. its fun and its a very special feeling when we eat like this. basically its more enjoyable.

about the water drinking part, my personal reason is that i dont want to wash away the taste of the food, i love savouring it for as long as i can. :)

PS i love this article.

By: rjfennel

rjfennel — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:26:23 +0000

This just shows how versatile filipino’s are. Sure it looks unethical in some ways but your statistics are spot on. We didn’t have spoon and forks early on, and this is just part of our History and Culture regardless of its visuals. Besides meals are enjoyed better when eating by hand. well of course with your Banana leaf setting, the Beach while munching on some fresh Seafood and Filipino Fiesta meals Priceless!!

By: buckythetarayslayer

buckythetarayslayer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:14:34 +0000

Eating kamayan style always bring me back to the days when my mom’s side of the family would go to a nearby batis in Bicol and eat there. We’d bring our inihaw na tilapia, baboy, manggang hilaw with tomatoes and bagoong and prawns and just spread everything on those banana leaves. Oh, and of course we never forget our bottles of San Miguel beer and water. They were pretty liberal with the underage drinking (hello, they would buy beer for me and my other 13 year old cousins hehe)and if the beer was slighly warm, we’d lodge em between some big rocks submerged in the batis til they were cooler… Ahh good times…

By: Miles

Miles — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:31:32 +0000

you can also get rid of the seafod smells by squeezing the juice of a fresh kalamansi or putting a small amount of white vinegar on your hands or fingertips before soaping them when you wash after the meal.

By: jules winnfield

jules winnfield — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:02:47 +0000

this topic is my pandora’s box. you have let my evils out mm. definitely way up there on my list of lists is eating with my hands. it’s just so primal in a way that it heightens the dining experience all the more. the flavors take on a lifeform.

i normally gravitate towards the patio or the outdoors when i decide to eat ‘kamay’. the food – as mentioned repeatedly above: shrimp, crabs, catfish, tuna, pork.. (shudder… shudder…), chicken… grilled anything really, and preferably with the bones still on that ‘grilled anything’. either blackened beyond identification or still bloody red, it’s all fine. plus, you rip the meat apart, hehehe this part i like best, because you have no knife and fork, you rip it. rip it good. my cro-magnon life flashes before my eyes…

fish heads. i attack a fish head with my hands, and disassemble the skull to reveal the precious cheeks, eyes, jaw meat and puny brains. leaving the skull parts laid neatly on my plate like an airplane hobby set. shrimp heads are also cool although simple pecause you just sort of pop up the hood and suck the orange goo for brains.

and a critical part of eating ‘kamay’ is the holy water of this event.–> the sawsawan. no kamayan should be without one. this is my weakness, my pornography. believe me you (Ã¼), a ceremony of mine after eating is to sip the sawsawan from that little mongkok, regarless of the dirtied state it is in, with the bits of meat, fishbones, shrimp moustache, onion, chili, regardless of the resulting liquid color from the combined vinegar, soy sauce, patis, calamansi, sweat from my forehead, or even with the kaleidoscope formed on the surface by all that floating black-charcoal-carbon-stuff, even if there have been more than a dozen hands that have dipped their fingers in it along with the ‘grilled anything’ (provided i know these people)… i will still sip the sawsawan from that little mongkok….

By: erleen

erleen — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:49:21 +0000

eating with your hands is disastrous for any dieter. especially when you eat with all your family and friends around you. it feels like a fiesta and the kwentuhan and laughter almost never stops. =)

my dad always asks for a tabo with water to wash his hands after eating. Hinawan is what he calls it.

By: Ted

Ted — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:03:14 +0000

Eating with your hands is the “best” specially with seafood. One tip i can tell you is how to get rid of that smelly hands if you eat Crabs with your hands and you’re dipping them in vinegar with lots of garlic. When washing your hands, use a stainless steel spoon or fork, by continuously rubbing the steel with the hands you used while the water is flowing over your hands.

By: dhayL

dhayL — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:16:24 +0000

I remember growing up, every summer my uncle (who’s in a much better place now) would take us – the kids and his family out for a swim for a day…Since they don’t have a car, we take the jeepney to antipolo and just continue on with a rented tricycle ride to the resort…we have bbq’s, itlog na maalat and more and our meal will not be complete without banana leaves and ofcourse we would eat with our hand! It was so much and fun and always memorable each yr. Fast forward to todays date, although our houselhold still practices eating with our hand depending on our “ulam”, just minus the banana leaves, for some reason, it gives me so much pleasure and it’s much more enjoyable to eat with your hand during camping or spending a weekend in the cottage! :)

By: brenda

brenda — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:02:32 +0000

i love eating with my hands. but as much as possible I try to avoid it because I tend to eat more with my hands, mas masarap kumain pag naka-kamay!

here in Cebu, you could see locals eating in fastfoods with plastics in their hands, having “puso” and “ngoyong” or even “lechon”. I think its a common practice here in the Phils.

By: Maria Clara

Maria Clara — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:11:25 +0000

We have a bahay kubo at the rear of our house. Whenever we eat at the bahay kubo we are always defaulted to eat with our hands. I am telling you the foods taste very different from the set up we have at the house with the china and silverware. As with anything manners should always be in place. Our sandok which serves as our buffet spoons are made out of coconut shells secured with yantok at the wooden handle. The humble banana leaves bring up the whole set up in a different atmosphere very inviting especially adobo, asado, hilabos na hapos with chopped mangoes, tomatoes, onion and sauteed bagoong spread out on banana leaves and grilled bangus with eggplant salad.