Easy like Sunday morning

What Cebuanos call pochero most other Filipinos call bulaló. This, if you ask me, is pochero (beef stew), though it actually started out as bulaló (beef soup) at the previous day’s lunch.

Sili-ness

On the way to the beach last summer, we stopped at a small town to get some greens for fish soup. It was nearing noon and witheringly hot; there was nary a soul outside to solicit directions from. After a couple of aimless turns we found the vegetable market tucked away in a narrow alley.

Can’t we just, y’know, chill?

It had been a while since I watched television. Catching the tail end of yesterday’s early evening news, what got my attention was not Ian King’s coming-out as a transwoman, or the world’s oldest living person possibly a 118-year-old lola from Negros — heck, no, it wasn’t even in the news.

Make that double

Don’t be fooled: the duplication of the basic adjective halang (Bisaya for spicy) in chicken halang-halang means that the dish is a little/somewhat peppery, instead of being very much so. Same goes with parát (salty), tam-is (sweet), aslum (sour), or paít (bitter): repetition (parát-parat, paít-pait, etc.) points to that particular taste being just a tad more pronounced than the usual. As for what’s “usual,” well…

In other news…

Two weeks after it opened, the ukay-ukay (used clothes) store across the street had shown no sign of taking or even toning down the PA system. That’s how come I know everything is now at ₱30, and have memorized the sequence of songs on their sole mixtape. Then there’s the laboriously inane commentary in between, delivered in an uninflected drone as if the speaker were on the verge of a narcoleptic fit. Finally, Ma sent over word that she was calling the police.

All-purpose, Pinoy edition

Language fascinates me. Even among Bisaya speakers, a word comes up every now and then that someone does not recognize. This time it was “huwaw.”

Let’s do the two-step

I am not really sure when the turbo broiler was invented, or by whom (here my Google chops fail me). We got ours in the late 1970s and we have always had one since then, the current being our third or maybe fourth. Is it that essential? If you ask me, no; no more than the microwave oven and crock pot are. It sees action every now and then, mostly with chicken and eggplant.

Mar & the odd fish

Mar Roxas is in town. Remember Mr. Palengke? That’s correct; now he wants to be Mr. President. I happened to be roadside when his entourage passed by yesterday. Although I did not see him — he was on the other side of the van — I did not hear cheering either. Make that at all.

Drool-worthy

Psssst! Before you dive headlong into a holiday cholesterol orgy, can I interest you to try something healthy on the side? It’s really good — and by that I mean not at all icky — for alugbati or vine/Malabar spinach, that is. Trust me, I used to hate alugbati.

And the cake goes to…

My friend Armando is given to flights of fancy. “Think about it, Tops,” he would say, for instance. “What if I looked like Piolo?” I don’t bother to, of course, not even for argument’s sake — Piolo Pascual has problems enough just being himself. Besides, Armand’s girlfriend can’t be that lucky, never mind that she’s one of my dearest friends.