On Saturday, we celebrated Ate Janet's birthday at Dampa at Farmer's - we enjoyed pigging out on prawns in lemon-butter sauce, chili crabs, grilled squid, grilled fish, pakbet and sinigang na maya-maya. No one was surprised when Ate Cecile and I were the last to finish our meal as we tried to finish off all the crabs.
The next day, Nina, Frank and I travelled all the way to Batangas to enjoy a barrio fiesta. For breakfast, we had home-made suman, dinuguan and puto. A few hours later, we had buko salad. Lunch was literally a feast as we had binutuhan, menudo, habanera, chicken, mixed vegetables, leche flan, ube halaya and more buko salad.
From Batangas, we travelled to Tagaytay just to get the egg tarts that we reserved from Rowena's. And since we were already in Tagaytay, we passed by Massimo's to take home a serving of their artichoke dip.
Today, seeing that we had lots of nacho-tasting chips, I made my first home-made salsa! And for dinner, we had our own version of lettuce wraps - we grilled some pork, sliced some garlic and wrapped them in lettuce leaves that were smeared with red bean paste. We still need to perfect the marinade for the pork, but it was still fun eating our version of sam gyup sal at home.
I probably gained at least 3 lbs this weekend, but each bite I had these past 3 days was definitely worth the weight!!!
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More on the Batangas-Tagaytay trip -
I never realized that barrio fiestas can be so entertaining - marching bands took turns parading on the main road, there were lots of vendors selling balloons and cheap trinkets, but the star of the fiesta was the ati-atihan.
Batangas' version of the ati-atihan cannot be ignored - it started with a slim trannie going door-to-door wearing only a pink 2-piece swimsuit, I got the shock of my life when I saw one knocking at my friend's window. He actually succeeded in stopping me from taking my next bite. Then came the rest of the trannie gang wearing black skin-tight clothes. They performed modern dance moves in tune to ati-atihan music. Unfortunately, each of them had his own choreography. The best part of their performance was the duo of fire-eaters - they both ate and breathed fire with lust in their eyes. Scary, but still entertaining.
Inside the house, we entertained ourselves by watching the Olympic games (the athletes from Argentina were cute!), competed in our own Olympic game - jackstones (unfortunately, one of the stars broke before we even finished one game), and watched the US version of My Sassy Girl (really awful, as we expected.)
From Batangas, we took the Star Toll (a really beautiful stretch of road!) and passed through Tanauan. The road that brought us up to Tagaytay was pretty rough and steep. There were stretches that were cemented but most of the 30-minute drive was either cracked asphalt or just plain dirt. This national road was already narrow but it was 2-way. It gave us beautiful views of Taal volcano, though. So like the ati-atihan in Batangas, the road was scary, but still entertaining.
3 comments:
Abie! Im salivating while I was reading your blog entry. I miss the suman and kakanin in Pinas! Im definitely dragging you to various places (when I visit Pinas) and officially crowning you my eating buddy! :)
i'd ove to be your eating buddy, grace! gusto ma magtagaytay? sarap ng molten chocolate cake sa massimo's.
Abie - Id go wherever your tummy lead us. You know that Patrick and I are adventurous eaters and I trust your taste and food expertise. :) Oh, Im already thinking of the chocolate cake. I miss good seafood and kakanin too! :)
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