Foot and Fire

I decided to send out my thoughts to sail despite the fact that the stirred waters seem to calm down now sometime after Tiktoker Euleen Castro, also known as "Pambansang Yobab," shared in a video her experience in Coffeebreak Iloilo stating that everything she tasted were tab-ang and then freely swore under her breath before a spread of food on her table. This blogpost of mine then is the quiet water coming back to its body after noisily hitting the seawall. Anyhow, I was gently reminded to write this down after reading the news that the Iloilo City Council is being pushed to declare vlogger Euleen Castro as persona non grata. Consultant for the Iloilo UNESCO Creative City for Gastronomy PJ Arañador recommended such a move and noted that declaring her as such will set as a precedent among content creators who should all be sensitive to the livelihood sectors and enterprises whose long years of toil a blogger can only disregard out of his or her own self-promotions, whims a...

I am sharing our Japan Food List here. We got everything in our list covered, and more. I tasted fresh fig there at last!  ✅️ sushi from a conveyor belt which we did in Hakodate, Hokkaido ✅️ sushi to my heart's desire from a grocery store in Hakodate, Hokkaido as it is the place with live King Crab and giant clams so I had the freshest salmon, tuna, flat whitefish and mackerel on top of my sushi ✅️ onigiri, that triangle rice with filling inside and a cut of nori sheet outside to hold it, is a life saver everytime we have to catch a train. I love the salmon onigiri. ✅️Dotonbori bowl with raw egg in Osaka is what I want to have more ✅️ Kobe Beef, the tenderest ever, is a bit steep in Ueno, Tokyo ✅️ Lamb but got lamb sausage only in an Izakaya in Otaru, Hokkaido ✅️ Grilled Mackerel which I ate using my survival chopstick skills, Asakusabashi, Tokyo ✅️ Grilled Eel (I thi...

BIG NIGHT (1996) is what I had been looking for: a balance visual exposures of the food and the story. Everyone will love Italian brothers Primo and Secondo who have deep respect for Italian cooking but in crisis as there seems to be a need to compromise it for the business side of it. They need to prepare a dinner party for a guest who will help make their restaurant a success and their American dream come true. There are two scenes that sent me burstinf with laughter. At the beginning, Primo refuses to make the order of the woman. She ordered seafood risotto then she was looking for the seafoods, then she asked whether her order comes with a sides of Spaghetti. Primo explained that they don't go together and so she order spaghetti with meatballs. Primo explained that sometimes the spaghetti wants to be left alone, and the man suggested she order meatballs. Secondo relayed the starchy orders and Primo declined and shouted, she's a criminal. I laughed hard. I ...

10.10.20 TODAY, I GOT Rauram or vietnamese coriander, dill, chives, genovese basil, oregano.  TOMORROW, Rauram will be in a Pho Bo, dill in my tuna sandwich, chives in eggroll, basil in toast, oregano in my olive oil. Hope nothing changes after I sleep. 🤣🤣🤣 10.11.20 10.11.20 PHOTO DIARY of how my garden picks turned out today. Oregano-infused sunflower oil, attempted Pho Bo for the vietnamese coriander, egg roll with chives (no photo), tuna-dill mayo sandwich,  basil is still in the fridge.  THE STORY: Here's our Pho Bo to make you feel that we are in Vietnam, or somewhere just beside Vietnam. The boy shouted that the soup has "tyangaw" while sis chewed the rauram leaves accidentally and grimaced. Oh I liked the peppery and lemony taste of that, i said.  Conclusion after his two bowls: Tita G, it's just batchoy so we never reached Vietnam. I said, well, we may have just reached the Ninoy Aquino Int'l Airport afterall with this one. I smiled, thinkin...

Sweet Bean (2015) is a Japanese film that is a joy to watch as it slowly unfolds before us. I miss this kind of pacing and I thank Director Naomi Kawase for directing it so well that I found one Japanese film that is so filling, not only visually but also story-wise. Of course, it is an intended pun because An is the soul, the sweet bean filling, of the dorayaki, a spongy pancake. This movie invites us to see possibilties beyond our limitations and do our best in our life through the friendship of a teenager with inconsiderate mother, a middle age man who hates Dorayaki and an old woman who makes the perfect An. Almost every scene is a poetry in motion for me. *** Eat Drink Man Woman Eat Drink Man Woman is a 1994 Ang Lee film that gave us a visual treat of some chinese cooking as backdrop to a story that delights us with all the twist. But as much as I loved the long exposure of kitchen techniques at the start, I doubly loved the scene where the father and daughter had fina...

AS NINTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my monstrous  QUARTER POUND BURGER with cucumber, lettuce, onion and two cheeses that left everyone full and satisfied that I think they won't be salivating for it for the time being when they would see it in the screen. When I decided to make a real beefy burger, I had the Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs 1 & 2 in mind because they are the movies of my nephews when they were still younger.  But while I was contemplating of writing about it, Anthony Bourdain kept entering my mind, maybe because he's a New Yorker and burger for me means American. Well, given the life story of Bourdain, I sure love that he's prolific as a writer given the number of his books, and as travel-host of many food series. But like my craving for burger which is just once in a blue moon, I liked some episodes of his travel shows but I could n...

After reading Jason Lusk's Unnaturally Delicious, I had a mixed feelings about GMOs because as far as possible I want the "native" variety or those which I saw my parents were serving us when we were little, about insisting on cage-free organic eggs and chicken because I hate feeds, about food preservation to cut down food waste because there is also som sense in using "all" animal parts so that they won't go to waste even if it means using allowed chemicals to prolong it. 

*** I just can't help but immortalize this amusing article on commonly mispronounced food words  from Hellawella.com by reposting it in my blog. I am pleading guilty for most entries with a very few salvation reserved for me. Here are the top three favorites of mine... *** *** ***

Panaad sa Negros, an annual showcase of agricultural produce and tourism of every municipality and city in Negros Occidental, still runs until April 14. One can find booths filled with fruits, crops and pasalubong as well as plants, arts and crafts. Aside from that, there are different activities slated each night in the Paglaum Stadium. Here are some photos of the food and booths I was able to take...