Baguio on my Mind

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Last weekend we were in Baguio at the finally finished Loacan house. We had satay flavored ball soup (it was a variety of balls with rice noodles in a soup) and bagnet (crispy fried huge chunk of pork).

On my birthday last year the Mister and I took a bus to Baguio. We spent an afternoon at the Burnham Park watching kids play football while eating putubungbong (ube rice cake? - I am not sure what it is exactly but it’s a chewy purple thing served warm with brown sugar and margarine and grated coconut) and drinking coffee.

A couple of years ago we reached Session Road at around four in the morning. We stopped for hot ‘balut’ (boiled fertilized duck eggs). It was so cold that the hot balut in my hand already felt like a treat even before I cracked the shell and sipped the hot salty duck flavored liquid. We had rock salt tucked in newspaper for the itty bitty smushy duck and the ever precious yolk.

At Mines View Park we once bought charcoal grilled dried squid on a stick and ate them at the viewing deck. It came with vinegar which I drip dripped on my pants that I still had to wear the next day.

During the beginning of the Loacan house, before the windows were installed, we grilled steak, shrimp, pig ears, tomatoes and beef tapas on the second floor. We spent the night laughing, drinking and waiting for the fog to come get us.

In the summer after my fourth grade my grandfather took me to the Mario’s Restaurant in Baguio. I ordered a steak medium rare and strawberry jubilee for dessert. My pesky step-grandmother tried to get me to change my order but my grandfather put down his foot and made sure I got what I asked for. It was the first time I felt respected like an entire other person.

Almost all my memories are tied up with food. Maybe I am just a food person at heart. Today I tried to make chicken breast with basil cream sauce. I think it was too runny. So now I’m a bit sad and lonely. And I’ve spent the last hour thinking about food I have not forgotten all these years. (maybe it’s ratatouille in my head..) But really, it’s been hot today because there’s a storm and I couldn’t open windows and the power went out so I spent the day locked in with no fan. (how tragic) So I thought about Baguio and the cold weather they have four hours worth of driving from here. (but you know they did it in three hours and I am lucky we didn’t crash -they drove, I sat in the back seat) If we take the bus it will take us six hours but I can sleep it off so that’s all the same.

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