Food porn from Philippines

So here's the food porn I promised! The food culture is very much how I normally eat-- that is, they eat five or six times a day with meriendas (or snacks) interspersed around meals. My theory is that people eat so often here that their metabolism is forced to constantly work, making them very tiny.

Food on ANA

But taking a step back, I'm actually going to start with airplane food. So the pic stitch is of what our food on ANAirlines looked like. The options were seafood with saffron seasoning or japanese style chick, both of which were excellent. I usually hate airplane food, so the fact that I finished everything is only an indicator of how good it was. But as soon as they took away the trays, they started giving out VANILLA HAAGEN-DAZS? i almost died.

Jpop donuts, caramel flan, banana fries, halo-halo

It only got better. Starting on the first day, we gorged ourselves on multiple types of desserts. The top left corner are jpop donuts, which were a quarter of the size of my hand and filled with cream. One interesting flavor I didn't have the guts to try was meat... (not regretting it) Then on the right is caramel flan, which is also the pudding looking thing in the halo halo (bottom right). Halo is Tagalog for mix, so the dessert is called mix-mix, in English. And yes, that is indeed taro ice cream. It reminded me of the Korean dessert, bingsu, which is also crushed ice with condensed milk, beans, and other random stuff on top. The most hilarious thing is that one of the most popular places to get halo halo is at a chinese fastfood chain called Chowking! Besides what's actually pictured we also had several other desserts including mango crepes and mochi ice cream (they had red velvet flavor!) all of which were equally as amazing.

 But I actually did have real food too. Pork and chicken seem to be the biggest source of protein here. There is a prevalence of pork (well, pork belly actually) in a lot of dishes. The dish on the left is a popular breakfast dish. Eaten with pork dipped in vinegar sause, it comes with rice and fried eggs. Even at the saturday market, they were selling sweet marinated pork (which we got to try!). On our night out we also tried pork bruschetta, which is pork belly with bacon rolled inside of it. When we were give home cooked meals, pork was also a huge part. They gave us pork on skewers which tasted a lot like what I had tried at the market (absolutely fantastic). The noodle stuff next to it in the pictures is a chinese dish that were clear noodles. I'm going to try to find out what it's actually called, but it was savory with scallions mixed inside of it, but no meat.

Pork skewers and noodles 

Liempo at Saturday Market

In terms of restaurant meals, we also tried bruschetta which was pork belly cooked with seasoning and more bacon rolled into it. It got a little sickening at the end with all that grease but generally fantastic, especially with spanish rice and steamed vegetables.

Pork Bruschetta 

But we're poor college kids so most of the time we had street food/ fast food.  One of the first meals we had were at Jolibee, a fastfood restaurant that is more popular than McDonald's. It sells pretty much anything, but we heard the fried chicken was good, so that's what we ate. So we got two pieces of fried chicken with a rice that came in paper wrappings that made it look like a hamburger and some gravy. I got sick right after, so my brain thinks that I got sick from the food (even though I'm pretty sure it was just motion sickness from a long car ride after) and won't let me eat it. We also tried lobster rolls and crab claws that looked super fake but turned out to be delicious! I had it with a mixture of garlic sauce and sweet and sour sauce which turned out to be a great choice because it had a twist to the savory taste the garlic sauce and the actual dish had.

Lobster rolls and crab claws

Other street food also included a lot of mango smoothies/slush which I'm pretty sure I'm going to crave when I leave here.

The next couple of dishes I have pictures of were served at the house of one of the board members. Their mother went out of her way to treat us! She served us primarily Americanized foods because we were going on a distribution the day after, which I was part-saddened but in hindsight very grateful for her wisdom and foresight. But it was some of the best food I have ever had. WOW. We had lasagna, shrimp tempura with mango sauce, marinated pork, king prawns, and steak. I had never seen prawns that big or shrimp that big either. Then the steak omgahhh actually melted in my mouth from being so tender. love love love :) Right when I was pretty sure I couldn't possible fit anymore food into my stomach, Gina, the helper, came out with a ginormous frozen ice cream ish mango cake and apple pie. I literally died. If I could have slit my stomach to enlarge it to fit more food, I would have. I just wanted to keep putting it in my mouth before it slithered away from me.

What my dish looked like that night 

Mango frozen cake

Can't remember what these were..

Other general notes about the food here: the food is generally sweeter than I am accustomed to. Everything seems to have a sweeter twist, even the chicken and curry. Also with the commonality of pork, vinegar is commonly used as sauce, probably to even out the slightly greasy taste of it. The sweet and sour does add a nice twist to everything.

More food porn to follow closer to the end of the trip!