Weird Food

Then comes the weird stuff.  The locals eat a type of pudding called dinaguan, which is really the freshly drained blood of a pig made into a kind of stew. It's considered a delicacy. I won't touch it. They also make and eat a paste type seasoning called bagoong.  It's made out of tiny fermented shrimp. It comes out purple or brown color, and smells horrible. Yes, to me it's as nasty as it sounds. They usually like to eat this with unripe mangos. Then the all-time favorite among foreigners is fish head soup.  Exactly as it says, they make a soup with the fish heads boiled in as the main ingredient.   Again, not gonna touch it!

They do a lot of homemade ice cream, like we used to do years ago in the States.  It's simple, and tastes good. They also make a lot of bread type items like cupcakes, and puto, which is a specially made recipe that my wife is really good at. They are made by steaming.  It looks like small muffins that are fluffy and soft.  Then there is the especially tasty suman, which is sticky rice and brown sugar made into a thick paste and wrapped and cooked in banana leaves.  Really good stuff!

Then the fish category.  Since the P.I. is all an ISLAND, of course they have all kinds of fish.  They range from many you know, to many that you have never heard about.  The official fish of the P.I. is called Bangus, and is a lot like a trout, but completely silver.  No sharp fins to worry about.  It is mostly cooked over an open fire or grill to get the best flavor. A few years ago we were raising them in a two-acre fish pond that I was leasing.  We raised about 2500 at a time, for a period of four months.  We would powerfeed them to get them to selling size.  Then the local guys and I would round them up in a 100 meter long catch net, put them in containers, and send them to the buyer in town.  The locals would make about 200 pesos for helping me, which is about $5, and they also got some fish.  But, unfortunately, a direct hit from a typhoon destroyed it beyond repair.