{
"title": {
"media": {
"url": "/assets/img/fhbackground.png",
"caption": null,
"credit": "Philippine Food History"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Philippine Food History Timeline",
"text": "Philippine food and beverage have a fascinating and ongoing story reaching into prehistory. These exhibits celebrate how Filipinos have been creatively selecting preferred ingredients, technologies, procedures, and flavors amidst transitioning social, religious, political, economic, and scientific conditions. They are a testament to the value of heritage side by side with an appreciation for the contemporary."
}
},
"events": [
{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1g41y7I9QL24tG8ACJKyURMCVI-T0DeX0",
"caption": "Slow Food: Philippine Culinary Traditions",
"link": "/items/coll045.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2005"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Slow Food: Philippine Culinary Traditions",
"text": "A delicious servigin of nostalgic and informative pieces mostly from known gourmets and gourmands. The book gives the background behind slow-cooking family recipes and traces stomach links between grandmas, moms and pops and their cooking daughters and sons. A winner!'---Gilda Cordero-Fernando\\n'This mouth-watering book makes us reflect on slow/fast food, and calls to mind an obscure quote from Jose Rizal. In the manner of a Zen koan, he said 'Hay mas dias que longanisas.' Based on the references to food and cooking in his novels and writings, it would probably be safe to presume that he would be an advocate of slow food and would relish this book as much as I have enjoyed it.' ---Ambeth R. Ocampo, Chair, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Chair, National Historical Institute\\n'Like slow love, slow food whets the appetite even as this is being fed. The symbiotic action can only ensure a continuum of layered, crossover demand and appreciation. It also provides a fine counterpoint to the fast-track quality of lives often spent on quick, wham-bam indulgences. Hours spent on loving ministry over a fire or any other heating element can only ensure full satisfaction. That is also how we many indulge in this book, a little at a time, appreciating the continuing flame of its traditional passion, Pinoy-style- in customary tingi, a nibble here, a nibble there, while already smacking our lips at the prospect of further dalliances. Gorge on this book slowly, on love slowly, and we will then assure Doreen Fernandez that nothing ever be endangered.'--- Krip Yuson"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1d7Rul00L2DmqkR8xjyTf15iMhKAcFCXT",
"caption": "The Governor-General's Kitchen: Philippine culinary vignettes and period recipes, 1521-1935",
"link": "/items/coll046.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2006"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Governor-General's Kitchen: Philippine culinary vignettes and period recipes, 1521-1935",
"text": "Contents: Prologue : buen provecho! -- Introduction : a 20-year interlude -- Chapter 1. There is no hunger in paradise -- Chapter 2. Heavenly hearths -- Chapter 3. One-pot orchestration -- Chapter 4. Culinary contrivances -- Chapter 5. Culinary codes and measures -- Chapter 6. Stalls and stores -- Chapter 7. The professionals -- Chapter 8. The spice of life -- Chapter 9. Table talk -- Chapter 10. Food for the gods -- Chapter 11. Saints in the kitchen -- Chapter 12. Paschal preparations -- Chapter 13. Convent cooking -- Chapter 14. The royal bakeshop -- Chapter 15. Chinese spaghetti -- Chapter 16. The Bombay break -- Chapter 17. Waterways -- Chapter 18. Spiritual sentiments -- Chapter 19. Cocktail caprice -- Chapter 20. The galleon gourmet -- Chapter 21. Traveler's special -- Chapter 22. All the king's men -- Chapter 23. Let's go Manila -- Chapter 24. Royal feasts and civic fashions -- Chapter 25. Food trends and home comforts -- Al fin : post-prandial ponderings -- Selected bibliography -- Appendix I : Roster of goveror-generals -- Appendix II : Recipe index -- General index."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1uSuGZE59Lj94SxyqD4AelefRQvUXQ07N",
"caption": "The Foods of Jose Rizal",
"link": "/items/coll047.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2015"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Foods of Jose Rizal",
"text": "What did Jose Rizal eat? What food did he write about? Did he hunger for bagoong or mango jam while overseas? This book shares stories collected from Rizal's autobiography, works penned by him, biographies written about him by admirers, interviews of people who knew him, and accounts written about the Philippines, Europe, and Hong Kong during his lifetime. As it gives glimpses into the man's everyday life, this little tome reveals sacrifices made to keep patriotic advocacies his priority. Rizal's nobleness and supreme sacrifice for his love of Filipinas becomes all the more worthy of never-ending praise."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1o78kGrs3Dg0JYfQ66gWpNjsz7QMOU-m0",
"caption": "What Kids Should Know About Filipino Food",
"link": "/items/coll048.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2016"
},
"text": {
"headline": "What Kids Should Know About Filipino Food",
"text": "Food is not just what we eat. It is what make us unique as a people. Some have called it our \"edible identity\". In our food, we find traces of our past and present history. In the way we eat, we show how we celebrate our family and our community. Bacause it is so commonplace in our lives, we often forget that food is part of our cultural heritage. Find out more about Filipino food and what makes it Filipino."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1u3NCrmshOQp9Bwjyv1Z-bMAeU4hNrghF",
"caption": "Kain Na!: An Illustrated Guide to Philippine Food",
"link": "/items/coll049.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Kain Na!: An Illustrated Guide to Philippine Food",
"text": "The first Illustrated book containing essential information on Philippine food and eating habits, Kain Na! (which means \"let's eat!\") is a warm invitation to the country's communal dining table and its regional kitchens. Filipino food is the summary of Filipino history - from the indigenous food to the prehistoric era, to the influences of Asian cooking generated by trade, and the Colonial influences brought on by conquest. Yet for all its richness and diversity, little is known beyond dishes like adobo, sinigang, lechon. Kain Na! aims to change that. The first Illustrated tome of its kind contains essential information on Philippine food and eating habits. It is divided into 12 chapters. Almusal (breakfast), Lutong Bahay (home cooking), Meryenda (afternoon delights), Lutong Kalsada (street food), Paghimagas (desserts), Pulutan (bar chow), Pang-Pista (festival food), Inumin (beverages), Sa Panaderya (bakery finds), Kakanin (rice treats), Sawsawan (dipping sauces), and a section on ingredients key to the Filipino larder."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1fihNcJZxGqnTbHY0fXQwSX4NzATbHVXO",
"caption": "Pigafetta's Philippine Picnic: Culinary Encounters During the First Circumnavigation, 1519-1522",
"link": "/items/coll050.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Pigafetta's Philippine Picnic: Culinary Encounters During the First Circumnavigation, 1519-1522",
"text": "Pigafetta's Philippine Picnic: Culinary Encounters During the First Circumnavigation, 1519-1522 by food historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria narrates Ferdinand Magellan and his crew's voyage in search of the Spice Islands, and the various foods they discovered and ate in the course of the expedition. This book also explains the rich history of pre-colonial food in the Philippines as described by Antonio Pigafetta in his diary."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1KNm-ADQ1a_LI7C9FfvqUJiRvtNOFMnTd",
"caption": "Philippine Culinary Arts: Manifestations of Cultural History",
"link": "/items/coll051.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Philippine Culinary Arts: Manifestations of Cultural History"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1O6U9guYN-BAVb80KgERAMze_gMI7WWg7",
"caption": "The Culinary Culture of the Philippines",
"link": "/items/coll143.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "1976"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Culinary Culture of the Philippines",
"text": "“The Turn of the Century Kitchen” in The Culinary Culture of the Philippines, pp 60-65"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Hrdnu4VW5LuXb5pVmG-u35P-s9qIppf6",
"caption": "The Journal of History - Focus on Cavite Studies: Local History in the Context of National History, vol. 51, no. 1-4",
"link": "/items/coll144.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2005"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Journal of History - Focus on Cavite Studies: Local History in the Context of National History, vol. 51, no. 1-4",
"text": "“GAMBILA — A Preliminary Framework for the Study of Philippine Culinary History with Multidisciplinary Impact on Contemporary Social Reality” in The Journal of History: Focus on Cavite Studies (Local History in the Context of National History), pp 130-170"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1HtKI94O3oOs1qFL2irmbow4H-RKV3Gbg",
"caption": "Fact Finding on Social and Human Sciences Education in the Philippines",
"link": "/items/coll145.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2010"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Fact Finding on Social and Human Sciences Education in the Philippines",
"text": "“Social and Human Sciences Readings”, pp 109-154 and “Examples of Community Civic Action for Schools that Require Critical Inquiry and Creative Thinking from Stakeholder Participants”, pp. 155-157 in Fact Finding on Social and Human Sciences Education in the Philippines"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1X5pox3Yua5aeH2KiQTsmwjRL76rI-c5d",
"caption": "Savor the Word: Ten Years of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award",
"link": "/items/coll146.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2012"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Savor the Word: Ten Years of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1fQhtclJ3poQDBHCVgGgSY_3ZKgK_ib-r",
"caption": "Manila : Selected Papers of the 20th Annual Manila Studies Conference, July 28-29, 2011",
"link": "/items/coll147.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2012"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Manila : Selected Papers of the 20th Annual Manila Studies Conference, July 28-29, 2011",
"text": "“Table Wars: Home Economics Becomes an Accidental Advocate for Philippine Culture, 1904-1922” in Manila (20th Annual Manila Studies Conference), pp 34-52"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1h55mqhhg32vUfbER_dH5WoAjSsTjIp3u",
"caption": "Manila : Selected Papers of the 23rd Annual Manila Studies Conference, August 7-9",
"link": "/items/coll148.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2014"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Manila : Selected Papers of the 23rd Annual Manila Studies Conference, August 7-9",
"text": "“Early Philippine Cookbooks: Savors of Cultural Concern” in Manila (23rd Annual Manila Studies Conference), pp. 176-200"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1uwRbYKgxdGaXtupk6rZgJFB8z4KEENAT",
"caption": "Philippines-Spain: A 300 Year Gastronomic Journey the Program Catalogue of Madrid Fusión Manila",
"link": "/items/coll149.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2015"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Philippines-Spain: A 300 Year Gastronomic Journey the Program Catalogue of Madrid Fusión Manila",
"text": "“The Philippines: Asia’s Culinary Pearl” in Philippines-Spain: A 300 Year Gastronomic Journey the Program Catalogue of Madrid Fusión Manila, pp. 15-23"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1fnZhwUkFAO0FEVtYKB_-_N6iriGkiz7L",
"caption": "Panaderia: Philippine Bread, Biscuit and Bakery Traditions",
"link": "/items/coll150.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2015"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Panaderia: Philippine Bread, Biscuit and Bakery Traditions",
"text": "“Foreword” and “Tinapay: From Rice Cake to Wheat Bread” in Panaderia: Philippine Bread, Biscuit and Bakery Traditions, pp. viii - ix, 12 - 13"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/10ypTqnc3NvAImWYR1NGFD6TctGAct3Ci",
"caption": "Flavors That Sail Across the Seas",
"link": "/items/coll151.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2016"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Flavors That Sail Across the Seas",
"text": "“Malinamnam and Manila Galleons: Multiplying the Possibilities of Deliciousness from Around the World” in Flavors That Sail Across the Seas, pp. 60-73"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1TWM6xdZwfCl3nueTY1I5FNFTmzBZ7QWD",
"caption": "Sabores que cruzaron los océanos",
"link": "/items/coll152.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2016"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Sabores que cruzaron los océanos",
"text": "“Malinamnam y el galeón de Manila: Multiplicando las posibilidaded de delicias por todo el Mundo” in the Spanish edition, “Sabores que cruzaron los océanos” pp. 62-77"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1yK2t0q2ttEMImZ9dAShxdp6CzY4_ud9A",
"caption": "Philippine Food, Cooking, and Dining Dictionary",
"link": "/items/coll153.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2016"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Philippine Food, Cooking, and Dining Dictionary",
"text": "“Foreword: More Is Better” in Philippine Food, Cooking, and Dining Dictionary, pp i - ii"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1r38805moOx3OvK3VuJ1TnQKuOm1jVn_U",
"caption": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 22, no. 1",
"link": "/items/coll154.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2018"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 22, no. 1",
"text": "“A Vocabulary of Philippine Food and Well-being” in Budhi (A Journal of Ideas and Culture), pp. 1-23
A preliminary study of culinary words during the Spanish colonial era reveals multiple dimensions to feeding. Entries in dictionaries of Philippine languages compiled from 1613 to 1895 reveal kalusugan as food for the body, kaginhawaan as sustenance for the soul, and nayánayá as nutriment for the social self. The tripartite diet was a recipe for happiness and contentment. It is a legacy to review when designing contemporary strategies for national well-being."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Elxe91PtndViucPzkDUM-lvx0YWiIJwc",
"caption": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 23, no. 1",
"link": "/items/coll155.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2019"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 23, no. 1",
"text": "“Finding the IP (Indigenous People) in Each One of Us” in Budhi (A Journal of Ideas and Culture), pp 123-130"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1DuPiCwG1Gigcc4YCOzq6ojRtiK8u4VSL",
"caption": "Sangkap: Basic Philippine Ingredients",
"link": "/items/coll156.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2019"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Sangkap: Basic Philippine Ingredients",
"text": "“Kitchen Fundamentals” in Sangkap: Basic Philippine Ingredients, pp. 13-17"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/114Dor3EuxSbnN2XVDZIdUduHefDIIjbr",
"caption": "The Quezon City Food Journal",
"link": "/items/coll157.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2019"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Quezon City Food Journal",
"text": "“Introduction: Notes for a Food Traveler” in The Quezon City Food Journal, pp 6-10"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/128ZFDQT3QEXGOPt5Mo4cgO6S09yPn6mR",
"caption": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 24, no. 2",
"link": "/items/coll158.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, vol. 24, no. 2",
"text": "“Fitting Food to Circumstance: Potential Contributions of Philippine Culinary Heritage to Disaster Risk Reduction” in Budhi (A Journal of Ideas and Culture), pp. 37-84
Cultural legacies include a society’s emergency preparedness. Geological hazards such as the movement of the West Valley Fault will result in a metadisaster. Food security is fundamental to community resilience, a strategy for disaster risk reduction. Heritage food practices may contribute to food security during emergencies and disasters. Seasonal weather conditions and natural calamities have forced continuing developments in Philippine cuisine. Convenience foods, home and urban gardening, as well as food preservation continue to be altered appropriately to variations in societal anxieties, aspirations, and hopefully now, disaster preparedness."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1sY0zpl_l4fljcBuLy8LG7CfUWopeohfu",
"caption": "The Journal of Philippine History: History and Cultural Heritage, vol. 66",
"link": "/items/coll159.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Journal of Philippine History: History and Cultural Heritage, vol. 66",
"text": "“Food Literacy in Adult Education of the Philippine Commonwealth, 1937-1946” in The Journal of Philippine History (History and Cultural Heritage), pp. 301-350"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/3WmSO9RWdSs/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "What Kids Should Know About Filipino Food with Felice Sta Maria",
"link": "/items/coll160.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "What Kids Should Know About Filipino Food with Felice Sta Maria",
"text": "Written by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria and illustrated by Mika Bacani, this book is a reference on Filipino food for children. Recommended for children ages 9 and above. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1PFjDwfhCme2uJDeVayQiPgAQ8A8Hv27n",
"caption": "Appetite for Freedom: The Recipes of Maria Y. Orosa with essays on her life and work",
"link": "/items/coll161.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Appetite for Freedom: The Recipes of Maria Y. Orosa with essays on her life and work",
"text": "“Preface” in Appetite for Freedom: The Recipes of Maria Y. Orosa with essays on her life and work, p. 15"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/rXmD-NV28Kw/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Food in Philippine History (Review)",
"link": "/items/coll162.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Food in Philippine History (Review)",
"text": "After the unveiling of historical marker for Antonio Pigafetta at Plaza Independencia, Cebu City, organized by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines and Cebu City Goverment headed by Mayor Edgar Labella in line with the 2021 Quincentennial Commemorations in the Philippines, the National Quincentennial Committee launched its first publication, Felice Prudente Sta. Maria's \"Pigafetta's Philippine Picnic\" with reviews from anthropologist Jobers Reynes Bersales, food historian Louella Alix and public historian Xiao Chua on 13 April 2021, eve of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines, at the Pigafetta Monument, Fort San Pedro, Cebu."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/52Ure701pb0/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "The Governor General's Kitchen Philippine Vignettes and Period recipes 1521 - 1935 (Book Preview)",
"link": "/items/coll163.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Governor General's Kitchen Philippine Vignettes and Period recipes 1521 - 1935 (Book Preview)",
"text": "Book preview of The Governor General's Kitchen by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://www.facebook.com/theglobalbookworm/videos/211289694483137",
"caption": "The Governor General's Kitchen Philippine Vignettes and Period recipes 1521 - 1935 (Book Review)",
"link": "/items/coll164.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Governor General's Kitchen Philippine Vignettes and Period recipes 1521 - 1935 (Book Review)",
"text": "Book review of The Governor General's Kitchen Philippine Vignettes and Period recipes 1521 - 1935 by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1o176cYqKlO-6d52NFEmea9hUxt77g9C-",
"caption": "Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1575-1898)",
"link": "/items/coll165.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1575-1898)",
"text": "“Culinary Crossovers: Translations of Transpacific Tastes” in Transpacific Engagements: Trade, Translation, and Visual Culture of Entangled Empires (1575-1898), pp 147-151"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/v0HbYfSG5zw/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "The Foods of Jose Rizal",
"link": "/items/coll166.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2016"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Foods of Jose Rizal",
"text": "What did the Philippine National Hero eat? What foods did he write about? While overseas as a student, eye surgeon, and socio-political activist, what was his diet? Did he hunger for comfort foods like bagoong and mango jam? Why did he count the number of biscuits in a can and keep track of every centavo he spent on meals and drinks? What is there to know about Jose Rizal and Filipino food?\n\nThe Foods of jose Rizal by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria shares stories collected from Rizal’s autobiography, works penned by him, biographies written about him by admirers, interviews of people who knew him, and accounts written about the Philippines, Europe, and Hong Kong during his lifetimes. As it gives glimpses into the man’s everyday life, this little tome reveals sacrifices made to keep patriotic advocacies his priority. Rizal’s nobleness and supreme sacrifice for his love of Filipinas becomes all the more worthy of never ending praise."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/GfkzNg-u2MM/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "New Insights Into Philippine Heritage: Felice Sta Maria at Lopez Library",
"link": "/items/coll167.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2017"
},
"text": {
"headline": "New Insights Into Philippine Heritage: Felice Sta Maria at Lopez Library",
"text": "Felice Sta. Maria has, almost by accident, become the nation's authority on the history of food in Philippine history and culture. Already the author of several books on the subject, in our conversation Felice discloses new discoveries that give deep insight into the Philippine character.\n\nAnyone interested in a deep understanding of the Philippines will enjoy this conversation -- and in the process meet one of the most engaging personalities I have ever encountered."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1_JO9WVu5Kcx9K3q_2M-lSaG_iFGx96xw",
"caption": "Culinary Tourism and History",
"link": "/items/coll168.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2018"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Culinary Tourism and History"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1rNp1Gt0aiuJHDzCmjbCDiw1_uch0oUJD",
"caption": "Food Detective",
"link": "/items/coll169.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2018"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Food Detective"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/17EU15As_ojkoGHG0SamYbbZoLRd945HZ",
"caption": "Food History and Maps",
"link": "/items/coll170.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2019"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Food History and Maps"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/MfwyLaoYQWk/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Mama Sita's Mga Kuwentong Pagkain: Balatinaw Heirloom Rice Champorado",
"link": "/items/coll171.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Mama Sita's Mga Kuwentong Pagkain: Balatinaw Heirloom Rice Champorado",
"text": "Mama Sita's Mga Kuwentong Pagkain: Balatinaw Heirloom Rice Champorado with Felice Prudente Sta. Maria"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/_ca_3QnIfQo/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Dreams of Cake & Ice Cream: Coping with Hunger in World War II",
"link": "/items/coll172.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2020"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Dreams of Cake & Ice Cream: Coping with Hunger in World War II",
"text": "Free webinar by Filipinas Heritage Library tells the story of how private kitchens in a time of crisis became a source of public strength."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/Xwm_3QJulso/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "The Food in Identity - A Shortened Story of Philippine Branding",
"link": "/items/coll173.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Food in Identity - A Shortened Story of Philippine Branding"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/NuMGUkrS4GM/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "KULECTERATURA S2 E8: Food History and Its Applications to Social Studies and Civic Education",
"link": "/items/coll174.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "KULECTERATURA S2 E8: Food History and Its Applications to Social Studies and Civic Education",
"text": "Felice Prudente Sta. Maria is an internationally awarded non-fiction author whose works promote strengthening Filipino cultural identity as foundational to global competitiveness. She pioneers Philippine Food History as an expression of handling change and finding contemporary opportunities from it."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/sUrrSIYo9Vw/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Who Influenced What We Eat Today?",
"link": "/items/coll175.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Who Influenced What We Eat Today?",
"text": "Spilling the TEA about why we eat what we eat: Who influenced what we eat today? Interdisciplinary Conversations with Felice Prudente Sta. Maria"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/wcvcDQBxiSc/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Who Influenced How We Prepare Our Food Today?",
"link": "/items/coll176.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Who Influenced How We Prepare Our Food Today?",
"text": "Spilling the TEA about why we eat what we eat: Who influenced how we prepare our food today? Interdisciplinary Conversations with Felice Prudente Sta. Maria"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/LLb2Y5xd2Pc/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Who influenced what we like to eat?",
"link": "/items/coll177.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Who influenced what we like to eat?",
"text": "Spilling the TEA about why we eat what we eat: Who influenced what we like to eat today? Interdisciplinary Conversations with Felice Prudente Sta. Maria"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://img.youtube.com/vi/diNfYrR5IHc/hqdefault.jpg",
"caption": "Are we 21st century culinary influencers?",
"link": "/items/coll178.html"
},
"start_date": {
"year": "2022"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Are we 21st century culinary influencers?",
"text": "Spilling the TEA about why we eat what we eat: Are we 21st-century culinary influencers? Interdisciplinary Conversations with Felice Prudente Sta. Maria"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1aIVvD4h0nGeu4EK0MSYhlNZI4lYTOXKi",
"caption": "A New 100 Years Begins",
"link": "/items/coll179.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "01",
"day": "27",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "A New 100 Years Begins",
"text": "In 1665 when the second century of Filipinas as a Spanish colony began, there were four groups being fed: the colonisers; the Christianised natives; the Chinese traders and overseas migrant workers; and the pagans.\nThe Conquista (Conquest) was still on-going. The archipelago had not been pacified fully. Areas had not been reached and among those that had, there were revolts ignited by abuses, some of them because they threatened the food supply. Raids by Borneans and Dutch furthered instability.\nThe colony was in need of Spanish settlers to develop the islands. Instead they came wanting to make a fortune from the galleon trade and then leave. Even Spanish farmers given privileges by the Crown opted to trade. Promising lands mostly remained uncultivated.\nIndios had to provide the colonisers and themselves food. Parishes founded by missionaries aided food security. Chinese were brought in to increase the food supply by cultivating kitchen gardens, labouring in fields, salt farming, baking bread, and importing temperate clime culinary supplies. The Chinese had to feed themselves and as they became Christian and married indias, they strengthened the colony’s food providing capacity. Pagans continued to live off the land with some cultivation in their territories. Interaction among the four groups was meagre with missionaries being the common link at this point in time."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1CUvGZqMqE7DHWXE_FsV8eCfTr5WtpyMn",
"caption": "Catholic Cuisine",
"link": "/items/coll180.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "01",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Catholic Cuisine",
"text": "Into the second century of Philippine colonisation missionaries were still trying to convert natives. Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits and Recollects were implementing a system that divided up the archipelago among them. No Spanish lay were allowed to live with natives yet. Spanish military were confined to forts. Only priests, and there was a shortage of them, interacted with natives.\nIt was during church festivals that missionaries shared food with their flock. The practice was to have sweets and some wine, native and/or Spanish to make fiestas special. Precolonial festival foods and simple Spanish festival foods were both served: coloured rice dishes; pork. Into the start of the second colonial century, natives were exposed by priests to Spanish Christian cuisine and its customs. Natives learned to bless food, abstain, fast, and feast as Catholics. Secular Spanish culture was yet to spread beyond Manila. Such was the general setting into which our stories will open. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1ruiG7Przwars7gA39_OuP88XlD5pe_XF",
"caption": "Dugong Dinner (Part 1)",
"link": "/items/coll181.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "03",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Dugong Dinner (Part 1)",
"text": "On August 10, 1666 after 4 months on the Pacific Ocean, La Concepcion made port at Palapa, Samar. The vendaval was too strong so the galleon could not reach Cavite. Fr. Melchor de los Reyes, a Jesuit born in Puerto Rico was the Palapa parish missionary. He suddenly had 80 persons to house and feed! Dominicans numbered 39 and all were from Spain. He received his brothers in Christ with bell ringing, the playing of wind instruments, and other music. Some slept in the choir loft and others in galleries. There was a clear river where they could bath, books in great abundance, and food always plenty, clean and served punctually.\n It was presumed the group could leave in boats within a few days or that the galleon could continue its voyage. The priest found food to provision the ship and alerted Jesuits in neighboring areas of the dilemma. Not till 7 months later, in March the next year could his guests depart due to unsafe weather! Such was life at a time when people knew climate mattered.\nIt was the religious who provided free board and lodging to all who needed them. Simple Spanish dishes could have been added to what native cooks roasted and prepared in metal pans and clay pots. New World ingredients were being accepted into common Spanish cuisine gradually since the Columbian voyage of 1492. Some like tomato, chili and corn grew in different areas of Filipinas since the first colonial century."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1biIA7Wy3svtmVqjjSERfnnI0dqhw8_qM",
"caption": "Dugong Dinner (Part 2)",
"link": "/items/coll182.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Dugong Dinner (Part 2)",
"text": "The head of the travelling Dominican missionaries took P100 from their scant kitty and resolved to donate it to their host even if it was insufficient to cover even the cost of rice the 39 of them had been consuming for months. It was suggested he use it to partially pay porters and cooks. But the Jesuit refused resolutely. The priests of his domain came with whatever supplies they could to feed the 80 unexpected guests. He gave thanks that “nothing was owed the Indians” and that his pantry was always full. It was considered a miracle that two dugong had been caught, “a thing which had not been seen before…for it was .. a great miracle.” Each one, if adult, may have been about 2.6 meters long weighing 300 kilos. Perhaps the marine mammals were preserved with salt or by sun-drying or smoking? The sea-grass eating Dugong dugon is related to manatees and sea cows. It has been hunted since prehistoric times for its meat, oil, skin and bones. There is a 5,000-year-old, Neolithic painting of dugong in Tambun Cave, Ipoh, Malaysia. Some think it is the inspiration for mermaids."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1d7nNn6g5n_uFyDbgsWz7nyO9742o1JKk",
"caption": "Dugong Dinner (Part 3)",
"link": "/items/coll183.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "10",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Dugong Dinner (Part 3)",
"text": "The 80 missionaries stranded at Palapa, Samar were divided into 7 bands each put on a boat with a skilled pilot and stocked with supplies for several days. Upon reaching Manila, they all praised Fr. Melchor “reared in so holy a school as that of the Society of Jesus – where, although one is taught all kinds of knowledge completely, we can say that charity is that which is not taught, because it is inspired.” It took them 2 months to reach the capital due to bad weather. Upon reaching Luzon, they began their long walk over difficult roads and pathways, none paved at the time. Thankfully they made stops at Franciscan missions. In 1665 there were just over 70 missions in the entire archipelago. New missionaries would bring their religion into far off pagan areas where there was still head-hunting, take the place of elder missionaries who could no longer remain in health-challenging environs, fill long vacancies at missions where new Christians could revert to paganism, and also teach in the convents of Intramuros. In the late 1600s, missionaries were still impassioned by the asceticism and zeal of the late Renaissance and Counter Reformation movement. Simple Spanish cuisine reached native communities where priests proselytised. Philippine cuisine did not yet have sufficient access to foreign influences it could react to."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1B8WI5CFeqCB3rP_5RXY0KYt0jIBj7ni1",
"caption": "Queen of Fruits",
"link": "/items/coll184.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Queen of Fruits",
"text": "QUEEN OF FRUITS. In 1665, the year Filipinas began its 101st year as a colony, Domingo Fernandez Navarrete O.P. was arrested in China for his missionary work and deported. Intending to return to Filipinas where he had taught theology at UST and served in Bataan and Mindoro, he instead found himself in Spain and a new assignment in the New World, Sto. Domingo. In 1676 his book “Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China” was published. (Tratados means “treatises”.) In it he recounts discovering in the mountains of Bataan the “famous fruit considered as a delicacy in China, which is called lechias by the Spaniards and li chi by the Chinese”. He called it (Euphoria litchi) one of the best fruits in the world. The fresh ones he brought to Manila “were the first fresh ones that have been in that city; for those taken thither from China are dried and do not at all resemble the fresh ones.” He ventured that Chinese consider it the queen of fruits. “They are small, being slightly larger than a large nut, and the shell is green and thin. The inside is as white as snow, and it has a kernel in the middle as black as jet. Its savor, taste and odour make one praise the Creator”. The fruit of Chinese origin was growing wild in Bataan where natives called it alipai. Drying lychee extended its edibility and use in cooking. There are many botanicals from the main Asian continent in RP food."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1_99oxPC9xMLJT8C5chnQxocmvDgTkGv5",
"caption": "Fairest of Fruits",
"link": "/items/coll185.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "17",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Fairest of Fruits",
"text": "Navarrete in vignette 6 said LI CHI was the Chinese “queen of fruits”. Some priests described its taste as similar to sweet grape. He added that NANGKA is the “best fruit in the world”with some of them weighing over 40 libras (28 pounds) each. Its nuts or seeds were savoury when eaten raw or roasted. The Dominican, like other missionaries, called ATES (Anona squamosa L.) the “most superior of all the fruits God created” because of its aroma and taste. As the second colonial century started GUAVA (Psidium guayava) introduced from America had spread so fast it was destroying the pasteurage of cattle that in some areas multiplied greatly. Crows and other birds ate the fruit and dropped the stones to the ground where they took root. Guava was eaten raw or cooked into desired preserves and jellies. (Archaeological digs dated before Spanish settlement reveal guava seeds that could be a Philippine or Asian variety.) PAPAYA from the New World was growing well. There were at least eight kinds of native banana and orange. Manila’s lemons were small. They were DAYAP. One could not tell anymore which fruits were immigrant. The favoured fruits united indios and colonials through food."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Pq01pPACqgr4WrdXcsmfu5PCiHPlT3XO",
"caption": "Creole Cuisine",
"link": "/items/coll186.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "20",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Creole Cuisine",
"text": "One rare and important observation by Fr. Domingo Navarrete OP is that indios and creoles both used the residue from making coconut oil in cooking a “very savoury dish with rice”. He adds no description of the dish, however. A creole was a person of pure Spanish blood born in a colony. Those born in Filipinas were known as insulares (islanders) or Filipinos. The natives of Filipinas were called indios. Coconut was a common denominator in at least one food eaten by indios and the Spanish of Manila, and perhaps other parts of the islands. Native wine, likely tuba from coconut inflorescence sap, was mixed with Spanish wine already in the first century as a colonial’s drink. (Refer to #100philippinefood.) Navarrete notes that coconut water when coconut meat is sweet and tender is a healthful beverage. Cocoanut was roasted for the sick, and “after it settled the said water is drunk and produces excellent results.” He offers written evidence of how natives used coconut milk to “cook many of their eatables, among these their rice.” He classifies buchayo as an excellent native conserve. The Spanish were gaining knowledge of islander food and finding those they liked. Culinary experiences in a colonial environment are a two-way discovery by colonial and native of each other’s food customs."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1otcwHur_c6WjoU3l6myTnx9yV48gPVSs",
"caption": "Eat Like Indios",
"link": "/items/coll187.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Eat Like Indios",
"text": "Father Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, whose experiences are used for this set of vignettes left Filipinas for China 8 years before 1665 when the second century of Filipinas as a colony began. His book was released in 1676, 11 years into the new century. The missionary challenges he records remained into the 1700s. Navarrete and his companions, for example walked from Calavit uphill to Guistin in Mindoro over jagged rocks that wore out their soles. The bare feet of his Indian companions bled “causing us to overflow with compassion”. They clambered up slopes holding roots. For supper they had a small bit of biscuit soaked in a trifle of mass wine which they also drank for fear of the cold. Natives shared eggs, rice, potatoes. They killed a carabao near a spring and cut it into pieces on the spot to sun-dry. Some of the places they reached had not celebrated mass in 2 to 3 years; no Cura had set foot in others for 14 years. Yet in Mindoro all the Indian villages were full of crosses set up with great neatness. The locals were hospitable. Dugong (mentioned in earlier vignettes) was native food and its bones used to make rosaries. The roe of skate was salted for food. On Bacco Island they were treated to a meal of ray fish. Its liver was considered a finest native delicacy. The Spanish discovered and liked it. To survive, foreigners needed to eat local foods."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1W83TTpnsQRfaJB7_GgHp89pJdmcMDwlh",
"caption": "Fewer than Needed",
"link": "/items/coll188.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "02",
"day": "27",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Fewer than Needed",
"text": "Navarrete wished for a larger and constant contingency of missionaries. Likewise the colonial government pleaded for Spanish soldiers. Annual figures reveal how limited and slow was the impact of Spanish soldiers on native cuisine during this era. Our current focus begins in 1665 and the figures for soldiers before it hardly differ from 1670 and 1672. (The exception was 1663 when Governor-General Salcedo arrived with 700 paid soldiers.) The 2,200 minimum military force of pure blooded Spanish was not met. The total figure of Spanish soldiers in Manila were 708 in 1670 and 667 in 1673; Fort Santiago 86, 81; Cavite 225, 211; for both years Cagayan 155, Calamianes 73, Caraga 81, Cebu 145, Oton 169. The annual number of new soldiers wanted was 300 but on the average only 156 came and there were years such as 1686-1688, 1692-1693 when no soldiers arrived. The majority sent were convicts not career military. In the 1650s soldiers from Cavite and Manila roamed the countryside robbing indios because they had not been paid in years. For decades soldiers ate on credit at the Parian or lived with indio women. Like friars, soldiers succumbed to tropical climate and illness. There were clearly limits to indios experiencing Spanish cuisine during this period."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1P7Z-MqhHyB5FMGCok5F9HJKt5uZA2L14",
"caption": "Unusual Food",
"link": "/items/coll189.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "03",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Unusual Food",
"text": "Navarrete confirms that the ancient trade of Philippine edible birds’ nests with China was on-going. We wonder if he tried bird’s nest soup. He wrote, “When cooked with meat [the nests] are a marvel and contain much nourishment. They are given as presents in Manila.” The expensive nests of swiftlets were extracted by hand from craggy limestone rock faces, caves and cliffs. The Calamianes in Palawan have been famous for the product. The nests are made from dried bird saliva and resemble ash-coloured earth often with some feathers and twigs. But when cleaned they become white. (There are naturally orangey and reddish nests too.) Once softened the nests become gelatinous and are a favourite ingredient for nutritious soups that have been a part of Chinese cuisine for at least 400 years. The Portuguese included edible birds nests from Siam and Cambodia among their goods for the Chinese market. Navarrete must have been proud of his knowledge about Asia, an exotic realm. Few people travelled as tourists then."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1PEppCZ7qGeWvBB1VyQNhS7LYQMtc_QhQ",
"caption": "Farming Family (Part A)",
"link": "/items/coll190.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Farming Family (Part A)",
"text": "We leave Navarrete noting his concern that missionaries had a hard time creating parishes. Residents from several long-established barangays had to be convinced to relocate and create a parish. The parish was built with a central square plaza. The church was on one side and the government administrative office on another. Leaders could build their houses on the other two sides. Once firmly established the religious parish could be made a civil entity, a town. Public management was easier with people gathered in one place rather than scattered. Priests found it easier to enforce church education, festivals, tithing, church building and cleaning. By law no one could leave a parish, even temporarily without permission from the parish priest. But a town also made it easier for the tribute collector to gather the rice, textile and, later, coin due the King. Natives preferred to stay far away. Missionaries followed model Spanish town planning. Each family was given an identical amount of land to live and raise food on. They did not own the land. The King owned everything. A parish-town had an area cultivated in common by all residents for the town’s upkeep. Spaniards refused to farm and preferred to trade."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1K1UNBKIWcI_EdOj23ygDxhehygCgSmT1",
"caption": "Farming Family (Part B)",
"link": "/items/coll191.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Farming Family (Part B)",
"text": "No one was to employ anyone to cultivate for them. There were fines for deviants. Even traditional leading natives were not exempt. Each family was farming to feed itself and pay its tribute to the King, its required tithing to the church and costs of community upkeep. Where terrain could take it, missionaries had introduced the “carabao-powered” plow toward efficiency and better harvest during the first colonial century. During the start of the second century, our focus for now, food shortages occurred and population decreased. Men of a parish were rounded up for the required 40 days of government service (called “polo”) that could be during the seasons of planting and harvesting. There was no one left home to farm rice. Assigned far from their town to fell trees for ship building, crew, and even fight marauders from the south the men often died or their stints were extended up to 8 months. Cooks (sometimes as young as 7 years old) and other staff of priests were exempt from polo. One native revolt after another due to abuses had to be quelled around the islands. No lay Spanish lived in the towns at this point. The collector came when he could and was not allowed to stay overnight. Missionaries and parish priests were Spain’s culture bearers. And that includes Spanish cooking."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1g0bWoAr9xx5CgkVd1STD43GzP1WC335l",
"caption": "Target: Manila",
"link": "/items/coll192.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "10",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Target: Manila",
"text": "Rajahs and datus did not have scribes or visual artists recording food acquisitions or menus for banquets in Philippine precolonial times. No indios wrote recipes, cookbooks, menu cards, market receipts, food business or restaurant biographies during the first two centuries of the colonial era. The historical food narrative has to be pieced together using official documents and writings by government officials, missionaries, travellers and, as in this new series, even a pirate. Charles Swan was given command of the sailing ship Cygnet to trade British goods in the New World. Instead he joined up with a pirate and raided ships along the American coastline. While likely in the waters of Jalisco, he desired to head into Asia. But the Pacific crossing was notorious. The crew knew the extreme hunger and death from scurvy that Magellan and his men experienced in 1521. The Cygnet’s provisions would not last 60 days even with rations cut to half a pint of maiz daily. Salted jewfish (Atlantic goliath grouper) was the only other food on board. The big-bodied fish had sweet meat and fat. Jews in Jamaica ate them freely because the fish has scales and fins required by Levitical Law. Of all Swan’s arguments that which convinced the crew was his promise to cruise off Manila. The city’s wealth had become mythic. Ships with pieces of eight and silks could be captured. On March 31, 1686 Cygnet raised anchor. Swan increased the food ration from 8 spoonfuls of boiled maiz daily to 10 per man as they sailed with the trade winds. (To be continued on Saturday.)"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/13GwikfPoA4Vrj-YRZz-sIvaeeBI2UB3v",
"caption": "Relief Goods",
"link": "/items/coll193.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Relief Goods",
"text": "The first land seen after crossing west from the Americas is the Mariana Islands. Filipinas annually sent supplies there from Cavite during August or September. Everything from sardines to iron was brought for the mission post that started in 1668 and, constructed in 1671, a protective fort. By 1680 a Spanish settlement was being set up for galleons. It was a forlorn post to where exiles and prisoners were sent. An official could threaten anyone making passes at his wife with a sentence to the Marianas. Eventually Chamorros, the resident islanders, had to work two times weekly on government projects that included salt making by women and hunting wild boar by men. Other labors were onerous. Socorro (meaning “relief”) was the annual assistance of goods like food, coin, men to aid the community of Hagatma at the middle of Guam Island, on its west coast. A mile from that settlement is where Swan’s two boats anchored on May 21, 1696 at 11 pm posing as Spaniards. He had only enough food for 3 days and had land not been sited, his men would have killed and eaten him according to William Dampier whose eye-witness story is the basis for this set of Philippine culinary history vignettes."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1UA4MhmIStlocEbFkmZFnig-MMfAz8-To",
"caption": "Hostaged for Food (Part A)",
"link": "/items/coll194.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "17",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Hostaged for Food (Part A)",
"text": "The British pirate Charles Swan took the priest who had come aboard at likely Hagatma as a hostage. Swan and crew had crossed the Pacific in less than two months in 1686 compared to Magellan’s 3 months and 20 days in 1521. But Swan too had run out of food by the time he reached Guam then managed from Filipinas. The natives who came with the priest at night were sent in the morning to the Guam governor with two letters. One from the friar. The other was “a very obliging one from Captain Swan” sent with gifts of 4 yards of scarlet cloth and “a piece of broad silver and gold lace”. The Spanish Governor was living at the southend of the island (likely Umatac) and was able to warn the incoming galleon, San Telmo, to stay out of Swan’s site. The Governor replied in a letter later that morning that he appreciated the gifts and would send what provisions “he could possibly spare”. As a token of gratitude he sent 6 hogs, 12 musk melons, many watermelons, and ordered natives at a village near where Swan was anchored to “bake every day as much of the breadfruit as [Swan desired],” and help the visitors get coconuts. Till the end of May, the pirates enjoyed hot, baked breadfruit."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1BT2qXV0lIcO9kAesCbO7TyhnbmJzJvfj",
"caption": "Hostaged for Food (Part B)",
"link": "/items/coll195.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "17",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Hostaged for Food (Part B)",
"text": "Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is harvested unripe and hard but fully grown if it is to be baked. The rind is scorched till black and then scraped off. Beneath it is a tender crust within which is a soft, tender white “bread.” It has to be eaten immediately because within 24 hours it becomes “dry, harsh and choaky.” It is available 8 months of the year. The natives said it grew all over the Marianas Islands but Dampier had “never [heard] of it anywhere else.” Breadfruit (called RIMAS in Tagalog and KOLO in Bisayan) was not mentioned in records of Magellan. Instead jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophllus, nangka) was. Both fruits may have a common ancestor: Artocarpus camansi that grows all the way from New Guinea to the Spice Islands and to the Philippines. All three fruits remain valuably nutritious but they may need to rebrand themselves and create new products for competition in the current culinary trade. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1uUw0btbbnEkr1eKGfjVWNTobIlKoCC7Z",
"caption": "West & East Indias",
"link": "/items/coll196.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "20",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "West & East Indias",
"text": "The pirate Captain Swan gave his companion William Dampier (likewise considered a pirate at the time) reason to write a few years later as he regained respectability, “I have been the longer on this subject, to give the Reader a particular Account of the use and profit of a Vegetable, which is possibly of all others the most generally serviceable to the conveniences, as well as the necessities of humane Life. Yet this Tree, that is of such great use, and esteemed so much in the East Indies, is scare regarded in the West Indies, for want of the knowledge of the benefit which it may produce.” He found it, the coconut, growing in Guam’s dry ground. The nuts were of medium size and the sweetest he had tasted! Magellan’s men in the Philippines during 1521 likewise praised the coconut’s multiple uses. A botanical might be present in different parts of the world, yet its popularity may differ. In one area the plant’s culinary uses could be more common, varied and distinctive or unique than in another. (To be continued on Wednesday.)"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1QeIoRACoSVxSlhDnh6j90jBI6k3xTI3e",
"caption": "Coconut Wine Rivals",
"link": "/items/coll197.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Coconut Wine Rivals",
"text": "Sri Lanka makes wine from coconut flower inflorescence in an ancient manner and is promoting it on the international scene like the Philippines. Coconut wine is a product shared by the coconut growing areas of Asia. Dampier described the use of coconut to make wine, just as did Antonio Pigafetta of the circumnavigation crew in 1521. Dampier’s “toddy” looked like “whey”. He wrote: It is sweet and pleasant, but is to be drunk within 24 hours after it is drawn, for afterwards it grows sour. Of all the East Indies native wines much esteemed for making Punch, toddy using sap from the coconut tree made the most delicate.\nHe recommended adding a dash of brandy because toddy (known as arack; also according to Pigafetta, uraca and tuba) alone did not make good Punch. The duet was chiefly used in Goa and was called Goa Arack. Instead of hanging a bamboo pitcher as Filipinos do, Goans used a “Callabash” with a hole hung on the coconut tree. Coconut cooking and wine-making link the Philippines to its neighbouring nations. An Asian coconut cooking book that includes antique and contemporary uses of tuba should be interesting for world foodies. Arack and alak trace to the Arabic arrack (distillation) and one hopes to learn how the term became so well established in Filipinas. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/10cSfC5dYkyz-9rUKscuIn_Cxe1cHSobm",
"caption": "Coconut Soup",
"link": "/items/coll198.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "27",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Coconut Soup",
"text": "During the second colonial century of Filipinas, native cooking used ingredients found in the first century including those introduced recently from Mexico and China. Island native ingredients however were still popular. (Refer to #100philippinefood @felicepstamaria.) When Dampier had abandoned his pirate life and wrote his travel book he described different ways coconut milk was used in Asia. He recorded boiling fowl or any other sort of flesh in coconut milk to make a savoury broth. English seamen had learned from islanders to boil rice with coconut milk and therefore carried coconuts during voyages. By his era the greatest use of coconut was to make “Oyl both for illumination and for frying. The way to make the Oyl is to rasp the kernel, and steep it in fresh water; then boil it, and scum off the Oyl at the top as it rises: But the Nuts that make the Oyl ought to be a long time gathered, so as that the kernel may be turning soft and oily.”\nWhen potable water is unavailable, scarce, or being rationed the coconut has provided liquid for quenching thirst and cooking. Currently a new generation of coconut seedlings need to be planted to aid food security. While Pigafetta in 1521 during the first circumnavigation wrote about coconut water and coconut trees that live to be 100 years old, it seems a tree is most productive for only 30 years. Mama Sita Foundation president Clara Lapus drives home the point, “Many of our trees are now in menopause”. Coconut centenarians, like people, need successor generations."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1GRYNFsyF_Mad6eU9w0F6yN3qPuq1jqDG",
"caption": "Free to Leave",
"link": "/items/coll199.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "03",
"day": "31",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Free to Leave",
"text": "When the pirates arrived at Guam, they held hostage the priest who went on board to check them out. He knew they weren’t Spanish as they had claimed. He would be kept aboard until the Guam Governor provided sufficient provisions. Among the first food sent to Captain Swan were small hogs that had excellent meat. They were fed coconuts and their flesh was the sturdy texture of beef brisket. A polite and courteous exchange of letters began. The Governor sent two hogs and fruit daily for which he asked in exchange powder shot and arms. He also asked for a large English dog that was like a pet for Swan’s crew. The Spanish official received everything he asked for. On May 30, though, the Governor sent his last gift: several hogs, a jar of pickled mangoes [likely the small, wild growing Philippine “paho” used as the local substitute for olive], a jar of excellent pickled fish, a jar of bread made from fine wheat flour but that was not baked hard like sea biscuit. He also sent 6 to 7 packs of rice. His letter asked that he be “excused from sending any more provision ... [as] he had no more on the Island that he could spare”. He also sent word that the West Monsoon was at hand, that therefore according to Dampier, “it behooved us to be jogging from hence, unless we were resolved to return back to America again”. Swan said his thanks and sent the friar (hostaged since May 21) ashore with gifts for him: a large brass clock, an astrolabe, and a large telescope. The priest gave the pirates 6 hogs, a roasting pig, 3 or 4 bushels of potatoes, and 50 pounds of Manila tobacco. The pirates had also secured as many coconuts as they could stow, a good stock of rice, and 50 hogs preserved in salt. The Magellan-Elcano stay in the Visayas and Mindanao during 1521 had come to value coconuts as tropical provisions. The pirates set their course for Mindanao. Potatoes and tobacco from the New World were growing in Filipinas."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1cPfOOZdpMcsUZGbTZln6SintvtAwI_fq",
"caption": "Libby Trees",
"link": "/items/coll200.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "03",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Libby Trees",
"text": "Swan and Dampier spotted eastern Mindanao on June 22, 1686. The latter wrote that Libby Trees for sago grew wild in great groves of 5-6 miles long beside rivers. [Nipa palms likely.] Sago was a native staple food for 3-4 months. The tree’s pith is beaten lustily with a wooden pestle in a great mortar or trough after which it is collected in a cloth and held over the trough. Water is poured and the muddy substance collected below is made into cakes serving as bread. Sago was eaten similarly at all the Spice Islands. It was also dried into small pieces resembling seeds that were commonly eaten with almond milk (there is a Javanese almond) to cure those stricken by flux (discharge like diarrhea or even blood). Dampier did not realise yet that sago flour is made from several types of palms including buri. It figures in the Austronesian migration period of the Philippines particularly from the late third and second millennium BC. The SAGHU noted by Pigafetta in Tidore of 1521 may have been from black-thorned “Cycas revolta”. At that time Borneo traded sago as solid loaves. Precolonial sago would have figured in food preparations like BENIGNITY, SALAB, TAMPING, and PALAGSING. There are multiple industrial and commercial uses for sago that go beyond “sago at gulaman,” a Filipino comfort drink."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1vwltSaEjGSIQrhYbyS6I2OXhXGEWqgFp",
"caption": "Soft as Cream",
"link": "/items/coll201.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "07",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Soft as Cream",
"text": "European authors were challenged to describe exotic Asian foods for their compatriots during Spain’s second century in Filipinas. Dampier described Mindanao as growing a tree as large as an apple tree with fruit growing directly on the boughs like cacao fruit. He meant the durian that always made for a good story. The fruit “is about the bigness of a large pumpkin and covered with a thick green rough rind.” One wonders why he did not mention that the fruit is surrounded by sharp spikes. “When it is ripe,” he explains, “the rind begins to turn yellow, but it is not fit to eat till it opens at the top.” The ripe fruit inside sends forth an “excellent scent”. Once the rind opens, the durian fruit is quartered. Each quarter has several small cells, the largest as big as a pullet’s egg. “It is as white as milk and as soft as cream, and the taste very delicious to those who are accustomed to them; but those who have not been used to eat them, will dislike them at first because they smell like roasted onions.” Durian can only be eaten at its prime. Over a day or two the fruit blackens and spoils. Its seeds are roasted, peeled and eaten like chestnut, wrote the pirate. A durian paste is still used to make sweets documented during the Spanish colonial era."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1kpxg7TkxcyGJJzhWgttCiuycAP65GPwy",
"caption": "Waiting It Out",
"link": "/items/coll202.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "10",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Waiting It Out",
"text": "Call him a pirate, a freebooter, a buccaneer. That was Captain Charles Swan whose expedition sheds insight into food at the start of the second Philippine colonial century. His arrival in Mindanao of 1686 coincided with the westerlies that bring rain and typhoons. The winds so rage that the biggest trees are torn up and are carried into the sea by rivers that overflow their banks. At the southeast end of Mindanao they took shelter in a deep bay on July 4. Again in need of food, the pirates were lucky. The adjacent savannah “abounds with long grass, and it is plentifully stock’d with deer,” wrote Dampier. “The deer live here pretty peacefully and unmolested, for there are no inhabitants on that side of the bay. We visited this Savannah every morning, and killed as many deer as we pleased, sometimes 16 or 18 in a day; and we did eat nothing but venison all the time we stayed.” They were anchored there for 12 days. Archaeological research suggests that deer was part of the prehistoric Philippine diet. Deer was suited to life in flat lands. Wild boar thrived in thick forests. Usa, deer in Tagalog, is now a rare local food."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1MI0drsJBSjL8aQdhxNv9ejROiz_y6yA6",
"caption": "Surviving Typhoon Season",
"link": "/items/coll203.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "14",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Surviving Typhoon Season",
"text": "Once the weather cleared briefly, Captain Swan sailed along the southern coast of Mindanao. Villagers pointed to “Mindanao City” situated at a river of the same name. Once there they anchored and fired 7 or 9 guns and were answered by 3 guns fired from shore. Swan fired once and a canoa with 10 rowers approached. In it was Rajah Laut (the Maguindanao Sultan’s brother) who demanded in Spanish who they were. “English,” replied Mr. Smith, a prisoner that had taken at Leon, Mexico. The Rajah brothers wanted English to settle in their realm and bring in trade profits. No longer were the Portuguese their enemy but the Spanish and the Dutch. Swan was granted hospitality that extended for the entire season of westerly tempests. Ramadan month began on July 21 in 1686, so Rajah Laut explained he would not entertain Swan with dances and the usual pastimes as it was a solemn time. The “city” was about a mile long and narrow. It followed the winding river bank which when swollen from tempests required movement by canoes. The English ate boiled rice, scraps of fowl or bits of buffalo from the Rajah. More about food during the second colonial century to come."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/15318aw6fz7YeG_eC-R81QMbqJ-rv-fDH",
"caption": "Beef Business",
"link": "/items/coll204.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "17",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Beef Business",
"text": "The storm season passed. In November Captain Swan had his pirate ship’s bottom changed because it had become worm infested. They celebrated Christmas on board with a lunch of buffalo. His men went hunting having been promised there would be herds of cattle they could use as provisions. The natives had no hunting dogs and it seemed the story of abundant beef nearby was a ruse just to keep the crew around. A third had been living with the natives and lavishing payment (using even gold) for food, company, servants, and rent. As it became obvious that the foreigners were restless, the rajah shocked Swan by demanding payment for all the meals he had consumed since July. The easterlies had settled in and it was the only wind that could carry the ship to the Spiceries. Swan seemed indifferent to his men who wanted action. They were bored. His personal journal that insulted some of his men was found and his men gave him an ultimatum. Instead of addressing the issue with dominance and firmness, he let the situation fester. On January 14, Swan with around 36 of his men who had merchant inclinations were left ashore. The rest of the crew set sail to plunder in Manila! When they got to Zamboanga there were great tracts of hogs and cattle. The sailors had eaten the sweet flesh of green turtle. They saw huge bats, manatees but no fish near Guimaras. At Mindoro by February 18 they found again great herds of hogs and beef. The latter seemed to be a mix of Asian and American breeds. Within the first 40 years of Manila as a Spanish citadel, European cattle from Mexico had been introduced along with ranching. Clearly in 1686 the efforts were paying off. The pirates, now under the command of Captain Read, did not go hungry. (To be continued)"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1KCr-QiyzE1YhjQshhMpIHBuAcHYbaJLA",
"caption": "Lucky Manila",
"link": "/items/coll205.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "21",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Lucky Manila",
"text": "The pirates depended on good weather to conduct their mischief. They were closing in on Manila. At Mindoro they hunted wild hog and beef but could not capture any. On February 23 they took a Spanish vessel heading for Manila from Pangasinan. It was laden with rice to feed sailors from Mexico during their layover in Cavite. It also carried cotton cloth to make sails. The pirates saw Luzon’s savannahs well stocked with cattle, especially buffalo. The natives lived in towns. Manila Bay was large enough to take hundreds of ships. Usually there were 20 to 40 Chinese “jonks”. The season for successful operations near Manila had however passed, so the mutineers went away to wait for May when an Acapulco galleon would be around for their taking. They anchored at Pulo Condore near Cambodia with a Chinese vessel carrying pepper from Sumatra. 2 pirates died from [food or wine] poisoning in Mindanao. Heading back to capture a galleon, they were driven north instead and experienced Batanes cooking."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1u2P9hE1IIVdVVpNBG79NaVYWTfD0KNct",
"caption": "Bashee Goats",
"link": "/items/coll206.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Bashee Goats",
"text": "August winds pushed the pirates to Bashee, the northern island cluster of Batanes. Islanders sold them goats but asked the paunches (intestines) be returned. A Batanes dish was made by cooking in a pot over a fire all the grass and whatever else was in the paunches. Only salt was added. As it boiled, it released a strong, fermented odor. The stew was eaten mixed with the raw flesh of 2 or 3 small fish, bones removed and minced very fine. The “dung in the maw” looked like boiled herbs chopped very small. Islanders were not interested in pork paunches. But they would take goat skin, singe off the hair, then lay the skin over coal until they felt it could be chewed and swallowed. (More about Batanes food of 1687 on Wednesday.)"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1ohRVSLbbtaxrvYjskTMG51cL1HzHlI09",
"caption": "Parched Locust",
"link": "/items/coll207.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "04",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Parched Locust",
"text": "The pirates anchored in Bashee’s waters (northern Batanes) on August 6, 1687. They were greeted with a welcome drink: sugarcane juice boiled with small black berries then cured in great jars for 3 to 4 days till the excellent liquor became clear. The visitors called it Bashee Drink and it was served to them in every house they visited. The crew bought goats then salted them. It was the season for a sort of locust that devoured potato leaves. So the islanders caught them in nets, “parched them over fire in an earthen pan; and then their wings and legs would fall off, and their heads and backs would turn red... Their bodies being full, [they] would [be] very moist, their heads would crackle in one’s teeth.” Preparing to sail off in October they salted 70-80 good fat hogs, noted to have naturally sweet flesh, and bought yams and potatoes that made good store to eat at sea. They made off for the Red Sea hoping to pass the Spiceries but avoiding English and Dutch ships."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1uCbXleGqZL7HdO8fCqpzC3JirI0erOsu",
"caption": "Philippine Food 1686-1687",
"link": "/items/coll208.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "01",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Philippine Food 1686-1687",
"text": "In the 122nd and 123rd year of Filipinas as a colony, one pirate recorded and published food stories about Mindanao and Batanes. Growing were banana, durian, guava, jackfruit, lime, musk melon, orange, pineapple, potato, sugarcane, watermelon, yam. Palm flour was made into a native bread. Rice boiled in water or sago and a small fish or two made up the common food in Mindanao (Maguindanao). Meat was for the better-off. Spoons were not used. One takes a handful of rice from a communal platter. By wetting the hand in water so the rice won’t stick to the hand, one takes rice, squeezes it as hard as possible into a lump that is placed in the mouth. Scraps of fowl or buffalo were mixed into boiled rice. Coconut meat was rasped and made into milk for cooking rice or fowl. There were tame duck and hen as well as wild bat, boar, buffalo, cow, deer, varieties of fish, locust, manatee, pidgeon, sea turtle. There was also goat and swine. Wine was made from coconut or sugarcane. Water was the beverage at meals in Mindanao. Locust was toasted in a pan and grass from goat innards boiled at Batanes. Raw fish was eaten there, too. Spanish made pickled fish and pickled mango (the small paho kind resembling an olive). They baked bread using wheat flour. There were flora, fauna, cooked foods and processed wines that differed from one part of the archipelago from another. Western sailors salted pork for voyages, and learned from islanders to bring coconuts as survival food."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/18wiGnk-EcX07aIXU_0MbA-cIOHWgu9yY",
"caption": "The Pirate Food Writer",
"link": "/items/coll209.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "05",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "The Pirate Food Writer",
"text": "From the journey of Captain Read and Captain Swan we also learn that people of Maguindanao bred ducks and hens in corrals built around house posts. Dishes were washed indoors and the used water poured through slatted floors. Dutch in sloops from Ternate and Tidore of the Spiceries bought rice, beeswax and tobacco from Maguindanao. Malay was the trade language that supplemented local island languages. All vignettes of this set of 17 episodes are from “New Voyage Round the World” authored by the English freebooter William Dampier and published in 1697. It tells of his journey from 1679-1691. One wonders how a pirate could “go straight.” But in 1699 the British government made him head of a voyage of discovery to the South Seas that included Australia and New Guinea. He is commended as one of the most important British explorers and navigators of his era. He cited many foods and food plants in his book and is the first European to describe the making of guacamole. He possibly gave breadfruit its English name. From 1703-1707 he completed a second circumnavigation. The pirate in him never went away. From 1708 to 1722 he was the pilot of a privateer called Duke and with him sailed around the world for the last time."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1TleAqWSnv74Z0tqTSYBFaNZ-veR7BcgG",
"caption": "Manila Mango",
"link": "/items/coll210.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "10",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Manila Mango",
"text": "Franciscan missionary Fr. Juan Francisco de San Antonio encountered mango between his arrival in Manila during 1724 and the publication of his chronicles in 1738. The fruit had been introduced from abroad and was the most “sensuous fruit of the colony.” The new fruit was challenging atis as the most favoured fruit in Filipinas."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Yahpcz4kZBb6UZo2RxNPGsOOvZY7eP8r",
"caption": "Manga & Pajo",
"link": "/items/coll211.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "11",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Manga & Pajo",
"text": "Fr. San Antonio observed that the manga tree was large, luxuriant and offered welcome shade. Unripe its fruit was “used in marinating other dishes.” Its taste was like that of a “good peach but with greater fragrance.” The tree was “brought in from abroad, but here it grows so well that it seems to be in its own native environment.” The pajo looked “very much like the manga, except that it is small.” It was “only served steeped in brine, forming a substitute for olive.” Such was noted quite early in the first century of colonisation. The friar continues: “It is tasty and is a good appetite. It is given to the sick to increase their appetite and the indios like it very much.” It was paho brined rather than pickled perhaps that the pirates traveling with Swan and Dampier were given in Guam prior to their Mindanao visit. One wonders if the mango Dampier noted in Mindanao was the paho, also called pahutan, that when ripe is sweet. Or was it the dudul associated with Cotabato and Lanao in the 1980s."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1snC3vZoNTMLwjyb68HMxaz9CSjEnV5hD",
"caption": "Nipa-sasa",
"link": "/items/coll212.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "12",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Nipa-sasa",
"text": "San Antonio’s chronicles offer a glimpse into Philippine food in the 150th year of Filipinas as a colony. The wine “most commonly used by the indios, which is most healthful for the Spaniards, is that made from a palm called nipa by the Visayas and sasa by the Tagalogs.” It thrived in brackish water along riverbanks. Sap was gathered from the inflorescence and distilled using fire. The result was spirits milder than that of European wines but good for the health if used moderately. Tuba from coconut he considered “stronger and better” than nipa wine. Even “more refreshing.” San Antonio added that “There is no lack of European wine”. There was a Mexican wine made from herbs brought in, but it gave Spaniards “verven” (like dropsy) that killed them. Water not wine was had with meals. Wine was for toasting for a special event or feast. He added that native wines complemented the imported Spanish ones, “specially if blended with them or other healthy and tasty spices.” One senses Spanish cuisine developing colonial changes. Both colonisers and colonized affected each other’s cuisines."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1T9BYTUl-VIP7vhw31mk8aOnAZ_GwSWPb",
"caption": "Distinctions",
"link": "/items/coll213.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "14",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Distinctions",
"text": "Fr. San Antonio described “balimbin” as like a large “friar plum” that was oblong rather than globular in shape. The tropical Southeast Asian botanical along with other cultigens for coconut, lanzones and santol is now said to have been introduced by ancient Austronesians. Balimbin fruited all year round. “Its preserve, whether dried or in syrup, is in great demand here [Filipinas] and in New Spain.” One wonders if culinary interest in them can be resurrected? While still unripe, balimbin was sour and used as a condiment. A variety imported for planting from Terrenate [Indonesia] grew large fruit eaten when ripe for their exceptional sweetness. In the colony’s 150th year culinary and medicinal values of native botanicals had become familiar to missionaries. Up to this period only religious were allowed by law to live and mix with the indios. San Antonio could still distinguish what plants came from Spain (grapes from Parras; small lemons from Ceuta) and from the New World (atis, anonas, zapotes, chicozapotes, chirinoyas, papayas). As the foreign plants indigenized, their points of origen were lost from memory."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1bc8eVZDvOswEOG3UZxdlE_-fn12QrKWL",
"caption": "Fruits of Divine Providence",
"link": "/items/coll214.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "15",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Fruits of Divine Providence",
"text": "Fr. San Antonio praised the fruits growing all over in the mid-1700s. He found the big “santor” tree resembling Spain’s walnut tree in size. It was made into preserves, dried in the sun, salted, and stewed. “It is very abundantly and very much in demand by the indio who has a preference for sour fruits,” he added. Camias was also sour. Natives ate them sliced small in their juice; Spaniards ate them preserved like balimbin. The “duhat” resembled an olive and was seasoned or marinated similarly. Pineapple had already adapted to Philippine terroir from its home in the New World. San Antonio explained it is soaked in water and eaten with a little salt to counter colic. [The same habit was reported in the Caribbean. Pineapple may have originated in Brazil.] Salt made in Manila was as “fine, white and safe as that from Spain”; indio-made salt was said to be harmful. Manila salt was made by Chinese in vast amounts. They built ponds for filling with sea water that through the sun-evaporation process left sea salt. The friar was ecstatic about plants and fruit trees the islands were blessed with. Those seldom seen today in markets include mabolo, banquilin, anona."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/14igKEduUkf6-dgMjpdMP6HVlExsgAPrt",
"caption": "Woman in Black",
"link": "/items/coll215.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "16",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Woman in Black",
"text": "After 150 years of persistence, missionaries were seeing a sense of Spanish Catholicism in Filipinas. The long black veil (cobija) with which to cover one’s entire body and white petticoat were added to the tapis (overskirt) for modesty’s sake. Slippers embroidered in silk and gold rather than shoes or going barefoot when going out was common. In towns, native men used a frock coat, breeches, stockings, shoes. Tattoos were a thing of the past among Bisayans. Chocolate beverage made the Spanish way (not the Aztec style) had become popular and was served in “naturally small size” coconut shell cups. Cups, dishes and glasses of coconut shell were “finely carved”. The coconut shells were shipped to New Spain to be encased in silver where they were in demand. Palo Naga wood was carved into cups. To cure indigestion, one drank water turned blue by the wood. The Spaniards had come to like native “snacks” that would require “a large catalogue,” wrote San Antonio. Yet the common native meal was not Hispanized. Wheat bread never replaced rice served in dishes. Tustus, the layer of burned rice at the bottom of a cooking pot was placed atop rice being cooked. Tustus did not swell or cause the stomach to bloat from overeating."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1NjEjluEBRRxxOrJc9ttVwALMxoIKzkuD",
"caption": "Terroir Appropriate",
"link": "/items/coll216.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "19",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Terroir Appropriate",
"text": "Fr. San Antonio, bless his soul, had nice things to say about the indios. He found “men of 80 [years] working with the same vigor as men of 30... and many pass 100 before they are taken to their grave. This may be that they have adjusted to their [climate] since childhood; or it may be due to their prudent diet which does not change at all. The food they eat has very little fat in it and is by nature healthy. When he does get sick, one wonders at the very little medicine it takes to cure him rapidly, while it takes a Spaniard with the same illness an entire drugstore to get him well.” Even in the early 1700s the link between food and good health was recognized. We should aim for healthy food and make it delicious."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1NzjK21vIIJctzfIEpKF0eyLMNBPSt7AL",
"caption": "Little Meat",
"link": "/items/coll217.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "20",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Little Meat",
"text": "In the early 18th century, the common native meal remained like the 16th and 17th century meal: rice with some small fish or shell fish that was either cooked, salted,or marinated. Being plentiful, islanders got what river or ocean protein was needed with a “minimum of cost and work”. Rice was flavoured with salt or sawsauan (used by some Spanish as the equivalent of “salsa,” sauce). “With this scanty diet (which is well liked by them) most of them manage to live and even grow fat.” There were also appetisers soaked in vinegar and salt. Fish and meat were dried in the sun or over a fire to make what they called “tapa”. Being preserved, the protein could be eaten little by little as needed. Natives ate little meat, either “because their stomachs prefer fish or they cannot afford it. However they do eat meat in feasts if it is given to them, or if they find it in the fields.” Deer, carabao and wild pig remained abundant. Wild carabao, being domesticated for agricultural use, was “stronger than a strong bull”. Spanish cow had been introduced from stock bred in Mexico during the late 1500s. Natives had acquired a taste for beef even if it was originally loathsome to them. The Philippine food heritage of rice and seafood traces far into precolonial times. Sustainable habitats for a seafood diet is a contemporary concern."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Gi1hHEGC_eUYhUvNQhlbl5wabPxPO9Vn",
"caption": "Selling Greens",
"link": "/items/coll218.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "23",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Selling Greens",
"text": "For 150 years records repeat that indios did not go into the raising of vegetables for selling to the Spanish population. Overseas Chinese workers and resident Sangley Mestizos did. Fr. San Antonio explains that the latter “did not exist at the time of the discovery”. Usually the offspring was from a Christian Chinese father and a Christian indio mother. They were “very hard working and civilized [and] make it a point to imitate all that is European, but they tend to remain apart. They live in the same towns of the Tagalogs, but they form a distinct group”. Pampanga also had many Sangley Mestizo. It is only in this era close to the 150th colonial year that the Sangley Mestizo became many and enough to warrant a separate tax classification. Indios could gather their food from wild plants still growing in abundance. They did begin cultivating pumpkins, sitao, bulay-patani, mustard greens, ikmo, bonga, and mongo. The latter was recognised as a good food for victims of scurvy; broth from it was used to cure smallpox. [Mongo could be sold to provision the galleon.] Apalea also called amargoso bore fruit to be a “codo” long (from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger) and was eaten as a salad and in stew. A wild tree yet to be identified with surety was called Col de Maluco. Its leaves were used popularly by indios in cooking. Natives were self-sufficient in their everyday food unless the rice harvest was jeopardised. Spaniards had to buy food."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1cdYEHUtQ1LjwCoIOT81Awh3FrInJ7HgS",
"caption": "Government Provisions (Part A)",
"link": "/items/coll219.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Government Provisions (Part A)",
"text": "The previous vignette noted that as the 150th year of the colony was nearing, the Sangley Mestizo emerged as a new part of the population. There were many other social changes occurring and they all had impact on food security. A second change was the increase in the number of soldiers outside Manila to feed. Annual tribute was accepted in currency already, but only half the total. Payment in a rice quota continued so men working for the government could get paid their rice ration. Fr. San Antonio describes 24 fortresses and garrisons from Cagayan to Zamboanga in addition to the more heavily protected ones at Manila and Cavite. Some had only a handful of soldiers. Chaplains and military hospitals were also allocated a fixed amount of rice annually. Fr. San Antonio writes that every year over around 9,500 kilos of rice were allocated for soldiers of the Royal Service. Indios and not Spanish were farming. Although there were over 100 parishes (that also had the political status of pueblos), the interior lands of provinces like Pampanga were still wild and uncultivated. They were populated by wild pagans and vagabonds. The latter included men registered as parish residents but who ran away to escape polo — the required 40 days of labor on government projects. The work ranged from church maintenance, felling trees for lumber, and building ships to rowing during war. Those doing polo were supposed to be given a daily rice ration. Rice was boon and bane for the indio."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1-4QA5xtn6rfswYACS5D4cUepXeKHefcq",
"caption": "Government Provisions (Part B)",
"link": "/items/coll220.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Government Provisions (Part B)",
"text": "It was in the early second century that the King, now of the Bourbons and not the Hapsburgs, issued an important decree. In 1701 the superiors of the friar orders and the Jesuits in Filipinas sent a Remonstrance to the Governor-General criticising the abuses of encomenderos. They had been given temporary use of royal lands but were to develop them and help Christianise the indios there. Agriculture floundered, the parish-pueblo was threatened, and population declined. In 1686, as the second colonial century started the estimated population calculated from tributes was “over 600,00”; in 1588 it was 673,600. In 1718 the King promulgated an order that returned encomiendas to his estate. He could develop them according to new strategies. As the 150th colonial year approached the native population recovered as did products from the lands they farmed. But they would be challenged by usury and usurpation of farmlands by friar orders. Only religious were allowed into the grassroots still during San Antonio’s residency."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/15Y_Bgsizvtc1CRMDQwjlVmIZmMfS-wck",
"caption": "Declining Galleon Commerce (Part 1)",
"link": "/items/coll221.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "29",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Declining Galleon Commerce (Part 1)",
"text": "More changes as the Conquista was ending in the mid-1700s. Although indios were not allowed to invest in the galleon trade, the business offered profits from supplying provisions: salt, dried beef and fish, wheat and wheat sea biscuit, coconut shell cups and bowls for the crew, coconut wine, rice, mongo for instance. Only registered Manila residents could participate in the galleon trade. In its heyday an investor could earn 300 percent. The number of galleons allowed per year became limited to only one. The ship’s carrying capacity was measured and divided into shares. Since a limit also was set to the total value of trade goods going to New Spain (P500,000) and back (P1,000,000) each share had a corresponding peso value. Costs had to be shared to outfit the galleon, pay port fees and wages of the crew. City officials had allocations. Poor residents including widows found rich parties as partners. “This forms a kind of general assistance not found in Europe and its dominions,” concluded Fr. San Antonio. The colonials became so dependent on galleon income that if a ship did not return the colony’s economy was jeopardised till another galleon could be constructed, stocked and return home. Fr. San Antonio warned of another change confronting Filipinas during the first half of the second colonial century. Philippine commerce was on the decline and ministers needed to protect and grow the colony’s industrial wealth. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/14mO-e7Nn-5xeF7g15mEVLtYSixHwIwhq",
"caption": "Declining Galleon Commerce (Part 2)",
"link": "/items/coll222.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "29",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Declining Galleon Commerce (Part 2)",
"text": "Spain no longer had a monopoly on exporting Chinese goods. The trading company model managed by merchants was already in place among British (starting 1600), Dutch (1602) and French (1664). They were dealing directly with the Chinese. Manila was still exporting pearls and gems from India; rubies and cinnamon from Ceylon; Sumatran and Javanese pepper; clove and nutmeg from Maluco and Banda; Persian rugs from Ormuz; rich bedcovers from Bengal; high quality camphor from Borneo; Lequios musk; and ivory, rhinoceros or unicorn horns from Siam, Cambodia and Cochin China. China still brought to Manila silks, velvets, cotton blankets, porcelain, shawls, and curiosities of great price. Manila was still the transhipment depot that had started in the 16th century. The Chinese who shifted from paper to metal currency had no silver. Spanish pieces of eight paid for goods that were brought to Manila gave China silver. It is said that until 1750 (uncannily around the end of the Conquista in Filipinas) providing China with silver was at the center of the global economy. What San Antonio seems to have been pointing out is that Filipinas had rich natural resources ranging from gold and wax to civet, cacao, sugar and other food products. Yet Filipinas was not growing partly because there was no attention to agriculture. No one was investing in the colony’s production of goods for export."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1C7LsBJe7D36SbcTR7b3GW0hbYwjD_vdf",
"caption": "Southern Island Food Crops",
"link": "/items/coll223.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "05",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Southern Island Food Crops",
"text": "Fr. San Antonio summarised the major food crops growing from 1724 till around 1738. Samar: its plains are fertile producing an abundance of rice. Negros: fertile to rice “with which the natives supply Zebu and other islands around it”. In Cebu the “common food because there is very little rice” was a “seed they call borona which looks like millet, with a smaller grain and more straw”; also grown were garlic, onion, and a “lot of cacao, that of this area having the highest quality and being in great demand.” Mindoro was cited for abundant buri and yonote palms for sagu that is made into the “common bread”; it was not rice rich. The Province of Calamianes grew rice, vegetables, fruits; natives bred a “large number of pigs and chickens.” Mindanao produced an “abundance of rice and roots common [with] the Bisayas”. There was wild cinnamon and 25 towns on the coast of Cagayan, Dapitan and Samboangan cultivated the trees. It was mixed with Ceylonese cinnamon to acquire the export grade of “fine”. There were “beautiful and abundant wild vineyards of grapes”. In Jolo planted crops are not identified, only that there were many edible nests of the salangan bird; also perhaps for their eggs, many tabon birds. The Province of Caraga made salt and grew “rice for its own consumption” as well as good cacao, a botanical introduced to the colony only around 50 years earlier. There is not much mention of food crop diversity. Missions still were mostly along island coastlines (trying to be beyond flood lines) or inland along rivers; interior areas were still being Christianised and parishes created. New botanicals from the the Americas, China and other Asian sources would arrive mostly via missionaries who were still the only Spanish allowed to live and work among the folk for the first 150 years of the colonial experience."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1tVWd1iX6HIg8U-3-2k3D3QXL1XNjXGY-",
"caption": "Don & Pô Co",
"link": "/items/coll224.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "03",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Don & Pô Co",
"text": "Before winding up the chronicles of Fr. San Antonio it is important to glimpse some non-culinary changes he observed. One senses the mingling of Spanish and indio cultures in the early 1700s. Indios of rank had shifted from using the honorifics “Lakan” and “Gat” to the Castilian “Don”. He credited Tagalog for being a most cultured and formal language, citing its use of “po” and “po co”. The former was used by males, the second by females. It was discourteous to leave out either when speaking. There were many other phrases by which manners were still being well expressed. Children were being named after Pope Pio V and King Felipe V. Paternal surnames after the baptismal name, he wrote, “is now being introduced”. But men would forget their official names because once their first child was born, say Rosa, they would be known for the rest of their life as “Ama ni Rosa” (Father of Rosa). The custom was confusing for ascertaining censuses and tributes. These Spanish customs accompanied, as noted in a previous vignette, the start of men and women dressing in the Spanish way. As described in earlier stories about the end of the first colonial century, Spanish musical instruments and harmony were in place. Priests contributed food during fiestas when pig was served. Parishes became Spanish-like as they stabilized."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1OL9PjtxVP2kMJxJ_3SX90dUXo6QfuztJ",
"caption": "Pagan Food Rites",
"link": "/items/coll225.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "04",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Pagan Food Rites",
"text": "Perhaps because fasting was a pre-colonial mourning custom called “sipa” in Tagalog, missionaries had little issue explaining Catholic fasting. During days of sorrow such as sipa one ate only vegetables. The pagan custom called “tibao” was still active according to San Antonio. On the third or fourth day at mealtime, “the best place was left vacant for the dead guest” while relatives would “eat and drink in a splendid feast” and recount the good deeds of the deceased in stories and songs. Missionaries were removing the superstitious feature and instead emphasising prayers for the deceased during tibao. Weddings had three days of eating, drinking, dancing and singing. A pagan practice that had been eliminated was for the bride and groom on their bridal bed, to each sit on the laps of old women serving as marriage sponsors. The women would hand feed the couple from the same plate and have them both drink from the same cup. The couple would pledge their love and guests would shout in gaiety, drink, dance, sing. The pagan priestess called a “catalona” would then rise and extend many blessings to the newlyweds. Customs were not uniform throughout the archipelago although there were similarities. The Catholic priest had to assert new church customs. By linking them to existing practices, the new rituals could slip into indio lifestyle. As other records note, the inclusion of pork, sweets and alcoholic beverage during fiestas aided mission work. Food was a tool of religious conversion."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1CMAG3-_mYfafmGm7DBRcVGO-wgwvJ64b",
"caption": "Steady Harvests",
"link": "/items/coll226.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "05",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Steady Harvests",
"text": "Missionaries like Fr. Juan San Antonio whose chronicle we have been featuring could indeed take pride in seeing the results of their cumulative efforts since 1565. Not only were the numbers of indio and Sangley converts rising. Parishes were being settled, with a church, a government headquarters, houses along streets (still unpaved) laid out like a grid iron and each with a garden of edibles, plus chickens and pigs, even goats. Priests were proud to point out how well they knew their assigned venues including native plants that substituted for unavailable European ingredients. In early years, some priests worked in the fields side by side with the folk. They were “fathers” linked to their “children” and the farms, infrastructure, and successful growth of imported flora and fauna they worked hard to plant. San Antonio notes “pile”. Its seed looks like pine nut seed and substitutes for almond. “When green it can be eaten with its skin, like young almonds. It should be scalded with boiling water like raisins. If kept too long in water, it becomes hard and cannot be eaten.” A century in the future, pili would be made into Spanish turron and given as gifts with pride. Missionaries of the 1500s through early 1700s still were inspired passionately by the Counter-Reformation. Later friars seemed to have lost their desire for grassroots work as our stories will tell. But during San Antonio’s era, many missionaries devoted their entire adult lives to conversion and parish development. From 1598 to 1737 there had been only 13 Archbishops of Manila. Staying in position for around 10 to 20 years was common. The tenure of Governor-Generals was only around 3 to 4 years and did not build a lasting affection for Filipinas and its colonised. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1LujELouNmBmx-zfdLkbxjP7MAH-DzAGf",
"caption": "Parental Dominance",
"link": "/items/coll227.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Parental Dominance",
"text": "Perhaps missionaries sought to improve native cooking during fiestas and left the everyday rice and fish diet alone. Father San Antonio explains that the natives were ready believers of the new religion. “They are the most inclined to the Church and its feasts and ceremonies, but it is necessary to use the force of the whip to get them to hear mass on holidays of obligation and to confess and receive communion... They are very reverent to the Father Ministers because of the superiority they recognise in them, but at the same time make fun of them,” he writes. The indios were capable in any trade which they work at, he observed and “would be even more capable if they were less lazy or if their greed for temporal goods were greater. Because of this, they have always been, are, and will be poor, not caring to have more than is necessary to eat today”. Food accounts are interspersed among observations praising what the environs and era offer as well as perplexing evaluations that are patronising and condescending. It is within such a conflicting background that culinary changes occurred. Food studies cannot be separated from their social milieu."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1MmSIgWTwF2ylraH1hJlPeb0BCcvRbVbz",
"caption": "Royal Rice",
"link": "/items/coll228.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "07",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Royal Rice",
"text": "Tribute was payable in rice with husk on, called palay. The government rigorously established its measures. The CABAN, meaning storage chest in Tagalog, was an ancient measure that equalled 24 GANTAS. They were re-standardised according to the FANEGA, a Spanish measure of volume. In the colony, 1 caban equaled 1 fanega. But when polished rice, called bigas, was measured as the King’s regular subsidy for the Church and its missions, 1 fanega was defined as 48 gantas of palay that made 20 gantas of polished rice. “The King, in his charity, so as to give us the rice for our maintenance without waste [the husk], established the measure of [bigas] arbitrarily, such that it comes out double,” Fr. Juan de San Antonio, OFM explained. The old Tagalog GATANG or GABINAN was the amount of bigas for a “man’s single meal”. To measure a gatang was called TACAL. The gatang equalled one CHUPA. There were 16 chupas in 1 almud and 4 almuds in a fanega. So there were 64 chupas or gatang or individual rice servings in every fanega. One wonders if 20 gantas of bigas fed 64 servings. The 1 ganta measure of volume has been calculated today as roughly 2.5 kilos in weight of rice. 1 kilo can feed 12 persons. So 1 ganta can feed 30 persons. 20 gantas would have fed approximately 600 persons. While there was dependency on the Crown’s rice contribution, missionaries sought to maximise harvests of rice fields in their parishes sure that food shortages were annual."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1dcp-BcIne4iYZTY1SeMTDSRNGzzfg-Za",
"caption": "Concluding Reports",
"link": "/items/coll229.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "Concluding Reports",
"text": "Unhusked rice was classified as either LAYA, the thicker and more substantial variety “more suited to the working indio” or MACAN, the “better” type that had fragrant SINAPAGA rice and the scarce, rosemary-smelling RINOMERO among its kinds. Fr. San Antonio said indios had a strong preference for fish or meat that was “somewhat smelly, which to [us] is a strange taste”. Iguana made a tasty dish. Frogs were “in demand by the Indian as food”. Laguna de Bai had plenty of swordfish. Large whales were found in seas of Jolo and Mindanao Island. Butuanons of northern Mindanao were “worthy of eternal memories and gratitude having been the first who gave shelter to the Catholic men-at-arms ... the first land where the celebrated Magellan planted the domain of Jesus Christ and that of our Catholic King.” San Antonio wrote: “The island of Zebu or Sogbu (which is its proper name) was the first one favored by God with the first planting of the Holy Tree of the Cross and the establishment of Christianity”. Mactan island was “where Magellan was unfortunately killed”. Other sites visited by the first circumnavigation armada were not identified by him. In the 171st year of the colony, the total indio Christian population had reached around 837,182; the number of churches totalled 700. There were no figures for the “fluid” Spanish population he said. Indios were acquiring Hispanic influences even if Spanish lay were not yet allowed to live amongst them. One may presume they were due to the priests who had become well entrenched. That civil officials knelt to kiss the hand of a priest seemed a sign that religion was more powerful than the state according to other authors."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1c8ShRckfWCewfvVBBNzwti4xXo3HwzhX",
"caption": "DALAYAP",
"link": "/items/coll230.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "23",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "DALAYAP",
"text": "Before Filipinos cooked with kalamansi they used Citrus notissima. In Tagalog the lime is called DAYAP. In Pampangan it is the DALAYAP. It was an extremely common tree known popularly and used much. Reaching to heights of 12 feet or more, the tree had fruit with a thin rind and a diameter of more than an inch although some grew larger. Chinese used it to cook meat quickly in a pot, likely meaning it helped as a tenderiser. The Spanish called it lemoncito (small lemon). In Pampanga, the focus of our new set of food stories, MIDALAYAP meant to use dalayap in cooking. When two men became godfathers to the same child they were referred to as MICADALAYAP, also meaning that they had a “spiritual relationship” with the child’s father according to Fr. Diego Bergaño, OSA in 1732. He added the term MICADALANDAN, meaning the spiritual relationship of a child’s parents and godparents. The dalandan was an orange species of citrus. The citruses of the world are said to have originated in different parts of Asia including Southeast Asia, spreading through Austronesian migration, later trade routes, and global colonisations."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1sZ_NrglhDD8yB3iqp3hOUgRAYYG2kFGY",
"caption": "MANIRUG",
"link": "/items/coll231.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "26",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "MANIRUG",
"text": "Could the Comet of 1680 have caused the influenza pandemic of 1687? The emergency continued into the next year. Fr. Casimiro Diaz, OSA was serving in Guagua, Pampanga. Most of the indios were “prostrated by the cruel influenza, and the rest of them caring for the sick ones.” The few people on the street were deputies and officials of the confraternities who were carrying jars of NASI (cooked rice), going up into houses providing those who were in need with food. “Most of the people were without it, and others could not cook,” he wrote. Although influenza was frequent in the colony that year’s was the worst according to elders. Many died especially children and old persons. There were no people to cultivate rice fields. Before influenza hit, locusts had ruined a previous harvest. They were facing DANUP, hunger. What they would have appreciated was MANIRUG, the thoughtful act of offering a patient a favourite food that could revive the desire to eat, as defined by Fr. Diego Bergaño, a fellow Augustinian. IRUG described gravy, condiments, flavour, and anything else that whet the appetite. The definition implies that gravy was part of Pampanga cuisine by that time. The pandemic then like today inspired charity through feeding."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/16XuJ96rjgpFiJJHh9VPM6s0efDwSnnzI",
"caption": "YERBAS",
"link": "/items/coll232.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "YERBAS",
"text": "Also spelled hierbas, the term was applied to greens that were used as vegetables. In the 1700s Pampanga cooked the hierbas called CANCUNG (kangkong in Tagalog today) with venison to good results. It was also made into salad. The smooth vine trailed on mud or floated on stagnant pools. Also eaten was LIBATO (alugbati in Tagalog). Other herbs eaten were LUCAY (its flowers were called TUNAS, its roots TUCAL), SÁLAY and LUPA. Too much of the latter was injurious. Although this series is to help us get a sense of what Philippine cuisine was like in the second colonial century, 1665-1764, here are some wild Pampangan hierbas from 157 years later. In the 1700s as in earlier years not all ingredients needed to be cultivated in one’s garden. TUNGKUT-LAÑGIT (Helminthostachys zeylanica L.) was a wild fern. So was PAKÓ (Athyrium esculentum) widely distributed on gravel beds and banks of swift streams. Their young fronds were eaten raw as a salad, as well as cooked as a vegetable. PAPATANI was a vine growing wild in thickets. The seeds were said to be edible but possibly poisonous. Finding now rare heritage ingredients can offer “new” ingredients for contemporary cuisine."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1bCZNS1_lcST9iJ0SmTx7kXAF3rQKb8N1",
"caption": "ALLIUM",
"link": "/items/coll233.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "03",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "ALLIUM",
"text": "The arrival of chile added piquancy to the Philippine diet. What indigenized according to Manuel Blanco, OSA by the 1800s was Capsicum minimum with a tiny fruit. It was known as Pasitis in his time and grew everywhere, even uncultivated. Except in Pampanga, its old name LARA had been forgotten. In the 1700s lara indeed was in use. MANLARA was to add lara as an ingredient in Pampangan food to make it hot and pungent according to the Bergano dictionary. It seems not everyone liked pungency because PANLARAN was putting chili into someone’s food, knowing he would not eat it. In pre-lara times, the prick in Pampangan cuisine came from LAYA (Amomum zingiber), ginger. The root must have figured in abundance because MALAYA meant an abundance of ginger. In the Visayas of 1521, raw ginger was served separately to accompany roasted fish. BAUANG was the Pampanga term for garlic (Allium sativum) that if eaten raw gave piquancy too. In Cebu of 1521 LAXUNA (pronounced lah-su-nah) meant garlic. LASONA was the term for “cebolla,” onion in Pampanga during the 1700s. But was lasona then the Allium cepa, shallot also called little onion? LASUNA in Ilocos and Pangasinan still means shallot. The Spanish onion that is large, yellowish and considered sweet is also an Allium; so is the Mexican bulb onion which is white that is not sweet. During a trip to Jakarta in the mid-1980s, bawang had become the term for related herbs, all of the Allium genus: daun bawang lalap (small, bulbous spring onions eaten raw); bawang putih (garlic, already sold then as loose cloves or full bulbs); bawang merah (shallots that were deep red to purple, flavourful and used sliced or pounded; deep fried slices were a garnish). In Manila of the 1950s and 1960s the big bulb onion was called SIBUYAS BOMBAY. In Jakarta it was sold as bawang Bombay, the onion for European-influenced Indonesian dishes. Indeed it seems that early Pampanga cooking likely used shallots and not the European bulb onion. For heritage cooks, which Allium to use for a dish is a serious choice."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1I2A1rLbGqFihSn_2cYfQGXYS4bupmSnC",
"caption": "SWEETNESS",
"link": "/items/coll234.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "07",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SWEETNESS",
"text": "In the 1700s, Pampangan sweetness — YUMU — came from honey made by bees (PULUT) and sugarcane (ATBO). Sugarcane land was called PANAYBUAN. Sugar mills were termed at the time CAB-BIYAO. Animals like a carabao provided power for a mill or press. LANSI was sediment from honey or hard sugar. Diego Bergaño, OSA records the saying, “Malansi cang bina”. Perhaps honey was preferred to the sugar of that era because it roughly means “What appears to be honey is just hard sugar underneath”. CARAMELO also existed, a hard sugar cube that when bitten on caused LANGUBNGUB, the sound made by teeth. Sugar was cooked with lakatan banana to make a mixture called INANGIT. It also was mixed with wheat flour and fried into small round cakes called BARUYA. Honey too was used in cooking. It made BARILI, a sauce for meat and fish. BAGCAT was a paste made of toasted corn kernels ground with honey. With ginger, honey made SALABAT, a beverage. PANIMAGAS was an active word meaning sweets like preserves eaten to end a meal. DULOT was serving a combination or oranges and suman at the end of a meal; it also meant food at table given to children and relatives. BUCAYO already existed as a conserve or a jam, but when conjugated as MABUCAYO it meant to become preserved or inferior sugar. A regular ripening of fruits throughout a year could also satisfy the desire for sweetness."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1ULFAaUZt-3l7EgAEpz9aPDPMsTFl8ZZN",
"caption": "SMALL FISH",
"link": "/items/coll235.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "10",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SMALL FISH",
"text": "Consistently around the archipelago, small fish figure in the common diet. Pampanga’s parishes were upstream and not along the bay when in 1732 Fr. Bergano’s dictionary was first released. The word lists for languages of island residents such as in the Visayas have many fish types included. Not so in the Bergano book although not all fish and seafood may have been listed. ASAN is fish in general in Pampangan; MASAN is to eat a meal or fish. Perhaps the fish he included were the most popular ones or the ones he personally ate: ALUBEBAY like a sardine; BIA that was white; DILIS that was white and “good to eat”. A fish could mean more than being a fish. The delicious BUANBUAN was white-scaled and boney. It also meant an untarnished weapon or sword. Fish had power and nobleness associated with it. The CABASI fish gave its name to a kind of texture or weave. ITO was a fish without scales and figured in an adage: NOCARIN MALUN MO ALAN BIYAYAN ITO. The translation by Fr. Venancio Samson is: Where there are waves [such as the sea] no ITO can thrive. He explains that in the 18th-century it implied that every part of the sea has waves; wherever one goes there will be work to be done always. Other common fish of the era’s diet were the mud fish DALAG and TABANGONGO also called CANDOLE. The Pampangan table also served ALIMASAG, sea crab; PARUS, mussels or [other] shellfish; ULANG, prawns or large shrimp. MANULANG was to go looking to catch them specifically. On Wednesday we will share how they were cooked."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1_ZP8k4k0Ul_BcdKr3FH--Ihak_fQu_zu",
"caption": "ROASTING",
"link": "/items/coll236.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "14",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "ROASTING",
"text": "The first written description of Philippine cooking records roasting. That was in 1521 by Antonio Pigafetta. In the 1700s Pampanga cuisine was still employing the technique. Its vocabulary was highly developed with specific words for the way roasting was done. DARANG and NANGNANG were generic for roasting, asar (to roast) and asado (that which is roasted) in Spanish. Proof of fish being roasted at the time is the word BELITA, meaning to roast an entire fish from head to tail. SUBSUB was to move sausages or other food “closer to embers so they would roast better”. DUMIRI was the dripping of fat or grease as well as the sizzle made when roasting. Bergaño used “longaniza” as his example, suggesting that specific term for sausage was active in Pampanga. He did not use chorizo, for instance. One had to know how to roast well or what one roasted could end up criticised as BANTILAO, an adjective for being half-roasted or half-cooked. MANTILAO meant that food was cooked in that manner such as when there were many guests. Pigafetta had described food he ate in the Visayas as half-cooked.\nOne could “roast or toast” in a pan and not only over an open fire in the 1700s. In Pampanga, rice and corn kernels became BILUTUG when roasted or toasted (IBILUTUG) in a pan (termed BILITUGAN)."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Uq2he3mDPoVPw2M3pdvrDkFzC-6PeDeq",
"caption": "COOKING WITH LIQUID",
"link": "/items/coll237.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "17",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COOKING WITH LIQUID",
"text": "In addition to roasts, the first written story about Philippine cuisine mentions that broths of pork and of fish were served. That was the 1521 chronicle by Antonio Pigafetta when he was in the Visayas with Magellan. The Bergaño vocabulary documents that Pampangans in the 1700s had boiled dishes, likely as did their early ancestors. ITUN and TUMAN meant to cook and to boil. LUTU was boiled or cooked food; IYAGLUTO was to cook or prepare food. ALPA existed then as a term for “boiled food”. IYAYALPA meant boiled ingredients like squash and radish, two botanicals brought by the galleon trade. Everyone knew that MALALPA was very soft rice cooked with too much water. It’s opposite was GAGTO, rice cooked with insufficient water. ABIAS meant specifically to make “nasi,” cooked rice. Because of the word TAMBONG we can assume meat and vegetables were boiled to make a viand. TAMBONG or MANAMBONG was also used for boiled “ears of corn” and camotes, two more New World botanical immigrants that indigenized. At least one more word proves Pampangans boiled to cook: TUN, conjugated as ITUN and TUMUN. Additional culinary methods had been added since 1565 to basic roasting and boiling, thereby expanding possibilities for innovation. More about them on Wednesday."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1VP0il8O2bRlETUJnOkKoYSzfRs8E4JSq",
"caption": "PARBOILING & BLANCHING 1",
"link": "/items/coll238.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "21",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PARBOILING & BLANCHING 1",
"text": "To continue “Cooking with Liquid,” Pampanga in the 1700s was using the culinary technique called BANLI. Bergaño explains that IBANGLI and MANGLI mean to dip something in boiling water: such as a lemon [meaning a native citrus used in place of Spanish lemon, most likely] or some other fruit to tenderise it and extract juice easily. Today’s chefs could attempt repeating the antique flavouring process. BANLI is also the 1732 synonym of SALCOCHAR, meaning there can be SAL, salt, in the boiling water. In English, parboil is short for partially boiled, to submerge and boil food briefly and lightly over heat. Blanch is similar but infers immersing briefly in boiling water, about a minute whereas parboiling could take longer. Thus are the subtle differences between the two techniques, it seems. BANLI is more parboiling than blanching. In Tagalog of 1613, it is HABLOS, meat or fish [placed] in boiling water — SANCOCHAR in Spanish.\nOr is it? See immediate continuation."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1gIz5UpF_mbgxqn1hc1MHUElfWp0FfZeh",
"caption": "PARBOILING & BLANCHING 2",
"link": "/items/coll239.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "21",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PARBOILING & BLANCHING 2",
"text": "A 1624 Tagalog dictionary defines hablos as SALCOCHAR. It refers to LABON: cooking meat, fish or tubers as in SANCOCHAR and not as in LAGA, SAING, or SIG-ANG which we gather is longer boiling. SANGKUTSA does not yet appear in Pampangan or Tagalog dictionaries of the early to mid 1700s. Today, it is traced to SALCOCHAR, to boil in salted water. But it could be from SANCOCHAR, to cook in boiling water quickly a raw ingredient. Both Spanish words share COCHO in their etymologies; cocho from\nthe past participle COZER, to cook. The SAL is from the Spanish word for salt. Think through BANLI, HABLOS, and SANGKUTSA, three words in the heritage of Philippine cooking."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1kRv7oIhfrlE85PiG3z-de-Q1i7bDNsfq",
"caption": "TINAPAY",
"link": "/items/coll240.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "TINAPAY",
"text": "In 1732 the Pampangan word for pan, the Spanish word for bread, was TINAPAY. It is a word shared throughout the islands due to its use by missionaries in sermons about Christ as the bread of life and his miracle of the loaves and fish, for instance. In 1521 when TINAPAY was first recorded in writing, Antonio Pigafetta defined it as a certain type of rice cake in Cebu. To knead in Tagalog is TAPAY; the result is TINAPAY, na tapay. In Pampanga there was the root word AMAS conjugated as MANAMAS, meaning “to knead” so a synonym of tapay? MANAMAS was also that with which or what is put into the dough, like mixing; it is also that which is kneaded. We learn that rice and wheat flours were combined from MIAMAS, meaning “with company like rice flour with wheat flour”. MACAYAMAS is what is mixed in the dough. Typical of our languages, the root word (AMAS) shows its flexibility. Similarly YAMAS is recorded. As MANIAMAS it is not only to knead; it can also mean mixing good and bad. If one wonders what ingredients AMAS and YAMAS could knead into dough, one ingredient is honey. Pampangans in the 1700s used honey in their dough, if we follow the translation of “miel” selected by Fr. Venancio Q. Samson to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for his work. The word miel means honey, however it came to also mean sugarcane and palm juices cooked till thick like honey. Contemporary bakers can experiment today with all the “honeys” from the 1700s."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/10TDpK1o56yVXdk7HTNyc8rpVCEogpUnl",
"caption": "BRAZIERS.",
"link": "/items/coll241.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "BRAZIERS.",
"text": "To contain an open fire, thereby directing its heat upwards, a cooking fire can be made within the space central to three stones. A cooking vessel can sit on the tripod. In Pampanga of the 1700s TUNGCO was the three stones. So it was too in Tagalog that spelled it TONGCÔ in the early 1600s. Tagalog in 1613 had already also incorporated the word CALÁN, an earthenware brazier used in cooking by the natives. Bergaño lists CALANG as an earthenware stove in the 1700s. He describes it as having “three feet” similar to a tungco. The kalan shape has varied over time. Its advantages are that it is portable and keeps cooking coals contained and off the ground. The kalan came in many sizes. Its solid base or feet raise the part holding hot coals or firewood thereby protecting any flooring beneath it, such as a boat’s. Arsenio Manuel suggests the kalan like the kawa and its small version the kawali (the affix LI implying small) are Chinese in origin."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1bRyc_GJr7ifrReoDf8u1P1XTkVY9Ttnu",
"caption": "READY TO COOK",
"link": "/items/coll242.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "31",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "READY TO COOK",
"text": "Among the preparations in Pampanga cooking recorded in the 1700s is MANADTAD, to mince or cut into small pieces. TIDTAD was the dish made with minced meat. Until a meat grinder was invented, mincing was the technique around the world to make the tiniest pieces of meat. There likely was the use of eggs beaten till foamy because MANYBUL from the root word SABUL means to raise a foam, such as when beating eggs. What used beaten egg? Another example from Bergaño is the foam in water made by rowing. Proof that spit roasting was done are the words MANLAID and LAIRAN that mean to baste meat on a spit. A feather or a brush was used to baste, to apply lard. LEIRAN was that being basted. Lechon means the spit-roasted fiesta pig, but it is also used nowadays to mean anything cooked on a spit, such as chicken. DALDAC is to pound or crush something into pieces, such as in a mortar or vat. The term could apply to garlic used in cooking. GATA is coconut milk. MANGGATTA is to extract the milk by squeezing wet coconut gratings. The serrated scraper is used all over the former Austronesian migration and trade region and is an efficient improvement on simply scraping off coconut meat with a blade. When the “kabayo” version of the serrated scraper attached to a seat evolved still needs dating. APIÂ is to draw out juice by pressing or squeezing. It can apply to citrus and other fruits. An intriguing term, as translated by Samson, is TANGCAP, meaning embellished, dressed, seasoned, “neatly” cleaned or finished... thus making things MANANGCAP, ready for cooking. The word “neatly”expresses a quality aspired for that one hopes will never leave Pampangan cuisine."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1_0q2XZvtivm4KeOn8gMYUhcFEw6gz0ON",
"caption": "PRESERVING",
"link": "/items/coll243.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "04",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PRESERVING",
"text": "Pampangans in the 1700s extended the edibility of foods by using salt, ASIN. MIASIN was to put salt, according to Bergaño. CALAT was saltiness and ALAT, salty. BAGUC meant to both brine and pickle. (Today, BAGÚK is the synonym of bagoong, brined shrimp or fish. Bagoong is used in Tagalog; balaw and hingmay in Bikol; ginamos in Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Samar-Leyte; bagóng in Ibanag; bug-goong in Ilocano; inasín in Pangasinan.) PIBABAGUCAN was the container for brining. BURO was an adjective for something like fish or santol that had been put in salt that would become a brining liquid or solution. (One finds BURO having the same meaning in Hiligaynon, Ilocano, Pangasinan, Cebuano, and Tagalog.) One could salt beef and string it up to dry, a process call MALAING from the root word BALAING. Preserved beef was called BELAINGAN. There was salted fish called TAGUILAO that did not last long, however, because it used less salt than a BURU. (In Tagalog of 1613, TAGHILAO referred to fish, meat, beef that was salted.) While BUSBUS was to open a fish, DAING meant to open up a fish so as to salt it. Bergaño defined TAPA as meat or fish cut open or sliced on the diagonal, stretched wide,and marinated in salt and vinegar before roasting or frying; MANAPA was to prepare meat or fish the TAPA way. According to the Philippine National Museum, the first fish to be salted was dolphin before 1,000 BCE during prehistoric times."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/13ZgZTbE_aI-d2j77Zl5MzgQuNlRmpcAq",
"caption": "PRESERVES",
"link": "/items/coll244.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PRESERVES",
"text": "In addition to brining or salting, Bergaño offers evidence that in Pampanga of the 1700s food was also preserved using vinegar. DALOC meant to mix in vinegar to make pickles as was done for peppers. We wonder what kind of pepper. Perhaps something like bell pepper? There is no written evidence, however. “Pimiento” (black peppercorn) was identified as LARA by Bergaño. But LARA he defined as both pepper[corn] and chili. Bergaño does not identify what was made into ASLAM, vinegar. MANASLAM was to make vinegar. He does note that there was TUBA made of LIAB, the word for buri palm sap. LIABAN meant both the buri plant and the place where it grew. Buri sap was made into sugar cakes called CHANCACA but nothing is said about its use as vinegar. (Pampanga food heritage advocates can well take note of using buri as sweetener today.)"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1j_yvsl-J5TtiIY0tBqPE1SnRCgUyncev",
"caption": "PRESERVATION CONTINUED",
"link": "/items/coll245.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PRESERVATION CONTINUED",
"text": "The synonym for grape wine was ALAC. He adds that coconut wine was distilled. It is likely that coconut and nipa were used to make vinegar. But other sources would be needed to verify the conjecture. Perplexing is that the Pampanga words for ADOBO (“marinade” in this context) are buro (brining) and taguilao (salting). No mention of vinegar used as a pickling solution (adobo) is made. Could preserving with salt have been more common than preserving with vinegar? This set of words is intended to exemplify how dictionary entries can be useful in dating culinary ingredients, processes, and products. They often lead to new questions with answers in period reports and registers. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1NPnwkJ9zr1wKfKoZczEkHrI51jiOdxDi",
"caption": "TO COOK",
"link": "/items/coll246.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "11",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "TO COOK",
"text": "In Pampanga, MANLUTU and MAGLUTU meaning “to cook” (cocinar) or “to prepare food”was in use during the 1700s. PILUTUAN could be used to mean the place or the pot where cooking occurred. If one said MAMULU or IBULU it was understood as specifically cooking rice or meat in a bamboo culm, a section between nodes. ITUN or TUMUN was specific to cooking rice. TINUN and MITUN meant the one who cooked the rice. ABIAS was the raw rice for cooking; NASI was cooked abias ready for eating. The clay pot called CURAN was only for cooking rice. It was taller and had a narrower mouth than the BALANGA, a clay pot in which to cook meat, fish and other viands. CULUBAN was the pot cover. While in Manila, Spanish freir (to fry) had entered Tagalog in 1613 as pritos, it was not noted by Bergaño. TITI meant to dissolve fat to make it lard and to fry something in it. MATITI was used idiomatically for one who is consumed or wasted (perhaps from sickness, strife, or gambling). If one heard MANQUID, one knew someone was removing a pot or frying pan from fire. Pampangan had a well developed culinary vocabulary with words having very specific meanings."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1MbT1oGOTfesmLPp2x1qKvPg-VDpVNPSs",
"caption": "THE TABLE",
"link": "/items/coll247.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "14",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "THE TABLE",
"text": "In 1521 Antonio Pigafetta while sailing on the first circumnavigation wrote that in Cebu and the Moluccas, DULAN was a wooden platter. It had even been an offertory plate in some places. Today, in Malay the dulan is a tray on which beverages and titbits are served. In Tagalog of the early 1600s DOLAN meant “table”. Francisco de San Antonio, OFM defines DOLANG in 1624 as a table or a large plate where one eats. It could be used poetically, too, as in “Naging dolang ang mata co” [My eyes became a dolang], implying delight in what one was seeing. In Bergaño’s Pampangan dictionary, DULANG is a low table, about a foot high, for dining. MAGDULANG or MIDULANG was to eat meals on it. Like San Antonio for Tagalog, Bergaño annotates uses of the word. He says that no matter what one does a cat will seek shelter under a dulang; it is wrong to let a dog climb on top of it to lick grease or eat leftovers. The dulang continued as the rural dining table around which folk sat on their haunches or tailor style. Urbanized areas began preferring European chair-high tables."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/114DiPCvJbYC_YAhYVKWnr2R5Wrhrm4Bu",
"caption": "PING-GAN",
"link": "/items/coll248.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "18",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PING-GAN",
"text": "Atop a dulang table would be plates that in 18th century Pampanga were called PING-GAN. The word and its meaning were listed by Antonio Pigafetta of the first circumnavigation crew in 1521. He found it used by Malay speakers of the Spice Islands. Pampangan conjugated the noun into multiple meanings: MAMING-GAN, to place something on the plate; PIPING-GANAN, the plates used for serving and not those in reserve; MACAPING-GAN, to be on the plate. Bergaño added that MIPING-GAN meant “with company,” as in two persons eating from the same plate. He added “but not [eating] rice” that way. The terms give insight into meal customs. SUIC was the small porcelain plate used for salt and, perhaps by Spanish, for mustard. There was a large plate, the TAPAC, but no description of it survives. There were also bowls such as SUL-LIAO, possibly big, and LAMPAY that was bigger. MANGCOC was a cup to drink water from. One wonders about its size said to be bigger than a sul-liao, as well as its material. Half a small coconut, the BUO and half a larger coconut, the DUBASA were drinking cups. The latter could have multiple functions. CALAMBA and TABOAN were pitchers. The calamba had a “large narrow mouth”. In other languages it meant a pot. From the definition of SAQUID one learns that water was drawn out using a ladle, big spoon, or cupped hands. There was the GABOC, a porcelain jar with a cover but it likely was not for use at table. A vessel with water so ants could not climb into it was termed LAMPACAN. Even today items become unreachable by ants if they or their containers sit in a “moat”. One gleams details that when put together are a harvest re-creating life in early to mid 18th century Pampanga. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1M-2lSnrOdKWG1_57ShNzyQOnC0zqeZYR",
"caption": "FRECKLES",
"link": "/items/coll249.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "21",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "FRECKLES",
"text": "Food heritage supporters can sustain Pampanga’s traditional culinary vocabulary. It, as with other Philippine languages, proves the keen sensitivities of foragers and farmers alike. GAGUIAU describes raw-like for fresh fish, meat, egg, vegetables, fruits. CULDA is a green color “like a fruit in its early stage”. Worth visual and fashion artists noting the hue. Ripeness is expressed in MALULUT (ripening), MALALAY (being ripe; maturity reached), MALUMON (to become ripe, like a bunch of bananas), CALUMUNAN (peak of ripeness). MALUGÔ is fruit that falls off its tree by itself. DUNOT is an adjective for rotten, putrified such as a bruised fruit, destroyed or over ripe. Fruit spot is called ABSIC, black spots or patches on a fruit or tuber; also hardness of a fruit despite its ripeness. By keeping the words in use, each new generation sustains keen awareness passed on. It is valuable cultural knowledge."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1kWNZxqqm4RaZaYznFFUVjd82qoJakHbb",
"caption": "SMELL",
"link": "/items/coll250.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SMELL",
"text": "Food not properly brined or salted for preservation had a bad smell described as LANTONG. When conjugated as MALANTONG it meant a person who was a flatterer. Clearly a priest wrote the definitions because Bergaño noted that a MALANTONG had many flattering excuses but “brought no alms”. Scorched rice had a peculiar smell: MALANGNIS. EPASANGÓ was an intolerable smell, and “much more if it is the odour of hell,” added Bergaño. Being able to smell unsafe ingredients, food, and surroundings kept a person healthy. Words to describe the lack or surfeit of salt have yet to be found and yet many ancestral cooks claimed to have corrected flavouring by smell and not taste. Or could they have been smelling the viand as a whole sonata, and if something were out of tune, deducing that it was salt that was the missing note? How many cooks today smell rancidness or salt missing in their cooking pot?"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1JFNLx0NKweG32RvcMGFbZIR18WEtOT7H",
"caption": "EATING",
"link": "/items/coll251.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "EATING",
"text": "Pampanga’s PIULAM means a food like “banana and mango that accompany a meal’s staple”(rice). The word proves eating a fruit on the side was done. ULAM is a viand and MANULAM is one who eats many viands with rice. ALAYAN described a plate atop which were different foods, a practice done when serving “lords and elderly”. MANALAYAN was to put different foods on a plate. DULUT according to Bergaño was food at table given to children and relations; food put on a plate without approval of the recipient by a servant, a slave, or a “younger boarder” in charge of serving. On Holy Thursday, CABA, food on a plate or in a basket was taken to feed the poor. On regular days CABA could be donated to a convent. TAGAN meant leftovers from a meal (also remnants when cutting fabric for clothing). ABAO also meant leftover food such as from a banquet or a dinner and that was being kept to serve at the next meal. MICABOCABAN not only meant keeping leftovers for tomorrow, or tomorrow’s leftovers for some other day, but leaving today’s work for some other time. The word selection hints at how life proceeded in the 1700s."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1DF2INRrX7HnVlecpUEdGE3w47JwGKHV3",
"caption": "THE INVITED",
"link": "/items/coll252.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "01",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "THE INVITED",
"text": "If one is ANGAP, eager to eat and drink, the best that could happen is to become AGCAT or CANGAY, meaning one invited to a fiesta or banquet. AGCAT also referred to one who tagged along with or who was invited by the invitee. The guest was also called the CANGAYAN and the QUENGAYAN. Kindly note that the G is pronounced softly. At all occasions PACUNDANGAN was expected: politeness. Bergaño cites MAMATAS, to regulate such as is done with food so everyone gets an equal share when there is a crowd around food. PETASAN is the share given in identical amounts. Children then are like children now. They were notorious for MANYAYIT, to keep picking up tidbits of food not just to taste but to eat the dainties being served till nothing was left. SUMULU and MANYULU mean to enter and join those at table who are already eating. It also is used for a dog that arrives. The guest to be wary of is one who is TAMASA, ease-loving, spoiled, and stopping at nothing to get a free meal. MAGTAMASA is one glutting at a baptism or wedding. The 24 posts are a glimpse into culinary culture of Pampanga through just some of the hundreds of words collected by Fr. Diego Bergaño published in 1732. On Saturday we will compare his work with Tagalog of 1754."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1s5_UVodVZtHvcOCbV1fQ5z9YkNn2hTFQ",
"caption": "ST. JOHN’S DAY",
"link": "/items/coll253.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "ST. JOHN’S DAY",
"text": "The Great Comet of 1680 was seen in the Philippines according to the Augustinian priest Casemiro Diaz. His writings published in 1718 are among the references for our on-going series about Philippine cuisine during the second colonial century. It was visible in Filipinas from November 20, 1680 till February 14 the next year. It was the first comet to be discovered using a telescope. The credit goes to Gottfried Kirch. Diaz described it as a frightful sight “so large that it extended, like a wide belt, from one side of the horizon to the other, with but little difference [on its breadth], causing in the darkness of the night nearly as much light as the moon in her quadrature”. In Pampanga of the 1700s, the words for comet were taclan and batuin. He added, “This comet was visible throughout the world, giving rise to much discussion over its effects, which in truth were generally very evil”. His commentary reveals that indeed the modern, scientific age was far in the future. In 1685 smallpox hit the world. Even deer and wild swine in the Philippine mountains got sick. Millions of people died in China causing famine which would have had effects on food exports to Manila. In June 1686 the Sangley of Manila’s Parian revolted. They had plotted in the bakery inside Intramuros where they worked. By today, June 24, St. John’s Day in 1689 the comet’s ill will must have ended because the galleon named Santa Rosa de Lima arrived safely in Cavite from Acapulco."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1H_htmAuECEOmfSIKsvNouTlogJcddzXV",
"caption": "THE 137TH YEAR",
"link": "/items/coll254.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "THE 137TH YEAR",
"text": "Since the first 100 years of colonial management, the grassroots were still solely under supervision of Catholic missionaries by royal order. While the colony underwent political stress from internal and external causes, the religious strengthened their positions among the folk. In 1702 new auditors arrived with royal instructions to check on the tributary population. Licentiate Don Francisco Gueruela who had a royal appointment to the colony’s Audencia (court) conducted his visit to Camarines. It had 30,000 souls in villages administered by 16 priests. What worried the inspector is that more than P19,000 was going into local church coffers. The brave Gueruela revealed abuses committed on the indios and a list of reformatory measures ordered by his office. Many pertain to provisioning the friars. The edicts published during his visitation order that food supplies to the curas should be paid for by them; young girls (dalagas) should not pound rice to remove husk as their “repartamiento” [required labor] for the religious; food, wax [for illumination], candles should not be collected from the natives under any pretext of usage, custom or devotion; indios [men in this case] should not be domestics, cooks, fishers or act in any other personal employ for the religious without pay. The individual tribute given as the parish’s share was defined as no more than 3 reales yearly covering all church festivities [and rituals] and only 4 gantas of palay [toward support of masses for the dead]. If not having any arrears, an indio should not be expected to cut bamboo for frames [perhaps as festival decorations?] without pay."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1EtkmfYj_CJo5ZY9BEY2ZEdijlxxEOSG5",
"caption": "THE 137TH YEAR cont.",
"link": "/items/coll255.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "06",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "THE 137TH YEAR cont.",
"text": "The auditor spotted situations where the friars were trespassing into temporal jurisdiction and not keeping to their spiritual role. His findings are shared to understand the position of parish priests in the everyday life of the colonised. For instance, Gueruela writes, “the civil government of the villages is not in [the priests’] keeping nor shall the local authorities [need to] ask permission of the religious to execute the orders of their alcaldes-mayor, or to entertain travelers and furnish them what they need for its just value. The wills, contracts and obligations shall be sent to the record office of the alcalde-mayor without having to register them in the convents. The priests in charge of [religious] doctrine have “no authority to arrest, flog, or punish the natives either in person or through an intervening agency; and the Indians, both men and women, must not allow themselves to be arrested or flogged by the religious”. The auditor ended his report by defining how many natives could assist the priests: 4 servants for the parochial house; 1 doorkeeper per convent; people to carry the hammocks and litters when a minister goes out to administer the sacraments. Only 20 young men (baguntaos) were allowed to sweep the church and its courts daily or weekly, and definitely no dalagas were to be assigned. The dalagas needed to embroider cloth articles for divine worship were to do so outside the convents. Spinning, plain sewing of inside garments of the priests as well as their servants, and embroidery were to be paid for. The dalagas had been required to sow seeds in the fields without pay. These were examples of a colonial governance in disarray. Food security for the people was entangled in the sale of rice and other supplies to earn for the religious and likely beautification of the parish church. The second colonial century would increasingly fracture relations between civil and ecclesiastical authorities with the indios, Sangleyes and mestizos de Sangley caught in the fray."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1qjk8xEBAvhtV9OMG6HzjsuSO8GevuXu0",
"caption": "HUNGER",
"link": "/items/coll256.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "04",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "HUNGER",
"text": "Midway through the second colonial century, cuisine of which we are seeking to uncover, the Philippine Governor-General was Field Marshal Fernando Manuel de Bustillo Bustamante y Rueda. He arrived in 1717 but was assassinated in 1719 while in office, having made enemies for his severe sanctions to put colonial governance and its coffers in order. When he imprisoned the Manila Archbishop for upholding the right to sanctuary, the community was polarised and he died from the consequences. It seems the threat of hunger followed him. Around 1690 when he was mayor of Tlaxcala near Mexico City, he had to put down a revolt of 6,000 natives because the corn harvest had failed. He returned to Spain and supported Phillip V of the Bourbons in the War of Succession (1702-1713). By 1708 Bustamante was waiting to fill his new position as governor-general of Filipinas. Upon arrival in Manila finally in 1717, he had to deal with a severe rice shortage caused by locusts. His solution was to demand rice from provinces also suffering. He also arranged to import rice from Siam according to research by C. Pajaron Parody whose biography of Bustamante is published online by Real Academia dela Historia. Hunger remained a threat during the 1665 to 1764 era"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/150ZTHmOfXMPp0cO_Ad3ab6gkCEF0EmCw",
"caption": "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT",
"link": "/items/coll257.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT",
"text": "Into the second century of Spanish colonisation, much of the islands still needed to be cultivated. Spanish farmers and their families sent in the first century turned to trade rather than coping with agriculture hardships. Missionaries not only cultivated souls but fields, as a result. By the mid-1800s their efforts paid off. It was estimated that parishes generated “one peso fuerte [paper bill] a year from each family,” according to Gervasio Gironella. Every parish still continued to receive a royal stipend of 5,000 duros through the Archbishop’s office. (A duro was the old peso in hard metal coinage.) Big parish populations supported parishes economically through their annual tithing. Zambales was still hinterland in 1680. “Unaccustomed to the cultivation of the soil and not know[ing] how to plow, or dig, and [not having] instruments for that, nor even seed for planting,” the Dominican missionaries provided all."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1gNE38Myn0ASEQJG1vyWLk1ZKMJw9xjxH",
"caption": "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT cont.",
"link": "/items/coll258.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT cont.",
"text": "Vicente de Salazar, OP continues in his Historia de el Santissimo Rosario (Manila, 1742) that plows were also brought to encourage the Zambals to live in parishes. Salaried indios from other provinces were brought in to teach Zambals how to use the new tools as well as to help start agriculture. When the first rice crop headed, some Zambals “refused to accept the land because it was not reaped. But others, having the profit plainly in sight, set to reap....” The missionaries also plowed knowing fields for food “was compulsory in order to reduce [the Zambals] to a civilised life and to a good government.” The priests defended them against soldiers. It won them over and the Zambals became mild, gentle, peaceful, and “moderated themselves”. Both the cross and the plow aided Christianisation of Filipinas."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1ToCqv2h83ZIhgB9QI4_xOjXM0RZE17DS",
"caption": "RELIGIOUS EDUCATION",
"link": "/items/coll259.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "RELIGIOUS EDUCATION",
"text": "In 1749 Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, SJ published a history of Jesuit missions in Filipinas. The next year it was declared that all the religious, secular or from any order, serviced a total of 1,000,000 converted souls. The Conquista would be deemed over. Velarde’s narrative is being shared to give a sense of how religion occupied much of a community’s time as the Conquista was ending.\nEveryday all boys and girls up to the age of 14 heard mass. They called it “school” or a “company of the rosary”. At 10 am, a bell sounded and they went to the church and prayed before the blessed sacrament, recited the Salve and the Alabado hymn to the Virgin; left in procession singing prayers. At 2pm they returned to school; at 4 or 5 pm they returned to church, recited the rosary, and sang while processioning out. On Saturdays they were joined by the older teens who still did not pay tribute. On Sundays boys carrying banners went around the village calling residents to church. The minister preached a moral sermon and called the roll to see who indios failed to attend mass. The priests led in every aspect of community life, making one suspect they introduced their home-cooking to parishioners through convent cooks they had trained. As shown in the first century, foods like adobo, tamales, pochero were already concerns of missionaries. Priests wanted fiestas to be especially well celebrated. They raised pig and even cow for fiestas."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1mR8nKIODNjT7938IaULsV9xQKzRzuDPZ",
"caption": "RELIGIOUS EDUCATION cont.",
"link": "/items/coll260.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "RELIGIOUS EDUCATION cont.",
"text": "Murillo Velarde records that many indios not only heard mass daily but recited the rosary even while sailing. As the Conquista was to be declared done, indios were offering the first-fruits of their harvests as in the first century. Now they carried images and shrouds to bless the seed-sowing. They used holy water and set up holy crosses at home, on roads, in grain fields. They gave food to the poor on Holy Thursday. Perhaps because the Last Supper is recalled. During Holy Week, little altars adorned with prints and images [santos] were erected at home.\nChildren to be buried were dressed like angels, their bodies “neatly adorned with birds’ wings, palm leaves, wreaths, flowers, lights”. If the parents were poor, members of the community aided them. At the tail end of the Conquista there is a sense of religious ritual characterising the Jesuit parishes. One must not lose sight of counterpoints: the compulsory tributes paid to government and church, the injustices faced by indios when harvests were compromised, and the upsurge in gambling (cards, dice, cockfighting). One report signed by one priest per religious order in 1701 (before Murillo Velarde’s book) regrets that some villages more than a century old were in the “same poverty as are villages that are more recent and less encouraged by the ecclesiastical ministers and civil officials”"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/11-D_Js_zZudE1yt3hFjewsGSXZ7ChdFp",
"caption": "WINE & RICE REVENUE",
"link": "/items/coll261.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "07",
"day": "26",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "WINE & RICE REVENUE",
"text": "In 1701 the Dominican priest Jose Villa wrote there could be no masses because the wine for them from His Majesty was not arriving. Reserves were running low. Officials from Filipinas, he ventured, had been requesting less than is needed from Mexican officials who handled the shipment. Parishes were to become self-sufficient and produce surplus that could be sold. Rice was the favoured commodity. Missionaries were proud to show gains they influenced and the steadiness of attendance at church rituals. Their enemy was often the Alcalde-Mayor according to Villa. Under the civil official were natives obliged to accept the position of gobernadorcillo. The Alcalde-Mayor customarily held gobernadorcillos under his jurisdiction responsible for handing over tributes with matching registries. The latter paid from their own resources any insufficiency claimed by their superior. Indebtedness was punished by imprisonment. When dying in prison relatives had to raise whatever debt he was accused of. The Alcaldes set the prices of goods (often above the usual value) and would leave some with village leaders. If unsold the leader was forced to pick up the tab. Such was life of farming communities in the second colonial century. With profit earned from the land came abuses from those who did not toil."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1RoijHRokMFrO9l_iEk5AEhSboB2eoZJ6",
"caption": "FREEDOM TO FIND FOOD",
"link": "/items/coll262.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "FREEDOM TO FIND FOOD",
"text": "During the second colonial century, just after the Conquista had ended, the Agrarian Revolt began. It started in Lian and Nasugbu, Batangas in 1745. Other pueblos of Batangas, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan had joined by the time it ended in 1746. Pedro Enriquez an auditor of the Audencia reported to the King on the insurrection. It was due to religious of the Dominican and Augustinian orders “usurping lands of the Indians without leaving them the freedom of the rivers for their fishing, or allowing them to cut wood for their necessary use, or even to collect wild fruits, nor did they allow the natives to pasture on the hills near their villages the carabaos which they used for agriculture”. The auditor decided the natives should therefore not pay “various unjust taxes which the managers extracted from them”. Then the auditor was commissioned as a subdelegate judge of the adjustment of land titles. The orders having refused to present titles, he declared that the friars had taken crown lands. Therefore he redistributed them to the appropriate pueblos. Some of the usurped lands were used as cattle farms illegally. From the Escorial on November 17, 1752, King Ferdinand VI commanded “utmost vigilance in order that the Indians of the said villages may not be molested by the religious, and that the latter shall be kept in check in the unjust acts...” Pueblos developed on the King’s lands found themselves competing with friar estates for gains from agriculture and husbandry. Mail to and from the King went via galleon, needing at least a year if not longer for each one-way voyage. Heaven forbid a ship sank or was intercepted by pirates. Sadly the friars appealed the King’s decision and in the end, natives received no compensation for their misery and the injustice suffered."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1o4V8DGTOA0FkultzwVCG_K-1tdWZVGFl",
"caption": "HUNTING FOR FOOD",
"link": "/items/coll263.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "16",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "HUNTING FOR FOOD",
"text": "The 1740s still found areas of Filipinas thickly forested even if wood to build galleons and other boats was harvested. Missionaries were still creating parishes. The Conquista had not yet ended. Augustinians noted that the Zambals on the western side of Pangasinan and Pampanga obtained their living by hunting deer, wild swine, buffaloes; collecting wild honey from “extensive forests and shut-in mountains,” according to Fr. Antonio Mozo, OSA. They planted MALAGAN potatoes and camotes from Nueva España. The Balugas (or Aetas) of Pampanga lived in bands of 25 to 30 people and did not want to settle in towns. They used arrows to hunt deer. They dug for Nelumbium speciosum, a kind of pond lily with edible tubers that they roasted. During summer they subsisted on that root which they called SUCBAO (similar to the Ilocano SÚCAO). People of the forests perfected deer hunting. They poisoned arrows for hunting with the bark of CAMANDAG (Croton tiglium). Others attracted deer to an ambush by luring them with the scent of PANARONGUSA herbs. The land could still provide food sans ranching and vegetable raising. Meanwhile parishes were institutionalising urban living for the 1700s. Today the endemic Philippine deer once thriving is threatened with extinction."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1ZMC8wkjHUH8rswsWn7k2si6pYICio5dS",
"caption": "CHINESE IN THE FOOD CHAIN",
"link": "/items/coll264.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "08",
"day": "24",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "CHINESE IN THE FOOD CHAIN",
"text": "Since the first colonial century that ended in 1664, there had been many revolts by Chinese working in the Philippines. The foreigners were expelled en mass and even executed in retaliation. In 1754 pagan Sangleys again were expelled. They included fishermen; dealers of chicken, fruits, oil, pork, porcelain, rice, sugar, vegetables, and water; makers of braziers, noodles, pots, and sweets. There were also carpenters, stone cutters, dyers, weavers, shoemakers, druggists, box makers, sculptors, physicians. The Parian then at Arroceros was abandoned. By 1762, as the second century was about to end, the new San Fernando Silk Market for Chinese shops was built where San Fernando, Madrid and San Nicolas streets converged. A new generation of Chinese overseas workers to convert would arrive. There had been many incentives to convert them. In 1627, Philip III exempted new converts from paying tribute for 10 years. After, they were to pay what indios were paying. Around that time a pagan Sangley paid 16 times the annual 4 reales that was the indio tribute. The King also ordered they be allowed to marry native women and be given land to farm. By 1741 there were so many mestizos — half Chinese and half indio — that a new tax category was created for them. The mestizos had important functions in the domestic food chain and in providing provisions for the colonial government’s navy, military, and galleon trade."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/15kFJnF9zndK6zCFpQtnSLn9icsgQCliP",
"caption": "GALLEON ISSUES",
"link": "/items/coll265.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "05",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "GALLEON ISSUES",
"text": "The buying capacity for food by Spanish in Manila depended on the galleon trade. The commercial model was from the Renaissance. It was initiated for Filipinas in 1565 when the return route from the new colony to Mexico was plotted thereby connecting it to the already established pan-Atlantic galleon route. Spanish wines, olive oil, salted cod, hard cheeses, brined paho mango, sweet balimbing preserves, tuba, saplings and seeds, cows and horses all rode the galleon.\nIn its heyday there was no limit to its profit. But as the Chinese goods it brought threatened markets for Spain’s own textile makers, limits were set to how much a galleon could earn annually. As a result there was much smuggling. In 1720, on its 155th year, the single Manila galleon was allowed to carry out goods totalling no more than P500,000. The limit to what it could bring back was P600,000. In 1743 the English Admiral George Anson captured the Covadonga off Samar Island. He hauled away P1,300,000 in silver pieces of eight and 35,632 ounces of gold bullion. Silver coins were hidden in unlikely places."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/10aEjw8c24lOU6sepJZEOKskJ2qtea4CW",
"caption": "GALLEON ISSUES cont.",
"link": "/items/coll266.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "05",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "GALLEON ISSUES cont.",
"text": "In 1718 and 1720 King Philip V issued orders to stop the Philippine colony’s dependence on the faltering galleon trade. While stepping up agriculture for export (such as tobacco that became a monopoly 50 years later), the monarch sought to establish a royal trading company. It was the new business model proven successful by the Dutch and the British. He created one in 1733 but encountered resistance from galleon stalwarts that the idea lay latent. The principal contact of Filipinas with the outside world for newness rested in the solitary yearly Manila-Acapulco galleon sailing without a protective armada. Newness included changes wished by the monarchy, orders about new saints with devotions to promote, raging or rising culinary trends, scientific innovations, and philosophic developments. The second colonial century, 1665-1764, would become a tipping point for economic change affecting natives and their culinary exposure."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1qU1sWQYwv-UFxIxAsXGUcaY_XEgvVWIf",
"caption": "COMIDILLA",
"link": "/items/coll267.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COMIDILLA",
"text": "The meal in old Spanish-era dictionaries is COMIDA, eating food, dressed victuals, dinner, fare, feed. The small meal or light repast is the COMIDILLA. Today we think of it as a snack. In 1754 COMIDILLAS were associated with CACANÍN like SUMAN (made of rice and wrapped in leaves) and CALAMAY (a kind of conserve or preserve). The second colonial century, 1665-1774, is when a new word appears in Tagalog: BIBINGCA, a COMIDILLA made by Tagalog of flour baked in a HORNO [oven]. The DOS FUEGOS of long-time use in Spanish cooking is not described. Bibingkahan, the clay “oven” system associated with bibingca is not yet listed. If and how Tagalog bibingca links to Portuguese bebinca, bibik and bebinca needs confirmation. The Portuguese multi-layer cake is associated with Goa, India and Macao, China and is very different from bibingca in the Philippines where it is no longer confined to Tagalogs. Other COMIDILLOS as described in 1754 include PALAROSDOS also called PALADUSDUS; PALATOC made with flour, camote, coconut milk; PALITAO; PALUTANG; PINGAUA of rice; SANTAN of coconut, honey; SINALORSOR, an antique comidilla; TAMPOOC of banana that has seeds; TILITILI of flour. One wonders what happened to those seemingly displaced in popularity."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1m8zl3Ljy9-ByPLSbwFxjTg7kGGnRdCPE",
"caption": "SCALING UP",
"link": "/items/coll268.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SCALING UP",
"text": "It was during the Spanish era that amounts of salt, dried meat and fish, tuba, and other foods were needed in volumes far greater than what villages produced in 1565 when Spain began its settlement. By the second colonial century those with contracts to supply the government with food could profit well. Salt was the key to preservation then. By 1679, the royal encomienda of Binakayan in Cavite had been cleared and shorelines reclaimed by its Chinese-dominated residents. Salt-making in ponds the way it was done in China in addition to fishing became the town’s principal businesses into the 1900s. Galleons grew in size and in 1742 the Covadonga loaded for its voyage to Acapulco: 5,867.9 kilos of salted beef; 1,923.75 kilos of salted pork. In 1752 the Santissima Trinidad carried among its provisions 9,443.14 kilos of beef; 3,335.8 of fish likely dried and perhaps salted; 4,738.82 kilos of pork probably salted; 253 kilos of salt."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1-goMaU2Jw0HiZEe4hAv5-e4MMYJ22S-q",
"caption": "SCALING UP cont.",
"link": "/items/coll269.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SCALING UP cont.",
"text": "In 1754 supplies for the royal warehouses in Manila purchased from Chinese included sweet conserves of balimbing (starfruit), broas (meaning a sea biscuit and not a ladyfingers), cow fat, duck eggs, fish, dried fish, lime for betelnut chew, meat, mongo, white rice, rose [colored] sugar in loaves, jars of vinegar made from tuba, jars of [native] wine. There were also coconut spoons with wooden handles, bilao baskets, brooms from Laguna, and silk fabric in red and white for making flags and pillows needed by the Royal Hospital. Delivery and payment were coursed through leaders of Parian guilds. The overseas Chinese brought with them their traditional organisation for artisans and labourers. In 1750 there may have been more than 40,000 Chinese in the colony. They had been officially spread out (and marrying native women) in Bataan, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, Pangasinan, Vigan, Panay, and Spanish settlements at Cebu, Naga and Zamboanga. Indios did not have a similar economic system for filling large volume orders. They were accustomed to only the scales dictated by tributes paid in agricultural products, commonly rice."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1g5Bxbsb1oSvaaBIrwP3PFLGLOL95-2l4",
"caption": "COUNTRYSIDE CUISINE",
"link": "/items/coll270.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COUNTRYSIDE CUISINE",
"text": "When the religious declared by 1740s that they were servicing a million native souls, it seemed the Conquista could be deemed over. If there were peace in rural areas, Spanish could feel safe to settle and develop profit centres beyond Intramuros Manila. Around 20 years later there was still a shockingly minimal number of Spanish in the countryside. The Augustinian missions counted only 266 Spanish men and women in all the provinces they served! Their only villages with more than 10 Spanish residents were Tondo (35 persons) and Tambobong (12), Bulacan (12), Pampanga (Usua, 18; Bacolod, 40; Candava, 18), Ylocos (Batac, 35), Yloylo (Xaro, 14), Panay (Capiz, 16). The pattern would have been similar for the other orders."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1fvttO6zMULnnQYOB_dRuZ553eeVCvbsd",
"caption": "COUNTRYSIDE CUISINE cont.",
"link": "/items/coll271.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COUNTRYSIDE CUISINE cont.",
"text": "It appears the religious still remained the dominant bearers of Hispanic culture among the folk in the second colonial century. Who else could have taught Spanish cooking in the pueblos? Francisco Alcina, S.J. wrote that antique native celebratory foods were served with Spanish fiesta fare, the latter likely prepared by the priests’ native cooks. When studying Philippine food transitions one must remember that the only culinary laws enforced were those of Catholicism regarding fasting, abstinence, and feasting. The latter reinforced the precolonial use of pig in festivals. Natives decided what they wanted from the foreign. The choices offered were not identical in all the islands. When there were few Spaniards in an area, the impetus for cultural change and unique blending was weak. The possibilities of using the foreign were not offered simultaneously to all pueblos and not uniformly (no one “recipe). Cultural influences from abroad acquired local nuances gradually."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1txEZGM8RheVa-rt_-5SXsmt-lS7-XNcL",
"caption": "MANILA INTRAMUROS 1650",
"link": "/items/coll272.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "28",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "MANILA INTRAMUROS 1650",
"text": "Our current focus is Philippine Food from 1665-1774, the second Spanish colonial century. The image shown would approximate how the seat of Spanish government, commerce, and residence looked in 1665. It influenced significant but gradual transitions in cuisine. Notice at bottom right the one bridge connecting the walled city to Binondo across Pasig River. As our century starts to end, around 1760, the Real Alcaiceria de San Fernando would be built in the Binondo-San Nicolas area. The new tax house with a silk market could house traders till winds were favourable for their return home. At left is the connection of Intramuros to the south where there were poor Spanish soldiers with India partners, as well as native communities before reaching Ermita church. Our century will end with military breaches of the protective moats and a wake up call to colonial residents."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1GpvB9Ygg2vVMP6H2L1JtCr5PaBUBhfYO",
"caption": "BLACK PEPPER & CACAO",
"link": "/items/coll273.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "11",
"day": "15",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "BLACK PEPPER & CACAO",
"text": "The second Philippine colonial century was when both botanicals benefitted from Spanish government orders to cultivate them. Cacao seemingly introduced upon request of Juan Davila, SJ in 1663 and the cleric Bartolomé Brabo in 1670 was planted in missions. Black pepper originated in Kerala, India and was exported to Europe as far back as the 4th century BCE. The date of its arrival in Filipinas has yet to be proven with surety. By 1755 every indio family living in a pueblo was required to plant 10 bushes of pepper or cacao, or 10 trees of betel or coconut palm. Non-compliance was to be met with 25 lashes if commoners and 15 days in jail for cabezas de barangay and gobernadorcillos deemed complicit. The penalties may have been implemented with laxity. The government clearly wanted to increase local revenues. It had a monopoly on the sale of tuba and betelnut chew; licenses to sell were auctioned. The attempt to intensify backyard farming for cash cultivation however was not successful due to poor management on the ground. The British Occupation of 1762-1764 left colonial coffers empty, Manila sacked, and its wealthy residents in anguish. Filipinas could not continue as it had for its first 200 years of being a colony (1565-1764). The world was changing. Could Filipinas?"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1MuUh0UnwDQvlgcgX_uffRscg2QJWr3qi",
"caption": "SALT TRIO",
"link": "/items/coll274.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "11",
"day": "19",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SALT TRIO",
"text": "The voluminous, encyclopaedic work of the Jesuit missionary Ignacio Francisco Alcina (1610-1674) was published in 1668. Titled “Historia de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas,” Alcina described the 3 kinds of salt that were traded. SAL DE MORO meant salt made in Tagalog areas. Precolonial leaders included Muslims related to the Sultan of Borneo. Sea water was filtered through sand collected in a cloth-lined basket. The filtered sea water was collected in a metal pan (CARAHAY) below the basket and boiled till only salt was left. SAL DE BISAYAS came in a solid form shaped like a stone or a bread bun. Salted ash was made by burning logs that floated in from the sea or from mangrove trees. The ash and additional salt water were strained through BADIAN leaves into containers made of bark or clay that were fired to harden and solidify the salt in them. SAL DE SANGLEY was salt made in raised plots of earth that were flooded with salt water. Salt remained after water evaporated in sunlight. ASIN was identified by Antonio Pigafetta during his 1521 stay in Cebu as the native term for Spanish SAL (salt). In Manila of 1609, TAMBAN sardine was made into BURUNG TAMBAN, brined sardine. YNAASINAN was identified in 1613 Tagalog as “to preserve by salting.” Salting is a universal method of preserving fish, seafood, meat, vegetables."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1nBpGQwavIS7t4ADh-PhatrIsGmqmQWkr",
"caption": "MEXICAN MIX",
"link": "/items/coll275.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "11",
"day": "26",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "MEXICAN MIX",
"text": "Tamal, champurrado, and chocolaté beverage had been interpreted Philippine style as the second colonial century closed. There is still no written evidence up to 1764 for molé and pipian. Molé eventually became Pollo con Chocolate in some Philippine areas. It did not root strongly so as to inspire myriad versions of molé unlike adobado. The name of the dish comes from “mulli” meaning sauce or stew. Molé is pre-Hispanic for Mexico where it originated and has infinite varieties. Pipián is listed in the “Larousse Diccionario Enciclopédia de la Gastronomica Mexicana” of Ricardo Muñoz Zurita (2012) as a type of molé. Pipián is eaten in Mexico’s western zone like Jalisco, Michoacan, Morelos, and notably Colima where Filipino seamen hid and set up bootleg Tuba businesses. Ingredients include chicken, pork, rabbit, turkey, chile, squash seeds, tomato. Colima uses toasted corn in one of its versions. Epazote, also called apazote is native to Mesoamerica. Due to its strong aroma and pungent taste, it is used selectively in mostly central, south and southeastern Mexican cuisine. It grew in Filipinas. Pipian that became iconic for Ilocano cuisine uses alpasotes and atsuete coloring that had established themselves from Mexico; by the 1930s it was recorded that it also needed kamias and rice. Quilites was used more in Philippine cuisine than alpasotes by 1764. New World ingredients more than native Mexican cooking and cooking technology or tools are what were contributed to Philippine cuisine."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1dynrBVHFMH44JkOoMU3_71kJye8j1FDw",
"caption": "64 OUNCES YEARLY",
"link": "/items/coll276.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "11",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "64 OUNCES YEARLY",
"text": "By the mid-1700s, approximately 4 million persons in Spain, all the Americas, and Filipinas drank chocolate 64 times on the average. They usually used one ounce of chocolate in tablea or ball form, 64 ounces annually per consumer. The recipe Nicholas Norton Nicols found common was 10 libras each of cacao and sugar flavoured by around 8 ounces (around 227 grams) or less of cinnamon. A libra varies from 358 to 460 grams. Norton calculated that the annual chocolate consumption was 16 million libras needing 400,000 libras of cinnamon. Spain was the largest consumer of cinnamon and the Dutch its top supplier. English-born Norton became a naturalised Spaniard and was granted permission to trade in the Philippines. He wanted to establish a cinnamon plantation in Zamboanga to grow cinnamon equal to that of Ceylon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) the best at the time. Norton’s enthusiasm to increase earnings of Filipinas impressed Spanish King Carlos III. Norton passed away in 1761 before he could pursue his dream. Perhaps it was his luck because the British occupied Manila the next year."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1euSYuh0RvWZG1ah3ykqmKXWMp51CdBsM",
"caption": "64 OUNCES YEARLY cont.",
"link": "/items/coll277.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "11",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "64 OUNCES YEARLY cont.",
"text": "As early as 1521, a cinnamon (CANELA in Spanish) called MANA by Cebuanos was identified. At Cavit and Subanin on the Zamboanga peninsula the Spanish expedition found CAIU MANA (meaning “sweet wood”) that they described as the best cinnamon. KAYO MANIS, also meaning wood that is sweet, is the Ceylonese term for cinnamon. There are varieties of cinnamon in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Cinnamomum verum (True Cinnamon) has a subtle flavour needed for particular Sri Lankan dishes. There is C. mindanaense grown in Zamboanga; in Samar, C. iners Reinw. is called MAROBO. Having an aromatic bark similar to sassafras in taste and aroma is C. mercado Vid. known as KALINGAG in Rizal, Laguna, Bataan, Samar, Lanao, Tayabas, Camarines, and Polilo. It was called KALINGAD in Pampanga, KULIAN or ULIUAN in Cagayan; SAMILING in Bataan. Francisco Leandro de Viana, a fiscal of the 1700s used in his chocolate beverage KALINGAG from Mindoro that had a delicious odor “like cinnamon, clove and pepper combined.” He also used it in stews. To force down Dutch prices for cinnamon and clove, Viana suggested popularising KALINGAG, but futilely. In the third colonial century starting 1765 cinnamon and other botanicals related to cuisine would be considered for mass production."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1knL0BCydNofSrGpI1ThP2qLgTWEag2Xo",
"caption": "1754 FOOD",
"link": "/items/coll278.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "04",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "1754 FOOD",
"text": "Tagalog was the language of ancient Maynilad and adjacent areas we know today as Bulacan, Laguna, Batangas, Quezon, and Rizal. We begin dissecting a Tagalog-Spanish dictionary published in 1754. Words for it had been compiled supposedly starting in the 16th century by Dominicans; it was completed by the Jesuits Juan de Noceda and Pedro de San Lucar. Tagalog food words from 1609, 1613, and 1624 were included in posts about the first colonial century,1565-1664. Now we look at the second colonial century. BALATONG, beans and mongo, were first toasted before adding liquid or broth to soften them. Shrimp or fish was cooked in a bamboo container to make BINALONGBONG. A stew solely of vegetables, water, and salt was BULANGLANG. The 1754 dictionary entry may be the viand’s earliest written record, although it may have been cooked much earlier. COLAUO was a guisado (or stew) credited to Batangas. It used animal brain. LAMPAHAN was to cook fish in water with condiments. If ingredients were cooked only in vinegar and salt it was called PANGAT. Similarly PINALAM was a “kind of adobo,” made of deer and vinegar. It could be that adobo was used already locally to mean a cooked viand rather than the traditional Spanish term for marinade. SAGLAO was a cooked combination of fish and greens or herbs. SANGLAL as in 1624 was specific to a guisado made of an animal’s meat and blood; the 1754 definition, however, says it is a stew using oil [olive], lard and with blood."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1R_Dp232wsaBknbO5f0MG9QpqxcM4aUqx",
"caption": "COMIDILLA",
"link": "/items/coll279.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "08",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COMIDILLA",
"text": "The meal in old Spanish-era dictionaries is COMIDA, eating food, dressed victuals, dinner, fare, feed. The small meal or light repast is the COMIDILLA. Today we think of it as a snack. In 1754 COMIDILLAS were associated with CACANÍN like SUMAN (made of rice and wrapped in leaves) and CALAMAY (a kind of conserve or preserve). The second colonial century, 1665-1774, is when a new word appears in Tagalog: BIBINGCA, a COMIDILLA made by Tagalog of flour baked in a HORNO [oven]. The DOS FUEGOS of long-time use in Spanish cooking is not described. Bibingkahan, the clay “oven” system associated with bibingca is not yet listed. If and how Tagalog bibingca links to Portuguese bebinca, bibik and bebinca needs confirmation. The Portuguese multi-layer cake is associated with Goa, India and Macao, China and is very different from bibingca in the Philippines where it is no longer confined to Tagalogs. Other COMIDILLOS as described in 1754 include PALAROSDOS also called PALADUSDUS; PALATOC made with flour, camote, coconut milk; PALITAO; PALUTANG; PINGAUA of rice; SANTAN of coconut, honey; SINALORSOR, an antique comidilla; TAMPOOC of banana that has seeds; TILITILI of flour. One wonders what happened to those seemingly displaced in popularity. "
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1mrB_3gX8OdqqIwDm_bFKWzGRo4PtMGOM",
"caption": "MEALS 1754",
"link": "/items/coll280.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "11",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "MEALS 1754",
"text": "Tagalog meals were MAGAGA, the morning meal and HAPONAN, the late meal. BAHAO was something guarded at night for tomorrow’s breakfast. In 1624 PAMAHAO was defined as both breakfast and “merender”. [In 1852, the Spanish word merender meant to take a meal or refreshment between dinner and supper, or in some places to eat the principal meal at noon.]The dead were fed, too. LAMAC were small plates on which treats to put at mortuaries were placed; also to distribute food in plates for the dead. Noceda and Sanlucar offer evidence of a custom and words related to it. Is LAMAC still used?"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/11cc_ptX3qxYcWHSqMwSZmhPzXqdwGQ0j",
"caption": "MEALS IN 1754 continued",
"link": "/items/coll281.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "11",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "MEALS IN 1754 continued",
"text": "The role of rice determined words specific to describing a meal. AUOY in Tagalog was a meal without rice and only fish or vegetables. In 1624, however, it was defined as all types of camotes and bananas; when buying or selling it meant all kinds of fruits such as lucban and santol. One laments that lucban hardly appears anymore. CANIN was both rice and food, insinuating the esteemed rank of rice in the Filipino meal. Rice could be flavoured [after cooking] with salt, PACASAM. BAHOC was to eat rice with broth, whereas LABAY meant eating rice passed through broth or tuba. One senses dry food was not desired because of YAPA, food that is tasteless because it has no liquid in it.\nHIRHIR was to dampen in sauce (HIRHIRAN) or honey. Eating something more conducive than just with salt was HIRHIR, too, and HIDHID. Is hirhir a better or more precise term than sawsaw for dipping food in condiment sauces?\nIn 1624 SAU-SAU [not in the 1754 source] was defined as the act of briefly passing something in water, specifically, till it got wet. Rice could be seasoned [usually after cooking] with salt thus PACASAM, to season rice with salt. Note that Tagalog of 1624, includes BAHÓG: Adding salt or any spice such as for sinigang, meat so it penetrates the food. Bergaño provides another early mention of sinigang. HIMAGAS was to eat fruit at the end of a meal (as a “postre”) to cut any bad taste. One can use old colonial dictionary entries to reconstruct what Filipino meals were like and if they are still like that now."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1Xc5K2IB_2OUYzcFpwNRKz0CBgbifTiBh",
"caption": "INGREDIENTS 1754",
"link": "/items/coll282.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "16",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "INGREDIENTS 1754",
"text": "Beans offer carbohydrate and protein. They were part of the Tagalog diet four centuries ago. Among “frijoles” or beans listed by Noceda and Sanlucar, thus qualifying them as heritage beans, are BALATONG and PAAYAP (SETAO, today’s sitaw). Small beans included CAGUIOS also called CAGYOS and possibly TAPILAO. The bean’s name is spelled KADYOS today. It was once part of Tagalog cooking and not only Negrense dishes. BULAY that might be the PATANI, was a large bean. BINULAY CATA LAMANG, MAGPATSUAD CA meant “Pardon me that I invite you to [eat] only beans. Beans still green or young in their pods were LAGUIBAY and QUIBAL. Protein was available too from mushrooms that were foraged when in season. Listed is SICBOT also called CABUTI. CABUTI MANDIN ANG MGA LABI meant that a person’s lips resembled the CABUTI mushroom. How many heritage beans are still sold today? The interest in kadyos as KBL (kadyos with baby—pork— and langka) is keeping the ingredient cultivated. The Indian subcontinent seems to be the birthplace of kadyos that spread to Africa and then the Americas. When did it reach the Philippines? No one knows for sure yet. Anyone cooking the mentioned ingredients can safely say they were here in the 1700s before the Industrial Revolution started in 1750, before the second colonial century ended in 1774."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/11ICC8ZOC9VihmW2iClwPp43xd3Tnpb-T",
"caption": "INGREDIENTS 2 continued",
"link": "/items/coll283.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "22",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "INGREDIENTS 2 continued",
"text": "Some foreign ingredients had established themselves enough to have become part of Tagalog in 1754: CAMATIS (tomato brought in during the first century); PASITI (a minute chili that grew wild and that is likely today’s LABUYO; labuyo means “wild”). There were CONDOL, an Asian gourd; OPO, a gourd that may have originated in Asia; PATOLA an Asian luffa. CONDOL was also known in Tagalog as SICOT and TIBYAYONG. Spanish classified the Asian gourds as CALABASA, squash. ALIBANGBANG and SIBUG leaves were used in lieu of vinegar, meaning they gave desired sourness. MAGSIBUG was to add SIBUG to what one was cooking. CALITCALIT, DAMPALIT, and LIBATO [alugbati] were other “yerbas” or CULINARY herbs. PACO continues appearing since the 1600s; its 18th century description says it was eaten with dried fish. PACQUILING leaves flavoured rice [during cooking by lining the pot]. SAMPALOC remained on the list as the native word for tamarind meaning Indian Date in Arabic. Seeds of TALISAY trees were edible and reminded of pine nuts. There were AMPALAYA bittermelon, TALONG eggplant, and the wild eggplant called TARAMPOLA. Noceda-Sanlucar include GILAY: a genus of edible herbs. Francisco San Antonio’s GULAY in his Tagalog dictionary of 1624 are herbs such as BERSAS (collard greens or probably their likeness), NABOS (turnips), etc. that are tossed into a pot that has meat in it. His definition of GILAY is edible herbs. Dictionary compilers were becoming increasingly familiar with native ingredients just as foreign new botanicals were finding new homes in the Philippines."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/13p6JTlnQtbmKbRyFFfkmGNkKW2FhQQD-",
"caption": "INGREDIENTS 3 continued",
"link": "/items/coll284.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "25",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "INGREDIENTS 3 continued",
"text": "Fruits were important to the Tagalog diet. Bananas had many varieties but some are hardly known today: BANGALAN, BINGTICOHOL, BONGCOLAN, BOSOGAN, CALABONDO, DINUGUAN, GALAYAN, OBISPO, SABA, SACSIC, SAGING LIGAO, SAGING MACHING, MATAVIA, SANTAN, the large TARYANG ANUANG, TONDOC, finger-like TORLONG BINOCOT also called TORLONG DATO. One wonders if BOTHÓAN was the variety with many seeds desired not for eating but for its strong leaves used as wrappers. Other kinds of banana were introduced into the 20th century. They were bred to withstand the rigours of transport for domestic and global shipments. In 1754 there also were fruits such as ALIPAY, BALOBO, NANGCA, SAMPALOC, and the TAMPOY known for its fragrance and delicious taste. CAMANSALAY and sweet sour LANSONES fruits grew in clusters like grapes. There were native citrus: the tiny sweet sour CALAMUNDING also known as CALDAMUNDI; the large orange (“naranja” in Spanish) called SOHÁ and LUCBAN interchangeably. SO-A appears as a separate entry and is defined as an orange like the Spanish kind. CAMANGSI is eaten cooked today. We wonder about the edible fruits COBONG and CUBILI that grew on trees. PIÑA introduced from the Americas had become a Tagalog word as had MANGA introduced from India. It’s sad that fruit heritage from the 1700s is hardly known anymore and just as culinary tourism encourages appreciation for what makes cuisines unique."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1l2yuGcLaNdLMo3Rlu0Hiju5hLbA8-6ry",
"caption": "INGREDIENTS 4 continued",
"link": "/items/coll285.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "29",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "INGREDIENTS 4 continued",
"text": "The 1745 Tagalog-Spanish word list carries over terms from the colonial first century such as BABUY (pig), BABUY SA DAMO (wild pig), BIYIC (small pig or the candidate for lechonillo), USA (deer or venison). Missing still in Tagalog is BACA, beef (VACA in Spanish). One wonders if it is because beef was not yet a common food. Cattle ranches were operated primarily for Hispanics, for their food. Working backwards from Spanish entries to Tagalog one finds the following. Carne is LAMAN, flesh. Carne o pescado (meat or fish) that is spoiled is LANTOG, tasteless for lack of seasoning is LIROY or MALIROY, combined with vinegar is QUILAO and QUILAUIN, burnt is TOBOR. Carne fresca (flesh that is fresh) is SARIWA."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1fWP9XL4rg9v5Dcz_akUTOIFEWqahctpf",
"caption": "INGREDIENTS 5 continued",
"link": "/items/coll286.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "09",
"day": "29",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "INGREDIENTS 5 continued",
"text": "In the Spanish-Tagalog section of the dictionary, a place where meat is sold to the public was called PATAYAN and TINDAHAN NANG LAMANG CATI. Palengke, tienda, even tindahan do not figure among the Tagalog words. TINDAHAN is only in the Spanish section of the dictionary. BILI is the Tagalog term for to buy and to sell. Beef and how to cook it arrived with the Spanish. When did Filipino food start to include steaks? Possibly not by 1745. Let us see what later dictionaries will reveal."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/16MQKp_rng9_nIkMvy65ESrxBaxfnSoyp",
"caption": "TASTE",
"link": "/items/coll287.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "02",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "TASTE",
"text": "Tagalog of 1754 sustained the listing of INAM conjugated into LINAMNAM and NAMNAMIN for taste. INAM links to taste because it is defined as having merit, being good. NAMNÁM common to Tagalog and Ilocano means savor , taste, enjoyment of taste in the mouth. Similar is nanám in Hiligaynon, Maguindanao, Pangasinense, and Samar-Leyte. Nanam is used in Ibanag, Ilocano and Tausog; taham in Batanes (Ivatan); taam in Maranaw. A vocabulary for sense of taste connects the archipelago. Synonyms reveal ancient Asian cultural links. LASA is common to Tagalog, Pampangan, Hiligaynon, Bicolano. It is “rasa” in Indonesian and Malaysian. And it is RÁSA in Sanskrit that LASA finds its root based on studies by Jean-Paul G. Potet published in 2016. LASA becomes LASAPIN and LASAHIN. Saborear (to give a relish, to enjoy eating and drinking with peculiar pleasure) finds its Tagalog equivalent in PALASAHAN, PASARAPIN, and BIGYAN LASA.\nSARAP connects Tagalog to Malay, too. Potet tracks it to SEDAP, delight. In 1754 the Spanish noted that “to put salt” would make food sabroso or sarap. TAB-ANG was the antonym or “desabroso” in Spanish. The example used was “Matabang na canin” because Spanish traditionally did not cook rice plainly with only water as indios (and Sangleyes) did. The desire for deliciousness is global although its forms of satisfaction can be localised."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1u9DIISP-rMJeXXB_JHmd1TYyaqxVzYEL",
"caption": "FOREIGN TAGALOG",
"link": "/items/coll288.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "06",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "FOREIGN TAGALOG",
"text": "In 1754 there were very few words attributed to Chinese that had entered Tagalog — or at least the Sanlucar-Noceda listing. ANG-ANG was an earthenware pot with a large mouth, functions of which were not described. SANGCQUI (spelled SANGKE today) meaning Chinese anise continued as an active word. BALOT is described as an egg inside which there is a duck with feathers. It is silent about its origins although today it is considered to have had a Chinese prototype. Another foreign product mentioned is AMBOLOG, sago from Borneo. LACSA appears seemingly for the first time in a Tagalog dictionary. It is the only noodle (fideos in Spanish) in the book and it’s origin needs verification. LAKSA is Tagalog for “10,000”. In its contemporary rendering the dish laksa uses the fine noodle SOTANGHON made of bean flour. In Indonesia and Malaysia laksa uses rice noodles with coconut cream or tamarind sauce. The Chinese are credited for spreading noodles around Southeast Asia."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1HbG3KqYOwoDyUl73XTUcDfUGIpQjaPL5",
"caption": "NATIVE PLATES",
"link": "/items/coll289.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "09",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "NATIVE PLATES",
"text": "The Sanlucar-Noceda Tagalog dictionary of 1754 describes DAMPOTAN as a plate made from palm leaves. It probably is rooted in DAMPOT, to take with “la punta de los dedos o con tenazas” meaning with the tips of the fingers or with tongs. Note that eating was done using fingers not the whole hand. A number of words are given designations based on their functions: that from where one made dampot, for instance.\nBut the dictionary also has SAMAT, palm leaves woven to serve as plates. MAGSAMAT is to make or weave the plates. SINAMAT are the leaves that have been made into a plate. The SAMAT seems to have been well entrenched. We are very thankful that Elmer Nocheseda found examples of SAMAT and gives a step-by-guide how to make the ancient organic, eco-friendly plate. For restaurateurs and food stylists seeking Filipino heritage tables, the SAMAT can be revived. Weaving a SAMAT is not as simple as laying food directly on a flat banana leaf. But by giving each guest a personal SAMAT the image of Filipino culinary history becomes a salute to weaver-artisans and how creative our ancestors were using what the landscape offered as art materials."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1HpoW3pTJ3gKo-Supla_tnPLn57ONqFHz",
"caption": "NATIVE BOWLS",
"link": "/items/coll290.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "13",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "NATIVE BOWLS",
"text": "Just as leaves, especially coconut fronds, were creatively turned into woven plates so did coconut fruit shells become bowls and cups. Our featured Tagalog source of 1754 documents PANABO, a coconut made into a pitcher. LOMBO meant a large coconut one could drink from. Half a coconut made into a cup\nwas called LONGBO. It seems coconuts of all sizes were used as cups because a PANABYABAN coconut cup was smaller than a LOMBO but bigger than a HONGOT. The cups had no handles. But there are museum examples of coconuts to which ornate silver handles, bases, and lid knobs were added in the 19th century. A coconut shell used as a plate was termed SISAP and TAPTAPAN. Bamboo offered another material for culinary uses. TAYONA was a large bamboo section for storing wine or vinegar. The bamboo pitcher for collecting coconut inflorescence sap to make tuba was called TOQUIL and TIGUISAN. It is a credit to Filipino forebears that they used their natural surroundings creatively. Should coconut and bamboo become fashionable for table use, let us hope their raw materials will be sustainably available and artisanal skills well compensated."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/18iLBFBYhIZCo8mzvVgcaIGrNR9frG87v",
"caption": "SPOONS",
"link": "/items/coll291.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "16",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "SPOONS",
"text": "The 1754 roster of “cucharas” continues to include SANDOC, a spoon used in cooking. It appeared in San Buenaventura’s dictionary of 1613 where it is described as a “spoon for rice” and “for taking rice.” Thus MAGSANDOC. Rice was put on plates the Sanlucar-Noceda definition notes. CASANDOC and SANDOCSANDOCAN meant one sandoc serving in 1754. CAUOT also meant a cooking spoon. SALOC was like a spoon used to get fish; it was for catching fish one would think. Bamboo curiously could be woven into a spoon called SAGAP. SORÓ was a small spoon. MAGSORÒ and SORO-SORÓ meant to eat or be eating using the SORÓ. A spoon for eating made of palm leaves was the SILOC also listed earlier in 1613. MASILOC ANG LOOB was an expression we personally find revealing of the 18th century. It means MALIUAG NA LOOB, having a state of mind that was loose or comfortable. How many know SILOC and would use a spoon to describe emotions?"
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1od_fNsxr_GvxSEdXGQP0oI2dk2EwDE-G",
"caption": "PISTA",
"link": "/items/coll292.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "20",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "PISTA",
"text": "Tagalog dictionaries earlier than the Noceda-Sanlucar of 1754 show PISTA embedding itself into Tagalog. By 1754, 189 years since colonialism started in Filipinas, MAGPISTA had become a common term meaning to celebrate a fiesta, a day when Christian faith (fe) is honored with rituals and feasts. NGILIN and PANGILIN were to celebrate a fiesta. NILANG was to celebrate fiestas and guard Sundays which missionaries enforced as for religious activities solely. ALABAT are small bamboo set up as flags during a fiesta. PALASPAS are palm leaves; MAGPALASAS was to decorate with them. To be invited to a fiesta or a wedding was CANGAY; to attend a fiesta or a cockfight (permitted and taxed during fiestas) was DAYO. Carnival or Carnestolendas in Spanish appears as BOLINGBOLING and LAPAS. There was another kind of ritual feeding that persisted from pre-Christian days: LAMAC was to apportion food the way ancestors liked them; also small plates on which treats were placed at mortuaries. It was hoped abundance would come for those who fed the deceased. Charity was part of celebrating. ALOC was to give the sick food; DAIS was to bring food to the needy. Before setting out on the road or a journey — to enjoy fiesta cooking and bring food as caridad — one ate first: BALHO."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/1g68nhDjSvBzkN6CMlnRp9o4hRP6ajak4",
"caption": "BOOZE",
"link": "/items/coll293.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "27",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "BOOZE",
"text": "The Sanlucar/Noceda Tagalog-Spanish dictionary of 1754 proves ALAC continued as the native generic word for wine. TIOG was a wine made of honey and water, PANGASI one made of cooked rice, QUILANG a kind made from sugarcane, and TUBA wine made of distilled coconut. The entry for BASI reveals two meanings: BASI LEAVES to throw into QUILANG; and as MAGBASI, the drink. At the time LAMBANOG only meant a sling and to shoot with it. As we all know lambanog, the more “modern” drink, can really hit one down. While INOM remained the generic word for to drink, BARIC was specific to drinking wine. Drinking wine from a full cup was called CALOS. Drinking anything without pausing was PATICTIC. If one drank from a small cane used as a straw it was HIPHIP, HITHIT, or IPIP. If one drank more wine than one could handle one became LASING or LANGO, drunk. The “song” of someone drunk was called HILIRAO. BARIC meant a cup for wine, the drink for guests or of a drunk; PAGBARIC was toasting for everyone’s well-being. TAGAY also meant a toast. Bamboo that stored vinegar and wine was the TAYONA; for TUBA the cane container was a TUQUIL. Drunkenness was a concern of missionaries since the start of the colonial era. It was preached about as a form of gluttony. The colonial government taxed wine and limited sales to only government-approved shops. There would be trouble caused by the law."
}
},{
"media": {
"url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/163l8mLmsdX-8Ls95J2ma2ERKAcrPwZTY",
"caption": "COOKING",
"link": "/items/coll294.html"
},
"start_date": {
"month": "10",
"day": "30",
"year": "2021"
},
"text": {
"headline": "COOKING",
"text": "We end the sampling of culinary words from the Sanlucar/Noceda dictionary of 1754 by reviewing words for Spanish “cocer,” to cook. Names for foods were often the word for how they were cooked. INIHAW and ASADO, for instance, both meant viands prepared by roasting. They still do. TAMBONG was to cook a whole fish; COLOB to cook in hot water fish or meat in a BAO, a coconut shell; LAGAT to cook fish. LAGA and ANBLAY were to cook anything in water only. QISA meant to mix rice and corn, beans, or sweet potato; it also meant to cook them. LABON was specific to cooking sweet potato. SAING was to cook rice; BONYOG to cook rice in bamboo. Bamboo culms and clay pots were in use side by side with metal pans during the second colonial century. Bamboo tubes and baskets with names specific for their tasks were still being used. Their names, preserved in colonial dictionaries and other records, need to be revived if they have fallen out of use. Same with cooking terms."
}
}
]
}