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- Title:
- Selling Greens
- Date Created:
- 2021-05-23
- Description:
- 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.
- Subjects:
- Spain -- Colonies -- Asia -- Social life and customs Racially mixed people -- Taxation Filipinos -- Agriculture
- Exhibition:
- J San Antonio
- Source:
- Amargoso also called Bittermelon. From Flora de Filipinas by Fr. Manuel Blanco, OSA. 1880-1883. Wikimedia. Public Domain.
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Selling Greens", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll218.html