Cheers!

Yvette

I’m not going to lay down what we experienced in the tour, though I will write about it for a publication or two. It is something that has to be experienced. Here are photos of parts of the tour:

Binondo is packed with buildings, and even more packed with people

Ivan Man Dy, and friend

Kiam Peng, a Hokkien rice dish that's a meal in itself

Binondo is known for its stalls of cheap, haggle-able, fresh fruits

Steamed dumplings take me back to my childhood

An art deco building in the middle of Binondo

Worth the 800+ bucks, even if you’re already Chinese.

To find out more about the tours (they have other tours, including one of Malacangan), check out Old Manila Walks.

Just for comparison, here’s their longsilog (longganisa = sausage), which I haven’t tried but which Luis says is awesome.

Why don’t I have a picture of the tocilog? Because I keep eating it before I remember to photograph it.

They offered tapa and tocino, but since for some reason they didn’t offer eggs, I decided to skip that. Strangely enough, their coffee wasn’t barako. Weird, since we were in the middle of coffee country. They also had tawilis, a tiny fish that can only be found in Taal Lake. These look more like tuyo, but the sign said tawilis.

After breakfast, we were treated to an exhibition of latte art.

There was a tour of a seedling sanctuary, and then it was off to Tagaytay Highlands for lunch.

And what a lunch it was! We had:

Vegetable salad, the first I’ve had the whole trip, yay!

Hipon sa Gata (prawns in coconut milk). The prawns were big and juicy, and were fun to take apart with fingers.

Halbos ng Tahong, with lots of tahong-y goodness;

Jumbo Bangus, which drew crowds whenever it came in. Fat milk fish cooked in margarine and served sizzling, it tasted way better than it looks.

For dessert, we had assorted native delicacies.

A great and filling way to end a road trip.

Thanks Carnation and Appetite!

And then we had dinner here, well, inside here, which consisted of:

Fish Fillet in Capsicum Sauce, where the fish was marinated in milk for two hours before cooking.

Lumpiang Ubod, fresh spring rolls with palm heart filling. Milk was used to make the wrapper.

Bistek Tagalog, Tagalog-style beefsteak with onions. And for dessert, Inipit, a Bulacan delicacy.

Then some of us partied,  but I retired to my lovely room where I watched the Discovery Channel until I fell asleep.

Tomorrow, I post about more food, namely breakfast and lunch.

Taal is known for many things, including:

Ancestral houses, in the same way that Vigan is.

Marcela Agoncillo, who sewed the Philippine flag in Hong Kong.

Her ancestral home is now a museum, and is a great way to see what life was like during the Spanish era.

The there is Panocha, a kind of peanut brittle. It’s sickly sweet and hard enough to break off a tooth. It makes great pasalubong, though. And though easy to make, involves heat, which makes for a sweaty, smoke-filled workroom.

And the balisong, or butterfly knife. They are made in a Barangay called Balisong. In this part of town, every other house has a cabinet of butterfly knives for sale.

They also make other kinds of blades and, presumably, are not afraid to use them.

We met a guy who is a master butterfly knife fighter, and has even used his skill to scare off a would-be mugger in Manila once when he was 18.

Taal is also known for its embroidered linen.

And you can see the most amazing things on the side of the road.

On Thursday, I continue listing the food that we had on Appetite and Carnation’s Family Food Trip.

Repertory Philippines (Rep), the country’s premier professional theatre company, holds open auditions for their new production of Peter Shaffer’s psychodrama EQUUS on Monday, March 8, 2010, 5-9 p.m. (for major and minor roles) and on Friday, March 12, 2010, 6-9 p.m. (for the role of Alan Strang) at the Rep office, C2-A, Building C, 2316, Karrivin Plaza, Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City.

In EQUUS, Dr. Martin Dysart attempts to treat Alan Strang, a teenage boy who has blinded six horses in a violent fit of passion. Dysart believes that Strang has a case of pathological religious and sexual fascination with horses, which leads the psychiatrist and his patient to a complex and disturbingly dramatic confrontation.

Richard Griffiths played Dysart and Daniel Radcliffe played Strang in both London and Broadway revivals in 2007-2008.

Rep’s production of EQUUS is in search of actors for the following roles:

ALAN STRANG: Age 18 to 27 (can pass for 17). Height 5′5″ to 5′9″. He must be proficient in the English language. Acting and theater experience a plus.

DORA STRANG, Alan’s mother: Age 40 to 50.

Frank Strang, Alan’s father: Age 40 to 50.

HESTHER SALOMON, a magistrate: Age 30 to 50.

HARRY DALTON, stable owner: Age 40 to 60.

JILL MASON, Alan’s love interest: Age 20 to 23.

HORSEMAN: Height 5′10″ and above. Lean built. Must be able to follow choreography.

HORSES: Height 5′10″ and above. Lean built. Must be able to follow choreography.

*Visit http://repertory.ph for more detailed role descriptions.

Auditionees are requested to pick up the reading material for the roles they are auditioning for at the Rep office.

Auditionees are also requested to bring their biodata and one close up and one full body photograph.

For additional queries, contact Ria Pangilinan at telephone number (632) 887-0710.

Rep’s production of EQUUS runs from July 9 to 25, 2010 at Onstage Theatre, Greenbelt 1, Ayala Mall, Makati City.

Audie Gemora directs.

The fisher queen

We said hello to the penguin that stands outside the shrine (What the statue of an antartic bird is doing in a tropical country, I don’t know. It’s cute, though)…

The Penguin of Caysasay

Visited the Basilica of San Martin…

And had lunch at the Escuela Pia cultural Center. From the ‘escuela’ part of its name, my guess is that it used to be a school.

Escuela Pia

Where we were greeted by awesome Batanguenas,

Note cute boy in the background

And treated to lunch, which consisted of:

Adoo sa Luyang Dilaw (Adobo with yellow ginger, here quite milky because of the added milk (this is a Carnation trip, after all), though they had the original, milkless version too), Tapang Taal, Inihaw na Tilapia (grilled tilapia) and Bulanlang, a vegetable salad called Dinengdeng in the North

And various desserts, including minatamis na saba (sweetened bananas) my personal favorite being the Champorado (chocolate rice porridge) with Ice Cream and Carnation. I was fortunate to get the very last bowl. The champorado was thick, its sweetness provided by the accompanying ice cream while its texture was thinned by the milk. The rice was soft, but not gooey. I want to know who made it so I can kidnap him or hr and make her my official champorado cook.

But the best part of the meal was…

The coffee! Never have I tasted coffee so fragrant, good, you didn’t have to put  sugar in it because it was naturally sweet. When I asked the servers where I could get beans, they looked at me as if I was crazy and said, “the market.” Now I know what really good coffee tastes like. This is the taste I try to replicate at home. I’m succeeding, little by little, thanks to the barako beans Luis’ dad brought from Batangas.

But we didn’t just spend our days in Taal stuffing ourselves. We saw some stuff too, which I will post tomorrow.

Mentholated, and with many uses

Mentholatum has been around forever, but it’s only now that I’ve realized that it has other applications other than a chest rub or something to massage sore muscles with. Reading the box, I discovered that you can use it to soothe chapped skin and moisturize chapped lips. Of course, this caught my interest. I’ve always been a Vick girl but I could not resist Mentholatum’s promise of a product that multi-tasked.

So. I tried it as lip balm. It’s more mentholated than anything out there, but also less oily than, say, petroleum jelly. I liked the tingle it gave, but had to reapply more after a short while as my lips tend to dry out really fast. Am keeping the bottle, though. It still makes good chest rub.