THE quake in the 90’s was an odd time. We had to camp out of our home, making the Saint Louis University EH grounds our temporary home for weeks.
Yes. Tents. And it was not the nice kind. It was the type of tent which was made out of blankets and plastic, taking whatever, you had to literally put a roof over your head.
Maybe, that is why I have an aversion to camping... your past really does haunt you.
Our food was rationed, relying on relief goods for a while as stores ran out of stocks, I remember a storeowner in our area trying to ration the supplies to my neighbors trying to stock pile.
I remember lining up for a lot of things. Even laundry, there was a program for residents to do laundry at Burnham park. I remember lining up for that and discovering that clothes when wet, got extra heavy to carry.
There was no spinner.
Food was scarce but no one died of hunger. There was a lot of vegetables going around, one of these vegetables was the glorious sayote.
Every backyard had it, it grew abundantly and so fast that a patch of it could feed around two to three families.
Sayote tided the city over for months, it was everywhere, truth be told, I can taste sayote just thinking about it.
The relief goods which reached residents consisted to sardines. Later on, we learned the canned goods given to the city was actually corned beef, but was replaced by sardinas, but that’s a different story.
Let me get back to sayote.
So, sardines were the canned goods of choice for every family and paired with the sayote, which was the vegetable of the crisis, it was easy to deduce what home chefs did.
They COMBINED the sayote with the sardines, like an extender, only this way, they said, it would be healthy.
Honestly, it tasted okay. Really. I liked it. But it wasn’t always cooked together, sardines were paired with egg [if there was any available] sardines with sayote tops [the leave of the sayote], sardines with misua, sardines with noodles [this was nasty].
Sayote was cooked in an omelet, sautéed, fried, boiled it has endless possibilities and each resident had a chance to explore each and every one of them.
After weeks and months of eating sayote every week it become an ordeal and as the city recovered from the quake, the story became a testament to on how one defines the meaning of a Baguio local.
Sayote stories have become the butt of jokes and at the same time badge of survival.
My survival of the 90’s quake as well as the sayote eating sprees is hoped to up my chances of surviving this pandemic.
On the 6th week into the pandemic lockdown, I can safely say I have had carrots every week.
The carrots have been part of relief packs given as donations which has reached our household. I have never eaten this much carrots in my lifetime.
I am not complaining.
I have made spring rolls, soup, fried rice, dumplings, carrot meatballs, salad, coleslaw, curry, cake, muffins, kimchi, pickled, sticks for dipping, mash for sides, juice... you name it, we have done it.
I feel carrots have become the official pandemic survival staple.
And just like that, after decades, I miss sayote.