Matter of Taste
 by Matthew Sutherland

( Article received by email: Liza Velasco *Thank you!* )

The following is from a British journalist stationed in the Philippines.
His observations are so hilarious but true !!!

 I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider
 myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key
 step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that's to eat BALUT.

 The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and
 ask them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there
 will be no turning back.

BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant
 non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold
 with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips,
 by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can't see how
 gross it is. It's meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can't imagine
 anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a
 partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in
 the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is
 not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers,
 beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best.
 Others prefer just to drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent
 liquid that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus...excuse me; I
 have to go and throw up now. I'll be back in a minute.

 Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.
 They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are >
 called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, merienda ceyna,
 dinner, bedtime snacks and
 no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn't-count.

 The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes
 from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You're never far from
 food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you're driving
 home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without
 seeing food and I don't mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of
 food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking
 through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's less than one
 minute. Here are some other things I've noticed about food in the Philippines.

 Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice - even breakfast. In the
 UK, I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it's
 impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn't
 the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than
 two paces from their house without baon (food in small container) and
 a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a
 Filipino to leave home without his pants on.

 And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork.
 Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in
 fish sauce with a knife. One really nice thing about Filipino food
 culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my
 office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!"
 ("Let's eat!"). This confused me, until I realized that they didn't
 actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless
 bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, "No thanks, I
 just ate." But the principle is sound - if you have food on your
 plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are, with
 those who may be even hungrier. I think that's great.
 In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many
 Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet?" ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general
 greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

 Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other
 Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like
 Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked
 with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it's hard
 to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned
 LECHON de leche (roast pig) feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50
 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm... you
 can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive
 mouthful. I also share one key Pinoy trait ---a sweet tooth. I am thus
 the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread,
 sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on.
 I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza.

 Try it! It's the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck
 fetus in the half-shell, items to av oid in the Philippines include
 pig's blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull's testicle soup, the strangely-named
 "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one through four
 are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it's
 equally stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these
 latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to
 smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA, which wisely
 ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces.
 Then there's the small matter of the purple ice cream. I have never
 been able to get my brain around eating purple food; the ubiquitous
 UBE leaves me cold.

 And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that KALDERETANG  KAMBING
 (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)... The Filipino, of course,
 has a well-developed sense of food. Here's a typical Pinoy food joke:
 "I'm on a seafood diet. "What's a seafood diet?" "When I see food, I eat it!"

 Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals --- the feet, the head, the
 guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty
 names, like "ADIDAS" (chicken's feet); "KURBATA" (either just
 chicken's neck, or "neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL"
 (chicken wings); "HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines),
 and BETAMAX" (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum.
 Bon appetit.

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