Friday, January 27, 2012
My wife made tinola isda - fish soup - today. I ate it for both lunch and supper. With fresh greens from the garden; lemon grass from the yard, just outside the fence; squash, onions, garlic, peppers and okra from the market, it ranks number one on my list of tasty and healthy foods.
The fish is always the day’s
catch, bought from our fisherman/neighbors or from the market in town, and it’s
almost always delicious. Today’s variety was one I’m not familiar with. It had
a smooth, nutty-buttery kind of flavor, similar to yellow fin tuna, but milder.
The flesh was very white and solid, not quite as solid as tuna, but close.
The greens warrant a more
detailed description. The tastiest is one called alugbati. (I don’t know if
there is an English word for it.) It is dark green and similar to spinach, but
I think the taste is much better. Then there is malonggay, which is the small
green leaves of the tree by the same name. The leaves are round and smaller
than a penny. The taste is very mild. Malonggay has more concentrated nutrition
than just about any other plant on the planet. Google it, if you are
interested. It’s also called Kalamonggay. Last in our lunch and supper pot was
camote tops, which are the green leaves of a native sweet potato. Camote tops
are also packed full of nutrition and are tasty, however they are used.
My system is not used to a
“strictly healthy” diet, so I balanced out all that nutrition with some coconut
bread and a cup of malted milk (Milo ) and
coffee. In my estimation, coconut bread deserves a post all to itself. Briefly
though…well…it’s just damn good! And it’s made in a wood-fired oven just a few
blocks from here.
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