I'm four days late from creating this post, but it's better late than never. For the year 2021, I've been sharing pictures of food that my family and I have shared. Mostly, they're cooked by my parents and other times, purchased somewhere else.
The last month of the year has been tough, but I did save a few pictures of food. Most of them are pretty simple dishes, but still delicious and nice to share with with our loved ones. Let's start!
One of the famous fastfood chains in the Philippines is called "Mang Inasal". They're usually known for their roasted or grilled chicken, but I actually prefer eating their pork barbeque. Whenever papa goes out to buy groceries for our store, he sometimes tell us not to prepare for lunch because he'd just bring some takeout over. One of the common takeouts he brings for us is this. It's actually delicious and the sauce is great. We often eat in Mang Inasal when we visit my father's hometown... not only for the delicious chicken and pork barbeque, but also for the unlimited rice! haha
It's bitter gourd with egg and tomato and mandarin chorizo. This is a nice combination of flavors because the bitter gourd, of course, is better, the tomato is a little sour and sweet, the egg is a bit salty since it was seasoned and the mandarin chorizo is kind of sweet and salty. Every flavor combines and plays inside your mouth. It's also a healthy dish, so it's great. I used to despise eating bitter gourd as I couldn't understand its taste when I was young, but now, it's one of my faves! ^^
Achara or atsara is more of a side dish. It's pickled unripe papaya... sometimes with carrots and bell pepper. We usually have this when we eat grilled foods. When you go to eateries offering grilled stuff, they usually also offer some achara as side dish. My mama likes this very much. We actually just bought this. haha It just looked pretty, so I thought of sharing this as well. :)
It's chicken and pork calderetta. Calderetta is Filipino meat stew whixh usually use goat meat, however, you can use other meat like chicken, pork, beef, etc. In this case, we combined both pork and chicken. This was my late grandpa's specialty and he passed this recipe down to my mama and her siblings. It's pretty good. We didn't have electricity when I took this picture, so I used my phone's flashlight while taking it, so you can literally see smoke coming out of the dish. Yum! ^^
In the morning of the last day of December, a couple was shouting trying to convince people to buy their product which is fish. My papa called them and took a look at the fish they brought. He bought some and they made these two dishes. One is fried fish and the other is "paksiw". Basically, my mama cooked this in soy sauce and pineapple juice (although most people use vinegar in cooking it). Unfortunately, I don't eat fish since my body rejects it after I had a surgery years ago. I used to like fish and I miss eating them, but now, I can only enjoy watching my mama and papa munching on them. lol
Those were some of the dishes we had last month. It's kind of different from the previous months where mama and papa would cook several special dishes. However, this month has been tough... but nonetheless, we still had food on our table and that's one of the most important things. Thanks a lot for checking this out. I'm going to continue this series this year, too... Look forward to checking them out! See you around!
