Food and Drink | Korakora

Pancit Canton and eggs. Supermarket eggs are 55-gram eggs, while native chicken eggs are 45-gram eggs.

Tap water comes from underground sources and is safe to drink. However, I find the water rather salty so I prefer filtered water for drinking (we get 5 gallons for 25 pesos and this usually lasts us a week); boiled tap water is okay for coffee or tea, although boiling leaves plenty of sedimentation (lime probably) in the kettle and water pot.

Rice comes in several varieties such as bukid rice, red rice, pink rice, panda rice, camia rice, etc. Our preference has been camia rice. However, white rice is not really very healthy so we?re trying to look at alternatives. Bukid rice and red rice are healthier choices.

Ubod - the heart of the coconut tree - may be cooked and eaten.

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What I do is mix red rice, pink rice and white rice (we consume about 3 kilos of rice (that?s roughly 102-106 pesos) every 5-6 days with Penny and Vic eating lunch with us almost every day). Malagkit (sticky rice) is also available. When we get a blender/osterizer, I would like to make some sticky rice powder to mix in with soup. There?s also mais rice available in the market.

Beautiful heart of the saba banana tree. The heart can also be cooked and eaten.

This is milled maize (or corn) that resembles couscous when cooked. In Tagbilaran City?s Island City Mall and BQ Mall supermarkets, whole wheat flour is available in packs of 500 grams and 1 kilo, as well as cracked wheat. I have been getting more of these to bake bread and more recently to make pita bread as substitute for rice. I?ve also used cracked wheat for salad.

Flower of one of the wild squash plants growing in the garden.

Noodle is also our usual substitute for rice. There?s fresh miki available in the market. The packed ones (250 grams for 10 pesos) are better than the ones sold by weight as these are more hygienic and less salty. My other favorite is a type of dry noodle called pancit canton. The 250 grams pack costs 30 pesos at Tagbilaran City supermarkets in Island City Mall (ICM), Alturas or BQ Mall. The tastiest pancit canton noodles come from CITIFOOD Industries in Cebu.

Market Day in Baclayon.

Vegetables and eggs are plentiful and easily available at the market, and a few from our garden (kangkong, kamote tops, alugbati, gabi, atsal (native bell peppers), chilies, green papaya, malunggay; we also occasionally have native eggs which are smaller (45 grams) than supermarket eggs (55 grams)). Typical native vegetables are squash, eggplants, okra, sitao (stringbeans), ampalaya (bitter gourd), white radish, tomatoes, onions, spring onions, leeks, and root crops kamote (sweet potato), gabi, ubi, kamoteng kahoy (cassava).

Fresh cacao from our neighbor Charing.

Every Sunday, Gundat slaughters a pig so fresh pork is available. At the market, pork and chicken meat are available in the morning of market day (Wednesday), also often in the afternoon before market day. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning you might also find chicken and pork.

One of the cheapest fish in town - the so-called "Flying Fish."

Fish (and sometimes squid and less frequently shrimps) is available in the early morning and in the late afternoon everyday. On a good day, there?s also plenty of fresh seaweeds often eaten as salad. However, they have a variety of seaweed here that I?m not particularly fond of. They are thinner with numerous nodes. The varieties I like come from Ilocos Sur in Luzon island, and these are tiny grape-like seaweeds and the other are thicker round stems with a felt-like texture. Unfortunately, I can?t find these in Bohol.

Newly harvested turmeric.

Some seafood surprises are also be available at the market but more rarely: sea urchin, swordfish, stingray, eels. Prawns, lobsters, crabs and larger varieties of squid are better found in Tagbilaran City.

Unfortunately, fish and seafood tend to be expensive in Baclayon because of the practices of middlemen/fishmongers.

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