Spending time with mama

February 4, 2011

The nice thing about this particular trip was that it coincided with mama’s birthday. During other trips, I’d usually stay at the house with her and debate about what year I should get married or she’d ask me how certain friends of hers were doing back in the states. This time however was different, it was her birthday month! We’d have these talks while shopping and eating!

After looking for shoes, I asked her whether she wanted seafood or Japanese food, two choices we felt she’d enjoy the most. She went with Japanese food.

Busog! (Full!)

It wasn’t over yet, on the day of her birthday on January 23rd, the whole family took her out for a beach picnic!

And like any other picnic, you must grill, or in our visayan dialect, “sinugba”! There are three basic ingredients to sinugba: fish, pork, and fire.

My cousin Christopher handled the fish! (Isda).

And cousin Anthony took care of the pork belly (baboy).

A picnic is also not complete without alcohol. Here my uncles are sharing a glass of “tuba” or coconut wine: coconut flower sap fermented over a few days. Your typical “tuba”, unlike its further distilled cousin “lambanog”, has red coloring added to it.

The beach on a Sunday. The water-to-air-temperature ratio was PERFECT. Is there such thing as a water-to-air-temperature ratio? There is now! I don’t know what it means, but it sounds cool.