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OLD folks in Cebu’s countryside are rediscovering the ways they
coped with hard times during the last world war, although the
circumstances then were different. While many of the evacuees to the
hills had money, they had nothing to buy. Food was scarce, and the
farm folks were unable to produce more than what they needed to
survive. Thus, even some of the moneyed and well-to-do had to work
the fields in order to eat.
This time, however, the reverse is true. People
in the rural areas do not have the money to buy the basic
necessities of life. Many of them could not earn enough to meet the
soaring prices of rice and corn grit, much more so the commodities
that could make their simple lives a little more satisfying and
livable. Even the prices of salt and sugar that make their simple,
daily meals tastier and palatable, have gone up interminably.
Truth to tell, the people I circulate with in my
hometown—most of them the average town folks, with some of civil
servants who are used to simple ways of living—are doing
everything to overcome the rising cost of surviving. They turn to
veggies as a means of having nutritious hot soup, even if it is only
a stew of malunggay and alugbati. They eat these with dried fish,
and rice or corn grit, and enjoy the same satisfaction of a full
meal.
“My grandfather,” reminisced a 40-year-old
fourth grade public schoolteacher, “who was in his early teens
when the war broke out, used to regal us with his war stories, how
they were forced to eat green saba bananas with salted or dried
fish. It was during the war when he learned how to eat lugaw of
yellow corn. He said the farmers were not able to cultivate their
cornfields because they were afraid of frequent Japanese patrols.”
A wartime food that appears to have been
rediscovered in recent week by our people is the sinaksakan, the
meal the President re-introduced recently with a mix of sweet
potatoes. In those days in Cebu, however, it was not so much the
camote or sweet potatoes that was used as saksak, but either the
ripe or green bananas called cardaba (saba in Luzon) that was mixed
with the milled white or yellow corn grains.
Rice in those days in Cebu and neighboring
provinces was cooked only during special occasions, such as
weddings, baptisms or the last day of the novena for a dear
departed. Or it was used to fill the woven coconut leaf to make puso
or “hanging rice.” It was a rice or corn grit-saving menu.
Indeed, it is more relevant today when the price paer kilo of either
rice or corn grit has more than doubled, completely demolishing
family budgets.
One other thing that the WW II “survivors”
experienced then, and are reviving now, is thawing yellow corn grit
for their meals. Although it was not much produced during the war,
some mountain folks planted it. Called makyaw, the native variety
had a smell which did not go down well with the farm folks, the
reason why makyaw was not popularly produced then. But the yellow
corn has been found highly nutritious and used as chicken feed mix.
Recently, though, with the price of rice gone up
to more than P40 a kilo what used to be only P25 or P26 some months
ago, and with white corn grit going up to P32 and up per kilo, what
used to be only P16 per kilo of the No. 14 or 16 grit, many have
turned to the lowly makyaw for their meals. Surprisingly, I found
the imported present variety of yellow corn used as chicken feed mix
to be without smell, and highly palatable.
The yellow corn grit in the local market now
costs only P24 a kilo, while the white one costs P32 or P33. The
imported variety has a plain taste, and without the disturbing smell
the old folks said our native variety had before. It looks so
yellow, though, having a plateful of it is like having a dishful of
the hard-boiled chicken egg yolk. Taken with a fresh fish paksiw
paired with hot chocolate, one could have a satisfying breakfast.
Then of course, you could have either white rice
or yellow corn lugaw or porridge instead of plain cooked rice or
yellow corn grit. It could also go with “washed” salted fine
dilis immersed in vinegar and spiced with hot pepper, some onions
and garlic finely sliced. Indeed, the rising prices of gasoline,
rice and corn grit, the kilo of fish—really, the price of almost
everything we need to survive, except life itself—has become
prohibitive.
Our life, as you may have observed, has grown
cheap. One can lose his life over an outmoded cell phone or what
another may consider as a dirty look. But I feel quite enriched to
rediscover the things we had of the hard life during the last war
when there was nothing to expect or depend on to keep alive, except
oneself. At the moment, one has to face the prevailing realities,
when one’s income does not measure up to rising prices.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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