What the hell is ‘pagpag’?

Sometimes I really think I gave birth to myself, not once but twice (if I may quote our dear Susan Roces)! My three-year-old seems to have inherited my short fuse; my two-year-old, my eating habits. My youngest boy is so picky with food and wants to eat fried chicken all the time, which is what I used to eat all time. Believe it or not, I ate KFC for four years straight, Monday to Friday when I was in high school. I got sick of it and shifted to Tom Sawyer in college.

Tom Sawyer. I have such memories of that fried chicken joint that used to be in Greenhills Shopping Center. I had just come back from Tokyo and proudly wore my new red gingham skirt to buy my lunch. Lo and behold, when I entered Tom Sawyer, silence greeted me. Guests stopped chewing, waiters stopped serving, and the cashier stopped adding. They looked at me in suspended animation. I had forgotten that the curtains, tablecloth, napkins, not to mention the staff uniform, were red gingham. I simply held my chin up and ordered my wings to go. I not proud to say I’m mainly a meat-and-carbs person. I still don’t eat vegetables, and I’m afraid my boys will inherit this unhealthy trait.

When I was a kid, I was impossible to feed. I remember gagging – nay, throwing up – at the first taste of squash at age three (yes, I can remember that way back). I haven’t eaten squash ever since, and I don’t think my folks really forced me to eat vegetables, seeing that I did have a bad habit of vomiting at mealtime. It was only when I was a bit older that I began to try other food: french fries and potatoes didn’t taste so vile at the age of 15. Caesar salad and some greens became appealing in my 20s. I started to really enjoy food (read: buffets) at the age of 26, which was the time I started to put on weight. These days I think of beef a lot. I can remember certain meals that I’ve really enjoyed because I don’t know if I’ll ever have it again. For instance, some really expensive steak in Tokyo shared with my dad and sister. It was a 1960s-looking restaurant with like four tables and no bigger than my bedroom. And the Wagyu steak at Tsukiji is something else. I can’t tell you how much it costs due to the theme of this story. Let’s just say one has serious guilt upon ordering and eating something so good and expensive at the same time. Sometimes I have a really bad craving for yakiniku from Sakura, a dodgy-looking but excellent grilling restaurant on Pasay Road. It’s affordable compared to Tsukiji, but I usually wait for my mom’s treat to eat there.

Pagpag

Then there are days I remember pagpag. Now what the hell is that? You’d better thank your lucky stars if you don’t have a clue.

I’ve been going through some serious insomnia lately, so I’ve discovered that they show the most fantastic things on TV at 1 a.m.

While my husband quietly snored one Friday night I watched an episode of Emergency hosted by that funny-looking reporter, Arnold Clavio. I could never watch that guy until my baby took a liking to the Arn-Arn muppet he talks to on Unang Hirit.

Now I’m hooked on Emergency.

It started with some scavengers going out into the night with a giant kariton. I have seen it for myself on Shaw Boulevard, these people who pick the trash bags and leave such a nightmare for the garbage collectors.

They collect all sorts of recyclables such as cans, plastic bottles and styros with leftover food from the garbage bins of fast food joints. When they have amassed a certain amount they go home, park the garbage, and simply go to sleep after a hard day’s work.

The following morning a group of women are seen segregating the garbage into recyclables and pagpag. The latter refers to leftover chicken and bones. A woman who looked like she rose from Dante’s Inferno explains that she’s segregating edible pieces from the bones. The "edibles" are then packed into cardboard boxes, such as those used to pack tetra juices.

She brings the box of "freshly" harvested pagpag (literally, half-eaten chicken meat) to an old woman in a carinderia who has a bad dye job (read: anak araw). The woman pays her P50 and washes the pagpag with her bare hands, three times in a basin of murky water. I have no idea if soap is used.

The pagpag is then cooked two ways: one is like afritada where loads of tomato sauce is used to mask what is practically garbage (sold at P10/serving); the other is dropped in boiling oil and called "fried pagpag" (P15).

Customers arrive. I am not making fun of them, but they really look like mutants (read: one-eyed monsters), and you know what they say: you are what you eat. These are truly the dregs of society. They look like they were exhumed from Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Arnold Clavio returns with two nutritionists from Makati Med to explain to the people the illnesses one can get from pagpag: such as salmonella and E. coli.

A toothless customer uses her hands to eat pagpag. With bits of rice flying out of her mouth, she says she eats it daily and has never been sick. She is strong enough to carry two plastic containers of water daily and beat up her husband when she gets home.

The carinderia cook says she has never heard of anyone getting sick from pagpag. The nutritionists say these people are probably immune.

I watched this gory show with much interest, while hiding in a comforter under my chin. I don’t remember how I eventually drifted to sleep.

The following day I could barely eat brunch.

I asked the maids, "Do you know what pagpag is?" The yaya slapped the bed several times and said, "Ma’am, pagpag?"

"No, not that," I explained it to them, having previously heard their starvation stories in the province.

Thank God they’ve never heard of it.

I guess that’s something to think about whenever we don’t like the food that’s in front of us, whenever we want to eat something expensive, or whenever we dream of buying a really expensive handbag.