Feeding hungry kids

You’ll have a handful now that the school doors have closed and the children are home. They can’t be forever at the beach, in the swimming pool, or in some bowling alley or basketball court. Therefore, you are saddled with the incessant cry that they are "really, really starving," most of the time wanting junk food to munch on while watching games or playing around the house.

What to do? Be sure they have good regular meals. Consent to let them enjoy a bit of chichiria, but choose those without MSG. Give them nutritious snacks. Hotcakes are among the easiest/fastest breakfast or merienda to prepare at home. Pillsbury has One-Step and traditional hotcake mixes. Maya produces easy-to-bake bibingka and other mixes. Magnolia has recently come up with two variants: Hotcake mix comes in boxes, each at less than P30 and makes five reasonably-sized pieces. This does not need any egg and produces fluffy, creamy tasting pancakes. Each box has a sachet of flavored syrup. The Pancake & Waffle mix is in tetrapak, much bigger at 500 gms to which one egg has to be added for hotcakes and two for waffles. You also have to put more cake flour and water as instructed if making waffles. They are on a promo sale (below P30) at South Supermarket in Alabang.

Cookies will also be ideal. There’s one we recently discovered: D’licious, under the brand Luxury and produced by Hwa Tai in Malaysia, individually wrapped and come in different flavors. Our favorite is Tiramisu. This costs less than P50 for a box of eight.

Serve fresh juices to the young ones. What we did through the growing up years of our daughters was never to have soft drinks in our refrigerator. That way even if they were craving for it at home, they couldn’t get any. Try this with your kids. They may complain initially but will soon settle for what is on hand. Pineapples are very cheap, so crush them into a juice drink.

Melons and mangoes are specially sweet these days as they are in season. Have your kids take fruits after meals. We recently made the acquaintance of husband and wife team of Ogie and Emily at the BF Parañaque Market who sell fresh fruits and vegetables, and we have not been disappointed—yet.

During a trip to Batangas City a few days ago, we noted the multi-product stores on the roadside. While before they simply sold corn and some fruits local to the province, they now have mangoes which are from Pangasinan, still reasonable at P60 a kilo. We got lovely, smooth-skinned caimitos (star apples), the morado (purple) ones, newly picked from trees in the neighborhood for P50 a kilo. A thoughtful niece, a practicing doctor, gave us the popular tender, well-seasoned tapa and longganiza from Taal, plus panocha (to the Batangueños), plate-sized peanut sweets made with muscovado sugar and some very delicious Nangka Pastillas.

On our way back we had to make a stop in Biñan for the pospas (arroz caldo) of Tony by the movie house in the town square and Nila’s puto on the highway. Surprisingly, they have not increased their prices, the former at P35 per serving and the latter at P135 a hulog which is one big bilao (flat native basket).

Don’t be misled by the comparatively low price of some imported canned goods. While they are cheap, most of them are tasteless, such as Kirkland (this medical supplier now seems to be in food as well) Roast Beef. We had to add seasoning to make it palatable.

At South Supermarket we were pleased to find shelled crab meat, fresh and smelling good. The young lady at the counter was gracious enough to let us sniff it. We got one-fourth kilo, which was enough to make seven omelets with cubed potatoes. Also in this store, native garlic is tagged at P150 a kilo, much cheaper than elsewhere. They are comparatively bigger as well.

Recently after preparing pork kilawin (Biñan style), we had half a papaya left. We did not want to throw it away, so we made achara. Combine equal amounts of sugar and vinegar, add thinly sliced ginger, chopped native onions, peppercorns, two siling pasete and red bell pepper cut into narrow strips. Mix well so that the liquid soaks all the dry ingredients before putting the pickled papaya into a bottle; let stand at room temperature, away from the fridge, for at least three days. Served with fried fish and pork tocino, we got an A from our brood. Try it, even if you don’t have a spare half papaya. Buy one, it’s cheap.