Back to routine

After the Easter break, we are back to our routine, as everyone should be. Our first research venture after the Lenten holiday was at the Metro Mall, where we took a look and bought some items in the supermarket section. They have quite a lot of promo sales and at the early hours of that week day, shoppers were coming in, with families, little children and all.

By the entrance, before getting in, are swimming items – floaters, etc. – for children. In fact, we noticed young tots and their mothers, with some of the little ones choosing what they preferred. There is the stall where Lechon Cebu is sold, the newest offering being the rolled lechon belly. By the first check out counter, near the entrance, is a row of comfortable chairs, exclusive to seniors, but we noticed a non-senior mother and her family nonchalantly sitting there, unmindful of a couple of seniors waiting to sit. Has respect for elders escaped some of our kababayans? Sad.

We walked over to where the fruits were and got more than a half kilo of what were supposed to be seedless red grapes. Well, we discovered they had seeds when we had them after lunch at home. They sold for P380 a kilo. We then took the risk of buying half a kilo of beef sirloin. We say “risk” because we have yet to find a really tender sirloin in any supermarket, except perhaps in Tenderbites at Makati, where premium beef is sold at a premium price. We were assured by the attendant that it was tender. How disappointing that when we cooked the Metro sirloin as the family favorite – steak marinated in light soy sauce and calamansi juice, with lots of onion rings – the beef was tough! Even steak knives could not cut through them. So as not to waste the remaining pieces, we sliced them very thinly, ran them through olive oil (to inject more flavor) and added a small amount of oyster sauce, plus strips of carrots.

However we did find some good buys in the supermarket, like the bottled Langers Cranberry Plus 100% Juice and the frozen lasanga from France. Unfortunately the latter had no English text on its label, nor any illustration for heating it in the microwave. We did some guessing and it worked! We enjoyed the lasagna. Thus ends our first foray into a supermarket after the Lenten holidays.

On another trip to a different outlet, we got a bottle of oyster sauce made by Mama Sita’s. In the course of our culinary ventures, we have had only very few uses for oyster sauce. Well, this bottle we bought came with a tiny, tiny booklet titled “Mama Sita’s Masarap, Madali, Masustansya at Abot-Kaya” recipes. On reaching home, our cook immediately executed the ginisang pechay and tokwa which gained the approval of the family. We will now try the others – tortang puso ng saging (very new to us, as we never thought of doing puso ng saging or banana blossom this way), pancit bam-i (a new take on this noodle dish), lumpiang papaya (green) with oyster sauce and talong especial. Pick up a bottle of this sauce, and do serve these innovative dishes. We certainly will, after all, they give us new uses for oyster sauce which, in the past, we limited only to Chinese dishes.                 

Prior to the Holy Week we dropped by the Seaside Market on Daang Hari to buy some seafood for the abstinence days ahead. The vendors upped their prices, definitely because they knew people would be buying seafood during the week. Jumbo sugpo (prawns) which we used to get for P580 a kilo was then tagged at P680. They would only go down to P630, not a centavo less. We hopped over to South Supermarket where we got half a kilo of sliced mahi-mahi to make into sarsiado which cost us much less than the prawns.

Have a good family bonding Sunday.

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