Monday, March 12, 2007

Baguio vegetables

Mike and I spent the weekend in Baguio with our friends Anj and Jan and boy, what a food trip! Among the food highlights:

  • An accidental trip to the Strawberry Farms. From Tam-awan village, we decided to look for the vegetable trading post in La Trinidad. We couldn't find it; instead we chanced upon a sign directing us to the La Trinidad strawberry farms! We happily walked among the strawberries in the field, taking pictures. We sampled strawberry taho, strawberry wine, and strawberry ice cream, and ended our visit by buying seven kilos of strawberries among the four of us, and a few jars of strawberry jam. Yum!
  • Dessert at the Manor. We discovered that the Manor has excellent cakes and pastries! Sinfully delicious!
  • Chocolate baterol at John Hay. Mmmm!
  • Mongolian food at Oh May Kahn. Owned by the family of a batchmate of ours, Oh May Kahn has scrumptious Mongolian barbecue and a delicious a la carte menu as well.
  • Soy coffee at Ben-hur Villanueva's gallery, Arko ni Apo. Sculptor Ben-hur Villanueva was Mike and Jan's art teacher in grade school! We introduced ourselves and ended up spending about an hour with Ben-hur and his gracious family. They served us interesting soy coffee made even more interesting with the wonderful company.
  • Lunch at a Korean restaurant on Legarda road (I think). We enjoyed a scrumptious spicy chicken dish.

  • Fresh vegetables from the Baguio market. Baguio vegetables!!! Oh, if only Metro Manila had vegetables as fresh and as cheap as Baguio does, we'd all be a much healthier city. I found watercress--a rarity in Manila (and made myself some Vietnamese Shaking Beef salad today). Fresh parsley was P20 per kilo and for five pesos I now have enough fresh parsley to serve it on every single dish for the next two weeks.


Happy happy joy joy.

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4 comments:

Ahoy! said...

wow, what an enviable food trip! Not strawberry season here yet, but soon, soon... :-) The mesquite chicken sounds interesting, and I would like to try it but I don't know what to substiute for mesquite powder, and none of the websites I've been really describes what it is and what it tastes like. What do you think? Is it like breadcrumbs?

Christianne said...

Hi Rowie! Oh my, ang sarap nga ng Mongolian ng Oh May Kahn. I guess it's a local favorite because a friend of ours who's a Baguio native recommended it. I've never been to the strawberry farms, sana makapunta ako the next time we visit Baguio :)

rowie said...

Hey Ahoy! Hmm, I'm not too sure what a substitute for mesquite is either. Mesquite is a tree from the southern part of the US, and it's the wood from the tree that is used for smoking and grilling. I asked my mom (who's based in the US) to buy us a bottle of mesquite powder. I suppose powdered hickory flavoring might also taste good.

Hi Christianne! Yup, sarap nga ng Oh May Kahn! The strawberry farms were a pleasant, serendipitous surprise. :) We're still enjoying the strawberry jam we got from there, hehe!

Ahoy and Christianne -- Do you know each other or is it by fantastic coincidence that the only two Pinays I know living in Sweden just happened to visit my blog in the same week? :P

Christianne said...

Coincidence lang. Got here through Toni's link to your old blog :) I only found Ahoy's blog by clicking on her comment in this post, and I could relate to so many of the things she experienced in her first few months here!