the four year old cutie completed an important milestone in her life last week by graduating from prep school (ha.ha., but hey, that’s what got us started!) 😛 her parents were so proud because, like her ate, she was awarded a “bright child” medal. (she wore that medal from morning till night, by the way, while she “collected” her gifts (she prefers cash, thank you) from lolos, lolas, titos and titas 😀 (smart girl, isn’t she?)
anyway, we had lunch at partyplace and their popular buffet spread. (you remember partyland, don’t you?) the place was jampacked so i wasn’t able to take a photo of the buffet. if i remember right it had kilayin, bopis, chicken pastel, lumpiang shanghai, and lechon paksiw — typical of a capampangan fiesta spread (and all of which have been exhaustively blogged here previously, ha.ha.).
i zeroed in on the freshly fried hito (catfish) though — straight out of the kitchen to the table. i tore a mustasa (mustard) leaf, layered it with tagilo (fermented rice with fish), dumped some chunks of hito, and then rolled it like a tobacco. the bitterness of the greens, the sour-salty pungency of the tagilo, and the crunch of the hito pieces — pure heaven! this alone was worth the price of the buffet.
Friendship & Fries 
LOL, if you needed more proof that child is smart, you got it right there 😉 so, does she have her own bank account? (was it BPI that had the hello kitty saving program for kids?) or does she bank with mom and dad, he he he?
anyway, that hito, tagilo with mustasa is another of those dishes my apu would have loved, god rest her sould. she made a mean tagilo, with shrimps and sometimes with young bamboo shoots (remember the kawayan on the farthest end of our backyard?). she had an “aparador” (wooden cabinet) near the manual water pump where anything that needed to be made into “buro” was kept. talangka, tagilo, etc.
you know, i might be asked to renounce my capampangan-ness because of this but i don't like tagilo. the smell just really gets to me 😛
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hay, the stinkier the tagilo, the better! 😀 though oddly, this one that they served did not smell at all, but was quite good.
lol at your apu's aparador outside the house. talk about pickling under the elements (reminds me of how the koreans do their kimchi).
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