Author: Yolly Sotelo Fuertes

(When I get the time, I will post the different recipes concocted by Villasis people, most of them women, with eggplant as the main ingredient. I tasted some of them during the cookfest and they were really delicious. The winning piece is a little difficult, or maybe time consuming, to prepare. But my friend Vir Maganes who is from Villasis, found it really worth the P5,000 cash prize. I asked the winners what they will do with the money and they said they will give it to the barangay council. I asked, “But why? It’s your money, you should do what you want with it. Maybe start a livelihood project… They just smiled and said they will think about it. Its not much but… Hurray to the women of Villasis!)
VILLASIS, Pangasinan — This agricultural town in eastern Pangasinan is set to prove that eggplant — its main agricultural product — can be cooked in a hundred ways.
During the cookfest during the Third Talong Festival on Friday, 22 recipes with eggplant as the main ingredient were prepared and cooked by representatives of the barangays. This brought to 65 the number of original recipes featuring the versatile vegetable prepared by the townsfolk, said Libradita Abrenica, the town's first lady and chair of the town fiesta's executive committee.
Abrenica said during the first and second runs of the annual festivals, there were 21 and 22 recipes entered in the cookfest. When the number of recipes reach 100, the local government will publish a recipe book, she said.
"The entries get better yearly.Before, the entries were simple ones. But they are getting much versatile and there are unusual entries, the presentation are much better, too," Abrenica said.
The first prize was bagged by Puelay village with its recipe Hidden Talong Mix. Estela Bautista, the group's leader, explained that she got inspiration from butsi, those small rice cakes with fillings like mongo and ube.
She said quail eggs are hard-boiled, halved, and the yolks are removed. The eggs are then filled with mashed eggplant (broiled), then coated with a mixture of mashed eggplant, shredded carrots, chopped hotdogs and pork, spices and seasonings. Then these are rolled in uncooked glutinous rice and coconut milk then steamed for 45 minutes. The Hidden Talong is paired with nutririous malungay juice, a concoction of boiled malungay leaves, honey and calamanci juice.
The second price was the Eggplant Con Yugghort (Camarutan), while the third was a tie betwen Eggplant Pizza (Zone I) and Nazi Guring con Talong (San Nicolas).
The winners got P5,000, P3,000 and P2,000 prices, respectively.
The other entries are also gastronomical delights — talong bopis, eggplant nugget, pinausukang talong, eggplant salad, eggplant sarciado, talong rings, fritters, fried eggplant with rolling bread crumbs, siomai na talong, ratata, salad.
"These recipes prove that eggplant is really a versatile vegetable and I am proud that the residents are able to come up with different recipes adopted to local taste," Abrenica said.
And if there's one thing that parents with picky kids should be happy about, these are recipes with vegetables but which children will surely love to eat.
Four of the five judges were Villasis residents already living abroad, including Fe Prado Nardini who, together with her husband Giulinao, operates a restaurant called Ristorante Pizzeria "I Nardini" in Toscani, Italy.
Nardini said she was bringing some recipes to Italy and teach her husband how to prepare them.
"Our restaurant faces a camping area where different nationalities like Dutch, English and German, come. They are experimental when it comes to food, and I hope to introduce the eggplant recipes to them," she said.
 

( when Sta. Barbara Mayor Rey Velasco, one of the really committed mayors hereabouts, announced that the rural poor of Sta. Barbara will be the beneficiaries of the housing project of the local government and the Gawad Kalinga, he said a teacher and a policeman (or two teachers and two policemen) were included in the list. It's really sad that a teacher, a guardian of the hope of the fatherland, and a policeman, a guardian (supposedly) of the peace and order, are included in the list. Well, its nice that they were included… but to know that they are part of the rural poor, it breaks the heart).

 

STA. BARBARA, Pangasinan — The Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation has trained its eyes on local government units as partners in the implementation of its housing project as the LGUs have high rating and outstanding leaders, GK national president Tony Meloto said. 

 

Meloto, who signed on Tuesday a memorandum of agreement with Mayor Reynaldo Velasco for the establishment of a GK community with 88 houses in barangay Leet here, said with LGUs as partners, many private corporation will surely assist in the project. 

 

But while the GK has built communities in the country, there was "no good model yet in LGUs as there was no LGU which committed as many mayors are afraid of this challenge.". 

 

"If you invest, we will bring counterpart investments. There are many Filipinos abroad, not necessarily Pangasinenses, who love our country and we will show them Pangasinan's potential by providing a model community which can be copied by other LGUs," he said. 

 

Velasco said a one-hectare area has been prepared for the houses and an adjoining two-hectare lot is also ready for the beneficiaries' livelihood projects like communal vegetable garden and hog raising. The barangay road has been concreted and a concrete bridge has been constructed in place of the hanging bridge that connects Leet village to a nearby village. 

 

Each beneficiary will get a 100-meter lot with 40 square-meter, one-bedroom unit. 

The mayor has tapped relatives and friends and local businessmen for the initial funding of the project. "We have done the preliminary efforts so the visitors will know that we are determined to make the project something to be proud of." 

 

The first unit will be ready in a month time and will serve as a model for the investors. 

Meloto, who said he was coming back after a month, challenged the officials: "Give me bragging rights on the standard community that we will put up. Give me First World standards and even Bill Gates will go down on his knees to help us." 

 

He said while it will house poor people, the GK community here should have first class subdivision standards, with landscaped yards and colorful paints that do not peel off. 

Meloto gave these rules: The houses should have no clotheslines in front yard where tropical flowers are planted, there should be at least five kinds of vegetables including malungay, planted at the back, and no tricycles should be parked along the roads and in front of houses. Drinking alcoholic beverages and cockfighting are prohibited inside the community, he said. 

 

These aspects of "social engineering" will raise the standards by which the residents will look at themselves and bring back their respect for themselves, he said. 

Meloto also said that the residents will sign a contract they they can't sell or have their houses rented out. 

"It's goodbye Bahay Kubo kahit munti. We will put up First World houses and raise the poor residents' standard of living," he said. 

 

He pointed out the Pangasinenses are the biggest Filipino group in Canada and that they are willing to help in putting up GK communities in the province. 

 

"Dati. walang partnership with LGUs. Ang Couples for Christ ang nagpapadugo pero naghemorrage (Before there was no partnership with the LGUs. It was the Couples for Christ which did all the work but was bled dry).Not one organization can rebuild the country and last year, Couples for Christ (which tried to separate from GK) was humbled. Everyone should should together," Meloto said. 

 

He also said that there are many non-government organizations in the country but many Filipinos are still poor because the NGOs do not know how to work together. 

 

"Some are focused on health, some on education. But if we don't work together, wala din (nothing will happen)," he said. 

 

A New Year Story 
 
(This story was written on January 1, 2008. It was for a national daily. But then, it was not published, so I’m posting it here. Yeah, I know it’s late! But there must be a lesson somewhere…)
The Earth shook, large firecrackers exploded with roaring noises, thick smoke rose into the air.
 
It’s 12 o’clock in the afternoon of January 1, the time and day Pogo Grande village in Dagupan City  welcomes the New Year – perhaps the only village in the county that celebrates new year just as everyone is woozy from the past night’s revelry.
For more than 10 years this village has been holding the activity, said barangay chair George Galvan. It was started during the term of then chair Saturnino Siapno when the residents who manufacture firecrackers wanted to explode their unsold products.
It has grown grander yearly, he said. This year, a total of 75,000 firecrackers were strung together and hung above the street or lined along the road of Centro of Pogo Grande. In the western part of the village called Sagur, another 50,000 firecrackers were also exploded.
 

The residents started arranging the firecrackers at early as seven o’clock in the morning. The first explosive, a large rebentador, was lit at exactly 12 p.m. For the next 30 minutes, thunderous explosions pierced the air as residents watched from the sidelines, their hands covering their ears.
Then intermittent explosions followed until at around one o’clock, the village was silent and the roads littered with papers from firecrackers.
The barangay officials are ready for any eventually, Galvan said. Every year, a fire truck and an ambulance are on stand by to response to accidents.
 “But there have been no untoward incident that occurred in the past 10 years,” Galvan said.
 After the explosions have died, the residents retire to their houses, ready to partake of left over food from the Noche Buena the night before.
 A resident said the residents also welcome New Year at 12 in the morning of January 1 with firecrackers and pyrotechnics. But they reserve the biggest explosives for the following day.
 Many residents contribute to make the celebration bigger, former barangay village head Jojo  Ramos said. Some balikbayans give money to buy firecrakers.
The manufacturers also make sure that the firecrackers used are safe, he said.
The celebration has become an attraction of sorts for the village as many residents from other barangays and other towns come to watch as firecrackers boom along the roads.
An observer said it was  “very peculiar” to celebrate with deafening noises and environmentally-unfriendly materials, something that would need a social scientist to explain.