Food For Thought...

This was an entry I started a long time ago... I've been inspired to finish it in honor of our friends Shannon and Bryan who will venture here in March with their son, Benjamin.  Understandably, Shan is a little apprehensive about the food selection she'll have to offer her son after reading pages worth of our complaining about rice and fish...  turns out, it ain't so bad...

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I love food!  Reading the preparatory material for our journey to the Philippines led to a bit of anxiety. Our Peace Corps material suggested a vegetarian lifestyle would be very difficult to maintain.  I think the quote was, "it's easier to live as a homosexual than a vegetarian in the Philippines."  Wow... considering it's a predominantly Catholic country, and I'm pretty sure it's not been 'easy' to live as a homosexual in most cultures, especially devout Catholic regions, I was convinced maintaining a vegetarian lifestyle would take an act of God.

I anticipated force feeding myself a variety of meat items while in country just to be polite.  I  also considered perfecting the old "cough your food into the napkin" routine.

While I haven't had to eat a full chicken, there have been some debacles along the way.  Once, Lola tricked me into eating pork rind and thought it was hysterical (she told me it was like a potato chip).  Another time I was told Lumpia was vegetarian (because it had vegetables in it... along with pork).

Alas, as they say, God is good... we have not had to sell our souls to the Devil to enjoy the foods that fit our values.  Quite the contrary, we love the food we get to eat.  While we call ourselves 'vegetarian', we do eat fish (why is it we humans so desperately want to label ourselves?).  Living so close to the sea, the fish is fresh, delicious, and affordable... along with the fruits and vegetables in wild abundance.

Here's some of the pure deliciousness happening in our little corner of the world:

Rainbow of colors at the market.

Fresh seafood!

Fresh squeezed Kalamansi juice...
so time consuming, and so worth it!

Raw food chef Michelle Cerise writes me frequently with encouragement...
she always inspires me to take advantage of the abundance of raw!!

Calabasa- a staple round these parts.

It's making my mouth water right now.

And we can always find sweet treats when we need 'em :-)
(Steve Mann visited for 2 and 1/2 weeks and treated me often....)

Edible flowers!  No, not a salad we made at home.... Bohol Bee Farm.

Doesn't always look this fancy, and we drink a lot of coconut juice.
(This was my 35th birthday "cake"!)

Beer na beer!
Not bad for a couple beer snobs from Colorado :-)