Cultural Night: Filipino

Our July cultural night features The Philippines! You would think that this being our home country, we would have a lot of ideas what to do but it had an opposite effect on us and we reflected a bad Filipino trait which is katamaran! Our excuse: Adaptability is also a Filipino trait which we are exhibiting just by living in a foreign country and that's what we have been doing for the past months so we felt that we need not do that much in one day. I know, I know...it's a lousy excuse. Anyway, here goes:

Food: Filipinos love eating. During fiestas, to say that there are lots of food prepared is an understatement. However, the Ilokano in me found it impractical to do a lot of dishes for only the two of us so we narrowed it down to Puto't Dinuguan and Iloko Empanada. 

Why these? Our puto mix is expiring that month so we had to use it and Iloko Empanada was not listed in our usual meal raffle. In short, it was a case of hitting two birds with one stone. Both of which, we did for the first time so there were some kapalpakan. 

For the dinuguan, I bought fresh pork blood but later on I realized that the recipe I was replicating used a frozen one. I was not sure how to handle it so the sauce was not as smooth and tasty as I expected it to be but looked like dinuguan nevertheless. 

For the Iloko empanada, we had a hard time making the dough. The first recipe used rice flour but it broke down very easily and would not stick. I passed it to cook-from-the-heart Popy to "retokize" it but to no avail. The second attempt I used part of the recipe from the Goldilocks bake book but it was too sticky, thick and not sturdy enough to hold the filling. We ended up making it a week later after buying a ready made lumpia wrapper. I also forgot to buy a grater for the green papaya so I had a hard time preparing it.

Movie: It seems that we have a pattern with our cultural night movies. So far, all of them have been based from a true story: Abebe Bikila in Athlete, Michaelangelo in Agony and Ecstasy and now Elma Muros in Thelma. Another similarity from previous movie: runner na naman! Dahil running na naman, kaya kami nagmamarathon...movie marathon nga lang! Pinilit lang! Wakoko! Our watchlist included Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz's "It Takes a Man and Woman" and Pokwang's "A Mother's Love".

Activity: Wala kaming maisip na activity so nangapitbahay na lang kame. Ganun ang ginagawa pag laban ni Pacquiao d b? :p