Calamansi is available year round and is usually seen in its unripened state as a dark green fruit, but if left to ripen it turns a tangerine orange color.

It is used to make beverages, flavoring fish (particularly kinilaw), and used as an added flavoring in cakes, pies, preserves, sauces, and marmalades. It can also be used in soups and teas.

Because of its citrus acid, it is used with tuna to make a ceviche type of entre called kinilaw. The tuna, onions and sliced cucumbers are cured with vinegar, ginger and of course calamansi for that sweet sour citrus taste.

For a cool refreshing drink, calamansi juice makes a great beverage. Mixed with sugar and water it is very good when you’re hot, throat is dry and you do not want a soda and more flavor than just water.

Calamansi is also used to flavor cakes, pies and cookies. It’s is similar to using lemon or lime to add that little extra flavor.

For such a little fruit, it has many other uses. The juice can be used to remove ink stains from cloth and it can be used as a deodorant too.

For medicinal purposes it can be applied to the scalp to reduce dandruff. Crushing it, it can be used as a shampoo or the juice applied after shower to reduce itching. For bug mites just rub the fruit on the affected area to reduce swelling and itching.

For nausea and fainting, squeeze the rind and hold to the nose as an inhalant. For coughs and sore throats, warm calamansi tea is a good home remedy. Calamansi juice boiled with water is a good remedy for constipation too.

It is easy to grow at your home or is available at all markets and fruit stands. At the Palengke you will see many children carrying bags of calamansi for sale walking through the market.

Her brother, wife and helper were also there and asked me to drive them to the location to get a Van to return to Kidapawan. There was one more rider in the car, her brother’s future champion Cock Fighter. Yes, a young rooster in a little net bag. Well we filled the trunk with all the baggage and squeezed 7 people in my little Kia Rio and off we went. Traffic was lighter than but not as light as the few days prior.

After dropping the Kidapawan Clan off, we returned home. There was a box and small Styrofoam cooler that was not with them when they left. It turned out it was a box of crabs and a cooler of shrimp. I now feel bad I never took any photos, but with everyone moving around unpacking and Elena separating the crabs, some for us and some for a friend who asked Elena to bring some back I was just told to keep out of the way.

For dinner Elena made the crabs. They were steamed and as always, my kind sweet wife would break out the meat and place it on my plate. The crabs were delicious and I enjoyed dinner so much.

Monday night Elena was cooking and I was out of the way. I did not realize Elena bought 2 types of shrimps, maybe these qualify as prawns, and when I was called into dinner I had 4 HUGE shrimp tails lightly breaded and fried. In my life I had never had a shrimp that large. The tail meat was about 5 to 6 inches long and the thick end was about 1 inch in diameter. The meat was a little firmer than usual shrimp and had the sweetness and consistency of almost a lobster tail. When I looked at the girls taking the heads to consume I thought they were crabs since they were so big. Elena told me the 4 shrimp weighed 1 kilo. That would make each shrimp over ½ pound before beheaded and cleaned. I could not believe it and if you have never eaten a shrimp this big, just the 4 shrimp tails, a small amount of boiled potatoes and some broccoli filled me up so much I did not even want any desert.

As I was starting this article, I mentioned to Elena about how I wished I would have photographed the crabs and shrimp before cooking and after. She showed me, and I photographed, a few other shrimp she had left over. The big one was a size of 6-7 per kilo. She also told me the cost was so much cheaper in Bislig than in Davao, almost half the price.

Too bad it is a 7 hour bus trip or else I would be willing to send her there each month with a big ice chest to get more.

I guess in the future I will not be as upset when she wants to visit family knowing of the great meals I will get once she returns.

At the markets, there is a fresh supply of vegetables delivered daily. If you eat at home a lot and if the person doing the cooking is educated on cooking in a healthy conscience way, you can eat well and healthy.

There are 3 things in the normal Filipino cooking culture that is not very healthy. They are fried foods, salt and msg. Most of the main items are fried, chicken, fish, beef and pork. Frying is the main way of cooking. When I first visited Elena’s home and when I first moved here I noticed so much frying. Items not usually fried in Western culture are fried here.

I experienced bacon, hamburger, canned corned beef hash fried in oil. There is also the usual Filipino diet of dried fish that is fried. Chicken, pork, beef and fish is fried. Filipinos will also add garlic to left over rice and fry that too.

Also soup cubes or otherwise known as bouillon cubes are used often for soups and sauces. The 2 main ingredients are salt and MSG (Mono Sodium Glutamate). Then most foods are eaten with Soy Sauce which is high in salt also. Many homes have MSG and add it to their cooking too.

I heard MSG was actually a neurotoxin. I tried to research this fact and found supporting and non-supporting reports about MSG. I do know as I child, I would get severe headaches after eating Chinese food at one restaurant. I also noticed here, after eating in local restaurants serving local foods I would feel tired and had dry mouth.

I am not a doctor, but I know too much salt and too much fried foods are not good for your health. When I was young, and in Basic Training in the U.S. Army, I saw in the Mess Halls dispensers for Salt Tablets. I was in Basic Training during the winter, but was told, in the summers, they used to give the recruits salt tables to help retain fluids in the body. I was also told this practice was stopped for health reasons, but the dispensers were not removed as of yet.

I remember, one of the reasons for the need of some salt is for the iodine. Well, living so close to the gulf, there is enough salt and iodine in the air you get most of your needed intake just from breathing.
Here at home, we do not use granulated MSG, bouillon cubes and cook with less salt. Also there is more foods sauteed in Olive oil. We also use a pressure cooker for a most of the beef and pork.

If you are conscience of healthy cooking, and your wife is willing to learn, you can eat healthier here in the Philippines.

Ampalaya is a vegetable widely eaten here in the Philippines. The leaves and fruit – used as vegetables – are excellent sources of Vit B, iron, calcium, and phosphorus. It has twice the amount of beta carotene in broccoli and twice the calcium content of spinach.

It can be bitter if not prepared and cooked correctly. The first time I tasted it I did not mind the bitter taste but the aftertaste lingered too long. Once I tasted the way Elena makes it, I found there is a better way to prepare and I look forward to find it on the dinner table.

Here is the recipes from Elena’s Kitchen

Gisadong Ampalaya

Ingredients:
2 Ampalaya
4 eggs
2 cloves diced garlic
½ cup diced white onion
1 cup diced red tomatoes (remove seeds)
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 ½ tbsp butter
¼ tsp Marjoram (optional)
¼ tsb Thyme (optional)

Preparation:

1 tbsp salt
Boiling water

Slice Ampalaya lengthwise and remove seeds, then slice into very thin pieces.
Place slices into bowl and sprinkle with salt to absorb moisture.
Squeeze sliced Ampalaya to remove liquid and rinse and drain.
Cover with boiling water and let sit for approx 10-15 minutes.
Drain water and squeeze to remove remaining water.
Put aside to rest for 5 minutes.

Cooking Directions:

Heat oil and butter in medium to large skillet over medium heat until hot
Add garlic and onions and cook until translucent
Add tomatoes and stir until hot
Add sliced Ampalaya, salt, pepper, thyme and marjoram and stir for about 10 minutes
Beat eggs and pour over mixture and stir until cooked.

If you have any recipes, please email them to me with any photos and I will try to post them and give you credit.

Eat and Enjoy

Produce is different. In the states you can go into the market and find many varieties of vegetables and fruits. One of the items I miss is large ripe red tomatoes, even if they were picked green and some procedure ripened them. Eggplant is the Asian type which is small and thin, not like the main variety in the states that is huge and can feed a family. There are items I had not seen before such as long beans. These are like string beans but are about 1 foot long. Potatoes are small and I have never seen any young red potatoes.

Here the tomatoes are small, a little larger than an egg and most are still green or just turning red. Lettuce and cabbage are much smaller too.

Rice. In the states I thought there were just one or two types of white rice. Here there are so many and each type has different grades. Some differences are where they are grown. Before moving here I just thought rice was rice. Yes there is brown rice and wild rice, but with wild rice the wild part is a grain, not rice.

Someone told me the quality items are exported and we get the ones that cannot get shipped out. I think it might be with the large population the growers do not let them reach maturity so they can get them to the stores.

There is something else I miss but am better off without. That is frozen convenience foods. Back in the states if I was too tired to cook or go out to eat, I could open the freezer, grab a frozen meal and pop it into the microwave.

Here we buy vegetables, meats, fruits fresh. With the frozen meals, a lot are loaded with salt and fats. Even the ones that say they are “healthy”

One of my problems is there is so much MSG used in package foods here. And then some people add more when they are cooking.

All our meals are made with fresh items and I have been showing Elena how to cook with home made sauces and not the items loaded with MSG.

What ever the reasons, this is one of my observations.

As with anyone who has moved to a new country in a different part of the world, you just need to get used to what is available and try to forget what is not available.