It’s been a while and I really missed WordPress. There is something wrong with our server. For more than three days now, the connection has been quite erratic. When you’re blogging every day your thoughts come in burst of inspirations and it is easier to share. A week’s lapse seems a long time. I feel as if I have forgotten how to blog 
Would you believe if I say that one of the highlights of the week is discovering new and old things in the wet market? I like going to the wet market twice or thrice a month with my son in tow, of course. Fruits and root crops are in season nowadays. I’m beginning to think it’s summer now because you can see summer fruits like mangoes aplenty.
Yeay, we bought fresh green mangoes to go with the bagoong alamang which I plan to cook with lots of chili. Sweet potato comes in different varieties, I bought the yellow ones. There are so many ways of preparing this, you can have it baked, simply boiled, make it into fritters or just mix it with other vegetables. Turnips or what we locally know as singkamas are also in season now. I mix diced turnips with ground pork to make a simple siomai which is a favorite in our household.
I remember the times when I was in grade school and every summer break, we go to our relative’s farm in our place in Pangasinan and help them harvest peanuts. By the time we are ready to go home, we are loaded with a sack of freshly dug sweet potato and peanuts. We boil them together in a large pot and enjoy eating them at night while we just relax and exchange ghost stories with my cousins. Mom used to buy them in bulk and save them for rainy days for everyday snacks. Those were the days when life was simple. I was fascinated seeing this sticky black rice and asked the vendor how it is cooked. He said that it is prepared same way you cook the white one. I bought half a kilo of this and two pieces of panocha, a type of mascuvado sugar made into rounded blocks and used for making sweets. This is the first time that I made use of black rice, it needs more cooking than the regular sticky rice sold in the market. Using two pieces of coconut and one piece of panocha, I made a rice cake which in our native dialect is called binanlay or biko in Tagalog. I love its purple color and the taste is a little different compared to the regular sticky rice sold in the market. It’s another successful kitchen experiment, I guess 
It tasted so yummy that I intend to cook more of it and top it with latik. My son is also interested to learn how to cook so I taught him how to make a simple vegetable lumpia using the fresh ingredients we bought at the wet market – carrots, Baguio beans, sweet potato and turnips. I love any kind of lumpia and this is good with spicy vinegar used as dip.
It’s what I like about observing the season of Lent because we get to eat lots of fruits, fish and vegetables and a little of meat on the side. Abstaining from eating meat most days of Lent and all Fridays of the year, we get to invent recipes that need simple ingredients. Eating healthy is eating well, don’t you think?
Reblogged this on MR. TASTY RESTAURANT NTINDA and commented:
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Such delicious treats Ms. Arlene! Love the color of that biko. Now these are making me hungry. Happy cooking. =)
Hi Chellet, thank you! The biko is quite colorful, isn’t it? And it taste yummy too. Thanks for dropping by.
hi Arlene, is that dark rice cake “inlubi”? looks yum!
No, it’s not, it’s really black rice mixed with red and white ones. I know how inlubi is made because when I was in grade school, I always enjoyed seeing them prepare “deremen” then later cook it with coconut cream which we call “inlubi”. I miss that too LolaWi and I think this is closest to it in taste and texture.
thanks Arlene! “deremen” was the word i was looking! it’s been ages and i thought i have forgotten the taste. but now i’m craving for both! lol
Now that you mentioned deremen, I suddenly miss it