Love Affair With Nature

We've been sadly missing this annual February 14 event every year for various reasons.  Finally, this year, we deliberately made plans to join the citizens of Puerto Princesa City in planting mangroves along the coastline to express our love for nature --- in fact, our love for Puerto Princesa, which has been our home for the past three years.

Conveniently as well, Mangrove Ecosystems was Elise's lesson in her Science home school program for February.  So we had a stronger reason for participating!  We set off, along with another family, at 4:30A.M. to Pook Silangan in Barangay Tagburos, a small coastal fishing village.

When we got there, three priests just finished celebrating Holy Mass by the beach for a huge crowd.  

We hurriedly registered and got our mangrove seedlings.   They were packed in small black bags.  We proudly carried them over to the areas which were assigned for planting. 

As we walked towards the mangrove planting area, we saw many other people walking too.  We were all silent, overwhelmed by the dramatic sky, the cool breeze, the shadows and the rising sun.  This was indeed an expression of love for nature -- walking on the shore with family and friends at the break of dawn to do our part to save the coastline from eroding and eventually protecting them from storms and building a sturdy mangrove ecosystem.  So, we marched on. 

 

We found some marked spots and got some help with planting our seedlings.
 

 
The city government offices like the City Tourism Office and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources sent their staff and managers to plant and help out. Even the PNP and the Philippine Navy were there.

 

Private organizations were there too! 

Locals like us were lingering even after planting several seedlings.

Back at the beach, we caught a glimpse of Mayor Edward Hagedorn officiating a free mass wedding for about a hundred couples. 

     

Around the bend, some dancers were getting ready for the festivities..... 

We spent around an hour and a half there, feeling connected to the community.  We left Tagburos knowing that we helped saved the coastline by planting at least six or seven mangrove trees there. 

We love you, Puerto Princesa!

Sugar Cane Juice

Driving down one of the roads in Barangay San Pedro brought us to this small nipa shack that sells refreshing sugar cane or tubo juice.  We just had to stop and try it. 

The fresh tubo were piled up and ready for juicing.  The light green sticks reminded me of the sugar cane carts that used to pass by our house in Quezon City.  My mom would get us a stick each and we would chew on them to extract the juice. 

The lady with plastic food safe gloves (one point!) pushed the stick into the machine and turned it on.  The stainless steel machine pressed the sticks and efficiently juiced them out.  

While waiting, they had some information posted for the customers to read.  Lots of health benefits from sugarcane juice! 
 

 

Two sugar cane sticks yielded this 12oz cup of juice.  Poured over ice and some calamansi extract, it was the perfect break during a hot day!  I suddenly remembered that in the fruit area of Virra Mall and Shoppesville at the old Greenhills Shopping Center, there was a sugarcane juice stand too.  But their juice did not have the zesty calamansi flavor added to it.

 Since then, I've never passed that shack without stopping for some.  Fresh, every time!  

Breakfast!

Two large eggs. One tomato.  One clove garlic.  5 basil leaves.  A teaspoon of Anchor butter.

I wish I could photograph the fragrance that came out of this five-minute pan-sizzling.  Side by side with warm pan de sal and some fresh coffee, it's a well-balanced breakfast ! Sometimes, this is also lunch.

Here in the Palawan, fresh itlog itik (not the salted kind) can be bought at the market for about P6.00, just P1 more than the regular 45-day egg.  It's organic, with a much redder egg yolk than chicken egg, and the elders claim that it is more nutritious too. 

I read somewhere that almost all important nutrients that your body needs are packed into one egg.  It only has 5 grams of fat and only 70 calories.  The protein in eggs help you control the rate at which your body absorbs calories. You'll feel less hungry at lunch and consume 400+ less calories over a 24-hour period. 
They say that it also improves concentration, as it has Choline, which stimulates brain development and function. Eating an egg before the kids go off to school improves their concentration more than a meal of tapa or tocino with sinangag.

But what is as good as tapa or tocino with sinangag?   LAMAYO! 

Butterflied danggit marinated in garlic, vinegar and pepper, drained and fried in very hot coconut oil.  This, we enjoy with diced tomatoes in more vinegar steeped with red peppers, and lots of garlic rice!

Or dilis... small fish heated on a wok and stir fried with brown sugar and chili pepper....

Or, those small flat fish called palat laid out side by side like one sheet of paper.  They are so thin and crispy, you'll end up eating a whole page!

 

Fish jerky or fish tocino, as they are called at the market, are made of bisugo and are just a bit salty and spicy --- to be eaten with lots of garlic rice (and tomato and cilantro with vinegar!). 

 

When I feel like having an early meatless breakfast, this is what I have --- a bowl of cubed avocado and suman with either banana or mango sprinkled with honey and kasuy.  That and coffee with lots of milk hits the spot.  I do not get hungry till about 11a.m.

 

There is also ibus.  Sticky rice mixed with coconut cream, shaped into small logs, and individually wrapped in a single coconut leaf.  Friends from Iloilo recommend that it be taken with ripe mangoes and hot chocolate, made from tablea.   Rene is on a trip to Bohol, and I asked him to get some from Baclayon.  

When he returns, and we get to enjoy this the way it's supposed to be, that will be another delicious story altogether!

Baking, the Last Frontier

Cooking, I can do.  By cooking, I mean sauteing, steaming, and roasting over an open flame.  Baking, on the other hand, involves more precision and patience, and not much of the room for remedy that cooking offers. So, having built a new home, gone back to homeschooling Elise, and gardening, I think it's about time I seriously make some baked goods!

I started out with making squash muffins.  A friend shared with me her squash bread recipe and I adjusted it by using whole wheat flour.  Over the holidays, I went back to Manila and decided to bake some there.  It tasted different.  The whole wheat flour I bought at All About Baking in Quezon City had a different aftertaste, and the vanilla I used was too strong.  Here in Puerto, the vanilla I used was just the local one manufactured by Neco. When I got back here and baked it again, the muffins were "back to normal."

I tried dusting them with powdered sugar for presentation purposes.  But what I REALLY wanted to do was sprinkle some squash seeds on top.  There aren't any available here, and I didn't really feel like drying any. 

I tried baking cookies too, but they came out flat.  I was so disappointed because I used to make cookies a lot --- in the 1990's.  Then, late 2012, I lost my touch.  One of my friends who is a pastry chef said that I might be over-creaming the butter and sugar, or I might be greasing the cookie pan too much or the quality of butter might not be good.  I baked again and adjusted the creaming time and did not grease the sheets anymore since I realized that my cookie sheets are grease proof.  I also switched now from Baker's Best to Magnolia Gold butter.  Now, I think the butter was too softened to begin with. 

So, I moved on to trying to make my own bread.  Last month, I searched for a video that would explain to me visually how to bake bread.   I wanted to see how wet dough and a dough ball would look like.  I searched You Tube for "How To Make Pan De Sal".  

I watched the video, intently transcribed the instructions, and baked bread! 

Not bad!  They were quite heavy and not as airy as I expected.  One factor could be the yeast.  The recipe called for Active Dry Yeast, and what was available at the grocery was Instant Yeast.  I will have to research how to use instant yeast when the recipe calls for active dry yeast.  My guess is just to mix the instant yeast with the dry ingredients. 

A few days ago, I went back to muffin baking.  A friend asked me to make some banana muffins for her.  But instead of walnuts, I used macadamia.  The flavor of macadamia did not blend well with the banana, and Elise and Nacho did not like it.  They could not finish a single muffin.  I baked a batch again and used lakatan banana instead of latundan, and substituted macadamia with cashews. 

They came out so well that I delivered some to some other dear friends this afternoon.  I got to use those cupcake liners and boxes from RM Boxes which I bought in bulk when I was last in Manila.  By the way, they ship to Palawan too!  

So far, so good. :)

The Last of the Seedlings!

There were a few tomato and petchay seedlings that made it just before December.

But when the petchay leaves started to grow, they got eaten by something!  Probably a snail.  My mom said that sprinkling salt around the plant will prevent the snail from coming near. Too late! 

Here are my tomato plants now.   Despite the lack of attention when they were left home alone with just the natural climate for two weeks during the Christmas season, they still grew.  And with the loving care that I've been learning to give them, they are now very healthy!  Only three of them left, so please, grow, grow, grow and bear fruit soon!  

Hit-and-Miss Gardening

I never had a green thumb. But two weeks ago, we planted some tomato seeds in used egg trays, crossed our fingers and our seeds sprouted.

Feeling very encouraged, I did what my mom used to do when basil stems flower. I scraped off some buds with seeds from the stem and sprinkled them into a potful of soil. Good luck.

Our marigold hedge had gone wild and the vines were crawling around other plants.  I trimmed them until manageable.  I also tied ropes around the leaning birds of paradise to try to straighten them out, and replanted some small irises along a walkway.

I was on a roll. I pulled out all the gabi plants - those bulky ones that grow in the forest and reproduce very rapidly.   I uprooted around 40 of them, big and small, and piled them up along some other agricultural waste.

 

On my last trip to Handyman, Robinsons Place, I picked up some petchay and kangkong seed packets.  When I got home, I scooped up some damp soil from our backyard into small pots, sprinkled the seeds into them, and covered the seeds with a thin layer of soil.  The packet said that petchay and kangkong are easy plants to grow because they thrive in clay or sandy soil, and survive harsh conditions. In other words, piece of cake.

 

After three days, small seedlings burst out of the soil!  Happiness!!!!

Rene brought me back to reality and suggested that I find out how best to grow them, as there is a specific way how to take care of certain plants...... When I looked up "how to grow petchay", the suggested method was to plant one seed per pot because they can grow into really lush plants and they need space.  There was also a warning against transplanting them at any point of their lives.  I guess I overcrowded them.   What if I pull out a few to make room?  When I do this again, I'll make sure each seed gets its own pot.

No longer feeling encouraged, I checked our tomato seedlings.... and most of them drooped!! Oh no! They also looked pale and thin.  Maybe too much sunlight!  

So maybe I should look up "how to grow tomatoes" too.....  So much for having a natural inclination towards caring for plants. It is a science.  Botanists and horticulturalists have gained a new level of respect from me today.

I will try again. 

Scuba Diving at 20 Feet

I've always wanted to scuba dive, but have not had the chance to even go for an Intro Dive.  Two weeks ago, I got my chance to finally cross that one thing off my list!   We were picked up from the beachfront of Microtel Puerto Princesa and took a 15-minute boat ride to the open waters in front of Pristine Beach. 

We were several eager beavers, one of us was already a certified diver, and another one already experienced it twice.  I was a bit nervous, as it was my first time to wear the gear, and I had no idea what would happen. 

 

So I fell over backwards into the water, like everyone else, and realized that I was floating, as my instructor inflated my BCD before I tumbled.  No need to think about swimming yet, he said. Just focus on breathing. So I breathed in the clean air from my tank and started to descend into the deep, dark blue expansive ocean. Yaaaargh! It got cold and dark and I panicked, breathing short breaths, almost sure I would run out of air if I went too deep.

I motioned upward and attempted to postpone my adventure for the next time.... several times.  Finally, the lead instructor showed me how to CALMLY breathe rhythmically and lightly, and before I knew it, he was slowly deflating my BCD, and I was going deeper and deeper.  I was getting the hang of it, and happily distracted by the colorful gardens..... and was brave enough to touch them! The brown coral below felt like one of those hard, felt-covered wires that are used for arts and crafts. But they were as soft as feathers.  

The classic blue starfish, whose kind is so abundant in the islands of Palawan, was right there, resting at the bottom.

And then the highlight of my dive ---- a clownfish swam towards me, stopped a few inches from my face, and just stared at me with its black beady eyes!  I could not contain myself, that I poked it on its side. It just flinched and stared at me again.  Oh wow. I kept on poking it till it swam away. 

A few meters ahead, I figured out why that little Nemo was so aggressive.   It was guarding its home. Pretty awesome photo, for a point-and-shoot 12-megapixel underwater camera, with no photo editing!  I was not brave enough to touch the white tips of the anemone, but one of the divers said that it felt like little suction cups. 

Our instructor, Kuya Julius, playfully put one of these little creatures in his mask! Nice!

I only went 25 feet deep below the surface.  Some of the others went deeper and explored a sea wall where lots of corals were attached to it.  I hope to see that before the year ends.  

*The Front Desk at Microtel Puerto Princesa can book your dive for you, with a convenient pick up and drop off right at their beachfront.