Veggy Good

I am now in vacation in the Philippines and this is just another trip down memory lane.

I grew up in the province, in a community surrounded by fruit bearing trees and backyard gardens. Life was simple and food was never scarce. Vegetable of different kinds were grown abundantly in the neighborhood and you could ask for it for free or at its cheapest price. That’s how I had liked vegetables. My mother would always cooked vegetables telling us it’s healthy though I know for a fact that was all she could afford to prepare. Nonetheless I am grateful that she had more than instilled in us that character. We have not just memorized the “Bahay Kubo”, we had digested it!

Sa Likod po ng Aming Bahay..

When I was small, a cup of steamy rice with steamed camote tops dipped in ginisang bagoong was enough to make a full satisfying meal. If it wasn’t pinakbet or ginisang kalabasa, it would be saluyot and labong or adobong sitaw on the table, one reason after another to enjoy the meal and be thankful to the Above for showing us there’s a bounty at the back of our homes. Then it had gone beyond having left with no choice, but rather habituating to something clean and healthy.

That was something I have truly enjoyed being in the province, which, needless to say, is like being far away from toxic, from artificiality and from the perils of instant and preserved foods. When I started working in Manila, my intake of vegetable has dramatically gone less because most of the time I would have my meal in the restaurant or fastfood. My love for vegetables was overshadowed by practicality and hunt for convenience. Nevertheless, I made sure to make up for my misses every time I would go back to the province on weekends.

Being a lover of vegetables, I had never been hospitalized in my entire life for whatever medical reasons and I owe it, I believe, to my strong resistance from taking vegetables since I was a kid. Aside from that, vegetables have made me smart, talented, fat-free and less closer to the risks of high blood pressures, heart attacks, certain cancers and many other diseases. I would gladly trade in kilos of chickens, pork or fish in exchange for baskets of home grown fruits and vegetables. I just love it.