20051012

manila: salcedo market, pt. 3: the raw...

toto, i've a feeling we're not in kansas anymore.

market native chiken

market meats: native chiken [sic], which on guam, usually means roadkill, but for you fine folks, i shall interpret as "free range".

market chicken eggs

see those orangey blobby things? those are, for lack of a better phrase, "pre-laid eggs". all you lacto-ovo vegetarians, don't dwell on this too much.

market bag of frogs

frogs, before.

market frogs

frogs, after.

speaking of which, my lovely auntie f. has written a great article ostensibly about a capampangan folk song, but in reality is about frog baiting and days gone by. do check it out.

5 comments:

it would be an equally big shocker if you were expecting a prelaid egg and received a tangerine. i can't imagine why these are so popular, they just taste like egg yolks. however, i'm sure there's some fertility/aphrodesiac mumbo-jumbo attached to them, somewhere. i've seen them barbecued on a stick in japan and in the p.i., also in soups, and um, some very creative, non-stateside recipes (aka, stuff with blood and guts).

Hi Santos,

I didn't know that they ate so many frogs in the Philippines. Maybe it's because I haven't been there in about 15 years or so...

Has it been hot there?

BTW...I heard that Manila's been cleaned up quite a bit in the last 4-5 years. Is that true?

hi reid! it was raining, so it wasn't that hot. manila has definitely cleaned up, although not completely. the metro manila area looks more and more like malaysia, and there are huge tracts of areas that really look like california. it's a bit freaky. come on over!

I'm a little slow... are the "pre-laid" eggs obtained when they slaughter the chickens? Sorry, hope this isn't too awful to explain.

Every time I see frogs now I think of the Triplets of Belleville.

milgwimper--novelty, i guess.

hi cathy--yar, those are the eggs inside the chicken when they are slaughtered. you'll find a grape-like string of these orange blobs, which are called oocytes or something like that, which eventually get to the size you see in the photo. there's a better explanation here. i occasionally have come across a fully formed egg with shell and all, which is very disconcerting.

the triplets of belleville! i'd completely forgotten about that