A wood stove was all we had in grandma’s kitchen. To keep it going, my young cousins and I had to scour the neighborhood for fuel. Grandpa’s shop, which built bus and jeepney bodies, was a gold mine. Buses had wood body frames. Jeepneys sported uphostered wood seats with intricate solihiya (woven rattan) backs. There was an endless supply of tatal (small odd pieces), kusot (shavings), and ipa (sawdust), which were ideal for starting a fire with the help of a bamboo ihip (tube to blow air) and a sipit (steel tongs to handle the ash-covered but still smoldering embers). 

A bonus for us was finding pieces of metal, which were added to a pile that we sold as scrap every month or so. Despite the financial rewards, scavenging for the discards of welders and carpenters was no match to the fun-filled adventures we enjoyed during summers when our fuel-hunting expeditions took us to our barrio’s fishponds, salt beds, and rice fields. 

Early birds win

As everyone knew everybody, we had permission from the owners to gather fallen twigs and branches. We also had a license to eat edible fruits from wild plants growing profusely in the area, but flocks of birds often beat us to the ripe bayabas (guava) and aratiles. For our own safety we were barred from climbing sampalok (tamarind) and mango trees but were free to pick up any fruit that had fallen to the ground. On windy days we came home with enough green mango to season sinigang for a week. The ripe tamarind we often just consumed like popcorn. Wild vines provided us with yellow kantutay, whose sweet and juicy black seeds were very much like thirst-quenching passionfruit. Another creeper, the niyog-niyogan, bore small fruit shaped like balimbing, which we picked only when they were brown and dry. Peeled, the white flesh tasted like mature coconut, hence its name. The ripe fruit was fed to kids who had intestinal worms. 

Kite fights lost

Summer meant vacation from school, more free time to spend away from home in the guise of gathering firewood. When the sun was up and the fuel pile was well stocked, it was time to fly kites we made using old newspapers and bamboo sticks held together by twine and corn starch boiled with water. The rice fields were all ours. The grains had all been harvested, leaving only short amber stubs. The warm amihan breeze took our crude homemade kites soaring as far as our cotton strings would go. The older boys bullied us, sending their guryon (Manila paper kites spiked with sharp glass shards) diving and shredding our helpless DIY saranggolas or cutting the thread and setting our frail kite free. 

Free talangka for all

In May the first rains fell. Suddenly the salt beds were under water and teeming with talangka. Huddled in clumps along the edges of the flooded salt beds, the small crabs were easy to gather as they clung to any bait (fish entrails or scrap meat) dangled near them, refusing to let go no matter how much we shook the abaca string holding the bait. It did not take long for us to fill our buckets, to the delight of our parents who followed the tradition of sharing our catch with neighbors and the salt bed owners. For a couple of weeks our entire neighborhood feasted on free talangka before the crabs all disappeared to hibernate for a year, until the next season. 

Free fish for all 

Before the typhoons and heavy rains began, the flooded salt beds and fish ponds were drained in preparation for stocking them with bangus fry. A concrete kantarilya controlled the water level in the ponds. Wood panels dictated how high or low the brackish water from Manila Bay was allowed. To protect the needle-size fry from being eaten by other species, the ponds needed to be completely drained. 

On a signal from the pond owner, the barrio’s men, women, and children waded into the muddy ponds, guided by the tradition that we could keep whatever we caught except bangus and sugpo (tiger prawn). Within an hour, the ponds were rid of all fish and could be left to dry for a few days before being refilled with salt water from Manila Bay. Only then were thousands of bangus and sugpo fry loose in the ponds. 

A gift from the Nile

In those days, nobody raised tilapia, which was considered a predator, pests that were not yet popular as food for humans. Tilapia, originally from the Nile (thus the scientific name Tilapia Nilotica), was introduced in the Philippines by the government to provide fast-growing protein source for the masses. It took a generation for Filipinos to accept, but now even I like fried or broiled tilapia several times a week. Today there are many fish farmers raising nothing but tilapia, which sells for almost the same price as bangus yet are much cheaper to maintain. Tilapia is now part of our daily lives, no longer considered an alien threat. 

Skinless alien

My contemporaries knew fish fillets as breaded, skinless, and boneless fish drenched in thick sweet and sour sauce. Only expensive fish like lapu-lapu and maya-maya were served that way, and only on special meals. Then came imported cream dory: very white and very cheap fillets, which every family bought and learned how to bread and deep-fry. They were considered too fishy for sinigang, too bland for paksiw or pinangat. 

Fast food, joints offered fish fillets, fish nuggets and fish sandwiches, which were sold out during Lent. Every eat-all-you-can buffet had them in several forms. Soon the public tired of cream dory and went back to eating tilapia, bones and head intact. Note: cream dory or Pangasius from the Mekong River is now raised commercially in many farms all over the country, where they are reared on special feeds. Unscrupulous fish vendors cheat, selling them headless as different kinds of fish. Buffet restaurants keep Pangasius alive in tanks and serve them steamed whole. Labeled as Chinese steamed cream dory, the dish is often the first one to be wiped out by diners.