To ban or not to ban

A few weeks ago, there was this "sauce issue" which scared quite a few people. An announcement came from no less than the Secretary of Trade that some brands of soy sauce and other seasonings must be taken off the shelves because they contained excessive amounts of mcpd, from hydrolized vegetable protein, which could be harmful to human beings. A day after, the same government entity made a complete turn around, through an undersecretary, who announced that due to inconclusive findings, the ban is recalled. What a blunder!

Because of the first announcement, many consumers might have emptied their shelves and threw their supplies away. The scare remains at the back of our minds, not only of the specified brands but of similar products. Manufacturers faced potential losses, specially now that business is not very good.

We suggest that before making any warning, officials concerned must have all "the weapons", so to speak. They must have the facts or remain quiet until they can verify everything. Reputation is not easy to build but quick to demolish. Next time let’s be more considerate of the public and the producers, please.

In a recent series of cooking demonstrations which we did at The Julius Maggi Kitchen in Rockwell, one of the questions most asked was what is cilantro? We said this is kinchay, which is different from the Chinese wansoy. Cookbooks put cilantro and coriander in one category, herbs. The dictionary defines cilantro as a noun, as coriander leaves used in some Asian cooking. Recently an e-mail writer said cilantro is not kinchay but that it is wansoy. The message adds that kinchay comes from a Chinese (Mandarin) word "Xiang Cai" which means mabangong gulay. We leave it up to you to call kinchay whatever you like–cilantro or coriander.

With much anticipation we motored to East Avenue in Quezon City, inspite of traffic since we were curious about this new market called Super Tiangge at the Livelihood Arcade and Food Court. It took us nearly one hour and a half to get there, and while the tiangge was not that great we found some food stuff that we were delighted about.

The tiangge is housed in a circular structure fronting the Land Transportation Office on East Avenue cor. Edsa. It is clean but probably needs more promotion to create awareness and to bring people in. A garment store owner, Rose, who sells tops, pants and the like, says they would be much happier if the crowds would increase. Her prices are only half of what they are in the popular Greenhills tiangge, but not many people know that. She says they are open six days a week, with Sunday off. Maybe they should be open all days of the week.

Anyway, the market is clean and cool and it carries a lot of merchandize–from dry goods to food (cooked and ready-to-cook) but no vegetables. There is a fast-food hall where you can get a meal for only P35. There is this stall representing the Bataan Fish Processing Center, a joint venture of Livelihood Corporation (livecor) and the Bataan Products Consolidators Multi-Purpose Cooperatives (bapcom).

Among our finds were the selection of machine dried fish called Bataan’s Pride such as tiny daing na tilapia at P25 per pack of five, tinapang tilapia at P85 for 3 pcs with a total weight of 500 gms., kapang (galunggong-like fish) at P35, kabase at the same price and bangus at P95. They also have the rare golgoria cookies, which we thought were unique to Biñan, Laguna. These are small melt-in-the-mouth snack bits that are rolled in sugar, at P25, P60 and P80 (small, medium and large) each jar. They have other goodies, but since we were trying to watch our growing waistline, we moved on.

Sad to say that while there is a store for The Good Shepherd (Baguio) products, the items on display looked pathetically stale and nobody was minding the stall. The bantay in the next store said orders must be made from their list beforehand, but she could not tell who would take the orders. Not very business-like, don’t you think?