What Christmas?

What kind of Christmas can we look forward to? There’s the E-VAT which took effect last Tuesday. But even without it, the cost of oil products escalated nearly every week. Meralco is not far behind. Closer to the homemaker’s pocket, fish, fruits, meat and vegetables are climbing to prohibitive costs. The minimum wage earner may not even be able to buy chicken for his family, let alone gifts. But we need to celebrate, if in a very humble way, so let us all be enterprising. We met Loudette Dayrit, a pioneer in teaching the culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu Manille, who enlightened us on entrepreneurship. She not only teaches the basics of cooking, she has introduced a course called Food Entrepreneur Starter Workshop, 15 comprehensive lessons for entre-chefs. Call 910-6000.

We welcome the launch of the many variants of one of the most essential ingredients, flour, at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas a fortnight ago by Universal Robina. Introduced to trade consumers, we are not sure if the bulk purchase could be lessened should an ordinary homemaker want to try her hand at selling baked items. They come in five kilo-packs, so maybe one or two housewives can share a pack. We were trying to call the URC people, but could not get hold of them. Side by side with the flour promo was the formal launch of a book, "Endless Possibilities in Baking", by young pastry master Dennis Hipolito. There are some 80 recipes ranging from Pan de Ube to Moist Brandied Pecan Bars. It is available for P299 at URC offices.

On that ‘day of the flour’ we were sort of held hostage at the Crowne Plaza as we attended a long session conducted by F & B World magazine, with focus on "Food trends and issues in the food service industry". Sad to say that the average Filipino, specially the young, is not taking the necessary nutrients for a healthy diet. Two factors– economics and lack of knowledge–are responsible for this. There is a growing number of obese people, young and old, surely because of eating the wrong food. A lot are suffering from anemia. Statistics show that the average Filipino takes a low of 886 gms of food daily. Industry movers are therefore encouraged to use fortified food items, such as rice, and to educate the citizenry to eat more vegetables and fruits.

Toward this end, master chef Jessie Sinsioco of Le Souffle demonstrated a salad of alugbati which gave this lowly leaf a more sophisticated twist and a vegetable roulade using no less than six vegetables, from eggplants to carrots. She served it with a tomato-based, wine-splashed sauce. We marvel at this lady who concocted her recipes (including the cinnamon-coated pineapple chunks) on the morning of her presentation.

All the major food players were there–Del Monte with their new Melon Chill (puree to which you add water), San Miguel Purefoods with their PureBake shortening, Nestle with Rainy Day Special recipes using their food seasonings. We collected quite a few small recipe pamphlets which will prove to be very useful.

In September the Department of Trade conducted a contest among supermarkets and wet markets (two of the four sectors) aimed at assuring that the mandated Customer Welfare Desks were functioning well. This is a good step toward answering the needs (and complaints) of customers. It was strange that only Sta. Lucia Mall on Ortigas entered the competition among those located in the metropolis. This led us to presume the bigwigs were scared the small ones would beat them. The most efficient and clean wet market is the one in Pagsanjan (which we should visit one of these days) and the best among the supermarkets is EZ in Tarlac. They got their awards during the exhibit held at SM MegaTrade Hall, where photos of the winners showed exactly why they won.

Excellent customer service was what we got from Jo of Makati Supermarket in Alabang. We had been looking for the Japanese-made Golden Curry blocks for days. Our last resort was this store and we had to ask the assistance of Jo since we could not find it. She looked for it, found a different brand (S & B) but a few minutes after we left the store, we got a call telling us she found the Golden Curry brand in their warehouse. That’s surely going after customer satisfaction. Thanks, Jo.

Majestic Ham is what you should get if you crave for this particular breakfast item. But note that the price has gone up to P850 a kilo. Expect some other Christmas goodies to cost more as December approaches. If extra money is available (is it ever?) store up a few items at a time.

* * *

Email comments and questions to: [email protected]