Happily, we got a much welcome surprise when we received our list from our meat suki at the Muntinlupa public market – the price of pork went down by P10 kilo. It seems that there is, at the moment, an over supply. Rice also went down by a few pesos per kilo. We hope this trend continues.
Are you Christmas-ready? Before you can wink, the holidays will be here and no one must be unprepared. So, let’s walk through our kitchen and find out what we need to buy, to clean, to replace. It would be more practical for all of us to prepare our food at home instead of ordering them from a caterer. This will result in a big cut in our budget. But this will only be the situation if you or anybody else in the family cooks well. If you read cook books, you might want to go through the list of festive offerings and try your hand at doing everything yourself, perhaps with the help of family members or your assistants in the kitchen.
Plan the meals you are going to make ahead of time. Check your appliances, oven, even your blender and meat grinder. You don’t want to discover a missing screw in the course of your cooking. List down what you need – turkey, queso de bola, ham, chorizo, etc. If you have storage space in your freezer, it would be better to buy them now, because prices are sure to increase as Christmas nears.
Take advantage of your regular visits to supermarkets and other stores. If you need more Christmas décor, get them now. We have always been pleased with what National Book Store offers in all their branches. This is where you can get fully decorated trees, in varying sizes, and those little Christmas trimmings, which can be used to pretty up your gifts. Their prices are so reasonable, you might not need to go to Divisoria. Look for paper napkins with Christmas designs, normally we get them from Makati Supermarket in Alabang. There might also be festive table cloths, which can be washed after use. Get ready now – Christmas is just around the corner.
For the past weeks, SM has been celebrating its 50th anniversary. We remember this chain started as Shoe Mart basically selling foodwear in Carriedo, Quiapo. Because of its long history, we hazard a guess that practically every Filipino has bought a pair of shoes from this store. The group has grown with some 20 plus malls and Hypermarts all over the country and has expanded their product line to include clothes, appliances, school supplies, furniture, food, and more.
Over the weekend we visited the Hypermart at the Mall of Asia complex. As always there were so many shoppers. There were a lot of items on discounted prices, from clothing to footwear. We headed toward the fresh catch section which is on the farthest end. Note that some of the tag prices are based on half-kilo measures. Our sister found labong (bamboo shoots) at P50 a kilo. This was fresh because it did not have much of its usual offending smell. In another section, there is ground peanut, ready for kare-kare at P100 a kilo. But you probably need only about P20 worth of this. Tomatoes were priced between P39 and P48. They’ve got brussels sprouts for P640 a kilo. The red capsicums (large) were tagged at P185.
We looked at the frozen food coolers and found a line of amb cuts at P567, and ribs at P464. Their house brand is Farm Fresh. The selection includes the daily gourmet steak burger at P160 for a 400 gm pack. There are aquariums with live fish and shrimps have lapu-lapu for P325 and crabs at P207.50. On the display counter were medium-size bangus at P57 (half a kilo), lapu-lapu at P195 and suahe at P249. Surprisingly they had biya for P84. From Australia they have White Wings cake mixes (lemon, chocolate and blueberry) at P144.50 a box. Bottled beans and peppers from Spain are also on the shelves. Cherries in bottles are on sale and therefore those planning to make Christmas fruit cakes can take advantage of this. Also get your lasagna noodles, P138 for 500 gms. New on the racks are the Kraft Creamers in 8 ounce bottles and Nescafe Ice Java Syrup, in Irish Cream and French Vanilla.
The next big thing we have to plan for is the New Year. Think of all the round things we can get, chestnuts, oranges, and dots on our clothes!
E-mail comments and questions to: lydia_d_castillo@yahoo.com