"What's for breakfast?"

This is almost always asked by family members before retiring for the night. For indeed, after the tummy rests for at least six or the regular eight hours, it has to be filled. What’s for breakfast? More often in the Filipino home, it is sinangag with a variety of ulam – tuyo, daing, tocino, longganiza with eggs, either sunny side up or scrambled. These are normally served with vinegar and garlic or sliced tomatoes. For the so-called light eaters and Westernized individuals, the first meal of the day can be a bowl of cereal with milk or slices of toasted bread with a variety of palaman – ham, sausage, cheese and of course a slab of butter. Common beverages are coffee, chocolate or tea.

How imaginative can one be in preparing breakfast? That will come to the fore as the Doreen Gamboa Food Writing Competition unfolds with the theme “Breakfast or Almusal”..The most respected Doreen, in her lifetime, wrote about many things with regard to food and dining, one of them was an essay on breakfast. She mentioned suman dipped in tsokolate plus many others. The contest in ongoing. Deadline for submission is Sept. 30 while awarding will be held in November. Those interested may get in touch with Girlie Canlas at 895-2021 or send an email to [email protected].

Another contest on Filipino food is currently taking place in San Francisco, California. Dubbed as “Kulinarya – Filipino Culinary Showdown,” it has two categories – professionals and amateurs. Our US-based Henree Weiner, who once practiced public relations in the Philippines, sent us this info. The organizations involved – the Philippine Consulate General and the Department of Tourism – specified the dishes to be demonstrated. These are kare-kare, menudo, afritada and adobo. We hazard a guess that judging would involve innovation, which hopefully would not stray so much from the traditional. Three semi-finalists will show their cooking prowess in presenting lumpia, ukoy, bulalo, kilawin and adobo. A trip to the Philippines capped by a tour of culinary centers in the country awaits the winner.

Speaking of cooking and an aspiration for being a professional chef, those interested might want to get a copy of Anthony Bourdain’s latest book, “Medium Raw,” which, inspite of some irreverent remarks, gives a very interesting and helpful insight into what being a chef is all about. We will have more on this next week.

Meantime, our first daughter called our attention to the new look of the Makati Supermarket and the low prices of some of its merchandise. Gone is its crowded look. The entrance is clear, the flooring is shiny, but not slippery. Even the ceiling has a more artistic design. The deli counter through to the meat section is done with fuschia-colored overhead boards with gumamela prints. There is still work in progress, like inputting the senior citizens’ discount list in cashiers’ machines and tagging all items.

Jade, a new bathroom tissue brand, has 24 rolls in a pack with 400 sheets each at P208 per pack. Tishu sells for P30.95 each. Our normal purchase, the Premuim brand hand towels, are at P57.75 each. The 300-gm Kream Top coffee creamer from Alaska is tagged at P44.60 per. From the cooler, we noted Santis chorizo at P99.60 a piece while CDO’s Ulam Burger goes for P156 a pack of six.

Moving on, we noted the stamp MSA, the house brand, on a collection of meat. Ground pork is at P205 a kilo, pork belly at P97 a half kilo, chicken breast fillet for P87, beef shank at P185. They have US beef as well. Monterey is still there, so is Tenderbites, which offers Angus beef at P1,299 a kilo, roast striploin at P709 and morcon for P479.

The fresh section has bangus at P140, tilapia for P120 and lapu-lapu at P450 a kilo. In the vegetable cooler is a selection of imported and locally-grown mushrooms, ginger at P102 a kilo, onions at P50 for imported and P47.50 for local, camote at P37, sayote at P23 and cabbage at P40.

Among the drinks, we noted the Just Squeeze brand of juices in two sizes. Spice Time is a collection of mixes including turkey and chicken gravies. They have Kosher dill at P299 a bottle.

Think Christmas and store up on bottled cherries (maraschino and cocktail) from P113.50 to P375, which are among their new arrivals, as well as sundried tomatoes and roasted yellow and green peppers. 

Happy supermarketing!

E-mail comments and questions to: [email protected].