good eats!

one of my favorite shows on the food network is alton brown's good eats. every episode he features one food item -- like tofu, for instance -- and tells its story in a very interesting manner. off-putting to some, maybe, but refreshingly different.

this is not a story on every food featured on good eats. but it is about good eats... the ones you encounter on that day when you least expect to celebrate food and the place that is highly suspect for hygiene. this is about the wonderful world of food you find on november first. at the cemetery.

when i started going to the catholic cemetery more than a decade ago, there is limited choice on offer. just the typical small-time carinderia fare like palamig, pineapple juice (di-takal syempre), banana cue, and the jack and jill fun snacks. at the time i rarely bought food from the stalls, usually i brought my own or i eat back at the house which is only a few minutes away. but now, the number of people in the cemetery just manning the food stalls can equal the number of visitors, any given time. and yesterday, i had the time of my life checking out the good eats.

at the cemetery entrance were the more popular food chains: mc donald's, pizza hut, doner durum (the local shawarma shop). a bit further is the purefoods stall, complete with the large skillet thing. here's where i got my bacon cheesedog sandwich and canned soda. but scattered on every remaining available space are the stalls selling proven, kwek kwek, squid balls, fish balls, even papu's siomai (one of uplb's most popular street food). i helped myself to a few bags of crispy chicken skin, only my mom's caution stopped me from getting the proven as well. of course, there are still the vendors selling the good old palamig and junk food, but with more choices than ever before. not to mention the people going around hawking chicharon, mani, kasoy, and "dirty" ice cream. and do you know that mc donald's has joined the bandwagon, offering their 20-peso burger mc do on foot?

long ago i shared the conservative sentiment that the celebration of all saints' day should be solemn and quiet -- meaning, none of the music, laughter, and the food. but times are different now. and i've learned that death should not be a mourning of a life's end, but a celebration of a life lived. it is not the dead that celebrate this occassion, it is the living. and as long as we keep faithful to the meaning of this day -- a day of remembrance and of faith in the afterlife -- who's to say that we can't enjoy it as well?