Food Therapy

Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness – Auguste Escoffier

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Nine hours a day, five days a week. This is what my job schedule looks like. Sometimes, I even work overtime and during my days off just to earn a little bit more. This is why Weekends are important to me. Luckily, my rest day falls on Sunday and Monday, and my last shift of the week falls on Saturday and I go out of work by 11:00 am. During these days, I get to relax. I either sleep in, go to places, eat out, cook my food, or do nothing at all. However, last weekend, I decided to get out of my bed and enjoy my rest day.

The past week was nothing but draining. I work as a customer service representative in a Telecommunications account in one of the BPO companies here in Cebu, Philippines. Every day, I have to entertain customers which can be quite difficult, and working a graveyard shift is not helping at all.
To relieve all the stress that I had for the past week, I messaged one of my friends to eat out with me and visit the Carbon Night Market.

Carbon Night Market is an open-air food bazaar where people can pick different kinds of foods from different food stalls. The place offers variations of food.

This is one of the Philippines’ famous cuisine. We call this “Batchoy”. It is a noodle soup with pork offal or innards, crushed pork cracklings, chicken stock, beef loin, and round noodles as the main ingredients. To prevent the noodles from getting soggy, the broth for the soup is not added yet until a customer orders a bowl of this. I didn’t buy one since I prefer to eat fried food that day, but my friend bought one and I asked for some of it, and it tastes good. The umami flavor is there, the noodles are al dente, and the saltiness of the broth does not overpower the flavor of the whole combination of this food.

Besides the “Batchoy”, you will see fried foods such as the famous fried chicken, and Cebu’s most famous fried food, “Ginabot”. By drying up pork intestines, rubbing them with salt, covering them in flour, and deep frying it in boiling oil, you can have this exotic recipe turned into a famous viand in Cebu. Of course, the intestine is thoroughly cleaned so it is safe to eat. This is best paired with vinegar and rice. This is also commonly seen not only in food bazaars but also in the street foods we call “Pungko-pungko” (Translation: sit and eat here).

This is what usually “Pungko-pungko” looks like. A variety of fried food can be seen, and you can choose whatever you want. On the far right part of the photo, you’ll see the “go-to” fried food of Cebuanos, this is the mung-bean sprout wrapped in spring roll wrappers (Lumpiang Toge). I kinda failed to capture the whole photo of it, so sorry for that, will do better next time. Beside it, you’ll see four different things, fried chicken, sausages, hotdogs, and Cebu’s special kind of spring roll we call “Ngohiong” (Ngo-yong). It is a local version of the famous Chinese spring rolls and contains julienned bamboo shoots, and/or singkamas (Jicama). Sometimes it has ground pork, minced shrimp, garlic, and onions in it, but most commonly, it only contains that mentioned vegetables. It is wrapped in rice-paper roll, dipped in batter, and deep fried until golden brown.

On top of the fried chicken, you will see the fried chicken skins, and beside it is a simple version of ginabot. The pork intestines are deep-fried in oil after drying it up and rubbing salt. It was not covered in flour before frying. Below the simplified ginabot are fried pork chops.

After strolling around the bazaar, we finally found a place to sit. This actually happened last Sunday (08/14/2022), and since it’s a Sunday, there are a lot of people coming there so we had to wait for some tables to be vacated by others. After settling down, my friend went first to get and order her food. I just waited for her to be done so that I can order mine. Someone had to be left behind to wait at the table so that no one will take our place.

I took my time choosing the food that I want to eat. I’m so indecisive and it really takes time for me to choose. I ended up picking two packs of fried chicken skin since it’s my favorite, and three pieces of hanging rice (Puso). It’s been a long time since I have eaten Cebu’s most famous dish, the Lechon.

Lechon is not only famous here in Cebu, but also in the whole Philippines, and other parts of the world. Because of its natural juiciness and taste, this is mostly present on occasions such as Fiesta, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., and is sought for by the people. And because of its reputation, this can be found in any part of Cebu, and in this case, it is available in Carbon Night Market. You can buy it per kilo, half a kilo, or for a quarter of a kilogram. Some stores sell it in combo meals, but most of them sell it separately from the rice and drinks.

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Visiting Carbon Night Market not only filled my stomach with good food, but also helped me forget some of the negative energy I got from work. I was not really able to take a lot of pictures since I was immersed in the food that I’m eating, and enjoying the company that I have. Aside from it, I enjoyed listening to the music being played by the indie bands and singers here in Cebu since there was an album launch as well, and my phone died due to low battery. Overall, it was a fun experience for me, and it helped me feel genuine happiness.