Life With A Dirty Kitchen: Day 4 - Chilling in Tagaytay

Today starts off in the laziest possible way. A luxurious sleep in followed by another delicious Longanisa breakfast accompanied with tasty orange juice made from imported oranges… Australian oranges! We don’t really have much planned for today, so we laze around until we have enough energy to undertake the great Wi Fi hunt. To increase our energy levels we may just need a little help. What better way than the great South Australian FruChoc! I’m excited to share with Jun one of my great loves. As it says on the packet, “If you don’t love a FruChoc you’re not really South Australian!” and I stand by their motto. They are so loved by South Australians worldwide. For example, the requirement of visiting my brother and sister in England is to bare gifts of Fruchocs….. (Even my half English 2 year old nephew has discovered them and won’t let the bag be passed around without having his share! Not to forget his English Dad, not a big lover of sweets but can’t pass on the peachy, apricoty, chocolately goodness.) My cousin Rach generously spent a large postage fee to send me a 900g bag of FruChocs whilst laid up in Boston. I hope you are getting the picture of how amazing they are. For those who have never heard of a FruChoc, it is dried peach and apricot mixed together in a small ball and covered in chocolate. To my delight (or dismay since I am now going to have to share…) Jun absolutely loves them.

With our bellies satisfied with a South Australian icon it is time to head out the gates of the estate and into the hustle and bustle of Tagaytay. To hunt for Wi Fi I use the method of taking out my iPod and turning on the Wi Fi to see if we can find an unsecured connection, or at least a restaurant that has good signal. I’d noticed the day before that a pizza place next to the very disappointing Starbucks had Wi Fi. This time we decide to check the Wi Fi to decide if we want to stay and order. Good thing we did because once connected I couldn’t get anything to load. Looks like pizza is out and the American diner next door, Mile Hi Diner, is in.

We of course check that the Wi Fi has a good speed, even Skype has connected! We find a booth and order Nachos, Chicken Tenders, a frozen Baileys cocktail (for me) and a Pina Colada (for Jun). (Both delicious drinks, couldn’t decide which to go for, luckily Jun is happy to share…) Unlike a typical American Diner, the portions are rather small and for Philippine standard not that cheap either. (The whole meal with drinks was $18, still not expensive by my standard but I’m becoming accustomed to things being much cheaper here!) The food was ok but not great and we were kind of disappointed as we left hungry. The upside though was that I got to speak to my sister George, my nephew Henry and my Mum! Yay for Wi Fi that works! So despite the average meal for an above average price, we had achieved what we had set out to do.

We head to the supermarket to buy some groceries with the full intention of eating healthy. (Apart from the pancakes planned for the next day…..) We casually stroll around the fruit and veg section, I’m trying to learn about local vegetables that I have never heard of and am constantly trying to figure out the exchange rate so I can determine if what we are buying is expensive or not. I want to learn to cook with local vegetables but the problem is I don’t know what most of them are or how to cook them so I am naturally drawn to what I know. Luckily most of what I use at home they also have here, so I can find what I want to make a salad. We already have our fruit which we bought at a stall on the side of the road, Mangos: $1.70 per kilo, Pineapples: 80 cents per piece…. (Fruit salad, Yummy Yummy!)

As we make our way out of the fruit and veg section half of the lights go out in the store and an announcement made in Tagalog. They are about to close the store and we are only at the beginning of our shopping list! Our shop suddenly turns in to the show, “Supermarket Sweep”. We start zooming up and down the aisles looking for the most essential items on our list…. Pancake mix! Where is the pancake mix?! Thank God the maple syrup is included in the pack, 2 birds… 1 stone….

We head to the cash register in a very rushed 5 minutes and with cut throat eliminations from the list (we don’t need cereal, we have pancakes!). We look around as our products are scanned and we are literally the last customers in the store. I don’t think I’ve ever closed a supermarket before but there is a first time for everything.

Back home we decide to cook a late dinner since our American diner experience was unfulfilling and Jun says he will cook BBQ. I’m confused, where is the BBQ? I haven’t seen one anywhere. It turns out BBQ is a style of meat; kebabs. In this case we are having marinated pork kebabs and Jun cooks them on something that I have never seen before. It’s called an Oventop Griller but it looks like a cross between and a one tray oven a see through steamer. We eat them with rice and they are delicious. It is late so there is not a vegetable to be seen on the plate but we have full intentions of starting our healthy eating tomorrow!