actually, i like thanksgiving and new years day better, but i am not here to be a scrooge.
even though we're going to my relatives' places for christmas, my mom made me vacuum the house while she decorated. that still wouldn't be such a big deal except she also made me vacuum the carpets downstairs, even though nobody lives there anymore. i suppose she did this to prepare for the coming of christ, or something like that. but if christ did come over to our house for chirstmas, i doubt that we would make him sleep downstairs.
also, i am here to announce that i have made ginger and coconut tapioca pudding, and it is gorgeous in the mouth. don't knock it til you've tried it.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
25 things
1. i really didn't wanna do this. but now i'm doing it because enough people have done it and now i feel left out (twss). i'm doing it on blogger cuz then i won't have to tag anybody and the virus can end with me. also because i have friends on facebook that i'm not really friends with. also because my comments section is lonely.
2. my mom had initially wanted to name me linus. i would probably have hated that as a little kid. now my alter-ego is linus van pelt from peanuts.
3. people have told me that i don't really stutter enough times for me to believe that i don't stutter. but i have vivid memories of times when i've stuttered, and i'll be embarrassed by me just recalling those times.
4. you know the brand of dairy products, "berkeley farms"? where exactly are the farms in berkeley?
5. if food is put in front of me to eat, i will almost always eat it. my parents have made sure that i am always grateful to be nourished.
6. when i was a sophomore or junior in college i learned that my grandma (my mom's mother) had wished for one of her grandkids to grow up to become a doctor. if i had known this when i was a sophomore or junior in highschool i wouldn't have applied to uc berkeley's college of engineering and would have tried for a path towards medicine there instead. not that i still can't become a doctor, but it's at least worth noting.
7. when i was in highschool, i gelled my hair everyday for four years and almost never had facial hair. one month after i graduated, i had facial hair and shaved my head. since then i've always had facial hear and have never since gelled my hair.
8. when i was a freshman at college, i wasn't really that interested in the cal bears football team, even though freshman were given free season tickets. i ended up attending only one game. cjay and i didn't know many people so we went to the game with the notion that we might stay. she wanted to go home home, so we made our way to bart and headed home. when i got home my dad asked me if i had went to the game. i said "yea dad, why?". "because they won", he said. it was the usc triple overtime game.
9. when i was in first grade, i pooped my pants on halloween. there aren't many people that i really know that don't know this story.
10. the earliest memory of my life that i can recall is waking up and wanting to go to the bathroom.
11. how long do you think a person can go without picking or blowing their nose?
12. i usually don't think too much of guys the first time i meet them. some of my best boyz of all time were doods that i thought were douchebags when i first met them.
13. i think dood is the unwhite way to spell it. dude makes my mind think of blond hair surfing douchebags.
14. 14 is my favorite number. 20 is my second favorite.
15. an ultimate goal of mine is to be able to cook practically anything, from scratch. i believe i'm about 1% there.
16. i kind of think this 25 thing is pointless if you already read my blog. i mean, why don't you just list the last 25 posts i did. it would practically be the same thing.
17. my blog title is from a song by the luniz. my most used online avatar-name-thing is from a song by james brown. i wonder if they knew each other.
18. if i ever have a son, one of his names will be david. from what my dad, aunts, and uncles tell me, my uncle dave was superman. my son will be superman as well.
19. i used to believe that after i died, i could ask god to send me back as anybody i wanted to be. when i was in 5th or 6th grade, i had made up my mind that i wanted to come back as forrest gump.
20. i once had a dream where i was a kid detective, and i had a white sidekick with brown hair, i think, and her name was grapes. right before i woke up, i was kissing grapes.
21. i think i have a terrible singing voice, but i like to sing anyway, unless somebody tells me that i have a terrible singing voice. then i become sweaty and embarrassed.
22. macapuno ice cream is my favorite flavor of ice cream, even though for the longest time i had no idea what macapuno was.
23. it still surprises me today how good my mom is at remembering everything, food-wise, that i love. and it's so sad how hard it is for me to shop for my mom at christmas.
24. the last thing my grandma (my dad's mother) ever said to me, was, in kapampangan, "when you get married, invite me to your wedding." i was only able to see her a couple times in my life, mostly when i was little, and so it's the only thing i can ever recall her saying to me. it's one of my most treasured memories.
25. i guess this 25 thing was ok. i wish some of this stuff would just come out in conversation with people, but i guess things don't really work like that.
2. my mom had initially wanted to name me linus. i would probably have hated that as a little kid. now my alter-ego is linus van pelt from peanuts.
3. people have told me that i don't really stutter enough times for me to believe that i don't stutter. but i have vivid memories of times when i've stuttered, and i'll be embarrassed by me just recalling those times.
4. you know the brand of dairy products, "berkeley farms"? where exactly are the farms in berkeley?
5. if food is put in front of me to eat, i will almost always eat it. my parents have made sure that i am always grateful to be nourished.
6. when i was a sophomore or junior in college i learned that my grandma (my mom's mother) had wished for one of her grandkids to grow up to become a doctor. if i had known this when i was a sophomore or junior in highschool i wouldn't have applied to uc berkeley's college of engineering and would have tried for a path towards medicine there instead. not that i still can't become a doctor, but it's at least worth noting.
7. when i was in highschool, i gelled my hair everyday for four years and almost never had facial hair. one month after i graduated, i had facial hair and shaved my head. since then i've always had facial hear and have never since gelled my hair.
8. when i was a freshman at college, i wasn't really that interested in the cal bears football team, even though freshman were given free season tickets. i ended up attending only one game. cjay and i didn't know many people so we went to the game with the notion that we might stay. she wanted to go home home, so we made our way to bart and headed home. when i got home my dad asked me if i had went to the game. i said "yea dad, why?". "because they won", he said. it was the usc triple overtime game.
9. when i was in first grade, i pooped my pants on halloween. there aren't many people that i really know that don't know this story.
10. the earliest memory of my life that i can recall is waking up and wanting to go to the bathroom.
11. how long do you think a person can go without picking or blowing their nose?
12. i usually don't think too much of guys the first time i meet them. some of my best boyz of all time were doods that i thought were douchebags when i first met them.
13. i think dood is the unwhite way to spell it. dude makes my mind think of blond hair surfing douchebags.
14. 14 is my favorite number. 20 is my second favorite.
15. an ultimate goal of mine is to be able to cook practically anything, from scratch. i believe i'm about 1% there.
16. i kind of think this 25 thing is pointless if you already read my blog. i mean, why don't you just list the last 25 posts i did. it would practically be the same thing.
17. my blog title is from a song by the luniz. my most used online avatar-name-thing is from a song by james brown. i wonder if they knew each other.
18. if i ever have a son, one of his names will be david. from what my dad, aunts, and uncles tell me, my uncle dave was superman. my son will be superman as well.
19. i used to believe that after i died, i could ask god to send me back as anybody i wanted to be. when i was in 5th or 6th grade, i had made up my mind that i wanted to come back as forrest gump.
20. i once had a dream where i was a kid detective, and i had a white sidekick with brown hair, i think, and her name was grapes. right before i woke up, i was kissing grapes.
21. i think i have a terrible singing voice, but i like to sing anyway, unless somebody tells me that i have a terrible singing voice. then i become sweaty and embarrassed.
22. macapuno ice cream is my favorite flavor of ice cream, even though for the longest time i had no idea what macapuno was.
23. it still surprises me today how good my mom is at remembering everything, food-wise, that i love. and it's so sad how hard it is for me to shop for my mom at christmas.
24. the last thing my grandma (my dad's mother) ever said to me, was, in kapampangan, "when you get married, invite me to your wedding." i was only able to see her a couple times in my life, mostly when i was little, and so it's the only thing i can ever recall her saying to me. it's one of my most treasured memories.
25. i guess this 25 thing was ok. i wish some of this stuff would just come out in conversation with people, but i guess things don't really work like that.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
open letter to madelyn gosselin
yea, i watch jon and kate +8, so what?
dear mady,
i'm almost 85% sure you are not as spoiled as you look. or at the very least, you won't end up like somebody that would be on mtv's "my sweet 16". but whatever made you more spoiled than your sister, just know that it's not your fault, it's just to way you are. i hope that you'll grow up and be a "normal" person, whatever that might mean to you, although i'm sure a lot of normalness has already left your upbringing due to the success of your family's tv show.
what bugs me most about your show is that while the its success is probably due to the cuteness of your younger siblings, i'm sure several people watch you, specifically, and are saddened or disappointed with your spoiledness. "what a spoiled bitch" they might think to themselves. again i say this to you, it's not your fault. it's not your fault that your childhood is shown on one of the most watched shows in the country. people all over this nation are more spoiled than you seem, and a lot of them are already full grown adults. i personally know some folks that look at you with contempt while i know that they themselves are more spoiled than they think they are, and it disgusts me as much as a prostitute's underwear would.
really mady, you just need to keep acting they way you feel. that's what kids are supposed to do. soon enough you'll go on a retreat in highschool and realize that you should be thankful for your family, and yada yada yada, you'll reach an epiphany and save the world. but for now, you are perfectly fine the way you are, relatively speaking.
maybe i'll meet you someday.
your friend,
josh
dear mady,
i'm almost 85% sure you are not as spoiled as you look. or at the very least, you won't end up like somebody that would be on mtv's "my sweet 16". but whatever made you more spoiled than your sister, just know that it's not your fault, it's just to way you are. i hope that you'll grow up and be a "normal" person, whatever that might mean to you, although i'm sure a lot of normalness has already left your upbringing due to the success of your family's tv show.
what bugs me most about your show is that while the its success is probably due to the cuteness of your younger siblings, i'm sure several people watch you, specifically, and are saddened or disappointed with your spoiledness. "what a spoiled bitch" they might think to themselves. again i say this to you, it's not your fault. it's not your fault that your childhood is shown on one of the most watched shows in the country. people all over this nation are more spoiled than you seem, and a lot of them are already full grown adults. i personally know some folks that look at you with contempt while i know that they themselves are more spoiled than they think they are, and it disgusts me as much as a prostitute's underwear would.
really mady, you just need to keep acting they way you feel. that's what kids are supposed to do. soon enough you'll go on a retreat in highschool and realize that you should be thankful for your family, and yada yada yada, you'll reach an epiphany and save the world. but for now, you are perfectly fine the way you are, relatively speaking.
maybe i'll meet you someday.
your friend,
josh
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
fledgling
so i read a book.and i recommend that you read it too.
but the real reason behind this post is that i used my bookmark to mark the page of a quote that i liked, and wanted to remind myself of. but now i'm moving on to another book, and i want my bookmark back. so i'll put the quote here along with the book cover.
"When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing."
- Octavia E. Butler, fledgling
letter to my hoodie
i love my sweaters. all of them. you should know that.
not because they have special all have meanings to them or anything. almost all of them don't. i try not to do that with things like sweaters, because i don't wanna be out in the cold not wearing a sweater only because it reminds me of something i don't wanna be reminded of.
but i love them because wearing a sweater is so comforting, and i have had so many of them to be comforted by.
but one sweater did have a little special meaning to me, because i bought it with my own money and then made it shine with my own skillz. my grey quiksilver zip up hoodie.
i bought it randomly from gilroy. wore it out a little bit. then while wearing it at a maganda tshirt screening event, decided to screen my screenname onto it. it made me feel so cool. so cool that i decided to see how many more things i could screen onto it. with each extra screen, my coolness would grow.
i would end up screening only two more things onto it because cutting out the stencils for screening was a beezy. two characters from peanuts; linus van pelt, who i always loved because he shared my could've been name, and a disproportionately sized woodstock, who i thought was just cool.
anyways, the zipper handle came off, and then the metal that used to hold the handle became sharp enough to take out a chunk of skin from my finger. and then some of the threads holding the lining of the zipper came loose and would catch and make me spend 15 minutes trying to get them free so i could zip it up properly. and then today they got caught again and i was so frustrated that i just took both flaps of the jacket and ripped them apart, breaking the zipper and effectively ending my hoodie's long life. i guess i could still wear it, but it's not really functional anymore unless i can zip it up, shit just gets too cold.
i can't imagine why this would be interesting to anybody. i spent the car ride from oakland to pacifica contemplating on whether or not i would post about my sweater, ultimately deciding for it only because it at least deserved some sort of obituary somewhere.
so goodbye dear old friend. like a champ you went with pretty much all my shirts and all my shoes and even all my hats. i'll be sure to donate you somewhere and hopefully you'll end up somewhere inspiring some up-and-coming freshness. maybe i'll see you on tv somewhere, who knows? maybe they'll make you into sustainable insulation and you'll continue warming people for generations. wherever you end up, hopefully, you'll do the rest of the world the good you did for me.
not because they have special all have meanings to them or anything. almost all of them don't. i try not to do that with things like sweaters, because i don't wanna be out in the cold not wearing a sweater only because it reminds me of something i don't wanna be reminded of.
but i love them because wearing a sweater is so comforting, and i have had so many of them to be comforted by.
but one sweater did have a little special meaning to me, because i bought it with my own money and then made it shine with my own skillz. my grey quiksilver zip up hoodie.
i bought it randomly from gilroy. wore it out a little bit. then while wearing it at a maganda tshirt screening event, decided to screen my screenname onto it. it made me feel so cool. so cool that i decided to see how many more things i could screen onto it. with each extra screen, my coolness would grow.
i would end up screening only two more things onto it because cutting out the stencils for screening was a beezy. two characters from peanuts; linus van pelt, who i always loved because he shared my could've been name, and a disproportionately sized woodstock, who i thought was just cool.
anyways, the zipper handle came off, and then the metal that used to hold the handle became sharp enough to take out a chunk of skin from my finger. and then some of the threads holding the lining of the zipper came loose and would catch and make me spend 15 minutes trying to get them free so i could zip it up properly. and then today they got caught again and i was so frustrated that i just took both flaps of the jacket and ripped them apart, breaking the zipper and effectively ending my hoodie's long life. i guess i could still wear it, but it's not really functional anymore unless i can zip it up, shit just gets too cold.
i can't imagine why this would be interesting to anybody. i spent the car ride from oakland to pacifica contemplating on whether or not i would post about my sweater, ultimately deciding for it only because it at least deserved some sort of obituary somewhere.
so goodbye dear old friend. like a champ you went with pretty much all my shirts and all my shoes and even all my hats. i'll be sure to donate you somewhere and hopefully you'll end up somewhere inspiring some up-and-coming freshness. maybe i'll see you on tv somewhere, who knows? maybe they'll make you into sustainable insulation and you'll continue warming people for generations. wherever you end up, hopefully, you'll do the rest of the world the good you did for me.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
josh's hella late hancock commentary
i'm just gonna say it:
they should've let hancock die at the end of the movie.
this would've made it such a better movie in my opinion. i'm starting to think that it's almost always better for movies to have either sad endings, or endings that stop short of letting you see what really happens at the end, a la "no country for old men" or "lock, stock, and two smoking barrels", because these type of endings force the viewer to think about the movie more, or at least for me they do. if i leave the theater feeling happy about the movie, i just think about my favorite parts of the movie, or stop thinking about the movie altogether, because it's over and i feel good about the ending. but if i leave a movie and i feel sad or confused about the ending, then i'm forced to think about the movie more, forced to relive scenes, and think about why the movie had to end that way, and what the movie is trying to say.
but i think it's easier to make my point with hancock, because i would think that more people have seen hancock and not the previous two that i mentioned.
the beginning of the movie is spent trying to give you a sense of what it feels like to be hancock: lonely, unappreciated, misunderstood. and then you find he's immortal and then who mary is and that they've been living in a tragic love cycle for decades. at this point, in my opinion, you should feel sorry for hancock, because his woman is happy with another man, because he's almost immortal, and because a lot of other things that i can't remember right now. anyways, more stuff happens, blah blah blah, and boom, he and she are almost gonna be killed because they're too close together and the bad guys finally have them vulnerable. and he's almost gonna die.... but no. the fierce lion in him says "no die" and he storms out of the hospital, yay all is fixed and the humans have a superhero for all of eternity.
but why not let him die? if he dies, then i am forced to think about why he dies. i think about what it must feel like to be him, how sad that must be: forced into isolation from my wife (who's with another man, anyway) to be a superhero for people who a couple days/weeks/months ago said they didn't even need me. really forced to live like the only of my kind... foreverrrrrrrrrrr. then i understand why he would want to die. then it becomes a better movie.
they should've let hancock die at the end of the movie.
this would've made it such a better movie in my opinion. i'm starting to think that it's almost always better for movies to have either sad endings, or endings that stop short of letting you see what really happens at the end, a la "no country for old men" or "lock, stock, and two smoking barrels", because these type of endings force the viewer to think about the movie more, or at least for me they do. if i leave the theater feeling happy about the movie, i just think about my favorite parts of the movie, or stop thinking about the movie altogether, because it's over and i feel good about the ending. but if i leave a movie and i feel sad or confused about the ending, then i'm forced to think about the movie more, forced to relive scenes, and think about why the movie had to end that way, and what the movie is trying to say.
but i think it's easier to make my point with hancock, because i would think that more people have seen hancock and not the previous two that i mentioned.
the beginning of the movie is spent trying to give you a sense of what it feels like to be hancock: lonely, unappreciated, misunderstood. and then you find he's immortal and then who mary is and that they've been living in a tragic love cycle for decades. at this point, in my opinion, you should feel sorry for hancock, because his woman is happy with another man, because he's almost immortal, and because a lot of other things that i can't remember right now. anyways, more stuff happens, blah blah blah, and boom, he and she are almost gonna be killed because they're too close together and the bad guys finally have them vulnerable. and he's almost gonna die.... but no. the fierce lion in him says "no die" and he storms out of the hospital, yay all is fixed and the humans have a superhero for all of eternity.
but why not let him die? if he dies, then i am forced to think about why he dies. i think about what it must feel like to be him, how sad that must be: forced into isolation from my wife (who's with another man, anyway) to be a superhero for people who a couple days/weeks/months ago said they didn't even need me. really forced to live like the only of my kind... foreverrrrrrrrrrr. then i understand why he would want to die. then it becomes a better movie.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
pig headed
uhh. warning! this post is kinna graphic. actually it's really graphic, and long (twss), and the videos are graphic, too. so don't tell me i didn't warn you. but this is how food is prepared. so you might as well read along if you eat pork.
if you followed my gchat status at all, you prolly already know that for thanksgiving/thankstaking i cooked a pig's head.
but if you didn't know, i cooked a pig's head for thanksgiving. turned it into sisig, a pilipino dish i had never heard of until cjay told me that it's one of her favorite dishes. she had asked me to make it for her like 3 or 4 years ago. but back then i didn't know where to get a pig's head and was far too sheepish to inquire for one anywhere. now, i am more like a lion or a shark, and not a sheep, so i went to a butcher and asked for one. sorry it took so long cjay, and sorry you didn't get to try the dish you had waited 3 or 4 years for.
actually, i was inspired to do so by my kuya, this guy, and this video.
and recently, i have also tried to make a conscious effort to appreciate as many parts of the animals that we eat (fish eyes anybody? chicken feet?). well, at least the parts that i can stomach for now.
AND, i think deep down inside, part of me wants to become a butcher. a real one. like this guy, except cooler.
anyways, i wish i had pictures to show you the progress of my dish and as proof that i did use an actual pig's head, but i did not have a camera to use, so you'll just have to trust me.
first, i cooked the pig's head for hours in some simmering salted water, with some aromatics. actually that's what i would've done, my mom got tired of my pig's head being in kitchen so she did it herself.
and then, after it had cooled sufficiently, i cut off the ears and then cut a separating line down the middle of the head and proceeded to peel off the two sides of the face, which was skin with whatever meat i could leave attached to the skin. this took some time maybe up to one and a half hours. and i also cut my finger early in this butchering process and had to use at least 4 bandages for this tiny ass cut while cutting up this head. the cheeks of my pig were huge. i thought i had done an ok job, except i left the temples (or at least what i thought were his temples) on the skull, instead of with the skin, so i had to take those out separately.
then i took out the tongue. it was suprisingly hard to open the mouth of my pig, so i had to reach in from the back of the head. it's a pretty odd feeling grabbing a pig's tongue from the back of its mouth. the tongue is also pretty firmly attached to the mouth so it took some real effort, and some precarious cuts to get it out.
my mom then took the skull and made some soup with it. it was pretty crazy cuz after a while in the stock pot, the bottom part of the jaw came off of the skull (i don't really know what was holding it there in the first place) and my mom took it out of the pot and just left it on the counter for a while. i will just say that the most chilling moment of this whole experience was seeing that pig's bottom set of teeth on my kitchen counter, it was just weird. for a while i couldn't bring myself to eat the soup that my mom had made. i mean it was flavored with teeth!
then after mass on thursday, my dad and i fired up the grill (always a manly experience), and i started to grill the meat as entire hemispheres of the face, if that makes sense. this was huge a mistake, cuz the sides weren't really even pieces of meat. so like a total n00b i ended up burning the skin before the meat in the middle could get warm. long story short, i burned most of the skin, so i had to discard a lot of it and one of the ears. luckily skin is excellent at protecting the fat and the meat from getting overdone, so my losses were minimal at worst.
after grilling i started chopping up the various parts. and, of course, as i came to a different part of the face, i had to try it to see what it tasted like.
- pig's ear is just skin and cartilege, and mine was crunchy, not crunchy like a potato chip, crunchy like the end of a chicken drumstick, between the meat and the bone end. i had read that i should've boiled them for a really long time, to make them tender, but like i said before, i wasn't in charge of the initial boiling.
- pig cheek, or pig jowl, as they should be called, is a lot like bacon, except there's a ton more fat than lean. as a result, it is pretty delicious.
- pig snout is surprisingly tender. well it's not so surprising if you touch your nose. sorry if that's weird.
- pig tongue, or lengua, is delish!!! i admit it's pretty hard getting over the fact that it's a tongue. but by the time i had it at this point, it hardly looked or felt like a tongue.
after it's all chopped up, just add some finely diced onions and finely diced jalepenos, some soy sauce and a combination of lemon and vinegar equal to the amount of soy sauce you put in. (i ended up using a whole cup of soy sauce, i think).
if it's still warm, (my kuya would say it's done, and) you can serve, but since i took forever cutting the meat, with the door open, some of my pig's head meat was pretty cold, so i took the opportunity to pan fry the meat (for all of you counting at home, that's right, i cooked this meat 3 different times), rendering a little bit of the fat, then sauteing the onions and jalepenos in said fat. and then i added the soy/vinegar/lemon combo, so not to reduce the sauce too much. i actually chopped up more onions to add as a garnish as well, and then lightly dusted it with some cayenne pepper cuz my wimpy jalepenos weren't really that hot at all.
(twss)
and the cayenne made it look prettier.
when i brought it over to thanksgiving and told all my cousins, none of them wanted any of it. none. even as i had asked them to just try it. none. and throughout the day, people (my uncles and aunties) would tell me what i should've done, "it should tasted more sour.... it shoulda had more spice... blah blah blah"
but by the end of the night, even though there was an abundance of the different desserts everybody else made, and leftover turkey, there were no leftovers for sisig.
none.
pig's head.
eat that.
if you followed my gchat status at all, you prolly already know that for thanksgiving/thankstaking i cooked a pig's head.
but if you didn't know, i cooked a pig's head for thanksgiving. turned it into sisig, a pilipino dish i had never heard of until cjay told me that it's one of her favorite dishes. she had asked me to make it for her like 3 or 4 years ago. but back then i didn't know where to get a pig's head and was far too sheepish to inquire for one anywhere. now, i am more like a lion or a shark, and not a sheep, so i went to a butcher and asked for one. sorry it took so long cjay, and sorry you didn't get to try the dish you had waited 3 or 4 years for.
actually, i was inspired to do so by my kuya, this guy, and this video.
and recently, i have also tried to make a conscious effort to appreciate as many parts of the animals that we eat (fish eyes anybody? chicken feet?). well, at least the parts that i can stomach for now.
AND, i think deep down inside, part of me wants to become a butcher. a real one. like this guy, except cooler.
anyways, i wish i had pictures to show you the progress of my dish and as proof that i did use an actual pig's head, but i did not have a camera to use, so you'll just have to trust me.
first, i cooked the pig's head for hours in some simmering salted water, with some aromatics. actually that's what i would've done, my mom got tired of my pig's head being in kitchen so she did it herself.
and then, after it had cooled sufficiently, i cut off the ears and then cut a separating line down the middle of the head and proceeded to peel off the two sides of the face, which was skin with whatever meat i could leave attached to the skin. this took some time maybe up to one and a half hours. and i also cut my finger early in this butchering process and had to use at least 4 bandages for this tiny ass cut while cutting up this head. the cheeks of my pig were huge. i thought i had done an ok job, except i left the temples (or at least what i thought were his temples) on the skull, instead of with the skin, so i had to take those out separately.
then i took out the tongue. it was suprisingly hard to open the mouth of my pig, so i had to reach in from the back of the head. it's a pretty odd feeling grabbing a pig's tongue from the back of its mouth. the tongue is also pretty firmly attached to the mouth so it took some real effort, and some precarious cuts to get it out.
my mom then took the skull and made some soup with it. it was pretty crazy cuz after a while in the stock pot, the bottom part of the jaw came off of the skull (i don't really know what was holding it there in the first place) and my mom took it out of the pot and just left it on the counter for a while. i will just say that the most chilling moment of this whole experience was seeing that pig's bottom set of teeth on my kitchen counter, it was just weird. for a while i couldn't bring myself to eat the soup that my mom had made. i mean it was flavored with teeth!
then after mass on thursday, my dad and i fired up the grill (always a manly experience), and i started to grill the meat as entire hemispheres of the face, if that makes sense. this was huge a mistake, cuz the sides weren't really even pieces of meat. so like a total n00b i ended up burning the skin before the meat in the middle could get warm. long story short, i burned most of the skin, so i had to discard a lot of it and one of the ears. luckily skin is excellent at protecting the fat and the meat from getting overdone, so my losses were minimal at worst.
after grilling i started chopping up the various parts. and, of course, as i came to a different part of the face, i had to try it to see what it tasted like.
- pig's ear is just skin and cartilege, and mine was crunchy, not crunchy like a potato chip, crunchy like the end of a chicken drumstick, between the meat and the bone end. i had read that i should've boiled them for a really long time, to make them tender, but like i said before, i wasn't in charge of the initial boiling.
- pig cheek, or pig jowl, as they should be called, is a lot like bacon, except there's a ton more fat than lean. as a result, it is pretty delicious.
- pig snout is surprisingly tender. well it's not so surprising if you touch your nose. sorry if that's weird.
- pig tongue, or lengua, is delish!!! i admit it's pretty hard getting over the fact that it's a tongue. but by the time i had it at this point, it hardly looked or felt like a tongue.
after it's all chopped up, just add some finely diced onions and finely diced jalepenos, some soy sauce and a combination of lemon and vinegar equal to the amount of soy sauce you put in. (i ended up using a whole cup of soy sauce, i think).
if it's still warm, (my kuya would say it's done, and) you can serve, but since i took forever cutting the meat, with the door open, some of my pig's head meat was pretty cold, so i took the opportunity to pan fry the meat (for all of you counting at home, that's right, i cooked this meat 3 different times), rendering a little bit of the fat, then sauteing the onions and jalepenos in said fat. and then i added the soy/vinegar/lemon combo, so not to reduce the sauce too much. i actually chopped up more onions to add as a garnish as well, and then lightly dusted it with some cayenne pepper cuz my wimpy jalepenos weren't really that hot at all.
(twss)
and the cayenne made it look prettier.
when i brought it over to thanksgiving and told all my cousins, none of them wanted any of it. none. even as i had asked them to just try it. none. and throughout the day, people (my uncles and aunties) would tell me what i should've done, "it should tasted more sour.... it shoulda had more spice... blah blah blah"
but by the end of the night, even though there was an abundance of the different desserts everybody else made, and leftover turkey, there were no leftovers for sisig.
none.
pig's head.
eat that.
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