Traditional kitchen in the old village

We would gather tañgantañgan wood every other day after school at the “farm”–a designated plot of land for vocational students–at the William S. Reyes Elementary School. Either that or haul them home in good old faithful–bull cart–returning home from the farm at As Perdido.

This chore was basically reserved for young boys then. Electric stoves were but a dream not for the young wood collectors, but for most moms across this isle. We often dream of the day when we never had to trail thick tañgantañgan jungles to pick fire wood. We dread it especially during the rainy season.

The use of traditional kitchen teaches you how to organize even little things like collecting tañgatañgan. For instance, we would clear a certain plot of land in preparation for planting. As we chop and uproot tañgantañgan manually, one is assigned to collect and gather it into piles for drying and subsequent use at the old kitchen in Chalan Kanoa.

Large ones are split into half with an ax or machete. You sit there splitting wood until the entire pile is done. It’s the only sure way to have cooking in the old kitchen, daily.
If you’re lazy, then you’re asking for either mom’s belt or you’d be scrounging for wood at 4 a.m. somewhere underneath the house or old piles of materials. I learned the price of laziness–had to split 2x4s one early morning under the rain. It’s the least of my definition of fun!

Dawn was a special time in the old kitchen. The entire village is smoking as moms or elderly girls prepare breakfast for the family. I usually finish cooking by 4 a.m. before heading to church. By that time, the smell of food is all over the villages. I could literally tell who’s having what for breakfast that morning. Heading home after mass, workers wait for the trailer (remember the NTTU’s old gray trailer that hauls workers?) toting lunch boxes wrapped in either handkerchiefs or the whitest diaper (ones we wash by hand daily). We weren’t sophisticates then but highly practical people.

The NTTU employees work as mechanics, carpenters, painters, supply depot, live-out maids on Navy and Capital Hill, nurse’s assistants at the old NOB hospital at Maturana or some other menial job. Their salaries were menial too!–$.20 an hour–cost of a can of tuna back then. These workers must be having a feast every meal time when they gather for lunch break. I couldn’t figure out why would they’d be hauling an entire day’s salary in the food they bring to work.

Ah, but the old folks were industrious people then supplementing family meals (lunches too) from subsistence farming after work and during weekends. There was a steady stream of healthy dietary home grown food. Vegetables are grown the old fashion way without the use of pesticides, commercial fertilizers or insecticides. Farm animals too were fed with home grown feed free from growth hormones found in today’s commercial feed.

It’s in the old kitchen where I learned real home economics. It’s the venue where you stretch not dollars, but nickels and dimes.
When the family budget is depleted, poverty also teaches you to scramble for survival. I usually have my Breakfast of Champions before heading to school (not cereal and milk now) but rice drowning in Hills Bros. coffee loaded with sugar. Yeap! Most kids have it in their tummies though we tell white lies to our teachers that we had bacon and eggs (it’s sardines), toast bread (boiled taro or banana), apples and oranges (a total fantasy of poverty stricken kids). Well, it’s more like tab water in drinking fountains strategically placed between classrooms.

For some odd reason, rice and coffee or any dish tasted better when cooked the old fashion way than in my Mr. Coffee or Japanese rice cooker or Mr. GE Stove. I miss the old kitchen and I’d visit my brothers and sisters at As Perdido just for the opportunity to revisit traditional cooking of days gone by, long, long, time ago.