Pecha de Peligro Meals

Hoy! Gising gising from reddit user bulalosataginit

Most young people--yuppie, hipster, millennial or student alike--probably know what it's like to run out of money way before the next payday or allowance arrives. That precarious period usually run the week or so before payday, locally known as pecha de peligro--literally, dangerous days. 

This comes mostly from not knowing how to budget their money. Whether you're the newbie fresh grad on your first job, or had way too many bills, or way too many #drinkstagram posts, or your parents are also having a hard time and hence the allowance delay, you know that feeling of not even having enough money to eat. 

Most probably consider instant ramen (the add water or in a cup kind) as the ultimate meal of last resort. I've heard instant noodles being referred to as "poverty food," and they're not too far from the truth. Just thinking of all the salt and additives makes my liver quiver. But for a vast majority of Pinoys on a tight budget, that's all there is too eat. You're even lucky at that point you're not eating pagpag--meals cooked from those discarded by fast food outlets and sold by the kilo in the poorest areas in the metro. So yeah, poverty food has different levels of hell. Consider yourself lucky if you're eating instant noodles.

For the part-time worker, these days are even more real especially at the end of a work term. You don't get your whole salary but only half of a half salary. You get probably a week's worth. The other half of your half salary you only get once you have been "cleared" after the last work requirements are submitted. That clearance process itself also takes some time since the paperwork requires a half dozen signatories or so. What's more: you don't get paid until a month into the next work season. So yeah, these are definitely salad days. 

Learning to cook to feed oneself is a valuable “adulting” skill. Admittedly though, grocery stores are a more convenient place to get food. Don’t rely on supermarkets and groceries, as ingredients there wouldn’t be as cheap compared to what you can buy at the wet market. Once at the market, opt for vegetables as these are cheaper than most meats. Check out this stir fried cabbage recipe with ham via MarketMan, which comes out cheaper than a fast food value meal. He also has a slew of delicious, nutricious, but lower priced dishes here. 

Market Man believes that yes, although times are tough, prices of raw ingredients are rising, we should know better than just succumbing to buying fast food meals to feed ourselves. That the Php49 fried chicken meal can be replicated at home, for far cheaper. He urges readers to cook more, cook smarter, and cook at home. 

My favorite resource of these cheap meals come from reddit ph user whose pecha de peligro recipes are real helpful. Check out these inexpensive recipes for spicy ginisang sayote and Hoy! Gising gising. There’s even a Valentines Special for those affordable date nights. 

Then there’s also the ultimate in Pinoy tipid foods: the delata or canned goods. There’s still a huge spread in terms of price: CDO Carne Norte at Php29.75/40 is way cheaper than the more gourmet Delimondo Corned Beef at Php120. And you still need skills to transform that into a meal and not just open the can and eat. 

Basically, my point is this: if you were not careful with your money, then you will always find yourself in a tough spot where you can only eat Sardinenuts— sardines with crushed Nagaraya nuts. That’s on you. But if you had cooking skills, then even sardines with nuts wouldn’t taste as bad. At least, that’s better than starving. 

The Ghetto Guide to Growing Your Own Food

From Ari LeVaux's Slate column

I was working at home yesterday, and sometime in the afternoon, I grew hungry. Didn't have much time to cook, so it had to be a low effort, what's-in-the-fridge endeavor. We had tomatoes, I had bagoong. I started washing the tomatoes when I spied the patch of alugbati creeping up the side wall. 

I'm not sure who planted it anymore: usually, when we buy vegetables, like bunches of camote or alugbati, those branches get sticked into the soil outside the house. It's something that we grew up with when we still had a huge yard with several trees. When I was a kid, there was a summer that we had the backyard overrun with camote. My brother and I would pick the leaves and put them on the rice and have them as snacks, which annoyed our mother as come dinner time, we wouldn't have appetites for a proper meal anymore. So you could be sure that at any given moment, there would be something edible growing in the yard, diminished size or not. Cut vegetables stalks turn into more vegies. Egg shells become fertilizer. But I suppose I've inherited a more practical approach to growing things. 

When people talk about gardening, it's usually this big effort--not to mention the expense that comes with cultivating plants. The idea of growing one's food is something that can be done to help out with the food expense. People are concerned with "local" and "organic" and "carbon footprints," but for the life of me, I cannot bring myself to pay a hundred bucks for a small tin of cherry tomatoes. It's just not practical. 

It even becomes more complicated when you talk about city or urban gardening. There isn't enough space, specially if one lived in an apartment or a cramped condo unit.

I was glad to run into this "lazy gardener's high yield technique," and it's simply this: throw seeds in the garden. It's so low effort, and yet you get good returns. I have been planning to start a more "proper" garden, but like Ari LeVaugh, it takes me a while to get things done. So I like this approach. It's so similar to our stick it in and watch it grow approach that I'm sure it would work. 

So yesterday, I saw the alugbati and picked off the leaves, blanched them, and ate them along with my tomato and bagoong salad.  I count myself lucky for that small patch of earth we can stick things in. Now if only I can get myself to be a little less lazy and clear the yard so there would be more room to scatter seeds in.