The Five Senses

(my journal entry dated August 23, 2012, a Thursday)

I finally got to dispose of the large tree branch that I cut off from the Neem tree in our backyard. It took me three days to pull off the entire thing—from cutting the massive branch, chopping it up, and then disposing it. After that, I now have a stack of firewood piled up in the front yard. I wonder what I’m going to use it for.

I was thinking of cooking bulalo or halayang ube. Or goto. I was thinking of business yesterday while chopping off the smaller branches and piling up the wood. Perhaps I should open up an eatery or something.

I get uncomfortable with that word: “eatery.” It’s like it was coined by a non-native speaker of English (a Pinoy in this case) and now seeped into popular use. I’ve so long wanted to look it up in the dictionary or the internet but I keep forgetting.

Right now, in the kitchen, Ate Gina is cooking our lunch. Tatay requested for nilagang talong (boiled eggplant) with bagoong as dip; I asked for tortang patatas (potato omelet)—hmmm….ang sarap!

When I was in college (taking up Physical Therapy at La Salle-Dasma), there was this house that my classmates rented and we used to hang out there during breaks. We ate together for lunch, but one time, I fancied tortang patatas and so I cooked it, and it was surprising because some of my classmates didn’t even know what it was.

One of my classmates who grew up in the U.S. saw me “messing up” the omelet (as I don’t know how to “perfectly” cook eggs) and called the dish “pathetic eggs.” He was joking, of course. But when we were already eating, he just couldn’t get enough of it, and he once said, “Could you please pass those ‘pathetic eggs’?” Hah!

It’s such a simple dish, really. You just fry shoe-string-cut potatoes (or if you want, french-fries-cut potatoes) and then add the scrambled eggs (with salt and pepper to taste). Yummy!

Ate Gina is already done with the cooking. She said we can eat now. I said, “yes,” but, man, I still have to finish this up.

I can smell the torta beckoning to me, like in those old cartoons where the smell of a delicious meal takes the form of smoke shaped like a human hand, seducing and then lifting up the craving cartoon character by the nose. Hmmm….that’s just like what that critic said about a Rembrandt portrait—the paint was applied so thick, one could lift up the entire painting by its nose. That’s a nice incident. From food to painting. The senses.

I once did a painting about it (the five senses) for a painting competition. The theme of the contest was “Natural ang ganda ng Pilipinas” (literally, “the beauty of the Philippines is natural”). So I painted a Filipino home scene, where the mother is cooking bañgus (milkfish) stuffed with chopped onions and tomatoes, and an assortment of tropical fruits to represent the sense of taste. There was also a small sharp knife on the table and a sepak takraw ball which a young boy (the son) toys with, representing the sense of touch.

Behind them, there was a guitar hanging on one corner of the wall (sense of hearing); a mirror showing a man—the father coming in the house from work—through the reflected front door (sense of sight); and at the center, a big window letting in the breeze and a picturesque view of the Manila Bay sunset (senses of smell and of sight).

Yep! The five senses.

It didn’t win. :)

Detail from "The Five Senses" (by yours truly)