Dairy isn't that big here in the Philippines. I imagine that due to lack of vast quantities of land on which to raise cows coupled with lack of refrigeration until relatively recently, it just wasn't practical and so it never really made it into the national diet.
When we first got here, A had some milk on hand for the girls. To keep it affordable, it's actually half reconsistuted milk and half fresh milk. Because we're on the other side of the world and the cow's diets are different, the taste is a little off, too. The verdict from the kids was a loud, "NO WAY!" We're going the path of ice cream and cheese for them instead.
Life is hard, I know.
Which brings me to the topic of cheese. Until fairly recently, it was hard to find things like cheddar and parmasan on a regular basis. The grocery stores in our area seem to have a fairly constant supply, so we're lucky in that regard. There is a "local" cheese product that is widely available, though, called Che*Vital. It's like Velveeta, but white. Or so I'm told, since I don't actually remember ever having had Velveeta. A says it's really good grated on top of hot pasta so it melts all over and gets gooey. I'll let him stick with that.
Butter is about the same price as in the states, but margarine is even cheaper, so most people, when they need such a thing, opt for margarine.
Where am I going with all this? Well, MJ, our househelp who is in charge of cooking, was asked to make pancakes for us this morning. She's never actually made pancakes before, but we got a mix with the instructions in Tagalog and she figured it out quite well. I'm sure she's seen pancakes before: the stack of steamy-warm goodness with the pat of butter on top sitting in a pool of sweet, sweet syrup.
The girls and I sat down at the table and waited for a few minutes and she brought out a plate with a stack of pancakes, smothered in syrup with white pats of... something... on top. It wasn't melting in. I thought that perhaps she'd made them earlier and the pancakes had gone cold. I lifted a pancake onto each of our plates, and the "butter" was sticking to the pancake on top of it. I took a little nibble to investigate, and sure enough, instead of butter, she'd topped each pancake with a pat of Che*Vital.
I laughed pretty hard, but The Youngest was miffed, because she'd gotten a bit bite of it before she realized what it was. It's not like it killed her, and really it wasn't THAT bad, but it wasn't what she was expecting. I took the plate back in and found out that, yes, they were pats of cheese and showed her that we typically opt for butter on meals like this.
Good times, people. Good times.
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11 years ago
6 comments:
ahahahahhahah che-vital =)) that's awesome. She was trying to copy the pancakes in the box!
Wait till she cooks you rice swimming in Star Margarine.
My uncle used to work for Magnolia. He said all our milk/cheese come from New Zealand. I dunno if that's relevant or whatever.
That is classic. I wonder if MJ thought it was odd that we top pancakes with processed cheese product. Those crazy Americans.
I once confused butter for cheese.
Mom used to buy margarine all the time, so I wasn't used to butter. I came home from college once and wanted to make an omelette. I sliced some cheese into it, but when I went to fold it over, all the cheese was gone--it was butter and melted.
Very funny. It reminds me of when Eric was little. He used to call butter queso ,(Spanish for cheese). And he ate it like it was cheese, too. Ashlynn is crazy about butter as well. She eats it by the spoonful when we aren't looking.
Butter, cheese... it's all good.
Wendy, I felt so bad going in to tell her, because it was clear from the look on her face when she brought them out that she was so proud she had figured it all out on her own. Oh well.
The Nestle milk here is half milk, half reconsituted powdered milk. We have since found "normal" milk, but the flavor is still off. The girls like it in chocolate milk form, though, so they get a bit of that now and then.
I love it! I have to make cheesy pancakes now.
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