My MIL frequents Manaoag when HB and I were about to get married but this is the first time that I ever set foot on this church. From what I heard, this church always seemed to have so many people from all walks of life. I was fortunate enough not to witness this because I was not up to rubbing elbows with so many people in the scorching heat and not to mention, JX in tow.

I asked HB to take photo of this board for our reference so the next time we visit Our Lady of Manaoag, we will be able to hear mass there. And of course, to share these kind of information with you just in case, you’re scheduled to visit any time soon.

One of the things I look forward when I go to the North is eating this tupig. I discovered this several years ago on a trip. We were hungry that time and peddlers were constantly bugging us to buy this pack of leaves when our car stops because of the traffic. And so, I gave in since it was only P10/ pak. From then on, I always keep my eyes open whenever we passby Pangasinan area for this delicacies of theirs. My MIL knew where to buy the just cooked tupik…at the back (or side) of the Manaoag church. At P2 a piece, we bought P100 (less than $3) worth of tupig. What is tupig? Tupig is one of Pangasinan’s native delicacies made from grated coconut, glutinous rice (malagkit) and sugar wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over a live charcoal or heated metal ( a little bit high tech :)). The banana leaves when heated definitely added flavor to the tupig. How I loved this treat because it makes me full with an affordable price! I think the next time my MIL will buy the tupig, she would double the quantity as she saw competition is just near.

Did you noticed that I love rice treats (kakanin)?  Well, I’m sure you did because this is another rice treat that we discovered.  The glutinous rice was cooked inside the bamboo.  Our usual suman treat is wrapped in banana leaves so this one was an interesting treat.  The bamboo and the coconut cream made the suman very fragrant that made us very curious.  Good thing, we had brought our own utensils that enabled us to dig in.  This treat was not sweet so we had to put Splenda (the only available sweetener we had) sweetener.  Yummy!  This can be found along Bolinao’s church zone.  Sold for 3-4 bamboos for P100.

Another rice treat AD was looking forward was devouring puto and kutsinta.  Both are also made from glutinous rice (or flour) and sugar with different ingredients for each.  We made sure that we would passby Calasiao just for this even we were already running late.  We knew that Calasiao had the best puto and we just have to make AD happy.  What surprised us was there was a lot of stalls selling the puto and kutsinta!  As in, every ladies in the stall were calling and catching my attention as I got out of the car.  I panicked!  Oh no!  Who do I choose?  The puto and kutsinta all looked the same!  I just trusted my instinct and chose the stall with the name, Remy.  She even asked me if I wanted my kutsinta made from white or brown sugar.  Of course, I chose the kutsinta made from the latter.  More healthy, don’t you think?  One thing that surprised me was that they were selling the puto and kutsinta on a per kilo basis since what we usually buy in Manila are per brown bag which only contain around 20-25 pcs of small puto or kutsinta.  I think you can buy half kilos of each.  1 kilo cost P60 (around $1.50/kilo.  They even posted a notice that because of the rice increase, they had to increase the price from P50 to P60).  I do hope the next time I go to Calasiao, puto and kutsinta would still be wallet friendly.  We finished half kilo of puto and kutsinta in less than 30 minutes.  We were 4 + 1 (AD who is almost like an adult when it comes to eating).  Pardon for the absence of photos.  I will post once I’ve found it.

Related Posts by HB:

Bolinao, Pangasinan: Where Else to Stay and What to do

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Outing, Food Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.