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Big Bird, Ernie, Grungella, and Big Bird’s Non-Imaginary Friend had dessert and coffee at a newish restaurant. Big Bird tried the apple pie. His friends awaited his opinion.

“Hmm,” he said portentously. “Um. . .urhm. . .the crust is good.”

“That’s it?” Ernie asked. “Good crust?”

Big Bird pushed the uneaten slice around his plate. “And look, the china is beautiful. Such detail.”

“This is a new school of criticism,” Grungella declared. “We only say positive things–”

“And you read between the lines!” Ernie said. “Note the decor: subtle baroque.”

“I didn’t even think that was possible,” Grungella said. “This restaurant brings oxymorons to life!”

“What about the food?” BB’s NIF pointed out.

“For maximum enjoyment,” Ernie replied, “Be sure to sit under a chandelier!”

“More chandeliers per square meter than other restaurants in this mall!” Grungella added.

They had started a new movement.

When I arrived from Bacolod last night I skipped dinner, and then at brunch I just had a salad. I don’t like vegetables, I’m a devout meatatarian, but after 36 hours in Bacolod I need some blandness. Mike was right. Before I left I asked him what Bacolod was like. He said, “Lafang. It’s all eating, eating, eating. You sit down to an enormous lunch, and halfway through, your companions are already discussing what you should have for dinner.”

I gave a talk at the La Sallian campus writers’ conference. I asked some participants why the term for La Salle student was changed from “La Sallite” to “La Sallian”. They said all their schools worldwide use the latter.  Thanks to my very generous hosts, the staff of the Spectrum, esp. the editor whose head I lopped off because he called before 8am.

After mass consumption of sweets I am now piaya (in different flavors). And napoleones. And barquillos. I didn’t even go near the dulce gatas, and I’m not into self-denial.

P.S. Sign in a beauty salon in Silay City, near El Ideal bakery: Haircut and blu dry, P40.

Banana Bag, originally uploaded by 160507.

“For generations, the banana has been embraced and celebrated in pop culture: “Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today!” But it took muscle and outright carnage to turn this fragile tropical treat into the most popular fruit in the United States. The banana is “the yin and yang of American culture and blood,” Koeppel says. The fruit became his obsession and the subject of his book, “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.”

“Surprisingly, Koeppel isn’t the only journalist of late to light out to the tropics and come back with tales of the banana’s bloody role in history. For Peter Chapman, a Financial Times reporter, who spent years covering Latin America, the great banana company, United Fruit, which later became Chiquita, prefigured the rise of the modern multinational corporation. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that something we would imagine as innocuous as bananas has produced as many exercises in regime change as has ever been enacted in the name of oil,” says Chapman, whose book is called “Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World.”

When bananas ruled the world in Salon. Histories of Latin America remind me that the Philippines is in the wrong continent.

This one caused crumbs to shoot out of my nose. From McSweeney’s: Cookie Monster Searches Deep Within Himself and Asks: Is Me Really Monster?

“Me was thinking and me just don’t get it. Why is me a monster? No one else called monster on Sesame Street. Well, no one who isn’t really monster. Two-Headed Monster have two heads, so he real monster. Herry Monster strong and look angry, so he probably real monster, too. But is me really monster?”

(Note: My definition of “funny” is “causes food to enter wrong passage and come out of nose”.) Me is friend of Carlo the baker, and Carlo name juancas for Juan Carlo and rickoise for Ricky, but me still have no cookie named after me.

Bad news, good news. The bad news is that my basic plan for world domination—send out Pinay maids to raise the next generation as Pinoys—will not work in China. The Chinese government frowns upon the “importation” of Filipino domestic helpers and nannies, as this takes employment away from the local nannies called ayis. Smart move. It’s not just to protect local labor, I think; they know the importance of being raised in one’s own culture. I mean, they don’t have a culture that’s thrived thousands of years for nothing. There are some Pinay maids working in China, but most of them are employed by expats.

The good news is that the bestselling line of snacks in China is Oishi, a Filipino brand. Oishi is manufactured by Liwayway Co., which began in Manila in 1946 as Liwayway Gawgaw. According to my source, Oishi has 10 percent of the huge Chinese snack food market; given the competition, this is enough to take the number one ranking. According to an extremely cheerful Chinese volunteer, Oishi snacks were handed out free at her school, so everyone became habituated to the chips and whatnot. There are Oishi products that aren’t even available in the Philippines yet, such as the grilled mushroom, the sweet and spicy, and the tomato ketchup-flavored potato chips in cans. (Although it must be noted that the truly Pinoy flavor would be banana ketchup.) As my sister, who consumed mass quantities of Bread Pan during her pregnancy, will attest, Oishi snacks can be quite addictive. Perhaps addictive enough to compensate for the absence of Pinay domestics in China. . .

In the late 80s, my friends Otsu and Valmont went to school in Scotland. There they became friends with Colum, an Irish librarian. One evening they were all having dinner at Colum’s place when he announced that he had a surprise for them. He then produced a small, hard, hairy coconut. “Ta-daaa!”

Being true Pinoys, Otsu and Valmont smiled like contestants in the question-and-answer portion of a beauty contest. “Oh,” Otsu said, though her thought balloon read, “Luma na ang niyog, copra na yata yan.” “Ah,” said Valmont, who was really thinking, “Am I expected to dance the maglalatik?”

“I searched all over,” Colum announced, “Before I found one in an Indian grocery.” Being a nice white boy, he had assumed that we tropical islanders would plotz with joy at the sight of a coconut in the temperate zone. (See the swallow sketch in The Holy Grail.) “What do you think?”

Without losing the dazzling smile, Otsu said, “It’s a little. . .dry.” Valmont avoided eye contact with anyone or he would burst out laughing.

“How do you open it?” Colum asked. Otsu and Valmont were stumped, as neither of them had ever personally cracked open a coconut—it usually arrived at the table already opened and with a straw, or as fresh lumpia or a guinataan dish. “Um. . .we’ve never. . .” Otsu and Valmont told their lovely host, who had probably seen too many movies of island natives running up trees and bagging coconuts. “Should I tell him that the servants do it for us?” read Otsu’s thought balloon. “Should I tell him we have electricity back home?” Valmont wondered.

So Colum produced a hatchet and a hammer. “Omigod this is how people get murdered,” Otsu thought. “Help!” Valmont squealed silently, but still smiling like a beauty contestant who can’t understand the question. “We’re Pinoy,” Otsu said as she recounted the story. “If we keep smiling, they won’t kill us.”

While Colum attacked the coconut with carpentry tools, Otsu and Valmont maintained a safe distance. “Those shards can be painful,” Otsu pointed out. “Shrapnel,” Valmont added. After much effort the coconut was opened and Colum ate it.

Whenever my sister and I did the groceries at Rustan’s in Ayala Center, we would drop by the Yum-Yum Tree coffee shop by the entrance. Our favorite was the pinakbet. It was by no means traditional or authentic—more like bagnet with sauteéd vegetables—but it was comforting and familiar.

The other day Chus and I went to Yum-Yum Tree after seeing 10,000 BC (It’s idiotic, but quite fun. It’s. . .it’s. . .Rapa Nui!). Yum-Yum Tree was gone. In its place was something called Le Gourmet. Wine, cheese, cold cuts, not really the sort of place you duck into while lugging four bags of groceries. The waiter noted our distress and said some of the dishes in the old Yum-Yum Tree menu are now available at Bon Appetit. So we ate upstairs, and the food tasted the same, but I miss my childhood.

The other supermarket coffee shop of my childhood was the one in the old Makati Supermart. They served the famous sweet spaghetti, staple of children’s parties (Mention it to Italians and they get apoplexy). The old Makati Supermarket is gone, but the sweet spaghetti is still served in the coffee shop of Unimart in Greenhills. Unimart is caught in a time-warp: It looks exactly the way it did in the 70s, minus the comic books.

Cakes by Carlo, originally uploaded by 160507.

The stats have remained constant, no spikes in the last week (although the comments have increased), so let’s try a corollary to hypothesis A: Lots of people searched for “Carlo” and “cake”. Here is Carlo the Dessert Diva’s Torta Limone, also known as “It’s a Lacroix!”— layers of crisp walnut meringue interspersed with thick mounds of delicately sour lemon curd, beneath a veil of chantilly cream and lemon roses. Mmm. Click on the photo to see the Strawberry and Mango Dacquoise, and the Grand Cru Truffle Torte, a.k.a. Death and Resurrection and Death Again by Chocolate.

Update. No spike, so hypothesis A is out. The stat booster must be lithium, then. However, I did get text messages from lots of friends asking where they could order the cakes. Yes, he can make the Torte Limone into a hat that you can wear. Carlo is updating his brochure. The cakes are available in different sizes. You can contact him at (+63) 920 955 CAKE. Carlo is also the subject of my column Emotional Weather Report tomorrow in the Star. No, I am not his publicist. I work for cookies (they’re eeevil).

Here’s a Straight Dope classic: “How does one suck in a piece of spaghetti? Think about it. How one sucks milk through a straw is easy. The lowered pressure in the mouth due to sucking causes the air pressure over the milk to force the liquid up. But if one pushes on the end of a piece of spaghetti it just buckles. The mouth is closed and sealed over the sides of the spaghetti, so passing air doesn’t drag it along. Somehow the air very close to the mouth must obliquely communicate a force along the length. . .” It’s more complicated than you think.

From FT via 3Quarks: This little piggy was raised in a cramped barn, castrated, killed at a young age, and turned into bacon with potassium nitrate and sodium nitrite. This other little piggy was allowed to run wild and eat acorns, killed at an oldish age, and cured in sea salt that turned his fat into a substance similar to olive oil. Clearly the second piggy makes for the better meat BUT due to technical reasons he cannot be labeled “organic”. Consumers count on labels to protect their health. Uh-oh.

Carlo the Dessert Diva arrives bearing a large cake box done up in black ribbon with a big bow.

Jessica: Dapat ba talagang naka-black ribbon yan?

Carlo: Yes, that’s their order. Why?

Jessica: Isn’t that how the NPA delivers death threats? Packages tied in black ribbon?

Carlo: That’s exactly what my mother said!

Ricky: Ganyan ba ang death threat? Ang Pilipino talaga, kahit death threat, over-styled! Masyadong madrama!

Press release from my friend the BLB: The Salcedo Community Market and the Provincial Government of Ilocos Norte will host an Ilocos food and crafts fair on December 15, 2007, showcasing the finest fresh produce, specialty food items and indigenous crafts from the Ilocos region. Specialty items on sale will include popular products such as Ilocos garlic, shallots, cornick, linga (sesame seeds), miki and tupig, sugarcane wine (basi) and sugarcane vinegar (sukang Iloko) – all of which will be on sale from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm. Other items on sale will also include Ilocano delicacies such as bagnet, empanada and longganiza. Among the non-food items are woven textiles and cotton fabric, as well as dried tobacco leaves – a traditional household insect-repellant and garden pesticide. Also on sale at the event are traditional Abel Iloko – or woven cotton fabrics – as blankets, runners and napkins. Included among the regional crafts are handcrafted baskets and mats that are renowned for their tight, intricate weaves.

The Salcedo weekend market is held in Salcedo Village, Makati, near the Makati Sports Club.