JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

is made the old-fashioned Filipino way at Camiña Balay nga Bato in Iloilo. It’s so good, you can sit in a cafe in Brussels, Basel or Barcelona, try their hot chocolate and say, “Wala ba kayo noong tsokolate tablea sa Iloilo? With Alpine milk?”

See that pot of rich, thick chocolate?

It takes four of these white packages of tablea to make one pot. No wonder it’s so good, it is labor-intensive. You can buy the tsokolate tablea at Lola Rufina Heritage Curio Shop on the ground floor of the old house. The shop also carries traditional woven fabrics, pottery, baskets, accessories and sinamak vinegar.

If you’d like to tour the old house or have lunch or dinner there, you can make an appointment at telephone (033) 306 1927.

The stone house, built in 1865, stands on Osmeña Street in Villa de Arevalo, Iloilo. You can’t miss it.

Go to the side of the house. No matter how desperate your craving for tsokolate, don’t forget your manners. You’re in Iloilo, what’s the rush?

The lady of the house Ms Luth Camiña, president of Banco de Arevalo, had just arrived. “If I’d known you were coming I would’ve prepared a proper lunch,” she declared. “We have no food. Would you like lechon and red rice?”

Whereupon food started coming out of the kitchen.

She made a bowl of hanggop, a refreshing salad of tomatoes and coriander in a sinamak dressing. Why do the simplest vegetables taste better when you’re in the country? Because they were just picked that day and are practically alive.

Then came the lechon, left over from the fiesta the previous night when there were a hundred visitors in the house. It was served with laswa, our favorite name for a vegetable stew. It should always be served next to the Ilokano puke-puke (a misnomer since it’s made of eggplant and eggs. Puke-puke. Laswa!)

And newly-cooked red rice, a variety that’s available only at certain times of the year. It’s so chewy and tasty you don’t need anything with it. The secret, Ms Luth said, is the amount of water you cook it with.

Instant feast!

* * * * *
Thanks to the My City, My SM, My Cuisine team Millie Dizon, Melody Bay, Nonie Cartagena and Cora Alvina of the Metropolitan Museum for making this trip possible.

We Bought A Zoo, directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Matt Damon, is so relentlessly sweet, warm and fuzzy it makes Disney cartoons look dangerous.

Granted Cameron Crowe has always had a sentimental streak, but this is going too far. What next, butterflies and unicorns?

We think Crowe needs to re-view the Billy Wilder movies he has professed admiration for. Wilder’s “romantic comedies” Some Like It Hot and The Apartment seemed like sugary confections until you licked the icing and burned your tongue off.

Matt Damon, we love you, stop trying to look like Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel, the center of the gilded age social scene. Credit: Byron Co. Collection/Museum of the City of New York

For Edith Wharton’s birthday, hail ultimate social climbers in the NYT.

We’d rather watch this semifinal than the final itself. Cross fingers, toes, all crossable appendages.

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer remain on track to meet in the semi-finals of the Australian Open, which is a little like eating your favourite food on the plate before your greens. Those who would rather such an inviting dish be saved for the final will just have to live with what’s on the menu.

Nadal and Federer on way to semifinal showdown

In this LitWit Challenge you can win a charming hardcover edition of two novels by Carson McCullers: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding. All you have to do is to write a story in 1,000 words or less in which the narrator is cruelly rejected by the object of her/his affections.

Notecards by Terrapin Stationers.

The best-written, most cruel rejection wins. Of course we are particularly interested in certified true stories, but we’ll take all tales of spurned and thwarted love, including Rafa-Roger slamfiction. (Soy su destino, no ese Mirka! Beruhigen Sie unten, den Anna Wintour Sie hören kann.)

As always, post your entries in Comments. We’re accepting submissions until Thursday, 26 January 2012 at 2359 hrs.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

* * * * *

Now a word from our sponsor.

National Bookstore is doing its second annual one-day Ang Pao Bag promo on Monday, 23 January 2012, Chinese New Year’s Day, at selected NBS branches. The bag contains more than Php1,000 worth of assorted products, including a Stabilo highlighter desk set, a hardcover John Grisham, photo albums, scrapbook materials and office supplies, and is available for only Php500.

Enjoy your Ang Pao Bag and here’s to a joyful Year of the Dragon.

We got an interesting set of film adaptation pitches for The Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.2. Any one of them would make a movie far superior to anything Star Cinema, Regal or Viva churned out last year.

Howards End
e-ripley has an idea for a Romeo and Juliet adaptation set in colonial era Zamboanga. Good work, but R&J has been done to death. If you like Oro, Plata, Mata, look up one of its inspirations, The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by Luchino Visconti, set in the last days of the Sicilian aristocracy. Or read the novel by Lampedusa.

Akyat-Bahay Gangster pitches Brideshead Revisited in 1930s Iloilo/Negros and 1940s Manila. This would work, except that the remake of Brideshead from a couple of years ago with Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw taking over for Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews is a blot on our memory. (Yeah our criteria for judging are completely arbitrary.)

Akyat-Bahay Gangster also suggests E.M. Forster’s Howards End in Malate and New Manila. Hmmm. (Yes, Christopher de Leon and Lorna Tolentino are old enough; Raymond Bagatsing is too old.) But putting the Zombadings team on it is an intriguing notion—their humorous approach would keep it from getting too staid and stately.

Valley of the Dolls

Ligayaparaiso’s pitch for Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls starring Roderick Paulate and Vice Ganda: Outstanding! Fabulous! We would invest in that.

kindler’s take on The Great Gatsby in Dumaguete starring Joko Diaz as Tom, Heart Evangelista/Anne Curtis as Daisy, Cogie Domingo as Nick: nice. We dread the forthcoming Baz Luhrmann adaptation. DiCaprio-Maguire-Mulligan are fine, it’s the Luhrmann we have doubts about. Also we haven’t seen a Gatsby adaptation we like. The Jack Clayton version: as pretty and immobile as a fashion magazine layout.

The winner of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.2: Pitch a film adaptation iiiiisssss….Ligayaparaiso. Honorable mention to Akyat-Bahay Gangster (for Howards End). Congratulations! You may pick up your prizes at the Customer Service counter, National Bookstore, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati starting Tuesday 24 January 2012.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore. The next LitWit Challenge is coming up.

* * * * *

kimedes007, your prize for The Weekly LitWit Challenge 8.1 can be claimed any time at National Bookstore in Rockwell.