Snacks of yesteryear: Pampam
We suddenly missed the corner bakeries of our childhood where, apart from the staple pan de sal they sold pan de coco, pan di limon, Spanish bread, ensaymada, mamon, and that bread with red or purple in the middle.
Never knew what that red/purple bread was called, but Margarita says its name is pampam. As in the 60s Tagalog slang for slut. (We’ve heard the bread referred to as pan de regla, which is just gross.)
In the 70s our older cousins’ word for slut was paka, short for pakawala, like “She’s so paka.”
In the 50s the term for slut was hotsie-patotsie. We learned that from our publisher Teddyboy, who speaks 1950s Assumptionista Tagalog. When surprised he still says “Ay kamote!” Which is more polite than the expression used by Tina’s ancient aunt whenever she is startled: “Ay p**i ni Santa Catalina!” What the saint’s vagina had to do with anything, we have no idea.
Speaking of bread and genitalia, we remembered Ambeth’s story about the time he brought some Spanish friends to a bakery and they died of laughter when they saw monay. But that was just the regular monay. The bigger size monay was called Abanaku and the largest, Susmaryosep. Hmmm, bread, genitalia and holiness. Very Catholic.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 22nd, 2012 at 21:37
in Batangas we call that bread – Kalihim (dunno why) and yeah sometimes my grandmom says pan de regla
and just to share – sluts – pagirpir and labutz trended before (from the word tubal which means dirty clothes so dirty people :)
May 22nd, 2012 at 23:37
I know that bread with the sticky, sweet, red thing inside by the name “maligaya.” I had wondered why, but I never got to ask the vendors; now, I know.
May 23rd, 2012 at 07:10
We call it Kalihim too, here in Laguna. I thought pan de regla was just something my friend invented to gross me out.
A few years back Jim Paredes wrote about bringing over some Spanish friends (or were they Mexican?) to Tagaytay and they saw some vendor selling puto beside the road. The foreigners couldn’t stop giggling.
May 23rd, 2012 at 10:39
There’s also pianono, my fave. And putok :D
May 23rd, 2012 at 16:00
i’m sure you weren’t trying to be funny when you wrote this but this, this is hilarious! i snorted, at masaket ilong ko now. thank you. bow.
May 23rd, 2012 at 17:47
in my hometown, during the town fiesta, there would be vendors at the town plaza selling snacks called “taimpusa,” short for “tae ng pusa.” they made me believe it was really cat shit (it kinda really looked like cat shit) when i was a kid so i never ate one again after finding out the name and the main ingredient.
May 23rd, 2012 at 17:49
oh, and there was also “sundot kulangot,” which i never even dared to go near at.
May 24th, 2012 at 09:20
I have always wondered what that’s called. I really liked that with coffee, except for some reason I thought it embarrassing to ask my mom to buy it. Maybe I thought it was jologs? I don’t know. Now I don’t really care. Those are good. :)
May 25th, 2012 at 17:16
I knew it as pan de regla and only learned “kalihim” recently (my husband’s from Laguna). The red stuff is the bakery’s bread from the day before made into pudding and stuffed into the fresh bun. Yum. I still love it.
And other terms for slut – my favorite is my mom and lola’s term, “putaching”, closely followed by “transient ladies”.
May 28th, 2012 at 08:20
In Cebu and some parts of Visayas and Mindanao, they call it “borikat”, meaning the same as the above. Never knew that they call this bread the same in other parts of Philippines!