I was in Silay City last weekend to be part of the Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) Visayas 2011. The mere mention of this heritage city, often referred to as the "Paris of Negros", brings a vision of grandeur due to its large collection of perfectly preserved heritage houses with more than thirty of these have been declared as historical landmarks.
But Silay City has more than these abodes to offer as we all found out during the ‘Lagaw Silay’ guided tour for the delegates and facilitated by their Tourism Office headed by Severino Pacete. From Bacolod City where most of the delegates meet, a quick bus ride across the vast sugar plantations with interesting stories along the way perked up the start of turned out to be a heritage and gastronomic journey in Silay City.
A quick stop over at the almost century old El Ideal Bakery announced our arrival in the city and for a food blogger like me, the journey could have started and ended there. Even with a full breakfast an hour then, I can’t help but to sample a few of their goodies as I helped my self with their signature fresh lumpia, empanada and cheese roll. But El Ideal’s signature product is the guapple pie, which may seem to be like an ordinary pie but curiosity almost leads to always a having a taste upon knowing it is made with guapple - is it guava or apple?
As the sugar industry created a big impact on the economy, haciendas make up a big part of the Silay. At the Hacienda Adela Folklore Village, we got a chance to tour and “immersed” in the lives of the people who spent almost their lifetime in the industry.
It turned out that planting, harvesting and “slashing” sugarcane wasn’t the only activity for these folks as most of them were also involved in the performing arts with some having been invited to the CCP before.
We enjoyed listening to composos, loas, and would you believe fliptop (a rap battle league that puts two people in a match to have them insult each other with the cleverest punch lines and sharpest rhymes). Of course the latter had flair as it was delivered in Hiligaynon known to be one of the sweetest dialects in the country. So despite the “insults”, a smile is inevitable.
A tour of the typical bodega, garage and office, among others, of the hacienda furthered our experience on the lives of these workers of the hacienda. We even got go to a “tubohan” with all those harvested tubo getting ready to be transported to the mill.
Hidden in the midst of the sugarcane plantation was our next destination and it was another farm. But it connotes that of modern farming methodologies yet goes back to the basic farming – no chemicals, no pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers, no GMO.
At the Fresh Start Organic’s farm in Hacienda Maquina, our tour started with a 101 on vermiculture (culture of earthworms). Owner and our host Ramon “Chin-chin” Uy Jr. explained that they started with only 2 kilos of earth worms and now they had no idea how many they have.
On layman’s terms, they feed the worms with compost and in turn they will “excrete” back nutrients to the soil thus making it more fertile. At first, they only supplied this nutrient soil to other farms but then they started their own organic farm thus the birth of the popular brand.
A tour of the farm brought us to the nursery where seedlings were taken care of before they are transferred to the plots. We were also in time for the harvesting of the lettuce that went straight to the washing area, then dried and packed all within minutes.
Their products display area was really heaven – rice that came in black, brown, white and red; native and organic coffee, assorted vegetable pickle, dried herbs, and fruit preserves like yakon and bignay in natural honey.
But was surprised us that time, as we were being led further back, was what they call as “organic pig” and it was hungrily devouring leaves when we came.
It was then a quick trip to the one of the most popular landmarks of Silay City – the Balay Negrense where a healthilicious lunch was prepared for us in the midst of the sprawling grounds of the mansiom. A healthy lunch in general, it was a treat from Fresh Start Organics where everything from the fruits, vegetables and the drinks even the lechon were of organic origins.
Appetizers included ensaladang langka and kinilaw nga isda. A tray of brown, red and black rice sprinkled with toasted kalkag created not only had a visual appeal but also gave an inviting aroma. There was a tray of steamed okra and eggplant served with appetizing guinamos and an assorted organic vegetables adobo, the winner of the 14th Adobo Festival two Saturdays ago, incidentally an entry from Fresh Start organics. It mainly had takway and okra in a savoury adobo seasoning.
The main entrees were patotin - made from organically fed ducks, steamed fish, Tinolang manok and the star of any feast, the lechon. And yes it’s the “brother” the of the organically fed lechon we saw earlier at the farm. Dessert was a mélange of freshly harvested organic fruits. Drinks served was among everybody’s favorite, freshly squeeze sugarcane juice mixed with passion fruit giving it a delicious taste you can actually smell.
Like sugar barons we were, we spent the remaining time going around the estate and the museum and a few minutes after we were in for another gastronomic treat - freshly brewed native coffee from the coffee farmers around Mt. Kanlaon. And to make it even more special, we were able to see how piaya, a native Negrense delicacy made with unleavened flour and Muscovado sugar, was made from scratch. It had mango essence that time that every piaya hot off the “grill” were “selling like hotcakes.”
It was indeed one weekend full of new learning from the wisdom people we met, to the places we visited and to the food we ate - each had a story to tell. It gave us, bloggers, inspiration to share these wonderful stories to the world for as what Eric Dee of www.byahilo.com writes “these stories are not often told as most of the times, it is the tales of the rich and famous that gets published.”