Hello there!
It's a pleasure to join ASEAN Hive Community Challenge once again. And this time, the topic is something about the most popular staple food in ASEAN countries, RICE. The title for this week's challenge makes total sense because indeed RICE IS LIFE.
In this post, I'm going to show you some photos and information related to how rice is used and consumed in our house. Let's start with the rice grains...
My family usually consume Ganador rice because it's fluffy and delicious. In the picture above, the rice is still inside a sack because aside from my family's consumption, we also sell rice per kilogram in our store.
We usually cook rice either once or twice a day. My family and I have rice usually for lunch and dinner. At breakfast, we usually eat bread. In the photo above, we're about to cook some rice for dinner. The one inside the plastic cup isn't for us, though... Here's what we do with it.
Since the pandemic started, my family and I have been feeding some rice grains to the birds. They're usually sparrows. At first, there were just about 10 of them, until they grew in number. Fast forward to this year, it has been a habit for them to come by either in the morning or afternoon for some food. They're all so adorable. Let me show you a few shots I took a minute after we placed the rice grains.
The sound they make is very relaxing. And it makes us happy to see them enjoying their food.
I also took a photo of the rice once it was cooked. This is why we like Ganador... it's fluffy and a bit sticky, so it's delicious. I personally like Japanese rice, but their rice is too expensive, so we seldom buy them.
There are times when we are already very full, but there are still a lot of leftover rice. In my family's case, if there's leftover rice during lunch, we just eat it for dinner. However, if there are leftover rice at dinner, we usually cook them into various rice dishes. Here are some examples of rice dishes we make using leftover rice. :)
This is called "Champurado". It's leftover rice with cocoa and brown sugar. Some people use powdered cocoa, but it our case, we use tableya. Have you ever heard of it? Let me show you!
This here is tableya. It's basically from cacao beans. It smells so good. Filipinos usually use this to make "Sikwate" which is a popular and traditional chocolate drink in the Philippines.
Of course, leftover rice can also be turned into this very famous Asian rice dish... the FRIED RICE! We had this for brunch today and it was so yummy. There's the leftover rice, egg, ham and green onion. :) It was so good!!! <3
And ohh... in addition to the birds outside. My mom and I somehow also started feeding some house geckos at home. haha They usually roam around near the dining table when we're eating. One time, I gave them a grain of rice and they ended up happily eating it, so we continued doing so whenever they're around.
Luckily, mama could take their photo earlier today. I just made a collage of the photos she sent me. They didn't show up yesterday, so yeah~ hahaha
Aside from the usual rice, the Philippines also use glutinous rice a lot. It's especially common in making some rice desserts like puto, biko, budbod or suman, and so on. I have a picture of puto and suman I took in the past. Let me show you below. They're mostly made of glutinous rice and coconut milk.
We sometimes buy these for breakfast. The long one which is still wrapped in banana leaf is called "budbod or suman", while the other one which is a bit triangular in shape is called "puto maya". I like dipping them in powdered chocolate. haha
The reason why we have some glutinous rice at home was because mama and papa were feeling quite nostalgic while talking about festivals in the past. They mentioned a dish called "Arroz Valenciana" which was quite common in their days.
I have never heard of it nor tasted it, so mama decided to try making it. She made it last week. I took some pictures, so I'll share it below, too.
It's similar to paella, I think?? It's glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, then there's chorizo, bell pepper, raisins and boiled egg. I think mama also added some leftover chicken in this dish.
It was a bit sweet since it's made with glutinous rice and coconut milk, but it was actually quite good. I'm not a huge fan of glutinous rice, but I was able to enjoy this dish.
There sure are a bunch of ways to enjoy rice. I can even just pour some soy sauce and used oil on cooked rice and I'd be satisfied. I mean, it's unhealthy, but I've tried it before when we didn't have any viand... and it was good! haha
Anyway, that's it for this post. It was indeed fun talking about rice. Thanks for reading and see you next time! (^^,)/
