{"id":2912,"date":"2011-04-22T18:06:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T00:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2912"},"modified":"2011-04-22T18:17:50","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T00:17:50","slug":"earth-dinner-package-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2912","title":{"rendered":"Earth Dinner Package Winner"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>

Wow, it has been\u00a0amazing to read all of\u00a0your\u00a0stories.\u00a0 Thank you for sharing.\u00a0 Now, it’s my\u00a0turn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u00a0grew up in a\u00a0village called Disimpit in the town of Jones.\u00a0\u00a0This town\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0province of Isabela on the\u00a0northernmost and largest island in the Philippines called Luzon.\u00a0 Got it?\u00a0 Several months before our birthdays every year, grandpa would take my brother and I to his pig pen.\u00a0 He would tell us each to\u00a0choose the best\u00a0one.\u00a0 So we did that and even gave them some cute names.\u00a0\u00a0My brother\u00a0and I would go visit the pigs most days to feed them and have a little chat, encouraging them just\u00a0to get a little bit\u00a0fatter.\u00a0 If you didn’t know it already, Filipinos are very serious about their lech\u00f3n<\/a>, <\/em>whole roasted pig.\u00a0 It is ever present in major events such as birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals.\u00a0 Yes indeeed, the cute and fat little piggy became a delicious birthday dish.\u00a0 I apologize to my vegetarian friends if I’ve horrified you.\u00a0 Blame tradition I guess.<\/p>\n

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Everyone in the village was invited.\u00a0 The men would start early in the day\u00a0to prepare the pig for roasting.\u00a0 The women made other\u00a0savory dishes and prepared some traditional desserts.\u00a0 My favorite of which is called indilakot, <\/em>a glutinous rice cake, steamed in banana leaves and served with the most delicious sauce.\u00a0\u00a0Everyone had a role.\u00a0\u00a0Someone would go out to chop\u00a0down the\u00a0banana leaves.\u00a0 Another person would cut the leaves into the right size, then\u00a0each piece would be held over a flame to make it more pliable and\u00a0easier to work with.\u00a0 The banana leaf releases some oil from the mild roasting and it is\u00a0absolutely\u00a0one\u00a0of my most favorite smells in the world.\u00a0 I can’t really describe it.\u00a0 It does not smell like bananas.\u00a0 The rice grains would be ground into flour then\u00a0worked into a dough by adding coconut milk, and some water.\u00a0 A large table of older women expertly wrapped the dough with the warm banana leaves as someone prepared a large steamer for cooking.\u00a0 The sauce was made\u00a0from freshly picked mature coconuts (grated and squeezed to get the milk).\u00a0 The milk was then reduced on low heat until it turned into golden-brown colored curds and clear fat.\u00a0 Molasses and cane sugar was added after that\u00a0and it is cooked until nice and syrupy.<\/p>\n

Below\u00a0is a picture of\u00a0 the indilakot <\/em>dessert\u00a0<\/em>that my grandma made last Christmas.\u00a0 It was not \u00a0made with freshly picked coconuts or banana leaves (because she lives in Illinois now).\u00a0 Still\u00a0it was\u00a0prepared\u00a0with a lot of love and fond memories of our old community.\u00a0 The whole family looks forward to\u00a0eating\u00a0it\u00a0every holiday and other important occassions.<\/p>\n

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I’m sorry I made you wait awhile.\u00a0 Let me announce the winner.\u00a0 Using a random number generator<\/a> and with the help of my dog Oliver’s little paw, the lucky commenter is number 6.\u00a0 Jessie you are the winner of the Earth Dinner package \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Congratulations!\u00a0 Please send me your address so that I can forward it to my contact at Organic Valley<\/a>.\u00a0 They will send you your prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, it has been\u00a0amazing to read all of\u00a0your\u00a0stories.\u00a0 Thank you for sharing.\u00a0 Now, it’s my\u00a0turn.\u00a0 I\u00a0grew up in a\u00a0village called Disimpit in the town of Jones.\u00a0\u00a0This town\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0province of Isabela on the\u00a0northernmost and largest island in the Philippines called Luzon.\u00a0 Got it?\u00a0 Several months before our birthdays every year, grandpa would take my brother and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[33,263,107,265,266],"class_list":["post-2912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contests","tag-dessert","tag-earth-day","tag-giveaway","tag-indilakot","tag-lechon","no-featured-image"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2935,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions\/2935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}