Getting Dirty

I was in Makati City Hall a few days ago. No, not for business or document concerns. I was there because of the food bazaar. Yes, there's a food bazaar in the parking area, and they sold lots and lots of ulam and merienda. Oh, the price was cheap, by the way.

So, I bought giniling na baboy and binagoongang baboy (Gosh! Ang-baboy ko!) for lunch. I wasn't in the mood for the sinigang na salmon belly which Mom asked me to buy from Chick-Boy. And when I went out to hitch a trike, I saw it. An apparition.

There it was, in its magnificent glory -- the fishball cart. I tried to avoid it, but it was a temptation too much to resist. (I promised myself not to eat fishball or other street foods again. I was hospitalized because of them -- during my residency training in 2006, and I was the chief resident! Wonderful. No, perfect.) Five years later, I decided to give it another chance, now with "standard precautions".

I bought five-pesos worth (10 pieces) of fishball. Oh, the fun of making tuhog the balls. Amusing, 'coz the price of 50 centavos had not changed in the past 10 years. This time, however, I didn't dip the balls in the sarsa. It's the sauce, honey, that harbored the Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Shigella dysenteriae, Campylobacter jejuni, and Yersinia enterocolitica. It's the same sauce that gave fishballs the superb taste that would put all those savory Italian sauces to shame, but I didn't want to take the risk and be hospitalized again with severe dehydration. Even so, I enjoyed the sauceless fishballs.

To date (three days after my fishball ingestion), my gastrointestinal mucosa is still intact.

 I secretly took this photo of the fishball cart while I was eating my balls (Ugh!). The sauce looked appetizing. Surely, it would taste even better. Nah, I settled for the sauceless. Not as scrumptious but nonetheless satisfying.