MALAPIT NA! AYAN NA!

No, I'm not having a fit or orgasm or anything. I'm just excited that summer is about to end. How do I know this? Because there's ants all over the place. Leave food on your table and come back a few minutes later and ants would have swarmed all over it. They're preparing for the rainy season already, this year being La Niña year. Let us learn from the ants.

Anyway, here's what the farm staff had for lunch yesterday which was an event day. I got home at 2AM Sunday because the couple decided to bottoms up all the wine with the rest of the gang, which included two actors. Now I leave it to you to process that useless piece of information.

Early Saturday morning, I went to the Masinag wet market to look for these beauties locally known as lumot. Weird, because lumot means seaweed. Anyway, these sell for Php 280 - 300 / kilo. I personally picked them because maraming gimik ang mga tindera when it comes to squids, eh. First, you have to make sure there's no fish inserted inside. Seriously! Some tinderas do this so the squids weigh more. Either this or they pick the squids for you but do not drain them first before putting them on the scale. Anyway, when preparing them for grilling, take out the "skeleton" which looks like a plastic kinife, pull the head off, remove the pincers from the mouth area, and take out the ink sac. Wash, wash. You might want to save the ink to make squid-ink rice. I do not like squid-ink rice.

For the stuffing, dice tomatoes and onions. Stuff them inside the cavity and put the head back on and secure with a barbecue stick (see first photo). Now they're ready for grilling. By the way, did you know that squids have three hearts? Yes, you read that right. And two kidneys. Cool, ano? Everyone in the cephalophod family (i.e. octopus) have the same features. This might be of interest to the kidney market, hmmmm.... Squid kidneys anyone?

You might want to keep the fire low because cooking squid is tricky. One mistake and they become like rubber. For the sauce, it's usually soy sauce with diced onions, tomatoes, and chili and a little vinegar. Slice the squids into rings before serving.

For dessert, I prepared minatamis na saging. You just slice saba bananas and boil it in water with brown sugar (I used muscovado) and flavor with vanilla and cinammon. If you have cinammon sticks, the better. Cool for a bit before quick chilling in the freezer. Enjoy. :-)