Zamboanga Part 2 (ChristmasMas Eve Dinner)

Christmas Eve we spent the time at the family house having dinner. What was the biggest anticipation was to see the roasted Lechon (pig). When we reached, the pig was still wrapped up with the brown paper. Lotsa oil soaked up. Pig was pretty small not what I imagined it to be. Uncle said smaller pigs are nicer as the bigger ones would have more fats and the meat would be chewy.

The Lechon still wrapped up.

The pork tasted so so for me. I guess I was comparing back to Penangs Roasted piglet style. But Ed on the other hand loved it that throughout the whole eating session he was standing around the pig eating away. You had two choices of vinegar to dip the pork in. One was a plain vinegar with soya sauce, and the other was the spiced vinegar which has chilly. Ed offered me the skin area. Took a bite and offered him back as one bite of it suddenly made me feel so geli-fied. I think because I was actually looking at the whole figure of the pig that it got to my head subconsciously. Also the skin was rather oily and had a layer of fat.

Took this shot as soon as the wrappers were taken off. Before I could snap the photo of the pig, an aunty came and ripped off the pigs ear. See it's missing a right ear.

The after effect of all our hungry stomachs.

Besides the pork, we also had other local foods such as this dish called 'valenciana'. It looks like those risoto rice we get in italian restaurants. It has all sorts of ingredients in the rice that I myself don't really know how to say. But taste wise, it was good. You only eat abit cos it's rather filling.

Valenciana

Then there was this dish called 'dinogoan' which is a favorite local dish in Philippines also known as 'bloody bloody'. Now this dish may get your stomach turning. It has all the spare parts of the pig cooked together with the pig blood. The pigs blood has to be fresh and how do they get it, when they slaughter the pig, they poke the neck with a sharp object and have a bucket ready to catch the blood oozing out. OOuughh......I felt so sad for the pig when the uncle told me this. I dared myself to try this dish. It tasted salty and sour. Didn't have the blood taste, but I just took a bit to try. Stomach wasn't quite accepting this dish.

Dinogoan also known as bloody bloody

Besides the main highlighted dishes, there was also some BBQ (pangang fish), Roasted crabs, Spaghetti with pork sausages (this was good. Cooked the Philippino way) and a huge bowl of salad. For drinks they made lovely fruit punch minus the liquor.

The table with all the dishes

For dessert we had the cream caramel. It tasted good, but it was extremely sweet. Every spoon bite was like taking a spoon of condense milk.

Cream Caramel

After dinner, we played Bingo with everyone. Bingo is one of a favourite past time game here in Philippines. It was real havoc I tell you with all the aunties and uncles playing together. Laughed and laughed as they were all joking around. We bet with each card with 1 piso. That would be only less than 10 cent RM. The first round, to my luck I WON!!!!! but wasn't so lucky for the remaining rounds. But it was a good experience. Thanks to the Bingo game we played at the Mall of Asia, my brain was at least working on the winning styles.

Playing bingo. Laughing cos I won the first round. See the money!

Throughout the dinner we had a group of ladies who came over to the house to sing Christmas carols. They were very very good. Good voices and good music accompaniment. I took a video of it. Uploaded it in this post. So take a look. They are singing O Holy Night in this video and also you get to see Ed being incharged of the roasted Lechon area. The dinner was good. It eneded around 10pm as we all had to head back to the hotel. Why so early, well Zamboanga ain't a safe place to be wandering at night due to the christian muslim thing. Pretty sad though but we didn't want to risk our chances. So the night ended early, Headed back to the hotel all exhausted that before midnight came, we were all fast asleep.