When my sister Nenen Amour and I were kids, even on lean months when income was low, our Tita Beb and Lola Beb always found ways to feed us nutritious meals with ingredients from our family's vegetable patch, little forest and the ingredients from the market that they could afford. They cooked them so well and so deliciously that my sister and I treasure the taste to this day. On those many lean months , staple would be a kind of fish stew made from a cheap can of sardines in tomato sauce (usually Ligo or 555) and sometimes when Tita would feel generous she'd break in an egg into the stew, sort of like the drop egg soup chinese recipe. Nenen or I would be tasked to run to the Sari Sari store to buy a small can of sardines and small packet of cooking oil - the kind you buy from 25 to 50 ml from 1 to 5 pesos. We'll also maybe buy a small packet of vetsin (msg) and a small bulb of onion and a small packet of misua - thin and white rice vermicelli, which turns...