Miswa Sardinas & the treasures of our family's garden & forest

  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 soft and not quite elastic (its best for this dish). Upon arriving home we'd drink some cool water from the large clay vat that has a faucet meant for drinking water as the tropical heat and running would exhaust us. Then with our little feet we'd make our way to the patch where our Lola or Tita would be pinching some leaves or veg as an ingredient  extending the servings and the nutrition of the dish. Oftentimes Tita would take down a few stalks of Malunggay/Moringa. Lola would add a patola or upo, gourd type veggies related to cucumber, dependent on what is growing and ready to eat. Lola would also pinch a few leaves of Labog - which I now know to be Roselle, a Hibiscus plant that has reddish purple flowers and edible shoots and leaves, very rich in minerals and vitamin C (and rather steep to buy fresh or as specialty tea leaves where I now live, in the UK). Lola would braise the Labog in a little water and salt and sugar, as Roselle itself releases a  gentle sourness. Cooked simply like this, it becomes a great side dish for steamed rice. Tita would stir fry the small onion after it is sliced in a little oil, then she'd also add in the sliced gourd to render the liquid in them into the developing base. Then she'd add water enough for a stew. When the water boils she'd add the can of sardines followed by the miswa and the malunggay leaves which my sister and I would pinch off the larger stalks. They looked like little hearts of emerald in a sea of reddish-pink liquid in the slow boiling stew. She'd simply season it with salt, pepper and a little vetsin and oh boy, my mouth would be drooling at the aroma in the air. Served with simple NFA (National Food Authority - government agency source of funded rice for the poor) steamed rice (lean times, Jasmine rice was a little too steep) and the Labog side dish as well as the Patis (fish sauce) and Atchara (pickled shredded papaya that is sweet and sour) that either Lola or Tita would make in advance from the Papaya in our garden, our lunch would be topped off with a delicious and refreshing sweet and sour juice drink made from squeezing Passion Fruits (added to cool water pumped from our artesian well) from our family's little forest that extended from  the back of our house to the town river and ricefields (we had all sorts of fruit trees and evergreens there, including mangoes and Langka/Jackfruit, we'd also be able to dig out the treasure that is Ube - purple yam - from the forest and enjoy it in so many ways). 

I remember eating so contentedly and watching my little sister stuffing her face happily, holding her spoon and fork like digging implements treasure hunters use. I look back to it now and think about how magical that aspect of our childhood was, living so close to the gifts pf nature, that while it's true we were not financially stable, we had so much more resources to explore and know in our young lives. We were surrounded by nature that gives and gifts and our Lola and Tita made the most out of it for our sake. I recall it fondly and with gratitude for I know that my little nieces Xam and Pipay are exploring and getting to know that very vegetable patch and forest in their childhood, under the loving guidance of my sister Nenen Amour, their mom. 

(The image above is that of the miswa and sardines dish, borrowed with respect from 'AS Ang Sarap' Filipino food blog, 2013.)

Ube or purple yam grows ubiquitously in our family's forest and we 'hunted' for them as kids.

Passion Fruit was a very good source of vitamin C for us. When craving for good passion fruit juice, we'd search for recently fallen fruits (we were too short to climb the tall palm trees and star apple trees the passion fruit vines grew parasitocally on) and juice them, to mix with water, a little sugar and ice.