It's September and the time for my boyfriend's birth town's fiesta. If you're not familiar with a fiesta, it is a feast celebrating a town's patron saint. Each town and/or barangay (the tiniest form of government) in our country has their own patron saints and throughout the year they are celebrated.
The celebration differs from one town to another depending on their patron saint. It can be about good harvests for farmers and plentiful fishes for fishermen. Likewise my boyfriend's town that's a big fishermen town.
And so after a week long stay in their place in Daet, Camarines Norte, sadly it's time to go home. But before going home I need to hit some treat stores or as we Filipinos call,tindahan ng pasalubong to bring home. It is our tradition to go to treat stores to bring back to our friends and families.
Before hitting the road to go home we had a quick detour to the local market. We rode tricycle and our first stop was the most famous one as our tour guide said ( aka my boyfriend's cousin. Though I think he said that because it's the closest one. Ahahahaha). In fairness it has the most reasonable of all the store we went.
The stores have lots of sweets. They have pastillas, tarts, urraro biscuits. And they even have panutsa (unrefined palm sugar)!
But the most famous of all the sweets are these nuts called pili.. Their town is famous for their pili nuts that can be seen mainly in the vast forest of their town. It is a nut encased in a very hard shell. It can be eaten unripe or ripe. And also cooked or uncooked.
It is cooked with sugar or can simply be roasted. It is creamy and sweet on its own. People from different town often visited to have a taste of this delicacy.
The process of extracting the nut can be a little tedious so the price can be a little high. The one in the picture is about PHP 150.00 or $3.00. But once you have a taste it's really good.
After buying some sweets, we headed to the center of the market to buy some Pancit (Noodle) Bato.
I had a small talk with the vendor and jokingly asked if the Pancit Bato was called Bato (Stone) because it was made of stone. He laughed and said it was called that way because it came from a town called Bato.
Pili Nut and Pancit Bato are food famous in the Bicol region of our country and one of the things that make the place famous. I hope one day you can have a taste of it too.
