It’s summer, the perfect time for travel and having fun visiting people and places near and far. Travel is the reward for a year of hard work, and is considered well worth spending a lot of time, effort and hard earned cash. It is therefore very important to make every moment count and the number one rule is: stay healthy. When traveling, the top cause of illnesses is food poisoning.
Food poisoning cases increase as temperatures rise. This situation is worsened by the influx of pests and insects in the summer, spreading germs and other harmful organisms. Heat also makes food spoil faster.
Even in the United States, with all their precautions, one in every six Americans is sickened by food poisoning each year. Just think how much greater the risk is in the Philippines, with the state of our public rest rooms (when you can find one) and picnic grounds.
WASH, CLEAN, COOL – Food safety begins with clean hands. If you cannot find a rest room, pack moist towelettes or hand sanitizer to clean up before handling food.
Don’t let food sit out more than an hour in the hot sun, or two in a cool room. Pack food in an insulated bag with frozen juice drinks or water bottles.
Keep the food container in the passenger cabin of the vehicle, never in the trunk or with the baggage.
If preparing family picnic favorites at home to take on the trip, make sure everything is fully cooked, never underdone. Cool all items completely before packing.
Pack single-serve snacks, like crackers and biscuits, muffins, dried fruits and brownies. They are more convenient and would not make a mess like big boxes of cookies and raisins that tend to spill in moving vehicles.
BATHING FRESH FRUITS – Roadside farmers’ stalls selling fresh produce are postcard pretty, but dangerous to health especially if you eat their fruits on the spot.
All fruit (and vegetables meant to be eaten raw) need thorough washing before consumption. With avocados, apples, bananas and other thick-skinned varieties, this means washing in water with a little detergent, followed by a thorough rinse. The same rule applies to tomatoes, cucumbers, papayas, santol, siniguelas, duhat, kaimito, guayabano, chico, etc.
Fruits and veggies come from the farms, handled by dozens of farmers and lastly by the vendors. Maybe a few of them fell on some animal waste, got dusted off and packed with the rest. Only God knows what dirt has touched those fruits.
SEPARATE COOLERS – Pack raw food separately from cooked to prevent contamination with salmonella. For this same reason, keep beverages away from raw meats.
One of the biggest mistakes is dumping everything in one big ice box: raw meats, cooked food, fresh fruits and vegetables and bottles or canned drinks. No matter how careful one is, accidents happen and all it would take is a small hole in a meat bag and people could get food poisoning.
When stopping on the road to buy drinks, watch where the cold bottles or cans are kept. If they are kept in an ice box, they’re probably swimming in contaminated water and would need to be thoroughly washed before consuming. Drinking from those cans/bottles before washing would be like swallowing the murky ice water from the store’s ice box.
FAST FOOD SPOILS FAST – Sometimes, one is forced to buy or take out food for the trip while already on the road. To keep the food from spoiling, open the Styrofoam boxes and allow the food to cool inside the moving vehicle. Keep the gravies, rice and meats separate, as they cool down at varying rates.
For family members who like cold fried chicken during picnics, there are ways to buy them and pack them. Just remember that fast food items also spoil, and spoil faster on the road because they are kept dangerously warm by their Styrofoam packaging. Purchase the fried chicken in buckets the night before the trip; cool the pieces completely outside the bucket and keep in the refrigerator until it’s time to go. Then repack in the bucket and keep inside the car.
LOCAL DELICACIES – This column was not intended to take away all sense of culinary adventure during your trip. There are some food items at your destinations that would make for exciting, wonderful family experiences. Here are a few examples.
In Batangas, do not miss the Pinangat or Sinaing na Tulingan, which is small tuna stewed the whole day in giant clay pots lined with banana leaves and seasoned with nothing but salt. A few local cooks enrich the dish by alternating layers of pork back fat, which render the tuna flesh almost creamy. This dish is perfect for pasalubong as it travels well and does not spoil even without refrigeration.
Another Batangas must-eat is Bulalo, the shin and knee cap of cow or carabao, boiled overnight with herbs and spices until the broth is milky and gelatinous. Men believe the concoction has Viagra-like powers.
The Bicol Region is proud of two food products that are also transportable: snacks with pili nut and Pinangat, which has nothing in common with its Batangas namesake. The Bicol Pinangat is made up of packets of gabi (elephant ear taro yam) leaves enclosing baby shrimp and pure coconut cream, simmered for hours in more pure coconut cream. There are two versions: spicy and very spicy.
Palawan offers dried fish of all types and sizes; so do Cebu and Zamboanga. Cavite has the Philippine version of the world’s most expensive coffee, rumored at one time to be more precious than gold. Popularized by Indonesia as Kopi Luwak, the Pinoy copycat is marketed as Kape Alamid.
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