My, My, My Beautiful Sunday

We bloggers have a way of inspiring each other. When my former classmate Chesca Roces-Brillantes revived hers, http://chescalikesfood.wordpress.com/, a couple of days ago, it was my cue to get up from my couch, cut short my avid, almost non-stop reading of food books for the meantime and write another entry.

Apart from reading, my mind has been replaying the melody of what I think is a track from the movie Black Orpheus; it’s called “A Day in the Life of a Fool.” I heard friend Anna Leah Sarabia, once a whiz on the classical guitar, faintly strumming the bossa standard on a guitar lying about in Sintang Lupa, Mendez, Cavite. The place is the Philippine home of environmentalists Christoph Ranzinger and Agnes Calda who stay in Germany most of the year. Their house has an eco roof (a garden) that can withstand typhoons and monsoons.

I dozed on and off on a lounging chair, enjoying the breeze after a breakfast of congee cooked in lots of ginger and sprinkled generously with chopped spring onions. For more substance, we each had a hardboiled egg.

Elsewhere, Anna’s daughter Sinag de Leon and granddaughter Raya explored the orchard, part of which is planted to coffee. Sinag’s toddler son Dakila was on the grass, grasping tree trunks to hoist himself up and practice his tentative steps under the watchful eyes of Beth.

I was fighting off the first signs of a bad cold by trying to sleep it off with not much success. Anna plied me with homemade tea. She plucked fresh mint leaves from the garden, I washed them and put them in a mug of hot water to steep. I must've refilled the mug thrice until the water lost its weak green tint.

The caretaker brought us brown bags of bread Anna earlier ordered in the evening. Inside were what the locals called loaves of kano and smaller-than-a-fist boleng. Kano takes its name from pan Amerikano, but this one is not sliced. You ate them by tearing chunks off. Since there was a hefty wedge of cheese with caviar, we spread that on our kano (talk of high brow and low brow). Anna said boleng, whose shape is like the other raisin-studded bread bonete (for bonnet?), might be named after the English bowler hat.

When I took my slow walk towards the orchard, there was that tune embedded in my head, playing over and over, fighting for space against the cold bacteria. How did the lyrics go? “I walk the avenue, and hope I run into the welcome sight of you coming my way.” Nobody came my way on the gravel path, except a bent branch at the end of which was a foot-ball size, ready-to-fall guyabano screaming "Pick me! I'm ripe and juicy!"

With a gem of a Sunday such as this, I felt strengthened for the challenges of (groan!) another working Monday.

In photo are Sinag and Raya up on the roof. (Photo by ANNA LEAH SARABIA)