Our New Year Blast

Sooner or later, there might be firecrackers ban. I am going to feel sad because I love watching fireworks display. I never get tired looking up, watching the colorful sky. But I am afraid too when it’s New Year’s Eve, kasi there could be stray bullet or wayward kwitis from our neighbors.

Edmund and I always have paputok ever since we got married. When Oyen was still little, hindi pa high tech nun. Edmund would be very busy beginning late afternoon of December 31 preparing the trumpillo, ipinapako pa nya isa isa at itinatali sa bakod namin. Me naman, busy splitting the watusi, wrapping them in little batches with newspaper.
Watusi is poisonous but the best way to train your kids not to put it in their mouth is to tell them “Anak if you put that in your mouth, you will surely die”.

I want fireworks display to stay but I am looking forward to a laser light invention, para walang danger.

P250 fountain

If you want noisy, sawa is the best. The imported ones are more efficient and safer to light but still, extreme caution must be observed. From our experience, the traditional triangle sawa is not reliable. If it’s supposed to be 1,000 pieces, only less than a third explode. The ones from China are more sulit.

We cleaned up afterwards. We wet the left over triangles to make sure they don’t explode and cause harm.

After paputok, we had our first meal of the year. In keeping with the Tans’ family tradition of media noche in Binangonan of pandesal, tsokolate at hamon, I served the following:

pandesal—– P34,
ciabatta—– P28
pancit canton by Antonia —-approx. P380 cost of ingredients,
Guinataan halo-halo with bilo-bilo, camote, saging, sago and langka—–approx. P400 cost of ingredients,
prawns —— left over from Christmas
hot chocolate ——– Tablea (gift from my son’s friend), evap milk P27
kiat-kiat ponkan oranges — 3 x P70 = P210
Majestic Ham—— cooked a few slices only, not even 10% of what I bought–P90

I was lazy to bring out the matching tea pot for the hot chocolate. Ang hirap maghugas, baka mabasag pa.

I spent just over a thousand pesos. Our table looks ostentatious because of the oranges. I indicated the estimated amount I spent to prove that one doesn’t need tons of money to enjoy a sumptuous media noche.

I didn’t publish our photo to show off. If I wanted to show off, I will not serve pancit canton and pandesal. I will buy one whole cow and make it sit on top of our table. We don’t do things to make other people envious or show off what we have. Hindi kami mababaw (shallow).

(Notice the solid brass cutlery. They were wedding gifts from our ninang sa kasal, Dra. Josefina Ynarez-Pedraza (+). 31 years old na yan. We very seldom use them, siguro this was only the second time in a span of 31 years. Oyen doesn’t like to use that. It tastes like metal daw. How come she knows. I don’t feed her metal ha!