This Little Piggy Went To the Market

 

One of the things I always enjoy experiencing in the Philippines is going to the market. It is totally unlike the sterile process of going to the local grocery store here. Here, everything is in logical order and there may only be one or two options for each particular item you wish to purchase, especially when it comes to fresh vegetables and proteins. The Philippines is the exact opposite in nearly every regard.

To start with, all of the food markets of Baguio are open air. You either walk down relatively wide alleyways like the one above or you enter the labyrinth of aisles on the ground floor of many of the surrounding buildings which are still open to the outside. There may be some added lighting but there is certainly no doors to open into a conditioned space. Trucks crawl up the mountains in low gear to arrive to the outskirts of Baguio every morning with fresh produce. Grains and warm season veggies like peppers, squash and tomatoes come up from the lowlands of the south and cooler season veggies come in from the central highlands of the north. They all get unloaded at distribution centers and then loaded onto smaller vehicles that can navigate the narrow roads of central Baguio. From there, they food is loaded onto wooden hand carts seen in the picture above and pushed to one of thousands of stalls where they are unloaded and sold before the end of the day. Tomorrow the process repeats.

Roughly, individual vendors tend to specialize in a few things. In the part of the market above, you can see lots of bananas, mangoes and melons among other things. Beside each of those stands is a vendor doing the weighing (everything is sold by the kilo or partial kilo) and money transacting. There might be 20 different vendors all selling bananas within 30 feet of each other. It is maddening to my capitalist brain which would force me to sell something different than my neighbors or at least in a different manner to be able to stand apart and make a profit. But all 20 vendors will be selling their bananas for the same price and it is up to you to go between the stands and find the bananas you like. There is a term for having a preferred vendor-customer relationship that Filipinos have but I have forgotten it already.

Above is some of the "inside" parts of the market in that there is a roof but it is still open to the outside. This picture is also the start of the "wet" market where one goes to buy fresh meat and seafood. I find this part to be the most interesting part since it is extremely different to how we do things in the U.S. and often brings up the most concern to others when I show them my pictures.

Instead of fish caught weeks ago, frozen and then thawed for the day at my local grocery store, the seafood found in the wet market has never been frozen and was likely caught overnight or at longest, the day before. It was likely brought up the mountain setting on ice to keep it cool but was never frozen and in the wet market is displayed at room temperature.

Chicken, pork and beef are done a bit differently. For ease and freshness, the live animal is brought to the market where in the early morning hours, they are slaughtered and cut up for that day's sales. It really doesn't get any fresher than that. If one looks, you can often see them still cutting up pieces in the backs of many of these stalls during the daytime so they can keep their displays full. I have never seen what happens at the end of the day as we, along with most Filipinos it seems, go shopping in the morning hours. The reason is refrigerators are very tiny or even non-existent in poorer houses and so people have to buy food for that day's consumption. I assume some of the excess, if there is any, must be refrigerated overnight and sold the next day.

The meat and seafood you buy is weighed and placed in ordinary plastic bags that you would get at a supermarket. The tops are tied so they don't leak and placed in your shopping bag along with everything else you have bought including your veggies. Filipino cooking is always done at high heat and using preservatives like vinegar and "rare" is not in their vocabulary so I am never concerned with getting sick eating pork, chicken or beef that has been sitting out for half a day. I've never gotten sick from doing so either. I personally find it less risky than eating a package of chicken parts that has been shrink wrapped and stored in a refrigerated section of the grocery store for a couple of weeks. I'm likely in a minority with this view but 120 million Filipinos safely consume proteins in this way every single day without apparent issues.

They do have small versions of our grocery stores where you go to buy the same sorts of things you typically find in the middle rows of any grocery store in the U.S. You can buy the highly processed, canned, bagged, boxed foods that are shelf stable. You won't however, find the aisles that ring the outside of most U.S. grocery stores like the fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy and frozen. For those you have to venture to the outdoor markets.

Another thing I should mention, is that I hardly ever see steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts or almost any typical cut of meat most Americans shop for. Instead you see all the things we rarely see such as tails, hoofs, heads, spines, etc. I'm not sure if all those missing pieces are consumed by the very wealthy and don't appear in the markets the average Filipino shops at or if they are frozen and shipped to America where they are sold at a large markup. Maybe someday I'll discover the answer but for now, it has been a mystery to me for the last 23 years.

Finally, a picture of two of our wet market purchases which we had for supper later that day, grilled fish and squid. Any sort of bacteria or human introduced contaminants that was on their skin between catching and going on the grill are killed with the high heat of the grill. The squid was chopped up and the fish served whole on a plate and both were eaten over rice and with some of the veggies that were bought the same day. It was all quite delicious.