Life Here & There 
3 Comments Tilapia, Piranhas, and Homesickness
When you choose to be an OFW or immigrate to a different country, you may be faced with a problem of being in an area without many Pinoys. Here in West Bend, there just are not that many Pinoys around to celebrate the holidays with especially at Christmas and New Years. With the great distances involved in the USA and your standard mix of some nice and not so nice snabero o snaberang Pinoys, you may be forced to redefine how you celebrate Pasko (Christmas) or ring in the New Year.
I was finding myself to be giving in to the feelings of homesickness. My emotions tended to negativity and feeling sorry for myself until my Nanay (Mama) gave me a wakeup call – literally over the phone. She reminded me to not let my feelings of missing the Philippines get me down. But instead to do something different, cook something special, remember the day as it should be remembered but with adjustments to a temp of -16 degrees Celsius. (With the wind, it feels like -24 degrees Celsius which is just freaking cold.)
With an understanding hubby, I got the ingredients for pancit bijon and pan fried tilapia with only the scales and guts missing. Then as he and my daughter were cleaning up our place, I got to cooking it all. I’m glad Goryo reminded me to get some rice sticks as it helped to save the pancit bijon. He doesn’t know the difference between rice sticks and noodles just the difference in the color of the packages. As it ended up, the pancit bijon was a bit different than normal as we used two packages of rice sticks. One package was for dishes like pancit bijon but the other package of rice sticks was for soups (pang miswa ba). I’m glad Goryo doesn’t really know what the dish is supposed to taste like (nahimong miswa LOL).
My daughter however didn’t eat much of the pancit bijon so more leftovers for the hubby to eat. After he finished
his plate of bijon, he left the table as he can’t stand watching us eat the tilapia with the head and fins still attached. But my daughter loves it. She was so hungry that she ate nearly all of the tilapia as fast as I could get it off the bone. My little piranha ate the two tilapia to the bone really fast! Walang natira for Mommy!
So what do you do to liven up the holidays and avoid the homesickness?Thank you,
among handa sa new year kay tilapia day…. whoahahahaha… buskag lagi ang naa sa picture?
hi! ana. buti ka pa may bihon. nagutom ako bigla. tilapia I can easily get that sa Asian store. my husband actually like it, even with the bones.
Nova, oo buskag kay saon si kuring paspas kaayo mukaon anang tilapya.
Juliana, oo depende din sa tao, etong hubby ko he’ll eat fish pero fillet, hay ewan maarte, kc ayaw nya daw nakatingin yung isda sa kanya while he’s eating, na guilty daw LOL:)