Dinuguan is a dish that in the Philippines has a cultural place as a dietary taboo tied to religious feeling. I remember tales of friends and cousins tricking people of the INC religion into trying it. As a taboo it is doubly offensive. It features the unclean pig (Muslim and Jew) cooked in its own (Jew) blood (INC, Jew). It is high in artery-clogging fats and cholesterol, as the diner is eating blood clotted up by cooking.

My mother used to refer to it as native chocolate, to entice me to eat it (it is an acquired taste, like beer and ampalaya). She need not have bothered. I remember on holidays watching my father and the neighbors cook a live pig from his uncle's kural into a variety of fiesta dishes, with dinuguan one of them. They would wrestle the pig to immobilize it, bop it on the head a la Sam Fisher of Splinter Cell, cut open the jugular vein and catch the blood in a big basin with a little uncooked rice. The rice served to clot the blood. Vinegar is later added to another portion of the blood for the "broth."

They would then cut up the pig. Upon getting to the intestines, they would clean it very thoroughly. I remember a man squeezing the bowels as I would squeeze the last smidgen of toothpaste from a tube. The pig was slaughtered in the morning and would be cooked and served in the afternoon. The enjoyment of eating dinuguan was the idea that the pig sacrificed its life for a grand reason. It was a kid's lesson on being humane.

Hmm.. Dagdag na recipe for langka. Nice, Jenn!

Sa amin naman sa Pangasinan, we know KBL as "karson, butaw, lawlaw."

If you like Chowking, you'll love Banawe and Ongpin. :)

Ah, you got me at the capital B! Bacon isn't all fat, it is 2/5 fat. It is a good thing bacon is so expensive, or else we'd be eating it all the time.

One of the delights of cooking I learned was cooking bacon first in a pan, then frying vegetables in the rendered fat/lard.

On the subject of bacon substitutes: Marty's? Bacon Crisps? Pwe! Those can never, ever, EVAH! take the place of a rasher.