Foodie magnets

Hi! How long has it been since my last post? I know, I promised to be a good girl and update my blog more often, but it's really been scorching here. During the day I can't make myself sit in front of the computer and type. Come to think of it, I find it hard to even think. And at night it feels so sticky and stuffy that I want to shower, and after I shower I get this uncontrollable urge to lie down and sleep, lol

Anyway, I made 3 more magnets end of last month, and i threw in some new yummy letters to the mix.

The "i" I made to look like our native tsokolate. They look a lot like hockey pucks, really, and the way you use it is you put it in really hot water or milk and stir until melts and then you drink it. It has a sandy, gritty texture which is characteristic of this drink, and it goes really really really great with  ensaymada, a local bread (with a spanish influence maybe?) with butter and cheese on top. Churros would probably be good too.

I also added a tart in place of the "l", watermelons and ice buko which is basically a popsicle, but coconut and milk based. The ones I had growing up had strips of fresh coconut meat and red mongo beans on top.

For this magnet I used leche (milk)flan for the "f", and kwek-kwek (hard boiled eggs dipped in an orange colored batter then deep fried; usually served with vinegar or a sweet sauce). For the "i", I made lumpiang sariwa. Lumpia is liketo a burrito, I guess, I'm using "like" loosely here because but the wrapper isn't actually a tortilla since it's more like a crepe than it is a bread. Okay scratch, a lumpia is similar to a crepe, and this Filipino crepe has fresh (sasriwa) vegetables inside like carrots and lettuce garlic, peanuts AND bamboo shoots all uniformly and thinly sliced. It's usually served with a sweet sauce and sprinkled with chopped peanuts. The "ube halaya for the second "i" is a pasty concoction made from purple yams mixed with coconut milk, butter/margarine and condensed milk, cooked until it gets smooth and thick. Some people (ie me) eat it as is, but is is also a key ingredient in halo-halo, another sweet Pinoy heat-buster.

For the "p" I made Pastillas--a sweet treat made with milk and rolled in sugar. The ensaymada, that goes well with the tsokolate steps in for the  third "i" and an iced gem in place of the "o". All this time I thought Iced gems were a Filipino innovation, but a search through Google told me it's actually known all over the world. I think it's cool. 

I thoroughly enjoyed making these magnets even if they were painstakingly detailed. I frequently changed the letters, mixed them up and made new ones just because I didn't like the way they looked together. I had a lot of misses to with some of the foods i wanted to include, like kiping and sampaloc, but overall I love how the textures turned out.

That made me hungry :) What foods from your childhood do you love best?