To live for

A week ago we got together for another delicious lunch to celebrate our friendship. Where do we choose to have lunch? At To Die For, now branded TDF Foods at 1159 Zobel Roxas corner Espiritu St. in Manila, almost at the boundary of Makati and Manila. Okay, they moved since I first wrote about them two or three years ago. Then they were at the corner of Gil Puyat Avenue and Bautista Sts., where Carica was. Now that has turned into Jollibee.

  I’m trying to reconstruct how my friendship with Ramon Tan and his sister Tina began. Maybe it was six or seven years ago. I was still selling in the Legazpi Market every Sunday. There I met Ramon Tan. I was still recovering from my stroke in 2003 and he introduced me to Carica, his line of organic drugs. 

I could tell that he could read my mind.  He saw I was a bit skeptical.  So he invited me to lunch at his office to meet his cousin whom he had healed from a brain tumor. The lunch was prepared by his sister, Tina, and it was absolutely delicious.  There I saw his wide assortment of organic pills and teas, shampoos, natural cigarettes, diet foods, a wide assortment of products to choose from.

 Ramon introduced me to a thick black book that he used as reference for his choice of plants. It was written by a Quisumbing, whom I recognized as my grandmother’s first cousin. I know him, I said. I used to go with my grandmother to visit him when I was small.

 He got me introduced to Herbalberry capsules and COQ10, which were made by him. I took them for many years and they helped me. He also gave me a herbal tonic for my mother, who was still alive then, and it built her appetite, made her a little more lucid, and made her need more adult diapers. It was Ramon Tan who finally made me believe in herbal medicines.

 I became closer friends with his sister Tina who rented my home in Calamba and turned it into a delicious restaurant, open only on weekends. She also invited many of her friends over and for a while my life became more socially active.  But all that had to change one day. Ramon was advised by his doctors to play only one game of tennis once a week. One Saturday he ran into an old friend who persuaded him to play a second game. After the second game, Ramon fell down dead.

Then Tina opened To Die For (TDF Foods), her version of a Pinoy deli, where she sells Filipino food cooked without MSG, no chemical coloring, no preservatives, all natural ingredients and using meats from free-ranging native black pigs (the most delicious paksiw na lechon ever), native chickens and native ducks.

At first she wanted her outlet designed but in the end, she wanted it like she is — straightforward, clean, very simple décor, very efficient freezers, and everything you want in one outlet.  Her menu includes callos, lengua, beef/chicken/goat caldereta, duck adobo, mechado, fabada, pork estofado, afritada and bottarga, which is fish roe cooked in tomatoes and olive oil. She also has Italian pasta sauces — mushroom, pesto, puttanesca, bolognese and vongole. For me I love her vongole and always buy two every time I go there.

 Furthermore she has ginataang kamansi and sinantol that is so good. My grandson Andres loves it. She has paksiw na bangus, dinuguan, a million other good things to eat but hard to cook well at home.

 And then she has the Carica pills and teas. I take sea cucumber pills every day. They are a bit expensive but they remove muscle pains and are good for arthritis. I also take turmeric to fight off Alzheimer’s disease, which I am so afraid I might inherit from my mother, and mangosteen capsules. I don’t really know what mangosteen capsules are for but someone told me it cures tumors and I assume it can also prevent them. That is my other not-so-secret side. Aside from Stem Enhance I drink Carica pills.  

 Last Saturday we lunched on boquerones ceviche. Boquerones are small white fish that I used to eat as a young student in Madrid but never prepared as hot as this. It had green and red chilis. Then we bad bacalao, fabada and delicious salad with blue cheese, all washed down with a fine bottle of light, crispy, well-chilled Pinot Grigio, my favorite wine these days on the few occasions I drink now.

 How my life has changed! Once upon a time I was quite a drinker and not just beer and wine but vodka, scotch, and brandy. Now I am too old. I do not drink anymore except socially and I take natural pills. They really work miracles on your body. Look at me. I’m 70 but I feel half my age. Of course I’m lying. Forgive me, that’s half the fun.

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