back when every corner had a shawarma shack

At half past eleven last night, I had another weird food craving (NOTE: Weird food cravings are ordinary to me; they aren't an indication that I'm pregnant or anything). After fetching a bar of chocolate from 7-11, I realized that I wanted chunks of grilled meat and vegetables wrapped in unleavened bread.


Why I wanted to eat shawarma, and how on earth I got the idea of eating one at midnight, baffles me too. There was no place I could buy one, much less at that hour. I had to wait at least ten hours until malls were open and hope that one of them still had a shawarma stand.

Of course I couldn't help reminiscing that there was a time when there were shawarma stands in every other corner. Every mall, campus and village had at least one. Shawarma was one of the top fad foods of the '90s.

Hey ... didn't Red Sternberg's character in the channel-7 series T.G.I.S. work at a shawarma stand? NoBenta just posted something about T.G.I.S. yesterday, so I guess that crept out of my subconscious. I never really watched the show (Ever. I swear.) but I remember hearing that detail from somewhere. Correct me if I'm wrong.


Just a block from where I used to live was a little store that sold shawarma. I hardly ever bought anything from there though.

I didn't really love eating shawarma, but I found it very convenient, especially at university (naturally as fad foods go, shawarma was sold at our school). It was easy to bring around, it didn't need utensils and it could be finished in several bites. Very practical when I had to spend break time studying or working on a project, and particularly convenient when most of the eating places were crowded and I didn't have time to wait for a table to free up (which was often the case). I could just buy one , grab a drink and eat it wherever.

Of course buying just one often didn't satisfy, especially after the demand for shawarma increased and its quality (and size) decreased.

These days there are but a handful of shawarma stands in Manila (I mean, not counting the authentic Middle-Eastern restaurants) - and it's not even the good kind of shawarma. In the late '90s shawarma stores packed up one by one, soon outnumbered by pearl shake kiosks (which were in turn later overpowered by Mini-Stops and Starbucks), and only a few survive to this day.

But I still intend to find one and feed my craving.

back when a mc donald's apple pie cost P13

I utterly dislike McDonalds. Rotten Ronnie's. I hate the fatty menu, I hate the greasy smell it emanates, the poorly-maintained interior with the sticky tables, the screaming kids in the playground.

There was a time when I liked McDonalds - in fact I think I even loved it.

My first time at a McDonald's was at some kid's birthday party - I must have been in kindergarten or first grade then. I was introduced to pleasures called "playland" and "french fries". I remember thinking that kid's family must have been rich to afford such a treat. It wasn't known as a cheap, grease-food joint back then - when it was still new, it was a bit of a luxury. It was packaged as a semi-high-end family eatery, a fun, safe place for children.

In the early eighties, there were only three McDonald's branches. The one nearest us was the one in Greenhills. My uncle once took my cousins and I on a no-reason-at-all treat there; he bought us each a quarter pounder with cheese. It had an enormous, inflated Ronald McDonald sitting cross-legged on the roof, nodding to dumbly to guests and passersby. For little kids like us, it was a wonderland.

The quarter-pounder with cheese was my first love. I don't think I could ever finish one, but it tasted like heaven to me.

Quarter Pounders used to be more massive, and they looked like they could've really weighed a quarter pound. In fact everything used to be bigger - and had better quality. There also used to be a lot more lettuce in the Big Mac, and it wasn't all soggy (Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions in a sesame seed bun, I recall). The abomination known as burger McDo was not yet invented.

Happy Meals were a bit happier then. They were more substantial - a burger, fries and drink. They came in - not with - a colorful box with puzzles and games on it. The first Happy Meal "toy" I ever got was a flat Ronald hanging decor. The free toys used to be much simpler, but I didn't care much about the toys; the box in itself was fun.

I would look fondly at that McDonalds branch whenever we drove by on the way to the grocery. The scent of its food could be smelled meters away, and it beckoned to me. I often wished I was in there, eating a quarter pounder with cheese.

The novelty of McDonalds wore off as branches sprouted in different areas of the country. The food became more affordable as the menu was adjusted to fit the Pinoy crowd (e.g., the introduction of rice meals). Eventually it became known as a place for relatively cheap but yummy eats.

I was so excited when a new McDonalds branch was constructed near our school. I was in sixth grade then. It meant a potential hang-out and a place to drive-thru when I craved a cheeseburger. Its then-ultramodern structure veered away from the usual red-and-yellow-and-brown with the slanted roofs; it had blue mosaic tiles on the facade and a unique, streamlined, very '90s look. I spent a lot of hours there after classes (and even during school hours) with my friends. It was the easiest place to meet up, and the most affordable for a student budget.

That was where I had lunch and studied with a friend on exam day.
That was where we met up with the boys from the school next to ours.
That was where I saw a classmate in a then-fashionable tent dress and realized it should never be worn with jeans.
That was where I fake-kissed a guy- friend on a dare.
That was where I saw my crush give a cheap gold bracelet to a girl in the batch below mine.
That was where my dad dropped me off on too-early Saturday mornings when I had children's theater reharsals.
That was where my friends and I made fun of another friend who was then a rising child pop star by singing along to his song as it played on the radio.
That was where kids from the nearby schools experimented with cigarettes and got caught on cam by a concerned citizen who sent it to an ABS-CBN program.

I drove past that branch twice daily and I was teased by the aroma of hash browns in the morning and cheeseburger in the afternoon. Sometimes I would treat myself by driving thru for an apple pie.

An apple pie cost P13.oo when I was thirteen years old. Apple pies used to be a few inches bigger than they are now, and there were two varieties - plain, which came in a green box; and spicy, which came in red.

A budget-meal consisting of a cheeseburger, french fries and a medium Coke was only P25. When the burger McDo came out, you could buy it with a medium drink for only P16.

The double double cheese cheese burger burger was the new item.

There also used to be milkshakes (in every branch), and they came in sizes. A large strawberry milkshake was my weekend treat - until they phased it out in the mid-90s.

By the time I was a teenager, I started getting conscious of my weight and told myself I'd eat less - except on weekends when I hung out at McDonalds Greenbelt with some friends after church.

My pals and I were regular weekend fixtures at McDo Greenbelt. We'd walk about 2.5 km from church to continue our "fellowship" there. Aside from the fact that there weren't many places to eat then, it was the place our non-working status could afford to be at.

That was where we bonded while chatting on the elevated island table that used to be there.
That was where I discovered that fries went well with sundae.
That was where one of my best friends walked out on us so often until it no longer had any effect.
That was where we had a gross conversation, forgetting there were other people around, and this very angry mother walked up to us and gave a lecture (um, more of to me, because I was the one nearest her) for our appalling behavior that made them lose their appetite.

It was in the '90s when I noticed McDonald's began to be packaged as a barkada place. TV ads of attractive-looking teenagers were used for promo. I remember this particular ad where there was this group of four teens, three of them each bought a pack of fries while the fouth one couldn't because he was broke. What the other three did was dump all the fries on the paper tray sheet so everyone could dig in. I thought it was so cool because my friends and I used to do that when we were low on cash - buy some fries, pool them into one, grab some free ketchup, mayo, gravy and salt and voila, we had dinner!

The quality of McDonalds food and service plumetted to disappointing lows through the years. Even the formerly appealing hash brown aroma now stinks. Everything on the menu seemed to have shrunk - and I'm sure it's not because I'm bigger now.

As I grew into a working, earning adult who could afford to eat at decent restaurants, my appetite for any kind of fastfood has waned. There are a lot of other affordable-but-yummy places to eat at nowadays anyway, many of them better than Rotten Ronnie's. Just thinking about McDonald's makes me nauseous - ick gross gross gross I'm not going back there I wont be taking my children there. It's not nausea though - just nostalgia - when I think about those happy thoughts attached to the McDonald's that used to be ... and that grease and cholesterol I didn't mind before.

back when chocolate drinks came in tin cans and glass bottles

I'm a sucker for chocolate drinks; I think most kids are or at least have been at some point.

Back then we had Milo - in its still-familiar green-and-gold trademark packaging, only it came in gold tin cans instead of foil sachets (In those days, the only things you could buy in sachets were shampoo and conditioner; today almost every consumer product comes in sachets - detergent, fabric softener, peanut butter). To my memory, Milo has always had the same jingle, just in different arrangements. And it's always had that "pro-athletic" thing going on. "Milo for Olympic energy".

I remember Milo bars. They were heavenly. I also remember that somebody's mother made wonderful Milo cookies.

The TV commercials were pretty indelible - The ups and downs in a boy's basketball lifestyle, the up of course involving a glass of ice-cold Milo. A day in the life of a soccer player, the highlight of which was the Milo-powered goal he made in a rain-soaked game. There was also the one with Bea Lucero, when she wasn't yet knows as the tae kwon do master with an Olympic bronze medal under her black belt, but the cute, twelve-year old gymnast who also co-hosted a kids show with Bam Aquino (then known as "BamBam") and Diego Castro (then known as "Kokok").

Milo disappeared for awhile, and it reemerged as vibrant as ever. Except that I think it doesn't quite have the same yummy quality - it seems to be mostly just sugar now. Or maybe it's just that those foil sachets cheapen the experience.

Milo's rival was Ovaltine, the TVCs of which showed adventurous, inquisitive kids who thought they were Indiana Jones. Ovaltine pow-errrrr .... Ovaltine!

This drink had a snack form called Ovalteenies - little round Ovaltine-flavored tablets - which were advertised by cartoon mascots who were just creepy - they were round, dark oompa loompas, and if you paid attention to what they were doing, you'd realize they were cannibals.

The nice thing about powdered chocolate drinks like Milo and Ovaltine is that you didn't have to mix them with water to enjoy them; you could eat the powder form. A spoonful of crunchy, cocoa-y Milo or Ovaltine (with or without milk or sugar) was kiddie bliss. I remember reading this hilarious book back in fourth grade (an old publication I chanced upon in the school library) with a heroine named Rosemary; in one story, she made a snack out of powdered chocolate, powdered milk and sugar and called it "cokeshug".

Chocolait was chocolate milk that came in a cute glass bottle. If I remember correctly, it was the only chocolate milk sold locally. "Magnolia Chocolait is a drink like a chocolate bar that you can drink - so highly nutritious!"

Magnolia thought of a brilliant way of making kids drink milk. Kids loved that whole array that looked so attractive lined up in the grocery stores, pastel colors showing through the sleek, clear glass -- fresh milk, sweet dairy milk, strawberry milk, melon milk. There was even this purple-colored thing that must have been ube milk (*shudder*). But everyone's fave - popular enough to have its own TVC - was Chocolait. Yummy and creamy, especially enjoyable when cold. It was an absolutely kid-friendly calcium treat.

The glass-bottle packaging wasn't so kid-friendly though. Preschoolers who brought this for recess had to pester Teacher to open the seal. You couldn't help spillages and breakages either; glass bottles, even small ones, might just be too heavy for kids to drink from. I have memories of schoolmates making a liquid chocolate mess across the snack table, or kids walking around in brown-drenched uniforms. I guess that's why the tetra-pack became more popular (well that and the fact that paper-based packaging is much cheaper than glass ones), resulting in the eventual demise of the cute glass bottle. Those bottles, by the way, are now considered collectibles. I saw some on sale at an antique shop.

Those numerous present-day tetra-packed chocolate drinks are just echoes of the original Magnolia Chocolait; most of them actually taste nothing like chocolate. Even today's Chocolait, I've heard (I haven't actually tried it since I am now a faithful Swiss Miss fan) doesn't even come close to the glory that was.

All this is activating my craving. I think I'll take a trip to a corner store and buy me a Nestle Chuckie. Not the cookie burst or peanut butter variant though.

Magnolia Chocolait image, mine.

back when i despised iced gems XP

In this nostalgia-trip article I chanced upon was a roster of 10 (Pinoy) Kiddie Snacks We Can't Forget. It did a good job of working out some fond memories from my childhood.

Orange Swits ... yum yum! Grade school days and sharing them with my friends Tricia and Chay.
Bazooka Bubble Gum ... wheee! My brother and I collected those little comic strips.
Tarzan ... sigh! I used to buy those at the store next door. St. Ignatius Village, Avi and the Korean girls.
Tootsie Roll ... aww!

And then it mentioned Iced Gems. Ick. Iced Gems was a kiddie snack? I never thought of something so disgusting as a snack for children. As a kid, I disliked Iced Gems with a fury; in fact I still do. I can't help but associate them with childhood memories that are anything but warm and fuzzy. Blech. For that matter, I lump them all together with those ugly, plastic-packed, mass-produced, local-brand baked items that call themselves "biscuits".

Okay, i get that they're cute, but I saw them more as something to play with rather than something to eat. I used to scrape off the frosting part with my teeth before putting the cookie part in my mouth, just to see how the cookie looked naked.

Some time ago I was with my friend G and we watched this kid eating Hi-Ro cookies. He had this I-don't-know-if-I'm-about-to-laugh-or-cry look on his face and he couldn't help sharing why. He explained that those brown-and-white Hi-Ro cookies in their orange plastic packaging triggered some not-so-good childhood memories. As he was bout to apologize, I said I knew exactly how he felt. We went on to enumerate those cardboard sandwiches biscuits we hated so much, and at the top of our list were Jolly and Iced Gems.

We - and many other children of the 80s, I'm sure- both shared the fate of being the offspring of struggling middle-class parents who opted to send us to private schools. Our parents also chose to save money by packing our lunchboxes with cheap, bland cookies for snacks.

Back in those childhood school days, I would open my ratty plastic lunchbox during break time to reveal an embarrassing Jolly, Hi-Ro, Iced Gems or an offensive Jack n' Jill Pretzels. I also had a pathetic little thermos of water that I hardly opened. If I was lucky I had a tetra pack of cheap juice. My Dad never believed in investing in expensive, good-quality snacks - for him the flavor and appearance of food were irrelevant; the sole purpose of food was to fill the tum. It was bad enough that I was stuck with stuff that tasted horrible day after day; I had to watch my classmates eat their rice meals, fruit, imported cookies, pudding, yummy chips or jelly sandwiches. And their Magnolia fresh milk or Chocolait, which came in glass bottles back then.

My parents didn't believe in giving a child money to buy lunch either, so I watched my friends buy - and eat - their brightly-colored, sugary desserts. Slushies, Sour Balls, Twin Popsies. Frosted cookies, waffle cheese, lollipops.

I wondered why my Dad insisted on buying that rubbish over and over again when nobody even liked to eat them. I felt sorry for myself for having such flaaaaat, cheap food that I hardly even ate. It made me feel like a poor, underprivileged kid in a roomful of rich, private school snobs. I'd go home hungry and with my plastic-wrapped snacks untouched, and I had the exact same pack of preservative-padded crap in my lunchbox the next day. I never wised up into that lunchroom vice of swapping snacks, but I brazenly asked for bits and bites from others' food stuff. "Can I try that?," "Can I have some?" My spoiled, imported-cookie-eating classmates never teased me for eating cheap food, but they did let me have it for being such a beggar.

It was only after the second grade when my Dad finally allowed me to carry cash for buying lunch at school. By that time those brightly-colored Sour Balls I'd always wondered about (and still wonder about to this day) were no longer being sold in the school cafeteria, but there were a lot of other goodies like sizzling meals, creamy cakes and chocolate truffles. It was a relief to finally graduate from those darned biscuits, but their memory still followed me around. I did have them day after day for a couple of years, and that was enough for a good deal of reinforcement and trauma that I carry until adulthood. One more time for the Iced Gems: Blech.