occupation: SAHM

Thank goodness SM Supermarket has evolved to being totally super. Its chain of supermarkets, of which I am a faithful and loyal shopper, now offers sago and gulaman, chopped veggies (e.g. ubod, sayote, pakbet and chopsuey ingredients, puso ng saging etc) and even grates coconut meat.

I am already thankful that it chops and cleans chicken and fish. This is the main reason why fish and chicken are regularly served on my dining table: SM chops and cleans it for me. I admit that in 6 1/2 years that I have cooked meals for my family, I have never chopped chicken. You can count with one hand the number of times I have cleaned and gutted fish, and these times happened only during my first year as a wife. These experiences I truly detest (cleaning fish, not being a wife).

Another reason why I have never served sago-gulaman beverage (eventhough I know how to concoct it) nor cooked gata-based viands is because these things I have to get in the heart of a wet market. Ugh! Another thing I don’t have the heart for.

I already knew this when I was a child, when my mom had to force me to accompany her during market day. Only the palengke has that kind of mush my mom calls mud, but it isn’t really mud, because mud I can stomach. That black goo that is perpetually on the market floor and flies on the back of my shirt because I just don’t know how to walk right, that I hate so much. Plus, that rotten smell that clings on to skin and clothes the second you step inside the market.

My aversion to the palengke may be caused by the fact that I have never stepped foot on a clean one. So far I have never heard of any wet market anywhere in Metro Manila, particularly close to where I live, that features sanitized surroundings. Until then, I remain a regular patron of SM supermarkets.