bangus bliss

We often travelled to Vallejo's farmer's market on Georgia St Saturday mornings for two things: marinated baby bangus and these butter and sugar rolls called Senoritas. First, the baby bangus sellers disappeared. Then the restaurant that sold Senoritas closed. Sigh. It was a sad day. A bit of a gastronomic 1-2 punch.

Then, oh joy, we found out last week that the baby bangus people were back! They sell the marinated bangus, sweet longanisa, garlic vinegar longanisa and a hot longanisa along with pork or chicken hamonado as well as Twillis and another dried fish. So, Ninong picked us up at 7:30 in the morning to make it to Vallejo bright and early because they often sold out by 10:30. I'm not a morning person at all! But these are important things. And important things require one to give up a few REM minutes in dreamland. My parents used to wake us up at 4:30 am to jump into the car to the Alemany Farmer's Market so my grandmother could buy crates of ampalaya. We'd be back by 9am and back in bed as if it was all a dream, while my mother and grandmother blanched sliced and ziplocked ampalaya.

We stopped off at a friend's place in unincorporated Vallejo to drop off a malanggay and dwarf papaya that Ninong had picked up from LA. Hopefully the malanggay will survive, such a delicious green in chicken tinola. They asked us if we wanted a 3 ft tall bulul, the rice fertility god. I like bululs, I have a baby one, but we don't have a yard yet and 3ft of any religious/spiritual icon is a bit much for me. I didn't even take the 3ft Mary my uncle had offered us. When we have a yard, we can get those 3ft tall deities. Before we left, he mentioned that the Seniorita people reopened as a bakery in the old Valerio's spot. Hmmmm....senioritas.

These folks make longanisa straight from the hubby memory and when you find something like this it's hard to pass it up. Apparently, they opened a restaurant in Santa Clara, which is why they were gone all year. CJ Kitchenette (650 Nuttman Ave #106). Don't know if it's any good, though we'll probably take a trip down there to see. We also found out that their cousin sells this stuff at the Milpitas farmer's market on Calaveras Sunday mornings. Now remember, when they left last year, Ninong must have spent a couple of months going to the different Filipino laden farmer's markets to find them. So it was nice to hear that if we miss them on Saturdays, we still could catch them on Sundays.

The sister-in-law requested some balut, so bought some of that and some quail eggs and maalat, the purple salted eggs. We left there before some stands could get their vegetables on tables.

Next stop Starbakery. Senioritas are these long finger length rolls of bread with layers of butter and sugar, but not too sweet, that oh so perfectly carmelized on the bottom. There used to be lines out the door at their old place as people waited for the next fresh batch to come out. There would be non-Filipinos in line dragging their kids. The kids would ask their parents, "What are we getting here?" and the parent would reply, "I don't know exactly, but they bring them to work and they're really good." There was no one there when we dropped by. It looks like word hasn't gotten around quite yet, though a couple of people followed us later. We got a couple of boxes slightly open to release the steam. Nothing is better!

We were back at home by 10am, with several bags of meat, fish, bread, eggs, and salad. The hubby stayed home to nap, while I went to kali seminar. It wouldn't matter what happened for the rest of the day. Today was a good day.