Ugly but Yummy

“Please buy me P500 worth of tupig,” my friend Irene e-mailed me when she heard I was going home to Pangasinan.

“That’s a whole lot of tupig!” I replied. At P2 each, that would be 250 pieces of tupig!

“Not enough of something soooo goooood,” she said.

Tupig is a delicacy in my home province. Made of ground sticky rice, strips of young coconut, unrefined brown sugar and wrapped in banana leaves, tupig is roasted on charcoal. The banana leaves naturally turn black in the process and what you get is an ugly piece of unusual goody.

As you might have guessed, I love the ugly thing. If I didn’t watch my sugar intake, I could eat a dozen in one sitting. I love it so much I made it a part of one of my children’s books.

It wasn’t a very good move. My art director had a hard time prettifying it. It was the greatest challenge to her sense of aesthetics.

I took the challenge, too, with my digicam. I arranged them on textured silk red tablecloth to make them look Christmasy—reminding me of our caroling days in the province when we gorged on them. Someone’s mom would cook them for us and they warmed our tummies while we went from house to house, on foot.

But as you can see, they’re still ugly. And still yummy.

Please don’t judge a tupig by its cover.