Life, Day by Day

Quan Delicacies has been my source of Ilonggo and other native Filipino food for the last twenty years or so. I can still remember the excitement I felt when they opened their first self-service restaurant besides the Bacolod Doctor's Hospital.  When I was taking my graduate studies in La Salle, I would take lunch there and later, they opened another restaurant in La Salle Avenue which was even more convenient because of the bigger parking space. And so when the Negrense Blogging Society, Inc was invited for food tasting of their newer products, I was happy to go.  

(Before I begin, a disclosure: the owner and I share a common ancestor, making her a cousin of sorts, although we were made aware of this only about 2 or 3 years ago)  The newest kid in the food market is Ceres Pasalubong . I first saw their outlet at their old north terminal several months ago, and I was very surprised...I mean the name Ceres is always equated with the bus line and never with food. So, out of curiosity and because someone told me that their hopia was really good (my family is hopia crazy), one day driving home to Silay, instead of going up the flyover, I went under it to pass by the Ceres north terminal and parked where their pasalubong tent was. I of course headed straight for the hopia. Wow...their hopia was triple the size of those in other stores! Unfortunately, they had no mongo (my personal favorite) at that time so I settled for the onion filling.  I also bought their other goodies like the caramel tart which looked just the right color (...