Titas de Bacolod: 2022

Friday, November 4, 2022

Friday, November 04, 2022

Roli's Napoleones : The Original Dessert Negrenses Have Loved Through The Years

Word has gotten around that a food festival showcasing Negrense food is happening at the Hidalgo Drive of the Rockwell Center in Makati, Metro Manila. Dubbed as the Namit Namit Food Festival, this gathering will perhaps be the very first time the Manila-based people of Negros Island, the sweet spot of the Philippines, will be celebrating their holiday known as Cinco de Noviembre in Metro Manila.

If there's one thing we all know Negrenses for, it's their passion for rolling out the best food for their guests to delight in. I'm sure that all the best inasals will be out, KBL (Kadyos, Baboy, Langka), Kansi and other Negrense favorites. However, for this moment, I'm zooming in on what I've always maintained as the original dessert Negrenses have loved through the years - Napoleones from Roli's!

For those who haven't come across it yet, Napoleones is basically a mille-feuille (translated to "a thousand sheets"), layers of puff pastry with custard filling and topped with sugar glaze. It has been around that in the minds of the older Negrenses, there's only one name attached to it - Roli's.

Long before Negrenses capped their meals with chocolate cake and coffee, we were doing Napoleones with coffee. In those days people didn't care at all about their blood sugar and would have Napoleones with sweetened coffee. I personally liked the idea of drinking my coffee black, and munch on sweet Roli's Napoleones as a way to temper and balance out the flavors.

That's probably what I'll be doing again today as the Namit Namit Food Festival opens at 10am. I'm going to walk my dog to Rockwell and get the first box of Roli's Napoleones. Before I even bring the box(es) back home, I'm going to have an unsweetened Americano to go along with it in the park bench and savor all the happy times we enjoyed this delicacy with the family. Just like old times.

O te', dali na kamo sa Namit Namit.

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Follow me on Twitter @TitasdeBacolod

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Why you missed Winnie Monsod's column this weekend on the Inquirer digital edition

Issues, Manila

In case you missed it, the last time Winnie Monsod's opinion column appeared on the digital version of the Inquirer was June 11, 2022. That was about the Alternative assessment of Duterte admin (2)

Yesterday "Get Real" no longer appeared on the digital version of the Inquirer. Surprised that I didn't find it, I had t look for the hard copy of Inquirer for June 18, 2022. Lo and behold, Winnie's column was still there. That may be the last of it though.

I'll share with you what was on her column there.

Last Saturday, I received an email from Jullet Javellana, Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) associate publisher, informing me that my column, "Get Real" would be dis continued, citing that I am a board member of Rappler, "another news organization and therefore a direct competitor of the Inquir er, and that I have encouraged my readers to read Rappler. I quote: "In light of the clear conflict of interest between your position as columnist of the Inquirer and your advocacy for Rappler and membership in its Board, we are serving notice that we shall discontinue. your column, 'Get Real' effective July 1, 2022."

This reasoning intrigues me. For when I was invited to join the Inquirer more than 20 years ago by Mrs. Marixi R. Prieto (then its publisher). I was a columnist for the Business World (BW), writing a twice-weekly column. That did not stop Mrs. Prieto, however, nor obviously Letty Magsanoc, its late editor in chief. They published my "Get Real" column on Saturdays, while my BW columns came out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This arrangement lasted more than 10 years, until late 2010 or early 2011, when, for health reasons, I had to give up writing for BW.

Then, in 2018, when I accepted an invitation to join the board of Rappler, this was public knowledge. I consider it an honor, especially since it has been under siege by the Duterte administration-just as PDI was under siege by both the Duterte and Estrada administrations. The PDI case also merited my support and unstinting loyalty, as well as the support and loyalty of all who believe in the freedom and independence of the press. Thus, I saw Rappler as a comrade in arms to PDI and not a competitor. I assumed PDI management felt the same, since at no time from 2018 to the present did PDI management take issue with my involvement with, or advocacy of, Rappler's cause.

By the way, I never wrote a column for Rappler and do not have any financial interest in it, other than one share of stock to qualify for a board membership.

So Reader, we may ask: Why the sudden volte-face by PDI? And why, after more than 20 years of working together, does PDI not think that I rate a face-to-face discussion or a Zoom chat or a telephone chat, instead of an impersonal email? This is how we handled difficulties before. To be sure, Yam, from the Opinion Desk, called to try to explain, but it was cold comfort.

Thank you for your faithful readership. Now, on to a more pressing issue: Every one seems to assume that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will be the next president. Hold your horses! It may be temporary. The Supreme Court still has to decide two cases against him: one, that he is not qualified to be a candidate, and another, that he is disqualified. A third case, still undecided by the Commission on Elections en banc (disclosure my husband is a legal counsel for petitioners), also for disqualification, will end up with the high court as well. The Comelec division should have decided on this case within 45 days (by its own rules). It took more than 6o days. The en banc, in the same manner, should have given its decision by May 10. It is now June 18.

Don't for a moment think, Reader, that the Supreme Court will just wash its hands off the cases, with a "vox popull, vox dei." Why? Because in 2016, the high court reversed its previous rulings, and I quote, "Suffice it to state that NO SUCH PRESUMPTION EXISTS IN ANY STATUTE OR PROCEDURAL RULE Besides, it is contrary to human experience that the electorate would have full knowledge of a public official's misdeeds..."

What are the case arguments? Simply put, Marcos Jr. is not qualified to be president because he isn't even a qualified voter (he was convicted), and he lied in his certificate of candidacy.

Marcos Jr. is disqualified because (1) he has committed a crime of moral turpitude by not filing his income tax returns for four years in a row, (2) he has been convicted of a crime for not filing nor paying his income taxes-his defense that, as a government official, the government already withholds his taxes only holds water when that is his only source of income. But, at 24, he was also chair of the Philcomsat board, with substantial honoraria/compensation.

Will the Supreme Court uphold the rule of law?

solita monsod@yahoo.com

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Follow me on Twitter @TitasdeBacolod

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Sunday, February 27, 2022

The Ghost of Marcos Crony and Plunderer Roberto Benedicto Haunts Negros Island in 2022

Blog, Issues

BACOLOD CITY - When presidential aspirant, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. came into town last February 23, 2022, eyebrows were raised among Bacolod and Negros Occidental citizens as to who came out to support the son of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.

It was of no surprise that Negros Occidental Vice Governor Jeffrey Ferrer was leading the party to welcome Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The dots are so easy to connect. Vice Governor Ferrer is the spouse of the Representative of Negros Occidental's 4th District, Hon. Juliet Marie "Yoyette" Ferrer, daughter of Philippine movie industry icon Kitchie Benedicto. Kitchie Benedicto was the daughter of former Philippine Ambassador Roberto S. Benedicto, who is known to have been Ferdinand Marcos' crony for cornering the proceeds of the sugar industry.

Under Martial Law, then President Marcos allowed Benedicto (known locally as "RSB") to take control of the Philippine Exchange Company (Philex), which monopolized the sugar planters' international trade. Benedicto used Philex to buy cheap sugar from local producers and sell it abroad for large profits, largely at the expense of the planters who in turn could not in turn pay back bank loans and wages of people in their farms.

The domino effect was that hunger was widespread in the countryside, breeding an insurgency and making Negros island a hotbed for local communist rebels.

These were the worst days of Negros after World War II and most Negros sugar planters remember how bitter those days were. Only most remember the bitter days of unrest and hunger in Negros because when Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. flew in last week, it seemed like quite a lot had forgotten their sorry state under the plunder of RSB.

Without having to name names, they were there. The ones who left for the US in the early 1980s as students or as young professionals to start a new life because there was hardly any future for them left in Bacolod. Today, having bounced back, living well, and retired or semi-retired in Bacolod, they are now throwing support behind Bong-Bong Marcos, oblivious to the agonies of their late parents who staunchly fought RSB and Marcos.

As if to spit on the graves of their deceased parents who hurt the most during the RSB years, the fresh local supporters came out in red and green in adulation of the dictator's son.

When one looks back, there will always be the supporters of the late President Marcos in Negros. Even back then under Marcos years, there were families who were loyal to Marcos up in the north and down in the south. No one forgets the infamy of the Escalante massacre in 1985. So yes, FM loyalists have their place in Negros. And yes, you have to give them some loyalty award for being there all throughout.

What puzzles though is the selective amnesia many have shown. It is one thing to support FM Jr. because you were there all along like your father was an Assemblyman during Marcos time and you had access to FM, getting some minor favors from the strongman along the way. But it is definitely another story, painfully hilarious, to see the ones shouting, "Sama Sama tayo Babangon Muli", knowing very wall that thirty six years ago, they were at the Bacolod Public Plaza chanting, "Tama Na! Sobra Na! Palitan Na!".

As it is, with a strong following, in Negros, you have to hand it to the supporters of the Uni-Team for having called up the ghost of the Marcos crony and plunderer Roberto S. Benedicto, as if to sneer on all who were victimized, "I'm baaaaack!".

This only prompts those on the other side of the fence, whether for Pacquiao, Lacson, Isko, or Leni, to fight harder as never before.

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Follow me on Twitter @TitasdeBacolod

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Friday, February 25, 2022

Remembering Nena - the Fighter for Causes

Negros, People

Found in one of the archives of The Visayan Daily Star. Excerpts from Ninfa R. Leonardia's farewell to Nena (Carolina) Lacson Garcia in 2015:

But Nena was also a fighter for causes. When the sugar industry was threatened during the days of the dictatorship, she was one of the most outspoken and blunt in her criticisms. At one time, the late sugar industry leader, Roberto S. Benedicto, set an interview with me and two other journalists from Bacolod, to be done in a TV station run by his company in Manila. It was about the current issues heating up between the industry leaders and local planters.

***

Nena was one of those who fed me with the most biting questions, and when I dared to ask them of RSB, knowing that all the planters in Negros were watching, she told me later that they clapped very hard for me. I asked her if they noted that my hands were shaking and my voice cracking, and she just laughed. “At least you got the point across,” she said. But good and loyal as she was as a friend, she could also be brutally frank when she is aggrieved and in the right. Even journalists who crossed her got their come-uppance.

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Follow me on Twitter @TitasdeBacolod

Related Posts:

Negros : An Island of People With Super Short Memories