some good postings....

just passing by

Hi Manong Vic, just passing by your town to extend our thanks for sharing your blogs in our nanumo nga kalapaw, plus your earnest invitation to your townmates to visit ours once in a while.Had a lot of connections with Asingan too, 'cause during the 60's when school is over i spend summer in Macalong with my kasinsins to help in rice planting season btw you're probably familiar with an old family in Dupac who make basi and suka from selag and unas that's my grandpa's half brother his name was Lakay Selmo, am not sure of his last name anymore only remember his name,my old grandpa used to visit him from Sta. Maria by crossing Agno River via Bantog/Ariston side 'cause our bario was across laeng then we ride a karomata from Bantog to ili then walk towards my other relatives behind the town hall towars Dupac,the Orallo Family, hahahhhh!,,anyway thnks again and have a nice trip to Ottawa..Mr. Pogi

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Mr. Pogi, Thanks for visiting the AMB and we join Mng Vic in welcoming you to our e-barangay. I am from Dupac and I know the Orallo Family especially the branch whose patriarch is the late apo Koronel Orallo of Dupac centro. Maybe I was not born early enough to know your Lolo Selmo. But in the 60’s and early 70’s, Dupac was well known for cane vinegar and basi and your old relative must be one of the many backyard producers. This is so because the only Dadapilan (Traditional sugar mill) for miles and miles around is in Dupac, owned and operated by the Sison-Almerol family. The dadapilan is basically made of two, big and heavy cylinders that are geared to counter-rotate just some millimetres apart. The canes are inserted between the cylinders and are pressed - squeezed dry of their precious juice which is then channelled into a concrete cistern. The cane juice, locally called “bennal” is manually transferred by pails to steel drums to be transported home to the farmers’ houses; or the cane juice is poured to a giant vat fired underneath by an underground furnace right in the compound of the dadapilan. The cane juice, by the vatful, is cooked until it boils and thickens into “pulitipot”(caramel of raw sugar), then boiled some more into almost powdery form of raw sugar called “tagapulot”( unprocessed brown sugar). Using a coconut shell (sabot) as a mould, the tagapulot is usually lumped and formed into its commercial form called “sinakub”. Meanwhile, the juice that are transported on steel drums are borne on carabao-drawn karitons for delivery to individual houses. The raw bennal is placed in earthen storage jars called “burnay”. Here, the bennal is sealed and allowed to ferment, getting more sour each day and finally, turn into a vinegar traditionally called Sukang Iloko. Still, some of the bennal are processed by the addition of yeast and “samak” flowers for color and flavouring and cooked into basi. I can’t exactly follow the process of basi making but i know that there is a second alcoholic derivative from basi called ”kabeng”. Anyway, this art seems to be lost now in present day Asingan as the last person I know who made and sold basi in Dupac (Apo Esiang) had passed away almost twenty years ago. I think you can still buy sinakub and basi in the Asingan Market, but these are no longer made in Asingan. Most of these come from nearby Binalonan and Laoac. Dupac farmers stopped planting sugar cane since the Dadapilan stopped its operations in the early 70s. ---Icarus