Given the delay between, actual time of eating, to the time it hits the blog, it leaves just about enough room for nostalgia. The frugal scrooge that I’ve been (still am) the past couple of months have meant driving home from lunch, which, from looking of the pictures, doesn’t really look that bad.

Here’s Lunch, or what was lunch over a span of a couple days. Shrimp cooked Coconut Milk, with Calabasa (Pumpkiny almost), String Beans, and Chilis. Dinuguan (Pork Blood Stew), made up of all the good bits (Cheek, stomach, etc).

Half of the fun of taking the effort and posting food photos is describing dishes that are just foreign to other people. Not that I’ve foreign readers, its just that most of the time these photos go live on SuFu prior anything. Here’s my emphatic attempt at trying to describe Sopas.

“Anticlimactically, we just call this Sopas. Chicken broth based soup, made with whatever pasta is available. Topped with forked chicken, chicken liver, and gizard (smoked sausage sometimes too), It’s served with a final douse of milk and Parmesan (and me, more pepper).”

Up and about, I’d expect, and still am expecting that this latest bout of “frugality” is going to result in a food turn down. But, just from the looks of whats been on the meal plate as of late, it isn’t terribly bad. Then again, I don’t think the words terribly bad have ever existed in the same paragraph (be it space) as foie gras.

Dinner out, and picking something relatively simple. Foie Gras, and Mushroom Ravioli. Served in a cream, clarified butter and peppercorn sauce.

Here’s what I mean by frugal, Food Court Grub (carb on carb concept). Grilled Chicken with a Thai inspired Sweet Chili Sauce. That beside Mash Potatoes, Gravy, and a good pile of Pesto.

I think this meal personifies what I’m trying to say here (much better than foie gras filled pasta, imho). It’s not necessarily just cheaper food (which they clearly aren’t), but food that have value. A hundred pesos for carb and carb, three hundred for amazing ravioli. Value meals, in the truest sense. Least that’s from how I see it.