LP 11: Summertime Coolers and Memories of Summer

Wow! After a long hiatus from blogging, this is my first time to participate in the Lasang Pinoy Series. Thanks to JMom for the invitation.

As the title implies, it's about what I used to indulge in during those summers when I was younger (and now I am sharing with my children).

In the LP 10, it had the same theme, and Tina posted about the same thing I made last night and which I am posting about today -- ice candy. This is just one of those delicious and thirst-quenching ways by which Filipinos (kids especially) try to beat the summer heat.

I made chocolate (using my untouched-for-months Nesquick) and melon. I have to share one technique that I have learned from I-can't-remember-who on how to make the ice candy (that's what we call the equivalent of icee or ice pops in the US) easy to bite (I still remember the first time I tried making ice candy, it was so hard that it was annoying to eat it!). It just involves boiling the water (that you are going to use for the mix) first then adding a little bit of cornstarch-water combination to the boiling water, like making it thick as in soups, but not too thick. Let's say for a big pot of boiling water, you add half a cup of cold water in which you have dissolved 2 tbsp of cornstarch. I have long been wondering about how it could bring about the desired effect, and in my "scientific" kuno mind, it seems that the complex starchy colloidal suspension hinders the lattice formation via the strong hydrogen bonds that form when water turns to ice, such that, instead of ice-like consistency of the ice candy, it becomes like packed snow. Once I mastered to do the trick, I even tried selling ice candies in our subdivision when I was in high school. Bad thing was, I did not use a tray, so the sticky substance oozed out of the plastic with small holes, that it stuck to the gadget of the freezer door, nasira!

Anyway, back to making my chocolate ice candy, I just poured Nesquick into 1 liter of the cooled-to-RT pre-boiled water, tasted as I went along, making it a bit sweeter than I could tolerate, because I had to add milk by taste, and of course, I had to provide allowance for the freezing. You know how ice makes sweet taste less sweet, and how heat tends to amplify the sweetness.

For melon, I did not add milk, because in recalling how chilled melon+condensed milk resulted in a bittery mettalic taste, I did not attempt to add milk here; just sugar. So, 1 liter of the same water, plus 1/4 melon processed in a blender, plus sugar to taste and a bit more, then I poured the whole thing into a bowl and added melon strips (kinayod).

After an hour, my younger son was eager to try it, but I could not give him any because it was not yet solid. I told him to wait til the next morning, which was today.

He woke up very early and asked for these ice candies first thing.

As you can very well see in the right photo, he still had that bed-head, but already was excited with the frozen goodies, and upon tasting, finally exclaimed, "Oh, I know these! I had these in the Philippines!"

Another memory from my childhood days is the Palitaw...it is one of those things I learned to make (experimented with) during the boring summer days, when I always looked for something to do aside from watching TV or reading or biking or trekking. But I will post on that next time (my photos are all ready).