Veg finds at the Salcedo Market Part 1: Vegan MoFo #13

(Pop, Luisa, Martin, Michael, and Bea in front of the market's entrance;

this would've been a great picture if my dad wasn't kidding around with Luisa while posing)

The Salcedo Market is a great place to shop for organic produce, native delicacies, home-cooked meals and local kitchenware while supporting small and medium enterprises, budding entrepreneurs, and locally grown and manufactured products. It's a nice way to spend your Saturday mornings too -- you can stroll through the stalls, get free samples of food, do your grocery, and even have lunch or a snack before heading back home. Not to be mistaken with traditional Filipino markets, the Salcedo market is a clean and secure place where people from the upper crust can feel like they're at an honest to goodness market. Foreign tourists and expatriates need not worry about bag snatchers and icky slime on the floor, that's for sure. Oh and in case you were wondering, I think the ratio of Filipinos and foreigners was 60/40. And I think I saw at least 5 Louis Vuitton purses.

(a sad day for companion animals indeed)

Not like other retail places in the Philippines, it's actually accepted and "fashionable" to bring your own reusable shopping bag. If you think about it, back in the olden days our lolos and lolas (grandparents) went shopping with banig bags (bags made from woven native fibers) out of necessity. You can actually buy a banig bag at a stall for only P100 ($2). Great thing about banig bags too is that they're biodegradable! You can get other items made from woven fibers here too, such as Christmas decor, baskets, fans, and hats.

While buying produce at a grocery store feels like a chore, buying produce from this market feels therapeutic. Maybe it's because none of the items are refrigerated (and neither are you in an artificially ventilated [aka air conditioned] place), or that they are displayed in plastic crates, or that they aren't wrapped up in plastic. As a shopper, you can pick up your fruit / vegetable of choice, touch it, smell it, feel it, and select which ones you want. The grocer does not pre-select your food for you, you get to do it yourself. Nothing is pre-weighed too. There really is something charming about getting to choose your own veggies and fruits, having them weighed by a non-electronic weighing scale, and carrying them in shopping bags made from dried palm leaves with zero use of plastic.











Perhaps I'm biased, but shopping for fruits and vegetables is much more fun than shopping for animal flesh. With flesh all you'll see are brown, red, and more shades of brown. Literally every color of the rainbow is represented when you shop for produce. The selection of leafy greens just astounds me. If you want an exciting experience buying veggies, I highly recommend checking out the Salcedo market stalls. Fresh button mushrooms, large American sized eggplants, and peppers as big as your hand, oh my! Last year I remember getting worked up when I saw bunches (not a few stems, but bunches) of fresh dill displayed.











Other great finds include:

Fruit and vegetable cocktails meant to naturally cure ailments, the way God intended (remedies are free from animal testing, of course).

Freshly baked wholewheat bread, bagels, pan de sal, pita bread, foccacia, you name it, Salcedo Market has it. Ask the concessionaires about milk and egg products, of course.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought to find malunggay pesto! I didn't get to ask the concessionaire if it had cheese, I was just too excited to photograph it.

Chutneys and jams made from papaya, mango, tomato, and mangosteen, wine made from cashews, ketchup made from pineapple, pickled ampalaya, and organic sinamak (spiced Ilonggo vinegar).

As this has become an epic , I'll finish off my veg finds at Salcedo in a second post!

The Salcedo Market is open from 7am to 2pm on Saturdays. You can find the market in the parking lot of the Salcedo park, across the Three Salcedo apartment building in Makati.