Isinay Units of Measuring Rice

THE PLASTIC RICE dispenser that is increasingly becoming a common “appliance” in Filipino kitchens today may one day soon render obsolete the use of certain units of measuring rice. 

One such unit of measure is the leche. It is simply the tin can of condensed milk  -- hence the name leche, which  is Spanish for milk -- the rough edges of which had been smoothed to prevent fingers from being hurt.

Leche, ready-to-cook rice, and cat on a winnowing basket.

Based on the tin can’s label (the brand of the one in the photo is Alaska), one leche (sinletse in Isinay, sangalitsi in Ilocano) is equivalent to 300 ml. (As a side note, I recall the condensed-milk  brands we had when I was young were Milkmaid, Liberty, Darigold, and Carnation.) 

I’m not sure if the leche has the same carrying capacity as the salmon (also a tin can but instead of milk it originally contained canned salmon or sardines). But I remember hearing such Isinay term as sinsalmon (one salmon) when Isinay folks would come to the house to either buy or borrow rice.

In the Ilocano village where I grew up, salmon was also used by my grandmother as term when she measured glutinous rice (diket in Ilocano, dayaot in Isinay, malagkit in Tagalog) to be soaked then pounded with al-o (pestle; e-u in Isinay) in the alsong (mortar; lusung in Isinay) when she made my favorite tupig. 

When we still had prolific fruiting Coffea arabica trees in our backyard, I also heard salmon being used quite often as indicative measure for how much coffee beans my Auntie Tibang (Primitiva Benitez Castro) would isange (roast) then bo^bo-on (grind) in preparation to serving brewed coffee each time there is a social gathering such as parasal (prayer for a departed one) in the house.

I recall salmon was also used to quantify how much goby fish (bunog in Ilocano, sappilan in Isinay) a fisher has caught from the river, how much black snail (ambeveyo^ in Isinay, leddeg in Ilocano) a shellfish gatherer has collected from the payaw (ricefield), how much iniruban (daluj-daluj in Isinay, pinipig in Tagalog) resulted from the tedious burning then pounding of newly harvested glutinous rice, how ripe duhat (lumboy in both Isinay and Ilocano) or boiled peanuts is measured and sold by a vendor.

I have yet to find out if the Ifugaos, Ibalois, Ifontocs, Ibanags, Gaddangs, Tagalogs, Bicolanos, Warays, Cebuanos, Maguindanaos, Maranaos, et al. are using the same tin cans for measuring rice, but at least in Dupax both the Ilocanos and Isinays used the leche and the salmon when I was young to takal (measure) or determine the amount of rice to be cooked, to be lent to a neighbor in need, or to be fed to chickens.   

Of course, I recall my grandparents also used black coconut shells (ungut in Isinay, sabsabut in Ilocano, bao in Tagalog) to scoop out rice from their Ilocos-made burnay that used to be a container of my Apong Lakay's basi, but that's another story.

Also another story is that I have yet to ascertain if the Tagalog gatang as well as the chupa are the same or rather yield the same quantities as the leche, and how many such leches, gatangs, and chupas would make one ganta, another unit of measure that was the market standard for rice, beans, sugar, salt, etc. before it became displaced by kilos. I’m not sure now in which grade we were taught this term in our elementary school Arithmetic, but I do recall one lesson went something like “4 chupas equals 1 ganta” along with “25 gantas equals 1 cavan” and “3 liters equals 1 gallon.”

Back to our milk can.

And what, you might ask, does the rice dispenser have to do with the banishment of the leche?

Well, as the photo shows, rice dispensers are equipped with levers marked 1, 2 and 3 to indicate the number of cups they are able to spew out into the collecting box at the bottom.

Which means that you only need to press the measurement of your choice or do some simple arithmetic depending on the number of people who are supposed to partake of the rice when cooked (for example, 2 cups for 3 people, 2 cups plus 3 cups for 7 people, etc.) and, presto, down pours the exact amount of rice you need to cook.

Before the memory of it gets sidetracked, I hasten to add here that when I was a kid commonly used as rice storage containers (pampurutan in Isinay, pagbagasan in Ilocano, palabigasan in Tagalog) were the rectangular biscuit cans equipped with round lids to keep the house rats and cockroaches away. Others had large burnay (mawaga in Isinay, tapayan in Tagalog).  

Alas, these containers are now being replaced by manufactured rice dispensers, in much the same manner that the kaldero (kettle) is now being replaced by electric-powered rice cookers.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if cooking rice is still part of the household chores of Dupax kids of today, be they Ilocano, Isinay or what not. But when I was old enough to carry the kaldero, be trusted with my arithmetic, became familiar with the middle-finger system of estimating the water to go with the rice after washing it, and already able to kindle the firewood on the stove, such chore was among the assignments I liked most.

Well, one reason I welcomed the rice-cooking assignment was because I enjoyed the fire-tending part of it as I loved to watch the dancing flames of the firewood and the flickering later of the resulting red embers. Besides, cooking rice saved me from washing the dishes.   

To end this sharing for now, I guess that not many kids of Dupax and even in other rural areas of the Philippines are still doing what my sisters and I used to compete for when we were small -- eating the deliciously burnt rice (na^gov in Isinay, ittip in Ilocano, tutong in Tagalog) at the bottom of the kaldero. 

Yes, aside from being a good Boy Scout, that was one more reason I didn't say no to cooking rice at the time -- because it gave me grand privilege or first-priority right, as it were, to scour the kettle for the aromatic and delicious rice tip.

When Halloween Was Somewhat Merrier Than Christmas

It was a time when the whole village went abuzz with the womenfolk pounding, winnowing and sieving glutinous rice, a time when men climbed coconuts and brought down the mature ones to be grated for their creamy milk, a time when the neighborhood became redolent with banana leaves roasting on flat tin sheets and when every kitchen had some native cakes being cooked, a time when we kids stopped going outdoors and stayed home so we would be the first to taste the tupig, baduya, linapet, pinais, and busi that made the season more exciting than Christmas.

If there is one thing that I wish could be restored to the place of my childhood -- aside from the sylvan hills, the fish-rich river, and the Eagle Swing Orchestra and St. Vincent Orchestra playing martial music around the main roads of Dupax days before Christmas to wake up people to go to the misa de gallo (dawn mass) at the centuries-old Roman Catholic church -- it was the way Halloween was celebrated in the barrio that cradled my formative years.

Halloween was of course an English term we learned in grade school. And it referred to the two-day event -- that is, Nov. 1 or All Saints Day and Nov. 2 or All Souls Day -- that we preferred to call "kararua" in both Ilocano and Isinay.


The Tagalog, Ilocano or even Isinay call it Undas now.

And, yes, Virginia... it is no longer observed the way it used to be.

When I was a boy, the observance of  Kararua took several days, a large part of which was, admittedly, not spent in the cemetery. Where I lived, its celebration went to such an extent that, instead of grieving for "the faithful departed," we faced no rebuke whenever we greeted friends and  relatives we would meet in the narrow village lanes a sort of "Happy All Souls' Day" with the Ilocano "Kararuayo, apo!"

I am connecting the dots of the past now, and I find that much of the kararua season's merriment and festivities during my boyhood revolved around or were mostly caused by native rice delicacies, particularly tupig -- a popular almost foot-long or sangadangan (isang dangkal in Tagalog) Northern Philippines delicacy made of pounded glutinous rice mixed with brown sugar, creamy coconut milk, and young coconut meat, then roasted along with its banana leaf wrapper on top of flattened tin sheets heated by wood charcoal.

There was of course more to Kararua than the tupig. Consider, for instance, the following composite kararua recollections:

• It was a time that we kids of Sitio I-iyo then looked forward to with the eagerness that kids of today await the coming of Santa Claus.
• It was a time when the whole village went abuzz with the womenfolk pounding, winnowing and sieving glutinous rice.
• It was a time when men climbed coconuts and brought down the mature ones to be grated for their creamy milk.
• It was a time when the neighborhood became redolent with banana leaves roasting on flat tin sheets and when every kitchen had some native cakes being cooked.
• It was a time when we kids stopped going outdoors and stayed home so we would be the first to taste the tupig, baduya, linapet, pinais, and busi that made the season more exciting than Christmas.
• It was a time when households would better think twice of not handing over a couple or so of tupig or linapet when someone would come on your door or rather ladder, otherwise you would wake up in the morning and see one of your chickens is missing or your bamboo ladder is nowhere to be found.

The reason Kararua is not so exciting now in I-iyo is that the people there have become too many. In this particular case, the pro-life advocates (or rather the anti-Reproductive Health Bill people) would probably have to think twice.

It would have been no problem if a sizeable part of the number grow diket rice or have their own cassava plants to make into linapet.

But you could just imagine how many would come ogle at you as you waited for the delicacy to be cooked.

(NOTE: Sorry, this piece is still a stub... I'll enrich it very soon.)