Ginamos for Breakfast

Bisaya's Finest and Native Delicacies
By Lakwatsero

To be exact, it was Valentines Day, me and my wife, with my officemate go for a habal-habal ride to my Tito's place. To cook for our lunch and dinner. Coz it is much expensive if we will all gonna eat in the resort that we were staying. It was as a early as the morning of the Valentines day, we go on also take our breakfast, my Tito serves as, native rice of bohol, egg with tomatoes and onion, noodles and of course "ginamos". My Tito actually has 2 kind of ginamos, actually i took some pictures of that.




Actually I didn't eat any kind of fish dishes, i really don't know why but don't ask me...hehehehe...sorry for the fish lovers.....but, I remember when was still a kid, my mother would do sometimes joke, whenever we have some pasalubongs from our relatives, "ginamos" is always present on their package, that it was tasty because it had fallen into a kanal, was retrieved from it, and then brought to us. Even in those times that I believed the joke, I would still not eat a ginamos. In the years that have passed I’ve come to learn that the kanal joke is universal and that I was not alone in insisting to not to eat ginamos in spite of it. Yes....

But there are some Filipino humors has more to say on ginamos. This all came from my Tito, we know of a variety of preparations that have been shortened to suggest morbid execution. There’s the classic gipusil, or ginamos pus-ag sili. There’s also gipriso, ginamos pritohon nga solo, there's gikahon, ginamos ug kamatis gisahon. Then comes gidunggab, ginamos dungag gabi. Lastly, there’s the dread gitook, ginamos tongtongag ok-ok.Actually there are so many variations of preparations for "ginamos".

Whether you believe in the kanal joke or not or have personally experienced gitook, if you want to be sure about how sanitary your ginamos is, you can always make your own. You will need a glass jar, some small fish (your choice of kujog, bolinaw, or mubgas) or tagimtim or sisi, and some salt. Rub the salt all over the fish. How much salt you use will depend on your taste. To this, you can add a few lemonsito leaves or a few cloves of ahos to make the ginamos fragrant. Put the fish in the jar and let alone for days or weeks until ma-gamos na.

One may be driven to eat them every day out of necessity or, if you’re better off, you can eat them as you please and by choice. Whatever your status, "ginamos" have us Filipinos bound as one people. It may be through our stomachs, but that’s not much further from our hearts.