Sidefood, If There's a Sidebar..

No, it's not seafood or side dish. It's Sidefood--at least that's what I call it. These vendors have all their merchandise laid out on the floor of the foot bridge that crossed highways overhead, or else right on the pavement of sidewalks. The foot bridge or sidewalk has only about a meter of space remaining for pedestrians to walk on.

At home, we have another version of sidefood--food we eat right after meals. They're not junk food; they're real food. In short, we eat again right after meals--my youngest son and I. And then there's the food for thought you feed your mind with to tame your soul. But sometimes you ponder on it further and get strange ideas which you realize make sense more than the first food for thought you had. 

Then that's when you come up with your hopia soup which you alone find satisfaction in. You alone have a taste for it.

To me, strange is better any time. Like hopia soup most people find funny and strange. Funny yes, but strange? All people have their own hopia soup recipes which they never find strange--but which others do. When you pass by the foot bridge or sidewalk and see how the vendors sit or lie flat on their backs on the street asphalt, you'd think them strange. But they don't. They think it's the most normal thing to do, and you who look at them strangely are the strange one.

You think what they have is sidefood when all along it's what you have that is.

Or maybe, you're the sidefood.

Street food is different. Ideas you get from street corner folks and thugs are street food--plus of course what they sell fried or steamed from their carts and pedestrians buy them cheap and eat them hot straight from the pans or makeshift steamers. Those are seafoods, with their matching spicy and thick dips and sauces. I like spiced and boiled vinegar better, especially for floured balot, or what they so fondly call tok-nene.

Sidefood is extra food during or after meals which I and my youngest often enjoy, and which I relish more than the Sunday morning sermons most pastors give behind pulpits. If they sold the sermons in the streets, people would throw street food at them--or what remains of street food after they have munched the major parts.

And that's not fair deal--street people are short changed if they throw street food and get pastor's sermons in return. They should at least also get street food--and incidentally, pastors should learn how to cook and eat street food. Or sidefood like hopia soup. You've been missing so much eye-and-mind opening truth if you haven't tasted sidefood in your life.

If there's a sidebar and a sidedish, then maybe there's sidefood? Of course there is. I and my son have been eating them..