When dad was still alive, the family would always eat grilled foods for lunch. It was him who was very diligent in grilling foods, and after he died, the weekly tradition just faded. Speaking for myself, I was just lazy to grill. Cleaning the grill and getting the coals ready was just too tedious, and grilling itself was just not really that fun to do. Then again, I missed eating grilled foods, so when I had the chance to go to the market, I bought 2 slices of pork belly and a milkfish. I am going to reinstate the grilled lunch!

In marinating the meat, I just combined minced garlic, evaporated milk, salt, pepper, and calamansi juice. I just let them stay in the grill until they are cooked, it was quite a windy day so no need to fan the coals. The milk tend to create burnt looks on the meat, but it was easily scraped off with a bread knife. I grilled the pork first, then the fish together with eggplants. I made ensaladang talong by combining skinned grilled eggplants with chopped tomatoes, onions, radish, spring onions, calamansi juice and fish bagoong. I was quite happy with how it turned out - for a lazy grill queen, I was able to do it all without breaking a sweat (I did say it was a windy day, right? *winks*).

Brother wasn't able to join us for lunch. The happy me suddenly felt a little sad when mom was quiet throughout lunch. I don't know why she seemed quiet, but seeing her get rice three times and that I finished eating faster than her made me feel accomplished. Despite the little setbacks (not receiving any feed back from something I did certainly wore me down especially that I exerted effort in it), I still am keen on keeping up with the grilled lunch. Maybe I will go for tilapia and barbecues next weekend.

*** Jenn ***