Landang

Last Saturday night, on her TV program Jessica Soho had an interesting feature on "sago," that pearl-size, jelly-like, chewable but starchy thing which is the better half of "gulaman." I didn't know that it was made of cassava. Thing is, growing up in Mindanao, we call the sago "landang," and landang comes from the trunk of, according to the TV report, a "sago tree" which is really just a variety of nipa, or palm tree. The sago here in Manila comes from cassava while the sago in the Southern parts comes from a palm tree. Again, just like Macopa, sago has an identity crisis, depending on which region you live.

Marc is familiar with landang, I know there's plenty of nipa in Bohol. My late grandma would always bring some to Mindanao. It's actually very good, especially for tabiraq (that's guinatan in Manila or binignit in Cebu).