Apart from experimenting on ecosystem restoration, one of our objectives in Station 2 is to enhance the availability of “in-situ” food sources in the highlands of the natural park. The aim is to minimize the influx of packaged canned goods, noodles wrapped in plastic, other processed food materials, plastic containers and sachets, which would accumulate non-biodegradable wastes in the uplands. Not easy to do, we have not completely achieved the objective, but so far we have managed to achieve a steady supply of vegetables, leaves, stalks, fruits, beans, root crops, and lately chicken meat and eggs. The food sources are both indigenous and introduced by the ranchers before the 1960s and by the park rangers and staff after the 1960s.
One of the photos shows our field staff, Fransly Ignacio, an agroforester who graduated from Occidental Mindoro State College and a member of the Hanunuo ethnolinguistic group leading the preparation of our meals for the day. Trying out different combinations results in simple but interesting food dishes like what you see in the photos. For this particular day, we had a stew of freshly harvested saluyot (𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘶𝘴 𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘶𝘴), camote tops, stringbeans, ampalaya, papaya mixed with dried kanuping (seabream) fish for lunch and guacamole matched with boiled cassava for dinner, all without MSG!
This activity was supported by Mandai Nature.
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