Taho As Comfort Food

I made a list of things that were sources of comfort in my life, and I found that most of them involve food.

1) S

2) My family

3) Friends like M

4) Movie and dinner dates

5) Rice porridge with sliced century egg, steamed pork, flakes, and chives.

6) Taho

7) Dusk (because Twilight is overrated)

8) Socks

9) Baby food

10) Panna cotta

Obviously I like creamy, silky food.  This isn't common. I read somewhere that the food texture that most women find the most pleasing is creaminess.  

Taho is pretty high up in my list, thanks to past experiences. When I was young, I would watch, transfixed, as the mangtataho would skim off the excess water from the glistening, silken tofu, deftly scoop up thin slices and slide them into a cup . Then he'd take his long skinny spoon, stir the thick arnibal and run a thick web of syrup into the cup. Lastly, he'd scoop up a small amount of the tiny, beady, tapioca balls and ladle them on top. 

Ah heaven. I always ate mine with a spoon, unmixed, eager to eat the tofu the same way it was scooped up: in thin, horizontal layers that slide into my mouth like oysters.

When I got to college and was saving up money for three things: parties, clothes, and photocopied notes, I would routinely eat taho for breakfast or lunch. It was that  or instant noodles. A few months into that diet, and I swore off pancit canton for life.  Taho meanwhile, remains close to my heart.

Nowadays I prefer the taho from more reputable places, places that assure me of that their taho wasn't prepared in a concrete vat in the middle of Binondo and that their tofu is really tofu and not a chalk derivative.  But even TV Patrol-esque exposes on taho cannot sway me from indulging in a rare cup from the streets. I take comfort in the uncommon sense that, "linuto naman yan eh."