BLOG 13: An American's Experience With Pig's Blood

Filipinos have been known for eating a lot of strange food: fertilized chick embryos, pig tongue, and apparently dog (which is pretty uncommon in our country but I will get to that in another entry). But this fact did not actually hit me until I dated an American.

A couple of months into dating, I figured it were the right time to introduce my then-boyfriend to the food of my culture. I decided to get him the “Filipino basics.” This would be chicken adobo, bistek, and turon for dessert. While enjoyed all three (not so much the bistek since I think I bought a bad batch but he said he thought it would have been good), I knew he was not as adventurous to try out something extreme. So as a “surprise,” I decided to get dinuguan, which most of us know as pig insides mixed with pig’s blood. I set the dinuguan in a bowl and set it on the table. He took one look at the dark brown chunky soup-like dish and was hesitant.

This is what the poor boy saw

“What’s that?” he says. “Just try it. Find out if you like it.” It was probably a little mean of me to not let him know what it was before he tried it, but I also knew that, that was the only way he would. And if anything, I wanted to take some sort of credit for exposing him to a little culture. So he took his spoon and took a small bite. “What do you think?” “I don’t like it.” “It’s pig’s blood.” The look of disbelief on his face was priceless. He put down the spoon, took a picture, and then called his brothers and their wives telling them of his horrible experience. As horrible as it was to him, it did go down in the books as one of our most memorable moments. We have joked about it a few times too. “You know I’m the only one who could have given you that experience.” “Hmm… Yeah, I could have done well without it.”