Growing up with Lola, there was really nothing special I remember of her Holy Week menus. What I remember were the negative musts. No eating meat. No noise. No taking a bath on Good Friday. No swimming on Good Friday or the siokoy (merman) will drown you. Listen to the Good Friday Seven Last Words.
Seafood was present every day on our table. So abstinence really wasn’t a sacrifice. Maybe Lola should have withheld the tinapang kapak, a specialty of her home province, Bataan, which were small smoked banak (mullet) so we would know what foregoing a favorite food can be like.
That is why, when friends reminisced about the Lenten fare of their families, what many talked about were not f…
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