Cooking Menudo..

For a long time, I never had the chance to cook properly Menudo.  I am trying to attempt today what the taste could be...I missed a lot these cooking and  gathering especially this time of the year "kalag-kalag" (All Soul's Day). My mom used to be awake early because she has to go to my paternal grandmother's house at the back of the old Duekpui's store (the buliding~she actually owns) to help prepare for the food and prayer.  The menu usually comes with dinuguan, scabeche, guisado/menudo which I did not know the difference before and the ever strong tsocolate'~served in a smaller cup (tasa?). This is the time that I usually look forward because these are  not the regular dishes that we always eat daily in our house. ohh.. that smell of guisado when the small peas will be thrown in the wok, meaning its almost done. Then comes the ritual~ lead by the manaratbat which I liked to listen not because of the essence of praying but the entertaining rhymes. How did they memorize those long litany of prayers in waray-waray.....Now, I realized that it's really hard to be at par with their cooking~ not because of the taste....it's because of the love and devotion to what they were doing.