There are just days that are plain ordinary.
In the morning, at around 7AM, I get up, do my morning routine in the bathroom, cook and eat breakfast and leave for work. Then for 8-solid hours, I work almost non-stop to get to clock out on time and get home. After a 15-minute trip home, I exercise (or sometimes just try to in my head) then cook or reheat dinner and hit the sheets. Those are ordinary weekdays.
There are also ordinary weekends like this. Uneventful, no parties or get-togethers to attend, no errands to run that I end up cooped up in our wee flat, busying myself with house chores including my favorite chore: cooking, watching TV series or movies, reading through my Kindle and surfing the net.
But somehow, there is this itching feeling to make something extraordinary out of the sometimes boring ordinary day. There has to be something special everyday, right?
Monggo (mung bean soup), one of the humblest and standard Filipino comfort food dishes, was on our menu list and I gave it an upgrade by using bacon to give it the salt and smoky flavor it needs.
Ingredients:
- 500-grams whole mung beans
- Water
- 1/4 kilo extra salty and extra smoky pork bacon, chopped
- 1-whole onion, chopped
- 1-head of garlic, minced
- 1-tomato, chopped
- 2-tablespoons fish sauce
Step-by-step:
- Soak mung beans in a separate with water for at least 3-hours.
- Heat up pot and throw in bacon to sweat out the fat.
- Add onions and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent.
- Add tomatoes and saute for 3-minutes.
- Add soaked mung beans and water to the pot. Cover the pot to help seal in the heat and soften the mung beans.
- Add the fish sauce and mix.
- Cook with low heat for 1-hour until beans are nice and soft. Stir every 15-minutes and make sure to crush the beans. Note that crushing the beans is a very important step.
- Serve hot in a bowl and eat together with plain white jasmine rice.
Optional: Add a splash of lemon juice to the monggo. You’d be pleasantly surprised how the lemon juice makes a huge difference 
The smoky bacon here replaces the tinapa (salty smoked fish) flavor. But, of course, in the more indulgent sense as bacon is one of the more special ingredients, which I only got to enjoy on special weekends back home, being more expensive than the humble tinapa.
I really think that any ordinary day can be made special by just having a bowl of monggo. Moreso if it has bacon!
Enjoy!
Delirious about delicious,
Didi
