Mix Your Summer with Halo-Halo

Summer is definitely isn’t complete without halo-halo. Halo-halo can be considered as the common Filipino ice-cream. And Chowking’s halo-halo is the famous one. Being available all-year round, it gives you choices on how much you can consume a halo-halo. I’m not trying to promote Chowking’s product in here but let’s accept it, that being a nationwide fast-foodchain, they were able to penetrate the Philippine market of halo-halo. But do you know that selling halo-halo especially during summer is absolutely a good business? My Ate and I, when we were young, used to make halo-halo and sell it in our neighborhood during summer. And we earned quite a sum of money during those days.

To make some of the ingredients cheaper, you have to make it by yourselves. Not to worry, because it’s so easy that all you have to do is to boil it properly with sugar and pandan leaves. But you have to cook each ingredient separately so that its taste, color and smell won’t mix up.

Here is the list of ingredients that you can cook easily:

- Banana (saba) - ripe but not overly riped; cut it cross-wised and about a cm thick

- Jackfruit - tear it off length wise, each strip with width around 1 cm

- Kaong and Nata de coco – wash it properly

- Garbansos

- Sago

- Mongo beans

You can also make your own purple yam (halayang ube) but it’s really time and effort consuming.

So, here are the complete ingredients for our halo-halo:

- 2 tbsp of sugar

- 2 tbsp of pinipig or rice crispies

- 1 tbsp of garbansos

- 1 tbsp of mongo beans

- 2 tbsp of banana

- 2 tbsp of sago

- 1 tbsp of buko macapuno

- 1 tbsp of kaong

- 1 tbsp of nata de coco

- 2 tbsp of gulaman (jelly)

- 1 tbsp of sweetened corn

- Shaved ice

- 1 tbsp of jackfruit

- 5 tbsp of evaporated milk

- 1 tbsp of purple yam

- A scoop of ice cream

Do you know that a Japanese convenience store chain sold their own halo-halo? Mini-Stop sold a Japanese version of halo-halo last summer of 2007, and they named it, haro-haro. It’s a bit different from the original Filipino halo-halo but the concept is exactly the same.

Enjoy your home-made halo halo!