Painit: a meal before breakfast
My wife grew up in the provinces for almost half of her life. She lives in a quaint barangay near the port of Hagnaya in Northern Cebu. Some people may not be familiar with this place except that this is the only way to go to Bantayan Island. She lives in a family compound with family and relatives.
When she was a kid, she had to wake up really early to do chores. The usuals, like fixing the bed, watering the plants, and sweeping the floor, amongst other things.
But she also goes to the bakery to buy piping hot pandesal, and goes straight to the kitchen to prep the kettle for something hot, or init. This usually means coffee for the adults, and Ovaltine or Milo for the kids. Her mother would already have been busy making breakfast, or pamahaw in Cebuano. In their household, this usually means hot white rice, eggs, and some sort of protein.
Breakfast is relatively universal. We all get that. But I want to focus on the pandesal and coffee. Just like the hobbits in Lord of the Rings lore, a percentage of Cebuanos (most especially in the provinces) and some in the other regions in the Philippines have more meals than the standard breakfast-lunch-dinner. It is a staple for my wife’s family and most families in their province to eat pandesal and coffee while waiting for the rice to cook.
It goes like this: painit, pamahaw (breakfast), merienda (snacks), paniudto (lunch), merienda again, and panihapon (dinner).
They don’t consider this a snack, but an actual meal. This breaks the notion that Filipinos only consider something a meal if it does not include rice.
I’ve made a few assumptions as to why we have painit. Usually, people in the provinces tend to wake up really early (like 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. early) to attend to their daily tasks, that a usual 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. breakfast is just too far away to not eat something.
They need something to warm up their body and get their spirits moving while the sun has not risen yet. It becomes a sort of breath of fire to kick things off while the world is still fast asleep. Or maybe, we just love snacking so much we’ve turned it into a meal. I’ll definitely enjoy a hot cup of Milo at 4:30 in the morning, waiting for the steaming hot rice, and listening to the sounds of nature that you can only experience in the idyllic provincial landscape in the Philippines.
