MUCOLYTIC

Incompleteness

You think you're persnickety? I am persnickety. But believe me when I say there's no one more persnickety in this world than Nickey, The Nitpicky.

I define persnickety as that demon who rears its ugly head whenever I have some, say, elbow macaroni soup and try to judge it based on which ingredient is missing (not counting the other properties), instead of say, being grateful and judging the soup on its own terms.

My aunt Zusie used to cook some of the best foods I've ever tasted and part of her culinary success was her insistence on cooking only with the best - and complete - ingredients. (I hope I haven't dishonored my mother with that sentence.) Aunt Zusie's got to have the right brand of elbow macaroni, the right brand of evaporated milk, the right brand of hotdog, dressed chicken (free range), pork (freshly slaughtered and dripping with the right amount of fat), shrimp (dried and shelled), carrots, Chinese cabbage, and celery.

Nickey's definition of persnickety is worse because we would then be talking about halo-halo, i.e., whether all the ingredients he'd known intimately since birth would be there. Woe to the hapless halo-halo maker who would use unforgivable replacements and extenders (gelatin, sago), or scrimp with noticeable deletions.

Not that Nickey hasn't tried the specialty halo-halos around (Icebergs, etc.). I always say I am a hick at heart, but I am like Nickey when it comes to adventurousness, at least to a certain extent. Nickey and I are alike in a lot of ways. Undeniably hoi polloi as we are, we've always felt we are some kind of royalty, only that we've been royally banished due to our having violated a certain edict of the kingdom or something.

Anyway, Nickey's definition of persnickety would be looking around for the following ingredients in his halo-halo: pinipig, leche flan, ube jam, kaong, nata de coco, sweet corn, macapuno strips, kidney beans, red beans, langka preserve, saba preserve, camote preserve. He knows it's good to see the doughnut instead of the hole, but Nickey also knows whether he's been shortchanged or not. He would know which ingredient is missing. He has intricate knowledge of the prices of main commodities, for Pete's sake, especially the pricing oscillations and price differences between, say, Rustan's and Landmark or SM and Price Mart. He wouldn't trade the feeling of completeness for anything, no, not while he's breathing.

Balance and proportion are vital attributes anytime. Think yin-yang, ikebana, and classical paintings… But without the elements that
populate the periodic table, from hydrogen down to the heaviest, or the right combination of colored tiles or glass composing the floor mosaic or stained-glass window, the feeling is different. The end result is one of wanting, like a can of fruit mix with nothing in it but nata de coco, papaya, and a lot of disappointment. It's as though we never realized the value of biodiversity and allowed all sorts of extinctions to happen, like it wouldn't affect our future fruit salads one bit.

The world of taste, as in the rest of life, is too complex and too diversely exciting for such an excuse as a minor-yet-vital ingredient being left out. In a world this wealthy, such kind of impoverishment is scandalous.

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I take back what I said about vitamins. This weekend I gave in to the power of TV commercials. If your diet of late consists of paper and cardboard, go ahead, take your daily dose of vitamin A to zinc.