URDANETA CITY–Try a different leche flan, Spanish pan de sal, empanada, French fries, pancit and spaghetti noodles. How different? Use squash as base ingredient!

These are among the new byproducts that have been recently developed by the city government- owned Livelihood Skills Training Center (LSTC) to promote lowly kalabasa (squash).

Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr. told The PUNCH that the city government has started on its mission to produce 101 products from this nutritious vegetable, and initially more than a dozen of squash food byproducts have become a hit among food critics and government agency representatives.

Add to the list squash-based biscuits, yema, cookies, macaroons, pimiento, jam, catsup as among those that have passed the discriminating tastes of agents of the Bureau of Food and drugs, the Technical Education Skills Development Authority, and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) who arrived here for a ‘taste-test’ of these products.

Even overseas-based Urdanetans here on a vacation are already reportedly impressed by the quality of the new squash products.

The encouraging reception has inspired Perez to promote the squash byproducts as a home-grown industry to help create employment and promote the entrepreneurial spirit.

Perez said a laboratory center to house more and new equipment for processing of squash will be established to help ensure the commercial viability of the new products.

He said volume orders for the new products have already started.

Since the successful experimentation on the potentials of squash in the center, the city government has intensified its squash seeds distribution program in the barangays as part of its Tulungan sa Purok (Help in the Barangay) livelihood project and food sufficiency program.

“We want to make our city the Kalabasa (Squash) Capital of Pangasinan,” Perez said.

TARGET: 101

Revelyn Llagas, training center administrator of the Urdaneta City’s LSTC, said about 70 byproducts made of squash have already been identified and the research and development continues until the ‘101’ magic number is reached.

Her “love affair” with the squash started when she walked to the church one day and was struck by the sight of a child picking up a rejected squash thrown by a vendor in a heap of trash in the market.

Inside the church, her thoughts were about squash and the pathetic scene she saw. The thought remained till she reported to the office the following day and asked her instructors to begin experimenting on other possible uses of squash.

“It (program) was a prayer answered for me because I’ve been praying that we will come up with squash product whose nutritional value is superb,” Llagas said.

Meanwhile, the DTI pledged to provide P40,000 for squash training on product packaging and labeling as it urged he city officials to make squash as the city’s entry for the One Town, One Product program of the national government.-#

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