VILLASIS–Talong (eggplant) will again take center stage when this town in the northern bank of the Agno River holds its sixth Talong Festival on January 14 in conjunction with the town fiesta.

Mayor Dita Abrenica said the festival, which was started in 2005 by her husband, former Mayor Nonato Abrenica, will honor anew the town’s hardworking eggplant farmers.

Talong, the main ingredient of the popular Ilocano dish pinakbet, is a tropical crop which farmers usually plant after rice when the paddies have dried up.

Statistics show Villasis is now the leading town in the Ilocos Region in the production of eggplant.

The festival, which is now included in the Department of Tourism’s fiesta calendar, will give recognition to farmers who plant other vegetables that are used in pinakbet, i.e., tomatoes, okra, string beans, chili pepper, winged beans, sweet potato,  patani, kadios and the like.

Abrenica said Villasis, an agricultural town whose alluvial soil from the Agno River earned for the town the acclamation as the “Vegetable Bowl of Pangasinan”, is proud of its famous talong product.

Last year, the town published a cookbook on 101 ways to cook talong using recipes from cooking contests during the festival held in previous years.

Among the activities lined up this year is an artwork contest using talong and other pinakbet ingredients, scheduled at 5:00 a.m. to be covered live by ABS-CBN’s “Umagang Kay Ganda” show.

There will also be a cooking competition called “pinakbet sa kawa”, to be followed by a street dancing exhibition by dancers from different barangays garbed in attire bearing “talong” motiff.–LM

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