Good evening our dear readers & followers! I want to share something personal tonight.

On my way home, I suddenly thought of my mom's specialty. Actually I've been craving it for a couple of days now. Since it was my payday yesterday, I decided to treat myself. So earlier, I went straight into the market and bought some vegetables. I don't like to write down all of the items, so just take a look at the photo below.

Guys, I am not a chef... so please bear with me. Also, I am not a food blogger either. (Daeng disclaimers! LOL)

It's been 14 years since the last time I tasted my mom's "UTAN". Now, I will attempt to cook her specialty using my own style. Hopefully I can exactly replicate my mom's style of cooking it. By the way, believe it or not, I was able to cook this when I was just four (4) years old.

Let's prepare the vegetables. I just simply cut the squash into small squares or rectangles, or whatever shape that is... Same thing done to the taro (Colocasia esculenta) and sliced the eggplant too. For Malabar spinach, which is rich in fiber, I just took all the leaves.

Now, fill a large soup pot with 3 cups of water and add the diced squash & taro roots. Cover the pot and heat it for about 6-8 minutes. Then, drop the eggplant and dried fish. Wait for another two (2) minutes and finally add the spinach. Try to taste it and if you need to add more salt then do so. Earlier, I didn't have salt, so I used soy sauce instead. LOL

Finally, cooking time is done and here's the amazing "UTAN" of DiversityHuman. Guys, that rice on the plate was about 4-5 cups and guess what happened after 8 minutes?

After eating, I realized that I can't really beat how my mom cook this food! I miss you mama. Merry Christmas po!

FYI: "UTAN" is a term used by Cebuanos. It is a native style in preparing a mixed vegetables with no meat added to it. This is how we cook our food when I was living in the middle of a jungle in Southern Mindanao.