I Can't Believe We Missed It

Digging through a backlog of newspapers this morning, I see that we missed the Fifth Annual Baguio Province Tossed Salad Festival on Sunday.

According to a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, this year's Tossed Salad Festival was dominated by thousands of children "enjoying their greens" at the Baguio Convention Center.

Their Styrofor bowls were filled with slices of carrot, lettuce, cucumber, tomato and bell pepper.

A woman said her three grandchildren quickly consumed two bowls each. A bowl cost P20 (40 cents).

Organizers earlier announced that this year's festival would try to break the record by feeding 30,000 people. But only 10,000 servings had been offered to the public as of 3:00 p.m.

Yes. There's an actual record for this. According to the Inquirer, the first giant salad broke a record previously set in Utah by feeding 5,000 people. The second fed 12,800 people, the third 29,000. (Only 9,000 people showed up in 2004 when the Tossed Salad Festival was held on the heels of a meningococcemia outbreak in the city.)

If any province is going to hold a tossed salad festival, Baguio would be the one. Much of the produce in the Philippines is grown in Baguio, which has cooler weather and better growing conditions than much of the southern part of the country. We often buy string beans, strawberries and lettuce labeled as being from Baguio.

Still, who would have thought that a tossed salad festival would be so popular?