Did you also play with clay pot and stove cook sets when you were a child, like me and my sister Gigi? We owned lots. And probably as many sets we broke were the times Mommy and Grandma Gregoria bought us these toys. The clay pot sets sold back in the days I was still a child were better made. They really looked like miniature clay pots and stoves. The pot lids were always just the right size, and the stoves were well-shaped and not deformed, unlike the ones they make now-which are usually distorted and sloppily made. Sometimes, the lids are not even proportionate to the pots they cover. Am not sure if the paint they used back then were lead-free, but I loved the red color of the pots which were decorated with white flowers. We cooked rice, adobo, sinigang, and pakbet so many times in those tiny pots-and we ate what we cooked! Thankfully, my sister and I lived to adulthood, and whatever we ingested with the food we cooked in our toy pots had not seemed to have caused any permanent damage to our brains. The best part was Mommy always played with us. She patiently kindled the fire to light up the charcoal bricks. Gigi and I stirred the stew, added water, or lifted the lid when the sauce was boiling. No other game gave me hours of fun as much as our play kitchen did. If we happened to play it in the province during our visits to our grandparents, Daddy even built us tents fashioned out of blankets tied to chairs, under the generous shade of the ancient caimito tree. We laid out a straw mat where we can nap or lay down while reading our comics. Mommy even sat with us inside our tent! We arranged pillows around our tent and sat on them as if they were chairs.
In this album you will find the toy clay cookware I've collected over the years. It is perhaps an attempt to recapture my happy memories of childhood. One set was given to me. I've used some of these cook sets as props in my storytelling sessions. In fact one of these sets was the one I used in my very first storytelling of Araw sa Palengke. I bought it at the Kamuning Market.
ing Market.
Araw sa PalengkeMay Tobias-PapaPinoy Kids ToysPinoyKidsLit