Five years ago, Ruby Asuncion Corrales Santos founded One Indigo Project to assist children of indigent indigenous peoples’ communities in Bukidnon, Davao and Cotabato improve their academic performance in school.
With donations from like-minded companies like LBCFoundation, Century Tuna, and Sierra Falcones , One Indigo donated simple items such as ‘tenderly used clothing’, toys, shoes, and face masks aimed at assisting the lumad families cope with the demands of educating their children.
However, Bebot (as she is known to friends) began to feel the pinch as the years went by since she was basically financing all of One Indigo’s activities out of her own pocket, down to the snacks for volunteers who helped her sort donations for distribution.
In December, 2021, she decided to undertake a salted eggs production project to help finance One Indigo Project’s feeding programs to remote IP communities in Talakag and Maramag, Bukidnon, and to indigent areas and homes for the aged in Cagayan de Oro.
However, before production started at her farm at Libona, Bukidnon, she experimented with various processes from salting to boiling and coloring, but was not satisfied with the results, which pushed her to research some more until she hit perfection, hence the brand “Salted in Heaven”.
“The secret is actually in the curing and boiling,” she shares with a wink. “The salted duck eggs that you’ve been craving for are made eggs-tra special as they’re soaked in turmeric with less salt and larger than usual salted duck eggs.”
“I love our authentic creamy, not quite salty, aged duck salted eggs,” she added. “Our eggs go great with salads of dried cranberries, nuts, fresh arugula, sliced tomatoes, white onions, cucumber, and thinly sliced garlic for added oomph!”
To ensure the local community benefits from the project as well, she decided to simply source her supply locally from duck egg producers in Libona. She also hires three to four people locally, mostly single moms and battered wives whenever they undertake production, which has now increased to 35 trays every three weeks.
From a huge dying cypress tree in the farm (known locally as “saypris, sipris or cipris”), the workers use chips from its dead branches to start a fire for cooking the eggs, and mixed them with giant ipil-ipil firewood producing a fragrant wood smoke.
Besides the salted ducks eggs, the project has also undertaken pest control under the brand name “Unipest” as an additional revenue source for One Indigo and Bebot’s other projects (Kain Ko with Century Tuna canned goods, Books for lumad kids from Sierra Falcones, clothing from LBC Foundation).
Consumers willing to help One Indigo and Bebot’s other advocacies can order “Salted in Heaven” aged salted duck eggs from mobile 0976.053.9888 or by Messenger through https://www.facebook.com/saltedinheaven and deliveries will be made through riders. Premium custom gift wrapping and packaging must be pre-ordered.
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