On Wednesday, the townsfolk, led by the local officials, held the Talong Festival, lining up the town’s main highway with a 500-meter long grill on which 3,000 kilos or more than 20,000 pieces of talong were simultaneously cooked.
 

 Mayor Nonato Abrenica said the festival was a “dry run” for a much bigger activity  being planned for next year when the town will try to break or make a record in the Guinness Records.
 

 When I told long-time friend and Villasis native Ging Cardinoza about the plan, he asked me, “What category? Longest Barbecue? Then the town will try to dislodge Dagupan City.” He explained that the Records only had one category for Longest Barbecue, no matter what is cooked.
 

Dagupan holds the Records’ Longest Barbecue having grilled 10,000 pieces of bangus (milkfish) on a two-km grill in May last year.
 

 “But isn’t it a different category since we’re cooking vegetables while Dagupan cooked fish?” Abrenica told me when I called him up.
 

Well, it is really up for the Villasis leaders to find out.
 

Anyway, the Talong Festival was good for a first timer. I was wise for the Villasis folk to hold a “dry run” or “practice muna” before it embarks on trying to land on Guinness Records.

Remember, it was on the second try that Dagupan  finally found its name on the Records.
 Back to the festival activities, the street cooking was followed by a street party during which the residents and their visitors partook of the cooked vegetables or gave  these away to friends.
 

Before the long grill was held, a cook fest was conducted and the town’s 21 villages tried to outdo each other in coming up with different recipes with eggplant as the main ingredient.
 

The winners were the eggplant garlic teriyaki, classical stuffed talong and talong steak.
 

High school students from the town, adorned with colorful costumes but with the colors of eggplant dominating the scene, danced down the town’s highway during a street dancing competition.
 

Villasis (pop: 55,000) is an agricultural town      known as the vegetable bowl of Pangasinan. It produces ingredients for the vegetable dish “pinakbet” –  tomatoes, eggplant and ampalaya.
 

“But our biggest harvest is eggplant,” Abrenica said.
 

Some 270 hectares of the town are planted to eggplant every after rice harvest and each hectare averages a yield of 40 tons of eggplant. This translates to roughly 10,000 tons of eggplant produced by the town every year. 
 

“We are planning to exclusively devote some areas to eggplant production, especially those in the hilly areas,” the mayor said, adding that the town experienced a “bumper harvest” this year.
 

“We also got a good price because some towns which normally produce eggplant, did not,” he noted.
 

The town plants mostly the east-west variety of eggplant which are long and purple.
 

 Abrenica said with the Talong Festival, the town hopes to create awareness about the abundance of eggplant produced in the town, and to attract investors to the place.
 

 To support the agricultural sector, the municipal government put up the Bagsakan Market (trading post) where the farmers bring their produce to sell to traders.
 

 The mayor said there are no “middlemen” in the trading post so farmers and traders deal with each other, keeping prices at minimun.
 

 “We did away with middlemen who dictate the prices,” Abrenica said.
 

 The mayor also said the town earned P18 million from the proceeds of the popularity contest chaired by businessman Rosendo So. The contestants in the popularity contest are from Villasis who have migrated to other countries.
 

 The money will be used to renovate the municipal hall, Abrenica said.