American Filipina

My grandmother, me, and my grandfather A great man died in the family and I am not related to him by blood, but by marriage.  There was a horse and carriage, a band with the bugle boy playing the themed song Taps, and a flyover of jets with one less pilot in the formation that peeled off in the last second over the grave site.  One hundred or so men and women lined the streets of Arlington Cemetery in full military dress and waited quietly until the end of the ceremony to parade the conclusion of the event.  They were so quiet, we did not even know they were there.  This event was truly moving. Before flying back home, I was introduced last minute to an influential Filipino Major General, who signs his name as T2 if you get to know him.  Although the meeting was at an airport Starbuck’s, the move was strategic.  I introduced myself by breaking the ice by telling him of the purpose of my visit to Washington D.C.  I painted a picture of glory of the funeral I had attended.  He respe

What do you admit to hoarding?  Me?  Gift bags.      As the weather cools, my mind often drifts to fixing up the house because it is finally comfortable enough to work outside.  In Texas, the one hundred degree August heat was so unbearable, there was no need to move to break a sweat.  Air conditioners were breaking down everywhere.  There came a point where I was looking for excuses to go shopping because the stores were cooled to frigid temperatures for temporary relief.  Thus, my shopping habit increased due to some survival motivation to find a cool area to combine two things that bring me joy:  buying something I did not need and free air-conditioning.      This brings me to my topic of hoarding.  I ask myself if hoarding is an individual thing or should I stereotype my own culture?  If I frame my culture as my familial experience, then I think I can truthfully make this argument without surveying all the Filipinos I know.  I cannot help but think that culture has something to

When a family member passes away, the eventual topic will always come up:  Ghosts.  Many may laugh, but this terrifies even the most machismo men in the family.  For example, my dad always went about in a matter of fact way, soon after immediately someone passed away, and something random moved or flickered in the day or night and say, "Oh, that must be your grandma.  She is probably reminding us that we forgot her birthday" or "The garage door keeps opening by itself, that must be your Tito who just passed." I remember, "Your Auntie said on the fortieth day of your uncle's passing, all the lights in the house flickered."   Another recent statement from dad was, "Before we buried him, I felt a tickle on my ear." Also growing up, my dad would say, "Your great grandpa was moving his tools during the prayers at his funeral.  I heard him walk down the stairs.  He wanted to make sure we did not touch his tools."  He also mentioned oth

My Uncle died last week and I am a little in shock because he is the youngest of all my father's brothers. I have been misplaced on how to grieve, so I write and maybe I will arrive somewhere in the process. I dedicate this tale of four brothers. A real story from Agoo, La Union, Luzon, Philippines.  The concept of death somehow makes me feel the need to revisit birth. The tale starts with their father, Francisco, who fought as an ally with US troops in WWII. The history is relevant because had he not survived, I would not be here today.  War heros are ironic in a way that you can be proud, but ashamed at the same time. In a way the details of this story served as a backdrop of my child hood.  Images that both horrified me, but made me proud to come from a hard core lineage.  I am determined to make sure grandfather does not become a forgotten soldier.  This brings about the story of the impact that war has on generations.  Until this day, although I was not there, I feel t

Fables of Agoo: Now I write me down to sleep… : "There have been a lot of things happening lately that have prevented me from laying my thoughts down to paper. Ironically, the things that ..."

There have been a lot of things happening lately that have prevented me from laying my thoughts down to paper.  Ironically, the things that keep you up at night, I am thinking as I write before I sleep. Travel for work was like being instantly transplanted into a different time place continuum.  It is like a whole new life one lives without family.  The sole master of work can be focused on.  My food looks like art. I return home, only to wish a lifetime had not progressed in my absence.  To strengthen the maladjustment into my usual time zone and life, I am injected into a class reunion of twenty years.  People look different, but when you look into their eyes, you see some of the same people encapsulated into different bodies.  Perhaps they changed, but the mere collective presence of a particular set of people, again like a time machine, moves them back to a time and age of want and dream, a better place. Then to stop time, news of a relative that has gone ill, slows down the f

One must always have a fruit tray at a Filipino Party  The word Merienda means "afternoon snack."  I should have known better that my family is incapable of bringing together anything small much less a light snack.  The mere size of my family does not lend to little afternoon parties with nibbles.  When my mother  and aunties arrived to my "Merienda" they quickly corrected my marketing of the event and what the word Merienda was meant to mean.  The party was immediately renamed "The Little Big Party". Everyone proudly displayed their dishes as they walked in and posed in a photographs with their dishes.  This was an exhilarating feeling to see and hear their own stories and journeys of trying to cook their own recipes.  Some instructed their children to make the dish, some made what they wanted to eat.  Now, the point was to share the recipes, but nobody brought a copy on paper, they were all chattering away in the kitchen on their approaches and tech

Andre made Ilocano Pulpog a derivative of Sisig So, I am trying to wrap my head around the differences between the provincial culture my parents grew up in and that of a Filipino city slicker from Manila.  The reason why I am puzzled is because of a perplexed response I got from a Filipina girlfriend at work.  Note, I do not have many close Filipina girlfriends.  Period.  Unless we are relatives, distantly related or our parents knew each other, and you are Filipino, and you are not connected somehow within two degrees of separation, we may not know each other.  Now, that may leave only five people in Houston, given those statistics, but the point is - I did not seek out to make Filipino friends exclusively growing up.  I was already surrounded by them.  I did not see the differences in people that way.  For me the silo of uni-cultural just felt unnatural, which is a complete 360 to the way my parents operated. Thus, my youth angst of not really "belonging" made me who I

Garlic rice photo by Hamilton from Evart Michigan Simplicity sometimes makes things so much better.  I have been describing simple recipes with complicated nuances of in between twists and turns.  The truth of cooking as well as anything in life is that less is more.  I can not think of anything more basic and simple than rice. Rice is the fundamental staple of Filipino food.  It is the foundation upon which we pour our soups over.  It is the centerpiece of our sweets to make our gelatinous desserts.  My grandmother even made her own libation, saki, out of fermented rice.   I confess that I am probably the only Filipino who does not own a rice cooker. You can imagine how panicked I was when I decided to have a Filipino party.  I could not make enough rice to feed twenty-five people in a little pot, in my tiny kitchen, on my limited counter space stove top.  So I put a text out to family members who owned a rice cooker.  I text messaged "help, please bring rice." Those w

Fables of Agoo: Food and Oral History: Fried Fish, Daing : "Dad showing off his catch and cooking skills. My dad was referred to as 'Old Man of the Sea' when I booked him on one of those corporat..."

Dad showing off his catch and  cooking skills. My dad was referred to as "Old Man of the Sea" when I booked him on one of those corporate employee club deep sea fishing trips as a gift once.  Co-workers came back with stars in their eyes saying, "I met your dad.  He taught me how to fish."  I would look at them perplexed and matter-of-factly at the same time with that, "You mean you don't know how?" look.  They acted as if he had shared some sort of buried ancient secrets that caused them to now see the light.  My dad claimed to have never revealed his best tricks in the art of fishing.  I think my siblings and I have somehow inherited this "fish whisperer" talent.  We are not as skilled as father, but our endless weekends of childhood fishing should not be frowned upon.  We have the scars on our knees from walking the broken down jetties of Galveston to prove it. I recall a story of not really even trying and catching a very long rainb

My sister shows off her contribution to the Merienda.      This edible surprise will scare you if you are not familiar with this Filipino appetizer.  I know of many Filipinos who dare not touch this unless they are drunk.  It is exotic and it is strange.  It even looks a little disgusting.  My father said something to me growing up about the etiquette of eating this culinary freak of nature.  He said "you must eat it in a movie theatre so you do not have to look at it."             The mysterious delicacy I build up here is the legendary balut.  According to Wikipedia, a  balut  is a fertilized  duck  (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed  embryo  inside that is boiled alive and eaten in the shell.      Popularly believed to be an  aphrodisiac  and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, balut are mostly sold by street vendors in the regions where they are available. It is commonly sold as streetfood in the  Philippines .  The  Filipino  and  Malay  word  balut

This recipe blog entry is dedicated to my Tito Filimar Blanco  who passed away on Tuesday, April 12, 2011.  May he rest in peace. My cousin Frances shows off the dish his dad, my Uncle Leo, cooked      On your birthday, you must have someone make this dish for you.  The dish is called pancit or pansit, which is the term for noodles in Filipino cuisine. Noodles were introduced into the Philippines by the Chinese and have since been adopted into local cuisine. The term pancit is derived from the Hokkien pian i sit (Chinese: 便ê食) which means "something conveniently cooked fast".      If you have ever been to a Filipino party anywhere in the world, this dish will be there 99% of the time.  If it is not on the table, the host ran out of time to prepare it.  I think this dish best appeals to Americans because it is not too strange and exotic looking on the table.  The taste also does not have a distinct single strong ingredient to frighten away the baseline palette.  The dis