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Showing posts from May, 2011

Food and Oral History: Pulpog

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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

Food and Oral History: Garlic Rice

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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

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..."

Food and Oral History: Fried Fish, Daing

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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