Pagbalik (Going Back)

One of the reasons I'm latching on to learning as much as I can about Filipino food, I think, is that through the emotional turmoil and contemporary chaos that surrounds me every day, the pleasure I derive from tasting, visually consuming, and thinking about Filipino food is something I can count on - like seeing lush, tropical forests bursting with ripe fruit across the spectrum of colour, just peeking above the horizon.

It truly means a lot to me seeing the community behind The Filipino Food Movement grow in leaps and bounds. It's what I look forward to when I open my Instagram feed, and what I tell interested co-workers about when they ask what I'm having for lunch. I love having an appreciation of the technology that enables us to reach so many people in incredibly fun, engaging ways. I love having a network of people across the world who share the same desire to learn more about themselves - as professional and home cooks - by creating and re-creating recipes that have resonated strongly with them through the years.

It's inspiring as fuck to see how we Filipinos interpret the food we clearly have a deep attachment to.

I never cared much about history as a subject matter, but find that I now have over 15 books specifically listing Filipino recipes, two collections of compiled essays from distinguished Philippine culinary historians, one 465-page book about fermented foods of the Philippines and an expanding library of general food history books and "exotic" fruit and vegetable indexes.

When I finally found steady work, I dropped the first flow of spendable cash I had on books about Filipino food, because I couldn't find the information I wanted online. I wanted to read more from Doreen Fernandez, a culinary scholar whose passion for the foods of the Philippines made me want to travel the homeland, to taste the flavours she described so eloquently.

I realized that I desperately wanted to find out how certain cooking styles became so associated with certain regions, and that I would love to share the information I find online (from archives, books, journals, and hopefully one day, field interviews).

But why?

That's a question I ask often. To me, it kinda pulls everything together. As I learned about the importance of sustainability in farming and agriculture (Sam Hiersteiner's piece at Lucky Peach is a good primer), it made me think about the abundance and sheer variety of Philippine produce. What types of solutions might exist around utilizing those resources to boost the image - and consequently, consumption - of Philippine fruits and vegetables?

As I read about the importance of food security both in Western and non-Western societies, I thought about the state most Filipino farmers currently find themselves in - struggling to stay above the poverty line on a good season, penniless on the off. Farming is done in the rural provinces, where accessible educational material for things like root crop rotations and charts to document rice harvests are scant, and still very much needed.

I want to keep learning because it spurs my interest, and encourages me to write about Filipino food from different viewpoints.

Thinking About Dinner, And Philippine Condiments

I have been, quite literally, thinking about dinner for a long time; from distinct memories I remember attributing to about fifth grade, I have thought about dinner whilst on my commute home, riding in suspension-challenged tricycles, crowded jeepneys, open-air buses, planes, streetcars and still-crowded subways.

Dinner has always held a special place in my heart, cheesy as it is to say. When we lived in my grandmother's house in the Philippines, people at home would often eat dinner together. In the dining room we had a large, round wooden table lined with cloth and a glass top; that table, which I loved, did not leave much room for passing through to the kitchen when all six spots (easily extendible to eight) at the table were taken.

On these various ways home, the idea of thinking about what I would soon have the pleasure of sitting to eat sustained me through what often were long, arduous commutes.

Philippine condiments, on the other hand, I've thought of more intensely over the last two days than I've ever accorded them. As I sat to eat another bowl of sinigang with sweet bagoong (sauteed fermented shrimp paste), I thought about the types of bagoong I've had the chance to eat - and quickly realized that I didn't really know much about the process of making bagoong, a condiment I unabashedly love and cannot live without.

So off I took to research - and found some excellent sources.

• Philippine Fermented Foods: Principles and Technology By Priscilla C. Sanchez, published by University of the Philippines Press (I am currently working on getting a print copy - if anyone has leads to point my way, I would gladly appreciate it!)
• Episodes from an excellent GMA TV series called 100% Pinoy. Filmed and presented in Tagalog, two particular episodes of interest were "Tinapa, Buro at Sangkutsa: Pagkaing Pinasarap ng Panahon" (Smoked Shortfin Scad, Milkfish Fermented in Cultured Rice and Preserved Meats: Foods Made Delicious with Time) and one about common pairings of Filipino dishes. This awesome hour-long video has so much interesting stuff that I think it merits a longer post (and a topical outline)!

Help Me Chronicle #FilipinoFood

I miss being able to write, and becoming inspired to write about how I feel. 

I feel indignant - though that may be a strong word - about how the reality of in-depth research on the history of Filipino food remains very close to this passage from Doreen Fernandez, in an essay called "Historias, Cronicas, Vocabularios: Some Spanish Sources for Research in Philippine Food" from the Philippine Studies Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3.

I'd like to share a bit of what my last few months have been like. It will be quite detailed, but possibly worth it!

There have been lots of ups and downs over the past four months, along with a good bit of soul searching. I decided to leave a good job working with great people because I felt like I needed to learn more about a medium I used every single day, to explore learning more about how to code and create all these awesome things on the Internet. I discovered the importance of great user experience design, and how it affects every single thing you do, from the second your alarm clock app rings its slow chime to how you choose the wine to have way too many bottles of.

I took classes in front-end web development, and feel like I'm starting to come along. What has been incredibly eye-opening throughout this process surprised me, in very many good ways - I'm learning how not to feel guilty for chasing after my dreams, both the large ones and small.

I would love to help chronicle the history of Philippine cuisine as best as people connected by the Internet can. I would love to get in touch with Philippine food historians, or be placed in contact with them, to ask about how we can build a database that brings the ingredients, origins and evolution of Filipino food forward. I trust this exists in journals, textbooks, and many dusty corners of libraries in the Philippines and elsewhere, and can't wait to work on a project that would allow us to share those stories with the world, told with the help of data, photographs, linked citations and more.

To cover all the viewpoints (including cultural, political and historical aspects) concerning Filipino food will take a lot. I've had this idea in my head for so long as I don't know where to start! What I do know is that I would love to help bring context to our cuisine as it finds its global fans.

Yes, I have an unabashed love for Filipino food - something I came to regard much more deeply since moving to Canada. I have learned to love our cuisine for what it is - spamsilog, buro, sisig and all! - and would also love to share how discovering the history of what constitutes a very big part of me has helped me discover more about who I could be - at the very least, a data collector, presenter, and lover of Filipino food on the Internet.

If you've read this far, and think my pipe dream of travelling the Philippines to document its culinary history hasn't made you "umay", please consider signing up so we can create a group of like-minded (project-minded) folks!