Chicken Adobo
(Dad’s recipe)
1 chicken separated
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup vinegar
1 head garlic, mashed
1/2 cup lemon juice or wine
pepper and paprika
Saute chicken pieces to brown. Add soy, vinegar, garlic and wine. Season. Bring to a boil, then simmer at least one hour or until meat falls off the bone. Serve with rice. Always serve Filipino food with rice. Rice is the center of the Philippines. Barangays have thrived or failed because of rice. Never waste rice. Make it into fried rice with eggs and bacon and maybe some frozen vegetables, but never throw it out. Eat it and remember that there are children still starving back home.
When I was growing up, I had a game I used to play with people who got too nosy.
“Where are you from?” they’d ask, looking at my straight black hair and milk chocolate skin.
And I’d say “Queen Anne.” And they would laugh uncomfortably. “No, I mean, you know, what nationality are you?”
“Guess,” I’d say.
“Chinese? Japanese? Hawaiian? Indian?” they would shrug.
“East or Native?” I’d ask and they would shift their feet and smile. “My name’s Ellen.” I’d say, “Ellen Christine Zamora. It’s nice to meet you.”
But in my head there’d be the litany of names we call ourselves: Pinay, Pilipina, Filipina, Pilipino, Filipino. And the names they called us before: Brown brother, Flip. And the politically correct ones: Filipino American, Pinoy, Fil-Am.
I prefer American, but my family still calls me Baby.
Pancit
(Mom’s Recipe)
Pancit is easy. You just cook your onion and your garlic nice then add your meat, chicken is good and cheap too, all chopped up, and you cook it good so there’s no blood. Then you put in your vegetables. You know, celery, carrots, bean sprouts, things you like and add a can of chicken stock to the pot. Let it boil then put your noodles in but keep stirring them around and around to keep them from sticking. You don’t want anything sticky. When that’s done, you put in your little shrimp, the cooked kind, just at the end so they don’t fall apart. Then you put it on a nice platter with lemon. It should be limes, you know, calamansit, but they don’t have that here in the States, not even at the commissary. So you have to do with the lemons. They’re too tart but okay. You have to learn how to make do, when you get married. Things don’t always happen the way you want them to, but when you marry it’s too late to change things, so you’d better be sure. You don’t want to be like those other girls who leave their husbands. Except maybe if they beat them. Then I guess it would be okay to go. But you wouldn’t marry anybody like that, would you?
Jerry was a Junior and I was a Sophomore the year we met. Marisol had convinced us both that it was a solemn obligation to help her with Filipino Heritage month activities. We both managed to dodge the dance festival and the parade around campus, but there was no getting around her about fixing food. In the gathering space of St. Filomena’s Church, I tried not to laugh out loud as I watched Jerry try to roll the thin lumpia wrapper around the filling he had generously slopped on its surface. Tongue poked between his full lips, he resembled a third grader trying to master the curls of a cursive writing. His thick fingers tore the fragile wrapper in three places, spilling ground meat and vegetables all over his lap as he tried to fold the edge underneath.
“Next time try it with less filling,” I said, handing him a paper towel.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “My aunties usually took care of this stuff. I just like eating them.”
“Me too,” I said deftly turned the edge of my rolled lumpia over and placed it on a waiting tray. “Only three or four hundred left to go!”
“Why did we volunteer to help with Fil-Am fiesta again?” he asked as he gamely grabbed another wrapper with a smile.
My eyes never left the smoothness of his narrow hands.
Rice (Jerry Style)
Man, I lived on rice back in college. Rice and vitamin pills. Had a rice cooker in my dorm room so I wouldn’t have to walk all the way down to the kitchen to boil it. I’d put the rice and the water in and flick the switch. A chapter of Economics later and I’d have a nice bowl of rice. My roommate hated the steam, he said, so he moved out. Suited me just fine. I’d eat a whole pot before I went to class. I didn’t care it was cold. Between rice and taking twenty credits a semester, I graduated early and saved a lot of money going to college. Not like those soft boys taking money from their parents every second they could. No, I had a plan. But look, Elly, I make good money now. We can afford more than just rice. You know, buy red potatoes and radiatore pasta, instead. I love red potatoes with lots of butter. Real butter. But if you’ve gotta buy rice, buy the expensive stuff, the wild rice. It’s healthier anyway. This white stuff’s no good. Hey, I know it’s all that our folks could afford back then, but it’ll be different for us. We can have anything we want. I make enough so you don’t even have to work. Just stay home and be with the kids, you know. So, go get the good stuff. Even jasmine rice from Chinatown would be better than this California stuff. Go ahead. We can afford it.
Mom said she went shopping with Auntie Fe today to find a dress for the wedding. She didn’t sound very happy about the trip. I can just imagine…
“So Lena’s finally coming home?” says Fe, sliding another dress down the rack. She hears her sister sigh in agreement beside her. “Ooo, now this one would look nice for the wedding.” She holds up a mint green chiffon dress accented with silver beads for Mom to see.
Mom reaches into the collar and pulls out the price tag. “Too much!”
Fe nudges her with her elbow. “Too much! How can you say? Not too much for your daughter, hmmm? Bad luck to put a price on such a happy day.” She slides the dress back on the rack and begins thumbing through the next set of size 10’s.
“It should be Lena getting married, not Baby,” says Mom, turning away. “Too young!”
“Jerry will take care of her,” says Fe, looking over a blue dress with green trim. Nah, too much like a navy uniform, she thinks, putting it back. “He’s got a good job with a future. She’ll have enough money to take care of you when you’re old. And most of all he’s one of us and that’s what’s important.”
I first met Juan Tamad when I went to Pike’s Place Market to talk with Lola Mimi about the wedding flowers. He lounged behind the mounds of lilies, carnations, and statice that Mimi and her daughter were painstakingly winding into stunning bouquets. FOB, I thought, he’s Fresh Off the Boat. Looking a few years younger than Dad, Juan had that unmistakable Filipino posture, one foot on a bench, body leaning forward propped up by an elbow on his knee. His dark skin shone with sweat and a towel was draped over one shoulder. His black hair was slicked back in a duck-tail hairstyle and he wore faded blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He jutted his chin at me in greeting and smiled. I wondered if he knew how to speak English at all and hoped I’d be able to get my order done before he decided to start talking to me.
Lumpia
(Lola Mimi’s Recipe)
Lumpia is one of those “left over” foods. The kind of food you make when there’s nothing special to eat, but there’s all this stuff in the fridge that needs to be eaten. Back home, of course, there weren’t any refrigerators, but I bet it’s like the Chinese fried rice, you know, throw it all together and cook it good in oil. Makes a nice meal when you don’t have much to share with compadres that come for a visit. But it takes a long time, yah? To cook it and roll them up. It’s better to have a whole bunch of aunties over to talk while you roll them. Then you can get all the good gossip from the family you only see on the holidays. You hear about the babies coming or how well someone is doing at school. Or maybe you finally find out about how come Boy doesn’t come around any more. Or what happened with Glory’s doctor’s appointment. All of you around the table, the windows steamy, and the story’s even more so. Yah, it’s good to make lumpia once in a while.
Juan told me a story the other day when he asked me to take him shopping for shoes. He said that before the Spanish came, Pinays were strong women, not the weakling flowers you see in the tin-types. They were strong warrior women who fought next to their brothers in heroic battles, who remembered the stories of their ancestors and would recite them after a hunt, who had magic to turn skirts into trousers and daggers into spears. Women who would fight for their tribe, then marry the leader of the opposing tribe to assure peace. Women who knew that power came from honor and honor came from action.
He asked me if I was a warrior woman or a Spanish sampaguita and I could not say for sure.
Lechon
(Juan Tamad)
First you have to catch the pig. Make sure he’s a nice, big fat one, so everybody in the village can come to eat. Run him around the house to make him feel like he might just get away. But when you catch him, kill him quick. No need to let him suffer. Keep the blood in a pan for dinuguan later. Let the men remove the entrails and singe the hair off the pig. Dig a pit. A big pit. And line it with banana leaves and hot rocks. Put the pig inside and cover him with more banana leaves and hot rocks. Bury him all day. If he’s really big, let him cook all night. Doesn’t matter. The longer he cooks, the more tender he’ll be. Make a big show of taking him out of the ground. A miracle! Food from the earth! The smell will carry for miles so everybody will know it’s time to eat. So good! So crispy! So juicy! Make a big pot of sauce out of the liver. Make sure you put garlic in it. Lots of garlic. And vinegar so it will keep. Oh, I’m so hungry! Make sure you save the head for the mayor. He never comes to village except when there’s lechon. Let him make speeches. Let him make promises. The rest of us will eat. Just be sure you leave me the ears. I love the ears. So crunchy and when I eat them I learn the secrets only pigs hear. People will tell them anything.
Lola Mimi and Auntie Fe stopped winding the bouquets of flowers they held in their hands and looked at each other, lips pressed tight. We were finishing up the last of the bridesmaid bouquets and I mentioned that I had taken Juan Tamad to buy shoes for the wedding.
“You shouldn’t take him around places alone, Baby,” my mother said, snipping rose stems. “Next time be sure Jerry goes with you.”
“Why?” I said, looking at each woman in turn. “He’s harmless.”
“He’s up to no good,” said Auntie Fe, clicking her tongue. “Always stirring up trouble back home in the province. Our grandpa almost took a machete to him when he stole our carabao during wartime.”
“He brought it back,” my mother said, smiling. “And even bought us kids milk candy on market day.”
Auntie Fe looked at my mom sidelong and snorted.
“Wartime?” I asked, confused. “He doesn’t look that old.”
“Juan’s older,” said Mimi, taking up a handful of statice. “Old and wily like a morning glory vine. You think you pull that weed up and it just tunnels underground to come up another place.”
The other women nodded, stifling more talk of Juan in the rustle of fresh cut roses and crisp ribbon.
Lumpia
(Auntie Fe’s recipe)
1 package lumpia wrappers
1 # ground beef
1 package green beans, the big kind, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic mashed
4 potatoes cooked and cubed
Brown the meat and garlic, drain then add beans and potatoes until cooked. Add seasoning. Drain. Fill lumpia wrappers and fry in oil. Serve hot to your compadres with a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, pepper and garlic. Bite the end of the lumpia and blow gently between your teeth to help it cool. Spoon the suka sauce into the open end letting the garlic and soy stain your fingers with its taste and smell. Laugh at yourself for trying to be different when it’s really not so bad to be the same.
If you asked me when I fell out of love with Jerry, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’s when we got our apartments in Seattle, separate, of course, since we weren’t technically married. Yet he always expected me to stay over at his place and he hardly visited mine. Maybe it’s when I told him I wanted to wait to have kids and he gave me that “look” that reminded me of Dad, eyes wide with disbelief and dark eyebrows arching. Maybe it’s his certainty that everything will be perfect once I’m Mrs. Jerry Aguinaldo. His wife. Mother of his kids. Hostess of his office parties. His stand-in at church events.
“Baby,” he’d say. “I’ll take good care of you.”
Couldn’t tell you when I fell out of love. But I know it’s true.
Dinuguan
(Auntie Fe’s Recipe)
1/2 pound pork intestine
1/2 pound pork heart
1/2 pound pork liver
1/2 pound pork meat
1 1/2 cups pork blood
1/2 cup vinegar
1 onion, some peppers, and seasonings
Boil meat until tender. Keep 3 cups of the broth. Cut up the meat into nice pieces then sauté the onion with some garlic until it’s browned. Add the meat back in and pour in the blood and vinegar. Let it cook a while, until it’s done then add the peppers and seasonings. You can substitute chicken if you’d like. You know, you used to call it chocolate meat when you were little. You hated the stuff. But now you see, bring it all together, all the things that mean the most in life, and cook it with sweet blood and tangy vinegar. Add little onion and garlic; they’re the spicing of our souls. Then you see that sacrifice is a good thing to feed your family. They can thrive on that.
Jerry and I had coffee downtown the other day to finalize our honeymoon plans. I tried to pick a fight with him about it; I still wanted to go to Alaska instead of Hawaii. But he didn’t take the bait, saying he knew I was under a lot of pressure and not to worry, he’d take care of everything, as usual. I looked down at my coffee cup and noticed the figure of a man painted on our table.
“Coffee gods,” I whispered.
“What?” said Jerry, not looking up from his day-planner.
“Juan Tamad said these guys on the table were coffee gods. Old friends from back home. He laughed and said he couldn’t believe they’d become famous over here. Something about them being big mouthed, big shots, who talked until dawn and didn’t share their whiskey with him.”
“That old guy is weird, Elly. Don’t listen to him.”
Jerry was probably right, but I couldn’t help but notice the generous smiles of the painted gods. Smiles like I had never seen curve Jerry’s lips.
Jerry first met Juan at Lola Mimi’s summer party at Gasworks Park. Juan was running around the park with the kids trying to get this paper sack kite he’d made into the air. The kite didn’t even have a tail and string was too short, but that didn’t seem to matter to Juan. He zigzagged the field, jumping up and down once in a while to give the kite a lift. On one of his passes, he nearly ran into Jerry and me as we made our way to the picnic tables.
“Whoa! Watch it!” said Jerry, trying to keep my bowl of salad from spilling on the ground. Juan stopped abruptly in front of Jerry and smiled broadly, a gaggle of children pooling at his hips. When Juan met Jerry’s eyes though, his own narrowed and his smile became stiff.
“You cannot erase your family and remake yourself with wealth,” said Juan as he fingered the kite string. Turning to me, he placed the string in my hands. “Becoming his jewel will only diminish your worth.”
I wonder what Jerry could be dreaming now, with the deepness of the night still to come. There was a time when I knew our dreams were the same, that I could count on him to know my thoughts so well he would have a problem solved for me by morning. He’s good at giving answers, especially to his bride-to-be, but tonight I doubted that he would even comprehend the question I wrote on the inside front cover of my recipe binder:
Do you know who truly I am?
Halo Halo
(Ellie’s Special Recipe)
Shave the ice carefully, letting the soft curls gather in a basin near the block of ice. Don’t use crushed ice, it’s not the same and the Halo Halo will not taste right. Gather the ice with your hands and let it slide into your tall glass. Watch the air condense on the outside of the glass, concealing the special drink you are creating. Spoon the coconut sport and sweet bean mixture from the bottle you’ve found in the back of the refrigerator, a forgotten remnant of a dinner you’d planned weeks ago for your fiancé. Open a can of creamed corn and while you spoon the yellow lumps into the glass, remember how your fiancé thinks vegetables don’t belong in cocktails. Recall that he’d never asked why you liked corn in your Halo Halo. Remember that there should be the coconut liqueur called Inebra in this drink. You could have gotten a bottle on that the trip to the Philippines you cancelled when he asked you to marry him. Instead, pour chilled evaporated milk over the layers of ice and fruit. Let its thick whiteness cover it all. Take a long handled spoon twirl it slowly into the depths of the glass. Watch the reds, yellows, and creams mix themselves into a salty sweet salve to ease the deepness of the night.
Author’s note: This story is a revision of a story which first appeared in Notes from the Margins, 2003.