In a Filipina Kitchen, Cooking is Rest, by Leny Mendoza Strobel

In a Filipina Kitchen,

Cooking is Rest

BY LENY MENDOZA STROBEL, Ph.D.

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n Oneida elder once asked me: “Leny, someday you will no longer be an academic; you will be a culture-bearer. What is your cultural practice?”

I was taken aback by the question and I 1 surprised myself by saying: “I cook! Kapampangans cook.

My people are best known as good cooks. My homeland (Pampanga), in precolonial times, was a food mecca for visiting royals around Southeast Asia. We are people of the River (Pampanga means river shore). The Land and the River blessed us abundantly.”

Growing up in the Philippines before the advent of supermarkets, my mother went to the wet market every morning and brought home live fish, jumping shrimp, pinching blue crabs, and fresh vegetables from nearby small farms. In the early mornings, we were awakened by the pandesal (salt bread) vendor on his bike and the woman from Cabalantian selling tamales, suman (rice cake), and puto (steamed rice cake) from a native round basket she carried on her head. We ate well. We were nourished.

Mother always cooked enough to feed uninvited or drop-in friends, and she always shared a bowl with the neighbors who reciprocated with fresh cooked empanadas or chicharon. This was our village, a life of sharing. Then the Americans came and told us we were malnourished. They donated powdered milk, bulgur wheat, and margarine in cans. We were curious, but we were not impressed.

2 In the early years of my diaspora to Turtle Island , my homesickness was comforted by cooking—adobo, fried rice with garlic, lutung toyo (soy-marinated pork ribs with garlic, bay leaves, sugar, and salt), pancit noodles, and sweet rice desserts.

But what good was cooking with no one to share it with in the white middle class suburb where I landed?

1

Ethnolinguistic group living in the Philippines principally in the central plain of Luzon, especially in the province of Pampanga, but also in parts of other adjoining provinces.

2 Indigenous reference to North America Article photos by the author (top to bottom): Filipino breakfast - garlic fried rice, egg, and daing na bangus marinated milkfish Ampalaya - bitter melon Sautéed bitter melon leaves A M AT T E R O F S P I R IT

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Cooking is meditation. Cooking is ceremony. Cooking is a sacrament. In the kitchen, memories of my mother and my grandmother accompanied my reverie and reflections about being an immigrant and why I didn’t understand my feelings of non-belonging, loneliness, and homesickness.

These reflections led to graduate school and a dissertation on the process of decolonization for post1965 Filipino Americans.

I am of the “brain-drain” generation, pushed out by national policy that saw the export of laborers as an economic asset to the country. We are the generation that was miseducated in a neocolonial educational system. It was in the diaspora kitchen where I found my voice and developed my critical thinking.

I started to invite other scholars and culture-bearers to Kapihans (coffee klatches) and merienda (in-between meal snacking) at my home. These gatherings were often graced by visiting scholars from the Philippines. There was plenty of food for the heart, the mind, hungry stomachs, and the Filipino spirit.

Around the dinner table we ate kamayan style (with our hands), loosened our belts, and laughed so hard at silly jokes… and then we shared our dreams of wanting to re-create communities of belonging which we call Kapwa (you and I are One). Soon we were planning retreats and conferences, dreaming of people we would invite to our pagbabalikloob (decolonization).

It never ceases to fill me with awe and gratitude that what follows a day of cooking and eating with the Kapwa is a deep sense of rest and wellness. The stories we bring to the table are stories of remembrance, stories of longing and yearning for this sense of healing to live in larger circles of communities. The individualistic culture that surrounds us doesn’t extinguish this fire of communal belonging. We are determined to stay nourished by this sense of Kapwa.

At our gatherings, someone brings chocolate from Davao; another brings coffee beans from Batangas; another brings 4

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bibingka (baked sweet sticky rice with coconut milk topped with leche flan) from a grandmother’s recipe, always out-jostling each other to get to the crunchy edges of sticky goodness.

We amuse ourselves as we talk of the way we have learned to indigenize pasta dishes like spaghetti by adding sugar and hotdogs. I’ve told stories of how my father would put ice cream on his pandesal, making an ice cream sandwich, and how we prefer our fish to be whole rather than filleted; how our elders would suck the fish head and spit out white bones.

These remembered stories of our cooking and eating practices live in the diaspora. Many U.S.-born Filipino Americans are re-connecting to these practices as a way to decolonize not only their palates but their psyches and souls. The embodiment of these traditions invites an angle of repose, of rest. What if

“What if we could rest our souls and bodies in the knowledge that our ancestors have always carried traditional indigenous knowledge beginning with the plants, herbs, and fruit trees; that the Land has blessed the archipelago we come from?” we could rest our souls and bodies in the knowledge that our ancestors have always carried traditional indigenous knowledge beginning with the plants, herbs, and fruit trees; that the Land has blessed the archipelago we come from?

Fortunately, in some parts of Turtle Island, we can grow calamansi (native citrus), malunggay (moringa), and ampalaya (bitter melon), now considered “superfoods” that can be found in pill or powder form at health food stores. Although we lament that our bangus (milkfish) has to travel thousands of miles and use fossil fuels to reach us, we often can’t ignore the call of sinigang na bangus [soup soured by tamarind or kamias (tree sorrel)].

In the diaspora, we tend to our community kinship ties in the kitchen, where we gather with friends and relatives to hand roll lumpias (spring rolls), chop vegetables for pancit (noodle dish), and mince pork to make more dishes. At Filipino restaurants, we compare their offerings to decide if they are as good as our mother’s home-cooked dishes. But deep in our hearts, what we are really seeking is that communal feeling of recognition that is missing in restaurants as we are served individual portions.

Even today, my palate’s memory remains with the indigenous dishes my mother cooked from scratch. The memory of food as sacrament, communion, and medicine to be shared in community, is in my cultural genes. All of this informs, or has been informed by, my work at the Center for Babaylan Studies, which was created in my kitchen by dreamers and visionaries who believed that our Filipino Indigenous knowledge systems and practices must be kept alive in the diaspora. It all began in the kitchen.

Dr. Leny Mendoza Strobel is a founding Elder at the Center for Babaylan Studies. Ate Leny is Professor Emeritus in American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University (SSU) and has many published articles and writings. Catch up with Ate Leny at: lenystrobel.com Article photos by the author: Kamayan dinner with friends, author second from left (opposite page).

Top to bottom: Lechon - homemade oven-backed pork belly Kapampangan dessert made with egg yolk, condensed milk, and caramel Produce from a friend’s garden

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