Legacy

It's because of her I cook, and possibly cook well.

It's her voice I hear when I shop for ingredients, reminding me that I need more of this, less of that. That I don't need to spend so much for this and instead--why don't I try what I've got in the house?

My Ilocano mother was a brilliant cook. That she could make something out of nothing was endemic to her day and time, when resources were scarce and surviving during wartime occupation -- good times hard to find. But when family got together, and guests came over, you put out your best. And mama ALWAYS put out her best, especially here in America, where she built a comfortable life for us. This was a woman who learned to cook on a stove made from firewood and stones, cooking rice in a clay pot, and preparing fish freshly caught from the sea nearby and vegetables grown in the family garden.

Those practices stayed with her in America, and mama's garden was full of hot purple garlic from the Philippines, sweet potatoes, whose greens we'd eat, and calabasa - or what we now refer to as kombucha squash. She kept the ocean perch she caught in the Monterey Bay in her freezer in the garage, and was always, as they say these days -- food secure. Its a value that I take with me. Unconsciously, I still feel the anxiety she felt working hard to make sure there was rice, salt and sugar in the house by New Year's or else, as cultural superstition dictated, you'd go hungry that year.

From my dad, I learned all about volume. He cooked three meals a day for 200 men--mostly migrant laborers "imported" from Mexico to harvest lettuce, apples and strawberries. I was a kid, not old enough to go to school but observant enough to be fascinated by the stores of beans and rice my father kept in the dry goods room of his kitchen, and a walk-in refrigerator where freshly slaughtered pig was quartered for family meals for an entire season. My fondest memory of the summer was taking naps on sacks of pinto beans and breathing in the rice flour talc covering the Calrose rice my dad used to make arroz con tomates. Mexican rice.

All the rest came from instinct--from learning away from home how to make a roast chicken - a basic food lesson that everyone who wants to take care of themselves should learn. How to make a pilaf, which is the basis for most cooking throughout the world. When I was grown I watched mama cook with interest: how and why she'd smash garlic into a paste in hot oil before putting in the meat and vegetables - it softened the garlic sharpness. I watched when she browned the meat before pouring in the braising liquids for a long-slow roasting in the oven. When I was much older and she could no longer recall the difference between salt and sugar, it became my turn to take over in the kitchen, and I was cooking for her.

2010. Christmas Eve morning, my nephew Nikko called from North Carolina to retrieve my recipe for chicken adobo--he was cooking Christmas Eve dinner for his girlfriend's family tonight.  Tonight, my sister Rain, her husband Rick and my niece Felicia came over to my house for Christmas Eve dinner. A first. We had a meal I remembered from Cafe Angeline's in Paris: salmon and haricot verts. Poached salmon with creamy tarragon sauce and green beans, accompanied by champagne and zabayon for dessert. We paused and prepared a meal for the ancestors -- for Mama, whose picture faces my kitchen-dining room in my cozy little cottage in Berkeley. Felicia, my blog co-creator and Number 1 in the kitchen was helping.

Per our tradition, particularly now that Mama has passed, we lit candles in memory and in prayer, and I could only say that this was a dream. My family, here, with me. And like Mama, I put out my best. It was my duty.

Mama, this is for you. You taught me well, and we learn and remember: you are what you eat, and you are what you cook. So glad you were there to teach me and continue to be here, right in the heart. That's where I cook from.

The Full Loop

We're near the end of an 18-hour marathon of shopping, prepping, chopping, tasting and cooking for Sunday's birthday party for Ruthie's mom. With a crew call at the client's house set for 7:30am sharp in Santa Monica, every minute is critical, and getting every bite right is your only goal.

Using the kitchen timer on my niece's stove, catching respite with snore-filled catnaps on her couch, we managed to spell each other from midnight to 2:00am cooking and checking batch after batch of roasted red potatoes, letting them brown to golden, smearing them with a luscious mix of olive oil, garlic, chopped parsley and sea salt. Please everyone, remind me when I have had more sleep, to write more about the sensually titillating experience of rubbing warm potatoes with a bath of olive-oiled garlic and herbs. I'm serious.

For those who don't know Ruthie, I introduced her here when I first started this blog. She called me to cater this event because 1) She's tasted my food and she's sold; 2) she's a big fan of Alchemical Bites; 3) her daughters, Maya and Sarah fell in love with me when I introduced them to dark chocolate fondue with fresh pineapple at their father's election victory thank-you party for his volunteers, which I catered.

To say catering, or for that matter, industrial cooking like my father did is hard is an understatement. It can be brutal on your body if you don't take extra care of yourself.

First, to be able to think on your feet--a necessary survival strategy in the kitchen, you have to think of your feet. You only have two of them. They're there to move you through an obstacle course of deliveries, wending your way through a kitchen, kicking the door open when both hands are full, and they're probably the last sentient extremities you have left, doing their job while you're keeping your eyes open with toothpicks and your hands are on auto-pilot. You've got to have good arch support in your shoes. In fact, I will fight to the death with any fashionista to defend Mario Batali's living in his fashion-backward orange crocs. I understand, man. Its a totally forgiveable fashion faux pas and an industrial necessity.

You've got to do some form of strength exercise. I don't care: if you can manage a weekly visit to the gym or your Pilates instructor, or do yoga or get a massage, if you do anything even while in the act of making love that gives you some form of core and back strengthening, you'll last longer. When you're bending over a cutting board prepping your vegetables, heaving loads of crates, or pots full of boiling broth, lifting heavy trays of hot food out from under the broiler and you don't have a second to lose--any physical advantage you have is critical to endurance, which is what this business is.

Music is not optional. It is the atmosphere you breathe in to keep you motivated through your day. It also keeps you inspired when you begin to find yourself thinking all of your food tastes the same, or you just can't figure out what spice configuration you need to make the chutney complete, or you've got to determine whether you should make that eighth trip to Ralph's to get more of the vanilla extract that's just run out, or should you use almond extract instead. Music fills the gaps in self-inspiration. It often and always, as Sly and the Family Stone sing--takes you higher.

Comrades in arms. What can I say about this? That I was lucky enough for my sister to give birth to my best kitchen partner in this incarnation in life? It appears to me now that Fi chose to come to this lifetime gifted with a wisdom beyond her years, and the ability to instantly pick up cooking instructions and subsequently IMPROVE them. She's been this way in the kitchen since she was five, by the way. I love the way she swims in the kitchen under even the most stressful of times, as a fish takes to water.

As I am writing this, I am full of memories of my father coming home every night after an 18 hour day in the camp kitchen where he worked for twenty years. His was a life of hard labor, which undid him in the end, but was also filled with some fun times with mates watching over large-scale production of food, sharing filthy stories and ribald jokes to keep it going. Of my mother who labored in a canning factory in Watsonville, California grading produce for packaging and shipment, buoyed by friendships that stood the test of time, following her into retirement and the last years of her life. Fi and I come from a long, proud line of hard working people who did their best under amazingly hard circumstances, weary and grateful they had the skills to make it work in this rough place called America.

In a way, we have come the full loop. Daughter and granddaughter of new immigrants taking on, with pleasure and satisfaction, the jobs our family took on to survive when they first arrived. This time though, there's the difference of experience, modern health regimes, and the wisdom of good business decisions to make sure we get the recognition and the time we need to take good care of ourselves and keep the flame burning without destroying the torch. We're in this because we love this. There's no other reason better than that to do anything.

My father and mother, upstairs in heaven, must both be laughing with pride.

Getting reacquainted

Has it really been a year since we have last “shared a meal” on this cyber-table? It’s hard to believe that the last piece I wrote was about helping to slaughter and serve a whole pig in Costa Rica. And to think one of my first articles was about being a vegetarian...

...Well I still am vegetarian (barring my carnivorous respite abroad—traveling isn’t traveling with dietary restrictions), and I’m back in good ole Los Angeles, featured city of this month’s Saveur magazine. And who is that on my couch (in the same apartment that I moved into 2 years ago—my have we come far together)? None other than my soul mate in the kitchen, my Auntie Fe! She’s here to visit and to cater a birthday party with me. Yikes! Although she is a seasoned pro at catering, this will be one of my first forays into cooking for people other than my friends and family. I am confident, of course, that we will do brilliantly—we are UNSTOPPABLE as a team in the kitchen (not to brag or anything). But I am a little...uneasy, about cooking for people that I don’t know. How can I mix in the right emotion? How can I pour in love for people I have met only twice? I am at a loss—so much of cooking, for me, is sharing something with people—like a conversation. It’s so easy to share with people I know and love: I know their tastes (food-wise and in general) and moods—I know that eggplant parmesan will taste great with a favorite wine and even better if I play that one song; or that chunky guacamole will remind him of home... I guess I’ll have to trust my intuitions on this one...more to come

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But for now, let’s get caught up on what’s been going on in my food-world in our year apart. Back in LA, I have endless (and I mean ENDLESS) sources of to-die-for food. Food to eat, food to cook, food to dream about. Talk about culture shock from the sweet simplicity of Costa Rica. Farmer’s markets are always the top of my food to-do list at any given time. Luckily there is at least one good farmer’s market open EVERY DAY in LA where I can usually find Tara Kolla, an advocate for urban farms and founder of Silverlake farms, who came to speak to my Education for Sustainable Living class. And here’s the thing about farmer’s markets. Not only are they great for local businesses and organic food and helping the environment, but everything TASTES so much BETTER! And not usually more expensive than buying at Ralph’s (the one I live next to is the nation’s most expensive branch—yikes!). And if it is more expensive...what the heck, I’m saving money by not buying meat, right? If all I eat are veggies, then I’m gonna get GOOD veggies. And my cooking has never been better. I have also been trying to go out to different places—I’ve hit up some of the more “trendy” places, like Real Food Daily (a very hip vegan restaurant—I sat next to Jason Schwartzman, and Urth Caffe (great vegan chocolate cake), but I’ve gotta say, the best places are still the holes-in-the wall joints (that don’t have websites or names more clever than “Indian Cuisine”), and meals-on-wheels fruit vendors and gastro-trucks (that now roll onto campus and can be tracked by twitter).

So that’s it, for now....OK, so I’m skipping out on some bigger food adventures—but those deserve their own stories. For now I’ll say that I am still eating (A LOT) and enjoying the flavors of life with my friends and family—the best side dishes anyone could ever ask for.

Food is for Family

I wrote the following piece about my food experiences during my homestay for one of my classes....

Life in San Luis with the Mata-Vargas family is all about simplicity. The farm is small and simple; the house is small and simple. It doesn’t take much to be happy, especially in such a warm and loving family. The food follows the same pattern—maybe that’s why I like it so much: I mean, life has many complications (no matter how simply you live), so why not keep what you can control in life simple?

To say that the food was simple is not to say that it wasn’t completely satisfying, for my body and for my spirits. Every meal was warm and freshly prepared and well balanced. And that in itself is quite a feat. One complication in life that Eliza, my home stay mother, faces in preparing these wonderful meals to nourish her family, is that every member seems to have a different schedule and different preferences. But it is important to Eliza that her family eats their meals warm and fresh. Breakfast is an especially important meal—“I don’t understand how people can be satisfied with only a bowl of cereal in the morning. I need something hardy, to make me strong for the day,” she says. She usually prepares scrambled eggs on tortillas (fresh and hand-made, of course), gallo pinto, and if there is meat left over from dinner, she will heat that up as well—simple and hardy. But breakfast is actually the most complicated meal during the week. Adrianna, the teenager, catches the bus in Santa Elena to go to school in the San Luis at 5:30 am every morning—hers is the first meal that Eliza prepares around 4:30. Next, Alvaro (my home stay dad) awakes, and Eliza again prepares a fresh breakfast. Some days she’ll eat her breakfast with her husband, other days I don’t know when she makes time for herself to eat. Finally I wake up at 6:15, usually just after Laura, the three-year-old, (and the most picky eater) wakes up and avoids her mother’s first attempt at getting her to eat. Laura is usually willing to eat what I eat—gallo pinto is her favorite, and always papaya when it is our fresh fruit option. All this is accomplished by the simplicity of the meal—Eliza just chops up some cilantro, onions and peppers for the gallo pinto, and combines the rice and beans from the night before, and keeps a bowl of eggs waiting by the stove, and tortillas patted out, ready for the pan—every thing is ready to be cooked fresh as each member of her family awakes.

As important as meals are, I am surprised by how quiet it usually is around the table. True, we rarely all could eat together (even for lunch and dinner), but when we did, we were generally in our own thoughts. I think that for this family, dinner is a time to be tranquillo, to wind down, and to appreciate life. These meals, as simple as they may be, are the fruits of much labor and love. Eliza went once a week all the way to Santa Elena to buy groceries (anything that wasn’t grown on their own farm), and plans the week so effortlessly. She knows exactly what each family member liked and would eat, exactly which treats to buy. They don’t have much, and although they aren’t extravagant, meals are an expression of love and care.

The value of food as a symbol of care is most evident when guests come to visit. On my last Saturday, Adrianna had her fifteenth birthday party, and the whole family came to celebrate. For this occasion, my family bought a whole pig. A couple family members who live nearby came over on Friday, and we spent the whole day cutting and preparing, snacking and chatting around the traditional wood burning “cocinera.” So much love, work and pride went into preparing the food for Adrianna’s big day. And during the party it was clear that food was an important part of the culture of the family. The epicenter of the fiesta was in the back, around the cocinera, where the family munched continuously through the night, as they shared their contentment.


...During the party, and especially during the preparation for this party, I could only think of my own family, and of my Ammy Irene. I imagined that she would have prepared for a party like this much in the same way. The huge pot of pork cooking over the woodburning stove, the constant snacking as we cooked as a family. The smells and the sound of crackling meat in a hot pan brought me back to my grandmother's kitchen, and I was able to appreciate more than ever the love that is involved in preparing meals like this.

Ohhh Baby Baby It's a Wild World

Remember that song from Cat Stevens? I'm reminded of that as I read the further adventures of Little Fi in Costa Rica, and reflect on what a month and a half of political writing for Planetwaves is doing for my head.

We are and always will be a political family. My sister, Fi's mom got her degree in social science and Master's in education at UCSC. Fi's paternal grandmother was a teacher for the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. Fi's auntie, me--well I've been politically active since I started work as a CETA artist here in San Francisco. I am an artist-activist, and have been a core member of one of the nation's highly recognized women's theater company - Cultural Odyssey's the Medea Project--Theater for Incarcerated Women.

In that environment, all Fi had to do (because I've always believed she was an old soul to begin with) was be observant. And she is.

Here we are, November already. The world is becoming a wider, wilder place for me and my family, physically and intellectually. Our country is changing, and hopefully, we're changing with it. We're all learning, and the world at this stage, is in transition. You can feel it by the season and you can feel it by the news. We're going to change.

Aside from my blood family, the one thing though that keeps me grounded here in my little Berkeley cottage is the love of my extended family - friends Bob and Wen, Karen and Jim--and having a few glasses of wine, some beastly argument over politics and a great dinner. Hey--its the Berkeley way. And what goes better with some lamb shank osso bucco than some raw veggies with bagna cauda and some risotto milanese?

A little argument with your salad?

A Lobster Experience

I’m diving in Belize with my dad for a week, and I’ve just had one of the top lobster experiences in my life. It was an EXPERINCE, not just a meal.

The dive shop we are diving with, Chuck and Robbie’s, is small and locally owned. So local, in fact, it is located on the beach right in front of Robbie’s father-in-law’s house.

As it turns out, Robbie’s father-in-law (we never did catch his name), a short, happy, always chuckling and smiling man, is a fisherman. The other day, around 9 in the morning, he came up to the shop with a bucket full of large lobster tail. He had caught them that morning, by hand. Yes, by hand, meaning he went out there with fins and weights and dove down for each one of them. He sold us some on the spot, straight out of the bucket—dinner.

That night, we took them to our room (which had a kitchen) and made a feast. Rice with black beans, steamed peas from a local veggie stand and of course, broiled lobster tail. DELICIOSO. Washed down with the local beer, Beliken.

This simple meal was by far the best lobster experience I’ve had in my recent memory, and never have I enjoyed it so close to the source. Not only did we buy it directly from the man who caught it, on the morning it was caught, but just the day before we had dove and seen these lobster in their native home! Talk about fresh. Just another confirmation that the fresher, more local and native the food, the better.

Just Where Have I Been?

Just want to let friends and family know that I, Auntie Fi, aka Fe Bongolan, have not fallen off the flat end of the earth. I've been busy writing elsewhere. I was asked to join the crew at Eric Francis' Planetwaves to help out with writing while we're in the midst of a very busy campaign season.

A little background for those of you who know me from my food writing only: I am also a political blogger. In 2003-04 I was a blogger and blog moderator for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. In the past, I've posted at Democracy Cell Project. Most times now, you will find me posting at Daily Kos. If you click on the links I've provided, you can pretty much navigate yourself over (to Planetwaves and Daily Kos especially), and find me.

When Eric asked me two weeks ago to help out, I never thought we would be dealing with a Wall Street crisis, the ongoing sagas of Princess Sarah Palin, or debate politics, but since all of these topics are OTHER passions of mine, its been a hell of a ride. And there's more to come.

Don't worry, there will be more Pantry Zero recipes (otherwise Ruthie will have my head), Little Fi will hopefully give us some travelogue from Costa Rica (where she'll be studying biology for the next quarter), and I may just need to come here and decompress after the onslaught also known as national politics. I'll also be writing here about comfort foods, international hospitality, and the first International Body Music Festival, sponsored by Crosspulse, the non-profit arts organization for body musician Keith Terry, recent Guggenheim Fellow, my favoritist music teacher in the whole entire world, and gang leader of the family's most favorite a capella group "Slammin'".

Its going to be an amazing fall and winter!!!