Who would have thought I’ll be writing about food? This may not be a scholarly peer-reviewed piece but who would have thought it would even be available for the world to read? Even after posting recipes on my main blog, not many people have an idea how this girl’s about to embark on an adventure in food and things related. They probably think I’m too busy with policy work, plotting and scheming or just out chasing the wind. Well, true I’m preoccupied but then, who’s too busy for food?

I’ll have to admit though that I was initially hesitant to do this. I may know my way around a marketplace and a kitchen but who knew? Who would believe me? Aside from close friends and family, most people I’m in constant contact with are hardly aware of my culinary skills. If I bring lunch to work, people assume I just got back from the province and my mother cooked it. Almost everyone assumes that I don’t know my way around the kitchen. Even in high school, during a cooking session in home economics class, a lot of my classmates exclaimed that “OH, she does KNOW how to handle a sandok (ladle)!” Note that this was in Pampanga, where almost everyone can cook.

Moreover, unlike regular foodies, I don’t go out of my way to watch cooking shows, I have less than ten cookbooks and I wouldn’t know the first thing about what the current fashionable cuisine is or who among the chefs is making headlines. Perhaps the only competence I have is that I have been immersed in the culture of a region which considers cooking a ritual. Through necessity, or some may say under duress, I have mastered the basic skills this entails such that I am unafraid to experiment and explore other culinary delights. In fact, I have had several successful attempts at replicating dishes encountered in places which are worlds away from my grandmother’s kitchen.
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The thrill’s in the hiding. Clandestine trips late at night, the need to be as quiet as a cat. One has to keep appearances too. And when caught, feign innocence and curiosity.

Oh, the things I would do just to have a taste of simple pleasure - of exquisite richness that I go back to, over and over and over again! It doesn’t matter that I earn the scorn of my darling mother - all caution to the wind I throw!

What can make me write such prose?
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