Oh no no no! I will not track this meme although what Ana did to the Cookbook Meme and Nicky to the Cook Next Door meme appeals to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. But between you and me, I just had to know how this Childhood Food Memories meme started. Fortunately, I didn’t have to trace it too far up and tracing is as far as I’ll go.

And how about that, Childhood Food Memories was originally a generic The Five Things I Miss From My Childhood meme “unleashed” by one Unrepentant Individual - Brad - because he was tired of… memes! He’s been told of his “plague’s” evolution and he seems to get a kick out of it based on his reaction “[throws head back] MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

When it got to Beauty Joy Food, Amy decided to turn it into a Childhood Food Memories meme. In a twist, Cathy reverted to the original as soon as it got to her (My) Little Kitchen.

I’ve been tagged twice, by Nupur and Joey, almost a month apart. I should get on with it. Two non-food memes I’ve been tagged with are on my other blog. I’ll get on to the next one and a few Lasang Pinoy articles soon, hopefully.

Now my reply…

There are just so many memories of food from my childhood that I’ll have to concentrate on the highlights.

1. Eating with the whole clan. I was born in the mid-1970s and as far back as I can remember, our family gatherings were relatively simple but the table was always overflowing. Each time someone came home from abroad, we’d have an impromptu family/clan reunion and food would be one of the highlights.

   Everyone would cook or bring something aside from what was prepared by my grandmother that we’d have leftovers enough to last us a week. Even with that, of course we’d still cook each day.

   Times have changed, some have passed on to the next life, children have grown and have children of their own. But we’re still at it. A few years ago, one of my officemates exclaimed how wonderful it is to eat in the open air with the tables always laden with glorious food on fiestas in the province. I was surprised. Which of our pictures was she was looking at? Not a fiesta at all, I said. That’s just lunch.

2. “What is your specialty dish?” You should not have one, according to my Lola. Just when I started to cook unsupervised, a relative who came to eat at the house appreciatively said sinigang (meat or fish and vegetables in broth soured by unripe fruits) was my specialty. He must’ve been humouring the little girl who cooked, tee hee! For a day or so I went around thinking I had a specialty. I then asked my grandmother what was hers. Oh, was I in for a lecture!

   Lola said the notion of having one specialty was foolish. One had to give the best of her abilities (’her’ refers to the little girl being lectured) to anything she was cooking. It was excellent that I cooked sinigang well enough to earn praise but I wasn’t going to cook it for every meal everyday. I can’t just be cooking mediocre meals the rest of the time. In other words, ’specialty’ meant everything one can cook. Anything less was not tolerated. Tall order, but many years later, that girl still tries to follow her Lola’s dictum.

3. Gifts of food. I was perhaps five or six when one of my mother’s cousins was about to get married and I was to be the flower girl. As soon as the wedding date was finalised, my uncle’s then-fiancée-now-wife went to our house and brought me some tibuk-tibuk (a cake of ground and strained rice cooked in fresh carabao’s milk and flavoured with lime zest). Oh, did I feel special! I then pronounced tibuk-tibuk my favourite and from time to time, my auntie makes some especially for me.

   Through the years, I can recall many incidents of being gifted with food - pastries, fruits, suman (glutinous rice or cassava sticks wrapped in banana leaves), pisalubung (an extremely sticky glutinous rice cake), live seafood, candies, delicacies from across the globe. Each article of food I was given I savoured with relish but what makes each gift special is the love that the giver seals the package with.

4. Fifty-centavo goto. We live around a hundred metres away from our school and went home for lunch. My mother had a clever scheme to prevent me and my brother from eating junk food - she packed our snacks for recess and didn’t give us any money till the third grade. But every now and then, once a week perhaps, she’d give me fifty centavos (PhP .50) to buy a substantial bowl of goto, a congee or rice gruel with tripe, which the school canteen sold piping hot.

   Nowadays, fifty centavos (salapi in the vernacular, roughly US$ .009 with the current exchange rate) would only be enough for a piece of the cheapest hard candy. But for me, a salapi - which incidentally is not being minted anymore - brings warm memories of recess periods spent carelessly chatting with school friends, perhaps worth more than a treasure chest of gold.

5. Dining with cousins. In my childhood, when our more formal ascendants were still alive, on ordinary days (no occasion for celebrating) we were forbidden from eating at other people’s houses unless they were very close relatives or friends. If we were at a playmate’s house, we had to be home before mealtimes or else… oh poor earlobes! This seems to have been a very common practice in our town based on the number of sore earlobe stories I’ve been told recently.

   Among our playmates, we were only allowed to eat at very few houses. One of these was at my grandmother’s first cousin, Lola Uring. Together with her four grandchildren, our cousins, we played and ate heartily. Although this was on ordinary days, our meals had to be eaten on the dining table, we had to use utensils properly, chew our food well - not loudly like a goat, not wipe our mouths on our sleeves, politely participate in the conversation and generally mind our manners. We had no problem with that.

   Looking back, perhaps we were allowed to eat at our cousins’ because my grandmother knew we had to observe the same rules we had at home. In her book, we were not in danger of running into bad dining companions. Correct, Ate My?

To proceed with the meme, remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross-pollination effect.

From Nupur’s tree:

1. Farmgirl of Farmgirl Fare
2. Sam at Becks & Posh
3. Deccanhefalump at The Cooks Cottage
4. Nupur of One Hot Stove
5. Karen here at The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

From Joey’s tree:

1. Melissa at The Traveler’s Lunchbox
2. Pille of Nami-Nami
3. Paz of The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz
4. Joey who’s trying to blog about her 80 Breakfasts
5. Karen here at The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans

Next: select new friends to add to the pollen count. (Obviously no one is obligated to participate).

1. Iska over at Edible Experiments
2. Louie of Louienep/food
3. Chanit who cooks her (My) Mom’s Recipes And More
4. OrganaMonster whose cooking will make you exclaim Ang Sarap!

Food on the collage above, from top left bottom layer clockwise: suman, macopa (Syzygium samarangense), ocwi or ukoy/okoy (vegetable and shrimp fritters), Filipino rice tamales, Kapampangan bico (squash-rice pudding), quiltian mais or binatog (soft-puffed corn kernels with grated coconut) and on the top layer, my beloved tibuk-tibuk.