The November edition of Lasang Pinoy challenges us to think about Filipino soul food. What exactly is this? Until gracious host Minnette announced the theme, I didn’t realise soul food has its roots in African-American culture. So it IS related to soul music, which is the African-American style of combining elements of gospel music with more secular forms. In fact it used to be called Black Cuisine and only became “Soul Food” during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, according to Patricia Mitchell. Furthermore, she says that “when the emancipation came in 1863, slaves soon scattered from the confines of the plantation into other parts of the United States. So as to not lose contact with family members scattered far and wide, Sunday dinners became a common time for families to get together.” Interesting! The things one learns from joining online food blogging events.

And so the term soul food has evolved to mean that which brings back memories of family togetherness and was then adapted by other ethnic groups. Which brings us back to our theme for the month. What for me is Filipino soul food? I loved the way Minnette tied this up with how we Filipinos celebrate All Saints and All Souls Days - which are almost always with family, the nearest and the dearest.

I have very fond memories of All Saints Day celebrations. It was a major event, as far as I was was concerned. Days beforehand, we would go to the cemetery to supervise the cleaning of my grandfather’s grave, clean the house and go to the market for what we’d cook on the day itself. On Daun (pronounced ‘dah-woon’), my aunties, uncles and cousins would arrive from the city.
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Vinegar-stewed catfish
Today we post our entries for the second edition of Lasang Pinoy, the Filipino food blogging event. Our month’s host is Celia Kusinera at English Patis with the theme Cooking Up a Storm! It’s a very fitting topic since normally, September is towards the end of the monsoon season. With drastic climatic shifts however, it seems like typhoons are now intermittent occurences, unlike in recent years when we were able to distinguish a period when they were most frequent.Time was when the opening of classes coincided with the rainy season. A few weeks into the school year, chances were classes would be called off due to typhoons. The storms would range from mild to very strong, from Signal No. 1-3, before Signal No. 4 was added to the system very recently.

I loved the onset of the rainy season. Not too long after the showers started, the stream beside our house would be flowing more rapidly and we’d float our paper boats. Rains also meant playing and taking a bath in the rain, watching the mamadúas on the bridge over the stream. A padúas is a short bamboo fishing pole, mamadúas is both the verb, act of fishing, and the noun the person(s) fishing.
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Note: revising still but comments welcome

We chose to launch Lasang Pinoy, a Filipino food blogging event, on Ninoy Aquino Day to commemorate the death of our most well-known modern-day hero. Today, Filipino food bloggers and friends in many parts of the world will post their thoughts on being Filipino and the food that go with them.

Try as I might, I cannot recall what I was doing on 21 August 1983. Perhaps it was my typical child’s day of play, homework, raiding bookshelves, piano lessons, cartoons and whatever a nine-year old third grader would do. The day after is what I vividly remember.

My mother was reading the papers early in the evening, and in a tense and troubled voice confirmed: “Mete ne pin y Ninoy” which is Kapampangan for “Ninoy is really dead”. I had no idea who Ninoy was but it seemed that he was someone my mom knew very well. Could he be a relative or a very close friend? I was sure he was either one.
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