food for the heart

I wasn’t at all a sickly child. Actually, I was quite brown and robust from playing patintero, sha-to, ta-ching, tex out in the sunshine the whole day with the six dusty little boys of our truck mechanic who lived in a shanty just a few blocks from our house. It was for this reason that being rendered bed-ridden always came as a big, unwelcome surprise for me and moldering in bed while imagining the boys shouting, running, having so much fun outside was the cruelest form of torture. I was a bad patient, and I screamed and sulked through most of the common childhood illnesses that came my way. The only things that made those days of internment bearable were the marvelous gastronomical treats my Tita Loleng always managed to whip up to hasten my recovery.

Tita Loleng is my mother’s older sister and the family maiden aunt. While I was growing up, she had custody over me and my cousins at my lola’s ancestral home in Zapote, Las Piñas during weekends. She had a wide, angular face where a pair of huge, round-framed glasses always sat and short hair that she coiled into numerous curlers every night so that it would poof up the next day. She was strict and very easy with the back of the tsinelas whenever one of us misbehaved. But my cousins and I, and the rest of the family, knew that we were much loved by Tita Loleng. Not the touchy-feely, demonstrative sort, she displayed her affection in a more subtle and satisfying way—through the delicious spread she constantly laid out on the ancestral house’s long narra table and the specially-prepared meals she sent our way when one of us got sick.

My family is a firm believer in the healing ability of good food. Be it the common cold to something as serious as pneumonia, they would immediately hasten to inform the most talented cook in the family so she can send the patient’s favorite food or something she knows will become a favorite once he or she has sampled it. The most delicious food I’d ever tasted always came at a time when I was ill. Chalk it up to Tita Loleng’s culinary talents that she could make a sick family member come up for seconds when it was a meal she had prepared.

When I contracted measles, I remember my Tita Loleng feeding me pospas, which is like the Chinese congee. But the pospas she served me then was custom-made for it had chicken ass in it instead of regular chicken parts like the leg or breast. Tita Loleng knew that this was my favorite part and had seen how often I had scrabbled to get that delectable piece on my plate before my dad, who also liked it, could do so. Tita Loleng’s pospas was flavorful and fragrant, unlike most pospas or lugaw I’ve tasted in carinderias or fast-food chains. The secret is in the garlic, I think. She would first sauté and brown mortar-pounded garlic. The oil, I remember her telling me, holds the imprint of the first thing you fry in it—so you toss in first whichever it is you’d want to be dominant in taste. Once light-toasted brown in color, the garlic is removed and set aside. Then the ginger and onions are sautéed until their smell starts filling your kitchen. For my special pospas, Tita Loleng minced the ginger so I wouldn’t have to maneuver my way around or end up biting large chunks of the bitter root. Then the chicken parts, in my case my beloved chicken ass, are tossed in. The patis comes soon after. The next step is another cooking tip Tita Loleng has passed on to me. This involves covering the pot and allowing the chicken juice (or langsa) to ooze out. She calls this process sangkutsa and this is done so that the gamy taste is removed from the chicken. Once done with sangkutsa, the juices should be allowed to dry out, but not completely or your chicken will burn and stick to the bottom of the pot. Add the malagkit or short-grain, sticky rice, water and chicken broth. Once the rice is cooked, season with salt and pepper and when the pospas has reached the preferred consistency, it is ready to serve. Most people like pospas with calamansi, toyo, and a bit more of patis but I like mine with nothing else but the set-aside toasted garlic and lots of chopped spring onions.

I remember one time when it was Tita Loleng’s turn to get sick. I was in high school then, and was not yet adept in the kitchen since I spent most of my spare time reading historical romances and watching TV. My cousins and I decided to make something for Tita Loleng and I suggested pospas, but made with halaan or clams. We had a grand time of it, even had a skirmish between two cousins that involved two sandoks being wielded as dangerous weapons. In the end, it was probably the proverbial “too many cooks spoiling the broth” but the clams were overcooked and tough, the lugaw had the faint taste of being burnt since someone forgot to stir, and someone else dumped in too much pepper. Shame-faced, we presented our group culinary effort to Tita Loleng who gamely ate a bowlful and asked for another helping. When she was done eating, she lay down on her propped-up pillows and gave us a smile. That smile made me understand why she has always found her happiness in serving us the best food though it meant slaving away for hours in a hot kitchen. It was a smile of appreciation for a good meal, and of joy in knowing that you are loved.

drill

Yesterday, a friend studying in a school a la Hogwarts recounted the fire drill that had been conducted in his boarding place at 7 am. He thought while it was happening that it was the real deal--and he even thought he was the one who had caused it.

His story reminded me of the one and only fire drill I experienced in my old place along Katipunan. It was done at 1 pm but I was sleeping that time, having had a late night spent on studying for the English department's GEC (Guidance and Evaluation Committee) observation. Anyway, groggy and bleary eyed, I realized that the fire alarm was ringing and I panicked. I picked up my cell phone, wallet, and towel (?) and stuffed it into my ex's gym bag (which was full of clothes. He had left it in my place because he was transferring to a new apartment and needed a tambakan for some of his stuff). So there I went, hauling this big red bag towards the stairway (I had enough presence of mind to know one should never use the elevator in that kind of emergency). The people from other units had their doors open and were looking at the hallway. It took me a while to notice that none of them seemed panicky at all, and some of them were actually smiling at me in amusement. I stood in the hallway for a few seconds before it hit me. I went to the intercom, called the guard, and asked him if there was really a fire.

"Drill lang po, ma'am," he said. And I could hear the laughter in his voice.

Pakdatshit. That's what happens when you don't mind the announcements posted on the bulletin board.

Pare!

I am, what most of my friends call, a guy-girl. No, I’m not bisexual, but I’m usually the only estrogen-carrier in a table full of testosterone-laden humans, the sounding board for musings on the female psyche, the convenient no-strings-attached date if a friend needs to present someone at some family dinner or high school/college reunion, the one who gets slapped as hard on the back as any other member of the barkada, the noisy drunk everyone tries to render senseless with copious amounts of beer. I am the stereotypical “one of the boys”.

As far back as I can remember, I tended to gravitate towards groups composed of the opposite sex than girls. These boys always welcomed me with open arms. They never saw me as the other; I was always one of them. As a seven-year-old, I played patintero, sha-to, ta-ching, tex with the six dusty little boys of our truck mechanic who lived in a shanty just a few blocks from our house. In high school I was always horsing around with my male classmates who also sometimes treated me as a Dear Abby of sorts for their first attempts at dating (the “datee”s being the more popular girls in school, of course). In college, I was the non-sorority-member ka-barkada of one whole fraternity—that was when I learned to play pusoy, tong-its, and billiards; drink until the wee hours; and to sober up before class at different places around the university.

It’s not because I look like or dress like a boy. All right, so I’ve always sported short hair and I do have a stubborn, square jaw but I do have the less angular, softer features of a female. That I was really female became more obvious during puberty when my boobs started growing up to their present large size. I like wearing short skirts and I do put on make-up (I never leave home without my kikay kit).

Males just naturally feel comfortable when they’re with me. Maybe it’s because I don’t see them as potential flirt-material or boyfriends, or the way I can slug it out with the best of them when it comes to those raunchy jokes, possibly also the way I threaten them with bodily harm when they’ve gone a step too far. Or maybe it’s the way I feel happy and comfortable with them, too. I like being with these sweaty, odd, not-so-sweet-smelling creatures. The fact that they can relax and act like their natural selves when they’re with me is probably the reason why we get along so well.

But, as with everything, there are certain disadvantages to playing the guy-girl role, of course, and what follows are a few of them.

Males who are not members of your group, or who don’t know you that well, think you’re easy. I don’t know what it is exactly that makes people think that you’ve done the dirty deed with every guy you hang out with, but they just do. This is especially apparent when you meet the person at your favorite watering hole and he has seen you being surrounded by members of his species. There are two ways to handle this: cut him down to size yourself with a few intelligent, classy, go-away-you-are-a-sexist-idiot letdowns or put one of your barkadas to good use by asking him to give the jerk menacing looks. It helps a lot if said barkada is a big, brawny jock who looks like a killer.

Girlfriends and potential girlfriends see you as a threat. One of my few female friends, Dang, is almost always the object of hate by the significant others of her guy friends. She has gotten anonymous hate-mail, prank phone calls, and has even experienced one a la tele-novela confrontation scene. She’s pretty but not teeth-achingly so—unlike some of the girlfriends or dates of her friends. But it makes no difference. She is always considered a serious threat by these girls. Dang, in a fit of exasperation, once blurted out to a friend whose girlfriend was giving her grief, “If I wanted to sleep or get into a relationship with any of you, I would have made my move by now. You guys are so desperate anyway!” Of course, the last was a joke, but still. One guy friend explained it to me once when I asked him about the seeming irrationality of it and he said, “Well, think of it this way—which would make you more miserable: Your guy having had a one-night stand and then forgetting all about it or not having sex but actually forming a connection with someone?” The solution to this problem? Try befriending the girlfriend/nililigawan to show that she has nothing to fear from you. If that doesn’t work just ask your friend not to bring his girlfriend on your gimmicks anymore to save you both from possible drama.

The temptation to actually get into relationship with one of your friends. Gurl, this is a really bad idea. The idea can sometimes be really tempting but you have to think about this many, many times before you jump into anything. It has the potential to: actually ruin your reputation, thus reinforcing the above disadvantage I mentioned; break-up the group, especially if one or both of you are not mature enough to not force your friends to take sides; set a precedent—“tusok-tusok/tuhog of the barkada” is a big no-no. There are many fish out there in the dating ocean—take your pick. Do not piss where you eat. Okay, enough of the clichés and mixed metaphors—you get my point.

In spite of these possible setbacks, I am happy being a guy-girl. One of the greatest advantages is you get glimpses into the otherwise-murky male psyche and this helps a lot—most specially when you date (again, someone outside your group though). Of course, most of the time, it requires intestinal fortitude, great patience, the willingness to compromise and to weather a lot of problems, but what friendship doesn’t?