Mom’s short stories, long life: munchies

An actual photo of my fridge — nothing to eat in here

I hardly watch TV but this particular episode is on repeat in my house.

The teenage boy with the cargo pants, bleached hair and a ravenous appetite opens the refrigerator door. 

There’s homemade guacamole and salsa. Pickles. Chicken from two days ago. Pesto pasta from three days ago. Carrots. Colby cheese. Rice. And additional cold things.

“There’s nothing to eat,” he says in his mind.

He turns, walks three steps to the pantry and swings open the door. 

He looks up, then scans the middle, bends slightly to see if, by any chance, there’s something good stuffed in the bottom shelves.

He inspects the Wheat Thins next to the candy basket up top where the little ones can’t reach the M&Ms. “Healthy” cereal. Dave’s Killer Bread, two kinds. Peanut butter cookies from the 88 Ranch Market. Cashews and pistachios. Homemade granola. And more crunchy packaged things.

He closes the door and walks out of the kitchen. 

This. drives. me. crazy. A fridge and pantry stocked full! All this organically grown and home cooked food! Does he know how much groceries cost?!

A friend reminded me of something I didn’t want to hear. “We all did this at his age.”

What? No, oh no, I definitely didn’t do this. 

Or, did I? 

Ugh, I think I did. Now I’m peeling back memories of opening my childhood fridge and seeing the bowls and plates of leftovers and opting to not touch any of them. It’s because I was looking for something specific and the previous night’s rice, chicken adobo and dinengdeng (a filipino dish I’ll explain later) with bittermelon wasn’t hitting the spot. I, too, was guilty of acting in this episode. 

However, there is one youngster/teenager who didn’t do this. My mom. 

Except there wasn’t a fridge to open. If she wanted anything that was refrigerated or frozen like ice cream, she had to walk into town because her nipa hut did not have electricity, hence no cool and frosty treats. 

Not actually mom’s house but I think you know this :)

What did mom eat growing up? Here’s a typical day of food for mom. Grab a plate. Let’s feast.

Breakfast

Just like us, mom drank coffee. Not just like us, it was made with burnt rice instead of roasted coffee beans. The process involved toasting the rice until burned and then pouring boiling water over it. Voila, the deep cocoa-colored result was “coffee.” 

Rice is also eaten with breakfast. It’s also eaten with lunch. And dinner. And dessert too. Duh.

If the chickens laid eggs that day, those are eaten. So that everyone in the large family can have a share, expect to see one egg split into 4. Or 6 or 10 or 12. Mom has changed that number so many times when I was growing up, depending on the day, who she’s telling it to, and what sort of dramatic effect she’s going for at that moment. On special occasions, tuyo is also served with breakfast, which is dried sardines. 

Lunch and dinner

It’s funny how I grew up thinking that mom had little to eat. But the last time I asked her, she said, “Growing up, we were never hungry because my mom was a vendor in town and she would buy different kinds of vegetables and sell them in the city. Whatever she can’t sell, we’d have all kinds of vegetables to eat.” Here’s the plethora.

My grandma went to the market each day, delivering fresh food to her family daily. Besides vegetables, the loot could include seaweed, sea grapes, sea cucumbers, sea urchins (my mom’s favorite), snails, and all kinds of fish, particularly small ones like bagsang. Mom says the smaller the fish, the tastier. Almost every dish was cooked with ginger.

Mom said this pic I grabbed from the internet looks like the fish is fried. “We rarely eat it fried because oil was expensive. We cooked it with salt and tomatoes and onions.”

One meal they’d have on repeat is called dinengdeng. It is a vegetable soup dish that originated from the Ilocos region in the Philippines. It’s easy to make, using grilled or fried fish with a mix of backyard vegetables, such as beans, saluyot (a leafy green) and bittermelon (which tastes exactly as it’s called). Another key ingredient is bagoong isda, fermented fish. I grew up thinking bagoong was the stinkiest, most embarrassing thing to have out when my non-filipino friends came over. I was dumb back then. Today, I would best describe it as the Filipino umami flavor.

I had to include this pic because bagoong in my cupboards growing up never looked this fancy

Salt was purchased unprocessed, which was a brownish color, and they bought enough to last them an entire year.

Meat was rarely eaten because it simply wasn’t available. Meat was eaten on the rare occasion when a neighbor butchers their pig. They would also eat their own chickens because mom said, “there was no Foster Farms.”

Dessert

“I don’t think we had dessert. We just went to the backyard to get fruit,” my mom told me on the phone recently. Fruits included: 

• Guava: there were various types available for picking.

• Guyabano: these taste a little sour and a little sweet.

Guyabano is also known as soursop

• Green grapes: mom said growing up she had only seen green grapes, never any other color or variety.

• Jackfruit: these can get huge and gnarly looking, hanging from a tree. They also boiled and cooked the seeds and the result tastes similar to a Brazil nut.

This guy is proud of his heaviest jackfruit world record

• Duhat: this is also known as a java plum and mom describes it as “purple and really good, shaped like a big grape with a seed inside.”

Foraging in the forest

My grandpa would take trips to the forest next to their property to forage. He’d come back with bananas and some sort of red fruit (mom can’t remember the name of it). He’d also bring back sweet potatoes, which showed up as wild vines littered throughout the forest. Bamboo was aplenty and mom remembers he’d bring loads back to make rope.

A note about rice

The Philippines has two seasons, rainy and dry. Back then, there wasn’t an irrigation system so they depended on the rain to produce their most valuable food – rice. They harvested their entire year’s worth of rice in one go. Rice is grown in flooded fields, which becomes its own ecosystem. In these fields, mom would pick crabs, snails and mud fish. I found this fascinating. I knew rice fields get flooded but didn’t realize they became home to fishy creatures.

A clarification on dessert

Mom did grow up with prepared desserts but they were eaten seldomly and reserved for times like Christmas. In a future post, I’ll share those desserts and how mom celebrated Christmas. Zero presents involved.

Thanks for reading along, until next time.

“Naimas!” Translation in Ilocano (mom’s dialect): “Tastes good!”