It is a testament to my sad, sorry, defensive state that I am referring to myself in the 3rd person. As we all know, no one of sound mind does this. Let me amend that, no non-celebrity of sound mind refers to herself in the 3rd person. (I make this necessary amendment because I have heard through the grapevine that Ate Vi, bless her, calls herself "Vilma Santos." When asked to endorse a laundry bar, she apparently said, "Parang hindi naglalaba si Vilma Santos gamit ang kamay. Kung maglalaba si Vilma Santos, siguro gagamit siya ng washing machine." Let me take a moment to, in internet speak, ROTFLMAO. I don't know if this is true, and I don't particularly care. It's a hilarious story.).
But back to more serious matters, the kind that make people ponder metaphysical questions. In particular, what is identity? How is one's identity connected to the container one is housed in, ie one's body?
I ask these questions because I have just been told by the doctor to lose weight. Now, this is not a rare occurence. I have been told all my life to lose weight by doctors and non-doctors alike, by people I know and virtual strangers, by people who truly care and those who only care to expound on the virtues of being... not fat (in sum, that one would be more attractive and that from this increase in attractiveness, everything else will follow: boyfriend, husband, family, success, great life--hell, maybe even a spot in heaven!).
Most times, I am able to shrug these things off. I just tell people that I'm happy with myself and they are free to make of it what they will. This time, I couldn't dismiss the doctor telling me to lose weight because it wasn't so much being told to lose weight that bothered me, it was being told to, ahem, cut portions. Specifically, cut rice and pasta portions. And no pork, he said. Fish and chicken and veggies and fruits (except the ones that are too sweet) are all right. But no meat. No meat.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present... the Devil in a White Coat. Fancying telling me not to eat meat anymore. Not to cook pasta. The horror! Telling me to find another hobby besides food and cooking and eating. Que barbaridad! Even asking me if I have an eating disorder (his exact words were, "hindi ka ba yung tipong kumakain ng marami tapos isusuka?" Uh, you mean, am I bulimic? A great, big DUH!!! to you, Doc. If I were bulimic, that would suck 'cause, basically, all that purging obviously doesn't work and I'm still fat. A fat bulimic. That's a funny oxymoron right there. I'd be laughing my lardy ass off if it weren't my gastronomic future on the line). I told Doc Devil that I'm very well-adjusted, thank you. To which he said, "Mukha ngang masaya ka sa sarili mo." I don't know if he was being sarcastic but I take that as a compliment because I am happy with myself. It's just other people who sometimes aren't happy with me.
Don't get me wrong. Doc Devil wasn't mean. In fact, he seemed genuinely concerned. It's just that I feel that the minute he saw me, he automatically went on a crusade to get me to lose weight and virtually reduced my health issues to the fact of being big. And while I do think his dietary suggestions are valid (in fact, since Friday I have been eating no more than 1 cup of rice every meal instead of my usual, uh, 2 plates . I feel--quite rightly--self-congratulatory.), I think it was simplistic of him to blame my weight for my stuffy nose and scratchy throat. Another great, big DUHHH!!! Ever heard of a viral infection, Doc? No? Maybe you should go back to med school then.
I do know that I get very defensive when people comment and ask about my bigness. I get especially prickly when people tell me maybe I should lose weight. It's classical conditioning. People tell me I'm too big, which elicits a conditioned response of bristling resentment. People often talk about finding it hard to like and love themselves. I've never found it hard. I've always liked me, enjoyed my own company, thought myself deserving of anything I seek and work to have, and loved me. That hasn't been hard at all. It also hasn't been hard accepting the reality that not many people will probably like and love me to the same extent that I do myself. I have been ok with that fact. What I am not ok with and probably will never be ok with is the cavalier way with which people seek to impose their standards of beauty, sometimes disguised as concern for my health, on me when I take great pains to let them be. Be beautiful, be ugly. Be smart, be stupid. Be anything. (To illustrate: I don't tell people, "maybe you should try to be smarter." Or, "you'd be more attractive if you changed your face." That would be downright mean. What people don't get is that it's the same kind of mean to tell someone she'd be more attractive if she lost weight. Because then you assume that the person you're concerned about holds the same views about herself that you hold, ie that she is not smart enough, not pretty enough, not anything enough. Why would anyone make, let alone articulate, such harsh assumptions?).
I don't like being told what to do and how to be. I know this. It is almost pathological. My professor told me that things "told" me should be couched in egalitarian terms, terms that speak nothing of power imbalances, hierarchical relationships, and societal standards of being and worth.
I am trying to be pragmatic (for once in my life) and reasonable about it. Which means I have to take off my political/ideological lenses and view the matter from a more, er, neutral health perspective. (And no, I won't question the assumption that a health perspective is politically neutral. 'Cause this post is never going to end if I do that). I have a particular health concern, ie kabag (which is going away now, thank you). It may be an acute reaction to something (a virus or whatever) or it may be a symptom of an underlying digestive problem brought about by my fondness for food that's not, shall we say, optimal for health. What to do then? It pains me to say it but Food and I? We're gonna have to COMPROMISE.
So I will try to cut my rice portions to 1 cup per meal and my pasta portions to a single serving (around 100 grams, according to most cookbooks). Our bi-monthly menu only includes 2-3 pork dishes, of which I hope to limit myself again to only one serving. (When I say single serving, I mean a normal-sized portion and not my usual family-sized portions.). I've actually been eating more fish, veggies, and fruits so that's not really a problem. As for exercise, I'm going to continue strutting my beautiful bum around my village, maybe just more regularly.
But I say this now, I don't plan to ever swear off pork and rice and pizza and pasta. Doing so would guarantee the failure of this compromise agreement. I love food and I'll never force myself to stop loving food. That's non-negotiable. Maybe it's a matter of loving not just with my heart and gut but also with my head.
Like I told my Ditchie and Claire, though, I see hard times ahead. I see possible bouts of anger and depression. I see philosophical railings and metaphysical meanderings all in the name of food and weight and identity and love. Such is the nature of a committed relationship, I guess. It evolves, and you have to make certain changes to keep it going. Of course, just writing this makes me sad all over again. Reminds me of Shakespeare's idea of love:
Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Monday, December 18, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Losing Eat
I was struck by a viral infection that rendered me housebound for the better part of November, with only enough energy to sleep a lot and eat a little. I'll say that again. Eat A LITTLE. Up to now, I still can't quite believe that I went through a period of time not feeling like eating. Not wanting food, or needing it, or loving it, or having any kind of emotion about it. This, to state the obvious (something that I like to do every now and then), was uncharacteristic of me. It had never happened, in fact. I've felt worse in the past and have actually been sick with gastroenteritis (which I believe is God's punishment for eating indiscriminately). But even during that hellish period of alternating nausea and diarrhea punctuated by 3 needle shots, I still found in me the will to eat. For about one week last month, I lost it. I lost the will to eat.
This is how it happened. My loving, generous mother came home from Hong Kong bearing the gift of Zhen de Shou, a Chinese herbal supplement that purportedly helps one lose weight. My mom, bless her, had taken it upon herself to help us, her three daughters, lose weight. Not that we were begging for help. In fact, not that we were trying to lose weight either. Well, maybe my two sisters. Kinda. It's just that my mother is one of those people who believe that people are more beautiful when they're not fat. She thinks we're beautiful, yes. But I think she believes that we'd be downright ravishing if only we lost a bit of weight (in my case, a LOT of weight). I don't have the heart to tell her that being downright ravishing requires not just a certain weight but also a certain mien, an oomph that not everyone who's beautiful and thin may have. (Case in point, Lani Mercado, objectively a beautiful woman but, also objectively, about as 3D, sexy, and ravishing as a thumb tack). I just don't have that oomph. Maybe my sisters. But me? Not so much.
But when your mother brings home a month's worth of herbal supplements that cost quite a bit of money, you do not say no. You do not go into a pseudo-feminist rant about restrictive standards of beauty. Instead, you say, "Ok. Thanks, Mama. Love you. This doesn't have side effects naman, di ba?" And even though you rarely pray these days, you say a quick but heartfelt prayer that this works. If not for you, then for your mom. Who's obviously desperate about YOUR weight.
So I took them pills for three days. And on the 3rd day, God created Bochog's Loss of Appetite, a state or condition characterised by a lassitude that cannot be accounted for by a simple viral infection. Such lassitude includes an alarming apathy towards food and a similar disinterest in any kind of activity that constitutes the concept of LIVING. I did not feel like moving, dreaming, thinking, eating. I did not feel like doing anything.
The Loss of Appetite terrified me and prompted me to quit taking the pills and go to the hospital. The doctors at the hospital thought it was just another symptom of the viral infection. But when I asked my sisters, they said they were also feeling the same inertia. Mine was just worse because I was already sick with the viral thingy (I just didn't know it). I think also that my experience was worse because you do not go from thinking the world of food to not having any kind of thought or feeling about it in zero seconds flat. That just doesn't happen. Needless to say, my sisters quit too. And Ate My urged Mama to stop taking the pills. Turns out, Mama was feeling those things too. Except she was attributing them to high BP. When Ate My told her what happened, she realized it was those bleeding Zhen de Shou supplements. They make you lose weight, all right. They do it by making you lose your joie de vivre and turning you into a zombie. Or an anorexic trapped in the body of a fat girl. To which I say, no thanks. I'd rather be fat, passably pretty, and happy. I don't need to be thin and drop dead gorgeous.
So now we have around a dozen unopened boxes of those blasted pills. I'm not even going to give them to anyone. They're horrible. My sisters and I have never been so happy about quitting anything. Quitting those pills was like quitting sadness. And I'll always quit that.
This is how it happened. My loving, generous mother came home from Hong Kong bearing the gift of Zhen de Shou, a Chinese herbal supplement that purportedly helps one lose weight. My mom, bless her, had taken it upon herself to help us, her three daughters, lose weight. Not that we were begging for help. In fact, not that we were trying to lose weight either. Well, maybe my two sisters. Kinda. It's just that my mother is one of those people who believe that people are more beautiful when they're not fat. She thinks we're beautiful, yes. But I think she believes that we'd be downright ravishing if only we lost a bit of weight (in my case, a LOT of weight). I don't have the heart to tell her that being downright ravishing requires not just a certain weight but also a certain mien, an oomph that not everyone who's beautiful and thin may have. (Case in point, Lani Mercado, objectively a beautiful woman but, also objectively, about as 3D, sexy, and ravishing as a thumb tack). I just don't have that oomph. Maybe my sisters. But me? Not so much.
But when your mother brings home a month's worth of herbal supplements that cost quite a bit of money, you do not say no. You do not go into a pseudo-feminist rant about restrictive standards of beauty. Instead, you say, "Ok. Thanks, Mama. Love you. This doesn't have side effects naman, di ba?" And even though you rarely pray these days, you say a quick but heartfelt prayer that this works. If not for you, then for your mom. Who's obviously desperate about YOUR weight.
So I took them pills for three days. And on the 3rd day, God created Bochog's Loss of Appetite, a state or condition characterised by a lassitude that cannot be accounted for by a simple viral infection. Such lassitude includes an alarming apathy towards food and a similar disinterest in any kind of activity that constitutes the concept of LIVING. I did not feel like moving, dreaming, thinking, eating. I did not feel like doing anything.
The Loss of Appetite terrified me and prompted me to quit taking the pills and go to the hospital. The doctors at the hospital thought it was just another symptom of the viral infection. But when I asked my sisters, they said they were also feeling the same inertia. Mine was just worse because I was already sick with the viral thingy (I just didn't know it). I think also that my experience was worse because you do not go from thinking the world of food to not having any kind of thought or feeling about it in zero seconds flat. That just doesn't happen. Needless to say, my sisters quit too. And Ate My urged Mama to stop taking the pills. Turns out, Mama was feeling those things too. Except she was attributing them to high BP. When Ate My told her what happened, she realized it was those bleeding Zhen de Shou supplements. They make you lose weight, all right. They do it by making you lose your joie de vivre and turning you into a zombie. Or an anorexic trapped in the body of a fat girl. To which I say, no thanks. I'd rather be fat, passably pretty, and happy. I don't need to be thin and drop dead gorgeous.
So now we have around a dozen unopened boxes of those blasted pills. I'm not even going to give them to anyone. They're horrible. My sisters and I have never been so happy about quitting anything. Quitting those pills was like quitting sadness. And I'll always quit that.
Friday, September 15, 2006
NOT QUITE A VEGAN
Yesterday, I had my first 99% almost no meat vegetarian meal. It was lunch at The Sicilian Express in T.Morato with my friend Gina. Who wanted to eat veggies. For what reason it was not so clear. Or I forget, I don't know.
I must clarify that we did not expressly, consciously, decide to eat a full-on vegetarian meal. Gina just wanted some veggies (at least that's what she told me) to eat for lunch. That did not bother me as I, too, have been known to eat veggies with my meat. And The Sicilian Express is not exactly Bodhi. It's a nice Italian restaurant that has both flora and fauna in its menu. So, really, it posed no threat.
We had a nice lunch, actually. We ordered the sicilian salad which had about five token chicken bits to make up for the mangoes. (Mangoes in a salad is not a good idea for me. But, strangely enough, the salad worked. The chicken with the greens was a good combination). We also had a margarita pizza, which is basically just cheese, tomatoes, and basil. At every step, Gina asked if I was ok with the foods we were to order. And strangely, I put up no fight. I said yes, every time. And actually meant it.
It was only later that I realized certain things: 1) I just ate pizza without pasta; 2) I just ate a no-meat, instead of an all-meat, pizza; and 3) I just had a meal that had more plants than animals in it. And I'm not even upset about it!
Contrast this with 4-5 years ago when Clarsy and I had lunch at Struan and Tang's in Power Plant. I ordered fried squid, and almost pitched a fit when the waiter brought out a plate of breaded squid with brown rice. BROWN rice. For all you geniuses out there, brown rice is healthier--and, therefore, less tasty--than white rice. (The word "rice" in the previous sentence sure is a landmine. Imagine if I substitute "a" for "i". That wouldn't make for an egalitarian statement. Good thing I'm just taking about race, este, rice. Rice.).
What the f--?! This is brown rice, I said, because I sometimes like to state the obvious. Clarsy, quick to do some psychological bullshitting work, said, "Yes, but the squid is fried." I swear, that made me feel a lot better. A lot. Of course, looking back, I can admit that we skated around the very real possibility that the squid was fried in olive oil (which, again for the geniuses amongst us, is generally considered to be the healthiest of oils, notwithstanding the threat from the extra virgin coconut oil camp). We did not acknowledge that possibility as I was already overwrought bordering on queenish.
Given my history of aversion to healthy eating, my reaction to yesterday's almost vegetarian meal might seem to be a tad uncharacteristic. A more bochog-typical reaction would have been to end my friendship with Gina. Yes, over meat (or the lack thereof). Instead, I affirmed a good friendship over a surprisingly good meal. And I enjoyed myself.
I think I'm realizing that eating veggies, and eating healthy, may not be so bad after all. I'm not about to give up my meats. And I'm not about to eat a 100% vegetarian meal anytime soon. I am too much a hedonist, and for some strange reason, I cannot imagine experiencing nerve-sizzling pleasure when all you eat are plants. (Case in point, the Epicureans of Rome. Who binged all they wanted. I doubt if they gorged themselves on lettuce.). Yesterday's meal was pleasant. Nice. But if I had had meat as usual, then the meal would have been just as exciting, dramatic, inspiring as the conversation that accompanied it.
I must clarify that we did not expressly, consciously, decide to eat a full-on vegetarian meal. Gina just wanted some veggies (at least that's what she told me) to eat for lunch. That did not bother me as I, too, have been known to eat veggies with my meat. And The Sicilian Express is not exactly Bodhi. It's a nice Italian restaurant that has both flora and fauna in its menu. So, really, it posed no threat.
We had a nice lunch, actually. We ordered the sicilian salad which had about five token chicken bits to make up for the mangoes. (Mangoes in a salad is not a good idea for me. But, strangely enough, the salad worked. The chicken with the greens was a good combination). We also had a margarita pizza, which is basically just cheese, tomatoes, and basil. At every step, Gina asked if I was ok with the foods we were to order. And strangely, I put up no fight. I said yes, every time. And actually meant it.
It was only later that I realized certain things: 1) I just ate pizza without pasta; 2) I just ate a no-meat, instead of an all-meat, pizza; and 3) I just had a meal that had more plants than animals in it. And I'm not even upset about it!
Contrast this with 4-5 years ago when Clarsy and I had lunch at Struan and Tang's in Power Plant. I ordered fried squid, and almost pitched a fit when the waiter brought out a plate of breaded squid with brown rice. BROWN rice. For all you geniuses out there, brown rice is healthier--and, therefore, less tasty--than white rice. (The word "rice" in the previous sentence sure is a landmine. Imagine if I substitute "a" for "i". That wouldn't make for an egalitarian statement. Good thing I'm just taking about race, este, rice. Rice.).
What the f--?! This is brown rice, I said, because I sometimes like to state the obvious. Clarsy, quick to do some psychological bullshitting work, said, "Yes, but the squid is fried." I swear, that made me feel a lot better. A lot. Of course, looking back, I can admit that we skated around the very real possibility that the squid was fried in olive oil (which, again for the geniuses amongst us, is generally considered to be the healthiest of oils, notwithstanding the threat from the extra virgin coconut oil camp). We did not acknowledge that possibility as I was already overwrought bordering on queenish.
Given my history of aversion to healthy eating, my reaction to yesterday's almost vegetarian meal might seem to be a tad uncharacteristic. A more bochog-typical reaction would have been to end my friendship with Gina. Yes, over meat (or the lack thereof). Instead, I affirmed a good friendship over a surprisingly good meal. And I enjoyed myself.
I think I'm realizing that eating veggies, and eating healthy, may not be so bad after all. I'm not about to give up my meats. And I'm not about to eat a 100% vegetarian meal anytime soon. I am too much a hedonist, and for some strange reason, I cannot imagine experiencing nerve-sizzling pleasure when all you eat are plants. (Case in point, the Epicureans of Rome. Who binged all they wanted. I doubt if they gorged themselves on lettuce.). Yesterday's meal was pleasant. Nice. But if I had had meat as usual, then the meal would have been just as exciting, dramatic, inspiring as the conversation that accompanied it.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Excuse Me While I B.A.R.F.
Was praying with my family, ie my dad, 2 sisters, and our kasambahay Daya, last Saturday (Mama was out making money, which can be a form of prayer, I suppose, if you do it religiously and ritualistically. Ahem.). While it was not an unusual occurence for mi familia to pray together, it had been a long time since the last group thanksgiving-slash-supplication. We (and by we, I really mean my eldest sister and my dad) just felt like saying thank you to God because we've been feeling especially blessed the past few days. So in a fit of Protestant gratitude, we prayed.
When it was my turn to pray, I felt fake because I hadn't prayed in a long time. A long time. Possibly years. The kind of prayer that requires sincerity, heartfelt gratitude, and more importantly, the acknowledgement of God's control over one's life. I've become too William Ernest Henley, too "Master of My Fate", for that. Nevertheless, I prayed. It was sincere enough but I knew too that I was just regurgitating many of the words. And then... out of nowhere, the words came out of my mouth, "Lord, help each one of us carve our own paths."
That sounded so foreign to me, and a little bit jarring. Not because I've never said or thought about carving one's own path (in fact, that's all I think about) but because I had never ever prayed it. I was brought up to believe that a Christian could never be a Humanist and vice versa because to be humanist is to assert man's inferiority to no one (much less to someone who remains unseen).
And yet there I was praying what can only be called a humanist's prayer. And while I was jarred for a microsecond, I felt good afterwards. Imagine that. One can be a Humanist Christian, I suppose, or a religious academic, one who prays in a scholarly (seemingly secular) manner. Sometimes, I wonder at my Westernized academic orientation with its inordinate fondness for creating artificial dichotomies. As if we don't live our lives in a fairly integrated (and unconscious) manner. (Don't you just love the mind? It's a lean, mean, rationalizing machine. Hehe.)
What does prayer have to do with FOOD? Uh... it's food for the soul?
When it was my turn to pray, I felt fake because I hadn't prayed in a long time. A long time. Possibly years. The kind of prayer that requires sincerity, heartfelt gratitude, and more importantly, the acknowledgement of God's control over one's life. I've become too William Ernest Henley, too "Master of My Fate", for that. Nevertheless, I prayed. It was sincere enough but I knew too that I was just regurgitating many of the words. And then... out of nowhere, the words came out of my mouth, "Lord, help each one of us carve our own paths."
That sounded so foreign to me, and a little bit jarring. Not because I've never said or thought about carving one's own path (in fact, that's all I think about) but because I had never ever prayed it. I was brought up to believe that a Christian could never be a Humanist and vice versa because to be humanist is to assert man's inferiority to no one (much less to someone who remains unseen).
And yet there I was praying what can only be called a humanist's prayer. And while I was jarred for a microsecond, I felt good afterwards. Imagine that. One can be a Humanist Christian, I suppose, or a religious academic, one who prays in a scholarly (seemingly secular) manner. Sometimes, I wonder at my Westernized academic orientation with its inordinate fondness for creating artificial dichotomies. As if we don't live our lives in a fairly integrated (and unconscious) manner. (Don't you just love the mind? It's a lean, mean, rationalizing machine. Hehe.)
What does prayer have to do with FOOD? Uh... it's food for the soul?
Friday, August 18, 2006
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EATS
This is my earliest memory of a perfect meal: I was five years old, maybe six. Doesn’t matter, I was young. I was home while my older sisters were in school. It was lunchtime and my mother, for one reason or another, didn’t cook lunch like she usually did. Instead, she gave me five pesos and a Tupperware bowl, with instructions to go outside, walk to the nearest eskinita, and buy myself five pesos’ worth of fish balls. Fish balls. That was to be my lunch. Not my mom’s yummy adobo with the sauce thick and slightly sweet and the pork fat soft and almost melting, just the way I liked it. Not her hotdog omelet fried to oily perfection. Not her specialty macaroni sopas, with chicken and hotdog bits drowning in milky, margarine-yellowed soup.
Lunch was fish balls. I couldn’t have been more ecstatic.
At that time, fish balls cost only ten centavos apiece so the five pesos my mom gave me bought 50 pieces. 50 fish balls, drowning in a sweet-hot-sour sauce made of parts ketchup and soy sauce, sugar and sili. All of it mine. I remember doing a happy dance as I walked home carrying my Tupperware of fish balls. I remember my mom’s indulgent smile as she watched me wolf down fish balls and rice.
This was only my first perfect meal. I have enjoyed the gastronomic pleasure of more than one perfect meal in my life. Granted, from the aforementioned example, it does not seem too difficult to please my taste buds. In fact, one may say—quite rightly—that I am ridiculously easy to please. One may say that I’ll eat anything. And one would be right—crass and rude, but right.
I am not a gourmet. When it comes to food, I believe in equal opportunity for all food groups to be consumed, nay, devoured by moi. Well, maybe fruits and veggies are at a slight disadvantage… And although I can be finicky about my pizza and pasta, foods I love so much I consider them to be a separate food group, on the whole, I eat indiscriminately.
So when it comes to the perfect meal, or in my case, perfect meals, it isn’t so much a matter of taste or how good the food is as it is a matter of passion, of the emotions food evokes. The perfect meal is also about memory, and discovery. Take, for instance, another perfect meal I had when I was an easily pleased child: pan de sal (Filipino bread) with ketchup as palaman (filling).
The scene unfolded thus: I was looking inside the refrigerator, pan de sal in one hand, searching for palaman. A glance at the condiment section revealed no mayonnaise, no chiz whiz, no peanut butter, no coco jam. In other words, no palaman. Since, to me, pan de sal without palaman is like kanin (rice) without ulam (viand), I had to look for something to spread onto my pan. As if fated, my young, easily pleased eyes fell on a bottle of Papa banana ketchup. An image came to mind, of an older cousin sticking his index finger in a pan de sal, pretending it was a hotdog sandwich. New knowledge settled in my ken like a Catholic-style epiphany… Ah, anything can be palaman, if one wishes it. Mayo, chiz whiz, peanut butter, coco jam. Yes, even index finger. And if index finger, why not ketchup? Why not, indeed. Faultless logic and almost mystical intuition, the same stuff scientific discoveries are made of.
I remember the glee with which I poured a huge dollop of Papa onto my pan de sal, the joy I felt as I bit into my ketchup sandwich, the giggle that escaped my lips even as ketchup dribbled onto my chin. It was the perfect meal, messy and joyous and full of discovery.
I don’t eat ketchup sandwiches anymore. (These days I prefer Mang Tomas Lechon Sauce). And I have had near-perfect meals that involved relatively more sophisticated foods. But I find that, invariably, the best meals I’ve had, I was eating cheap, simple, hearty foods that filled my stomach—without wiping out my pocket—and made my heart glad, whether it’s create-your-own pizza and oily carbonara at Napoli’s or sweet-spicy pork barbecue and salted egg at Beach House in UP.
So much has been said about emotional eating. Mainly, it has been blamed for the increasingly high incidence of weight problems. Diet experts say that the only goal of eating is, or at least should be, nutrition and nothing else. Eat to live, as the old folks liked to say. Therefore, eat routinely and without emotion because emotions invest food with a purpose higher than mere sustenance and staving off of physical hunger.
Many people are embarrassed to admit that they, like every other human being on the planet, do eat emotionally and for reasons that have nothing to do with nutrition. Eating, much like other biological imperatives like sleep and sex, is motivated by things that go beyond the physical. When we eat emotionally, therefore, we assert our ability to push the limits of our biology, even to transcend it. This is admittedly a roundabout way of saying… I am not embarrassed. I admit it. I do eat emotionally. And I never quite understood why I should eat only to live. I eat with joy, with glee, with passion, with love. I eat as I live. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.
bochog
Lunch was fish balls. I couldn’t have been more ecstatic.
At that time, fish balls cost only ten centavos apiece so the five pesos my mom gave me bought 50 pieces. 50 fish balls, drowning in a sweet-hot-sour sauce made of parts ketchup and soy sauce, sugar and sili. All of it mine. I remember doing a happy dance as I walked home carrying my Tupperware of fish balls. I remember my mom’s indulgent smile as she watched me wolf down fish balls and rice.
This was only my first perfect meal. I have enjoyed the gastronomic pleasure of more than one perfect meal in my life. Granted, from the aforementioned example, it does not seem too difficult to please my taste buds. In fact, one may say—quite rightly—that I am ridiculously easy to please. One may say that I’ll eat anything. And one would be right—crass and rude, but right.
I am not a gourmet. When it comes to food, I believe in equal opportunity for all food groups to be consumed, nay, devoured by moi. Well, maybe fruits and veggies are at a slight disadvantage… And although I can be finicky about my pizza and pasta, foods I love so much I consider them to be a separate food group, on the whole, I eat indiscriminately.
So when it comes to the perfect meal, or in my case, perfect meals, it isn’t so much a matter of taste or how good the food is as it is a matter of passion, of the emotions food evokes. The perfect meal is also about memory, and discovery. Take, for instance, another perfect meal I had when I was an easily pleased child: pan de sal (Filipino bread) with ketchup as palaman (filling).
The scene unfolded thus: I was looking inside the refrigerator, pan de sal in one hand, searching for palaman. A glance at the condiment section revealed no mayonnaise, no chiz whiz, no peanut butter, no coco jam. In other words, no palaman. Since, to me, pan de sal without palaman is like kanin (rice) without ulam (viand), I had to look for something to spread onto my pan. As if fated, my young, easily pleased eyes fell on a bottle of Papa banana ketchup. An image came to mind, of an older cousin sticking his index finger in a pan de sal, pretending it was a hotdog sandwich. New knowledge settled in my ken like a Catholic-style epiphany… Ah, anything can be palaman, if one wishes it. Mayo, chiz whiz, peanut butter, coco jam. Yes, even index finger. And if index finger, why not ketchup? Why not, indeed. Faultless logic and almost mystical intuition, the same stuff scientific discoveries are made of.
I remember the glee with which I poured a huge dollop of Papa onto my pan de sal, the joy I felt as I bit into my ketchup sandwich, the giggle that escaped my lips even as ketchup dribbled onto my chin. It was the perfect meal, messy and joyous and full of discovery.
I don’t eat ketchup sandwiches anymore. (These days I prefer Mang Tomas Lechon Sauce). And I have had near-perfect meals that involved relatively more sophisticated foods. But I find that, invariably, the best meals I’ve had, I was eating cheap, simple, hearty foods that filled my stomach—without wiping out my pocket—and made my heart glad, whether it’s create-your-own pizza and oily carbonara at Napoli’s or sweet-spicy pork barbecue and salted egg at Beach House in UP.
So much has been said about emotional eating. Mainly, it has been blamed for the increasingly high incidence of weight problems. Diet experts say that the only goal of eating is, or at least should be, nutrition and nothing else. Eat to live, as the old folks liked to say. Therefore, eat routinely and without emotion because emotions invest food with a purpose higher than mere sustenance and staving off of physical hunger.
Many people are embarrassed to admit that they, like every other human being on the planet, do eat emotionally and for reasons that have nothing to do with nutrition. Eating, much like other biological imperatives like sleep and sex, is motivated by things that go beyond the physical. When we eat emotionally, therefore, we assert our ability to push the limits of our biology, even to transcend it. This is admittedly a roundabout way of saying… I am not embarrassed. I admit it. I do eat emotionally. And I never quite understood why I should eat only to live. I eat with joy, with glee, with passion, with love. I eat as I live. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.
bochog
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