Of sinigang, pansit, and hot kalamansi juice

The one thing I believe my whole family will attest to is that we cannot think of Dad without remembering food. Mind you, he was never a picky eater, in fact he had this repertoire that he would almost always choose whenever he was asked what he wanted to eat. I guess it was more to the fact that any memorable gathering we had from the time my siblings and I could recall was usually situated about the dining table, always punctuated by Dad looking over our shoulders to check if we were eating heartily enough. And true to his Kapampangan roots he liked nothing more than to be able to offer to us one of his specially-cooked ‘concoctions’ during those gatherings. Don’t get me wrong, we called them ‘concoctions’ not because they tasted weird or funny, but because he always had to make most things uniquely his own. It was almost routine for Dad to look slyly at my Mom while she was taking her first bite, waiting for her to ask, ‘O, what did you put this time?’ to which he would give his winsome smile and laughingly tell us what ingredient he added just to see how it would alter the taste.

Maybe the one dish that my family would unanimously agree was his favorite is the sinigang. Be it flavored with sampaloc, kamias, or even kalamansi cooked with pork, shrimp, or fish, he made them all. And the thicker the soup base, the more veggies it had the better it was for him. Dinner was always peppered by his advices (much as, I believe now, he spiced up his students’ lectures with his quotable quotes) — “Eat your greens because it will prevent colon cancer;” “Don’t put too much toyo because you might ruin your kidneys or get hypertension like me;” “Get more rice so you will have energy later when you study;” and my favorite, “Don’t study right after eating because you might get appendicitis.” (When I eventually finished Medicine I realized that even if I had decided to take up another field I had had exposure to a lot of medical terms already, and curiously enough, even without a medical degree much of what he said actually made sense. ) As for his sinigang, because we had it so often as we were growing up we used to tease him that it was almost coming out of our ears. We actually found it funny when some of my siblings who lived abroad would bring with them sinigang mix when they came home for a visit, improvising with the ingredients with what was available there (like using spinach, broccoli and the like) much the same way Dad did when he cooked. It wasn’t until early this year that I realized how much I had come to consider it as comfort food as well when I started craving it during my very difficult first trimester, eating little else for a while. I believe I detected a small smile from Dad when he first obliged and cooked it for me when I came for a visit, but he was never really one to gloat, and I was happy enough to have been indulged.

A signature dish of his which my siblings and I love was what we called his pancit spaghetti (for lack of a more imaginative name). I think it was out of boredom more than anything else that he decided to use pasta instead of the traditional bihon. Laden with pork, shrimp, green beans, cabbage, carrots, and lots and lots of kalamansi juice it was actually still pancit but had a certain twist to it that we could not really define. Maybe it was the thickened sauce he prepared, the secret spices he seasoned it with (which I sometimes suspect varied with each culinary event to such an extent that were we to ask Dad himself he could not tell us exactly), or just the effort we saw him put into it (I can still imagine him standing over the stove singing Mona Lisa while stirring the ingredients in the pot), but we grew to really enjoy eating it. Even when we grew up and weekends became the only time we had to eat together it was the one thing we would almost always request him to cook when he asked.

From his favorite sinigang, tinola, and nilaga, fresh crabs, fish, and shrimps, to delectable pineapples, lanzones, watermelon, the ever-present bananas, and even the freshly-squeezed glass of hot kalamansi which he would give me when I was sick as a child, these are the things I have grown to associate so closely with Dad. His students have quoted him as saying that one should never live to eat, but rather simply to eat to facilitate living, and it is true. It was never about the food for him. In fact, the simpler, and the less ornate it was, the better. It was about having the family gather together and laugh, while allowing the food to serve simply as backdrop to the occasion. It was about the effort taken to prepare a meal for the people you love; about the thought gone into remembering to buy the fruits in season because it is someone’s favorite; the concern shown towards anyone invited to join at the table, making sure that everyone felt welcome and a part of the family.

While dinners will probably never be the same without you Dad, we hope we keep to heart these important, though not-always-so-obvious things in life.