Passing on Lolo and Lola's Filipino Food Recipes

When you’re yearning for that Filipino food fix, where do you go? The modern Pilipino fusion joint in the city? The nearest Jollibee for some sweet spaghetti and fried chicken? The turo-turo restaurant for some instant ulam (dishes)? The bakery selling pan de sal, fresh out of the oven? For the fortunate Pilipinos and Fil-Ams, our answer is: home. Nothing beats our favorite Pilipino dishes like the ones created and perfected by our family.

Recipes have been passed down for generations, thus becoming as much a part of holiday gatherings at the attendees at the table. For instance, some dishes that never fail to make it to our holiday and celebration spreads include my mom’s lumpia, my auntie’s fruit salad and my grandma’s (or lola's) cassava cake.

When I was in high school, my mom told me to call my grandma to ask her for her cassava cake recipe. She had made it many times before when she lived with us, but I was too busy with my childhood duties – such as rollerblading, concocting potions with berries and leaves, and making mud traps for the mountain cats that prowled around the backyard at night – to appreciate it.  So, I called up my grandma, who had moved back out to California for work, and asked her to divulge her recipe secrets to me. This proved to be a success, as I’m now responsible for making it during holidays, parties, and whenever someone is craving it. Cassava cake is easily my family’s favorite dessert. I have learned to bake two batches, or risk being scolded by everyone (including my younger siblings) for not making enough. When I was in the Philippines last year, I had the chance to make it from scratch; there’s no kitchen workout like grating cassava!

Unfortunately, my personal Pilipino recipe book remains quite bare. When I’m home, I tend to spend most of my time in the kitchen. It is in this most sacred room of my home that I learned my parents' Adobo and Sinigang recipes. But this isn’t enough. When I am finally stateside again, I will resume my place as sous (and sometimes head) chef in the kitchen, picking up more Pilipino dish and dessert recipes. As a young Pilipina, it is my responsibility to preserve the cuisine that helps define our palette and lifestyle. There are so many dishes I have no idea how to make, and it’d be a shame if they were lost. I hope to build up my recipe repertoire; not just with Pilipino dishes, but with all the tricks of the cooking trade that my family continues to employ in the kitchen and during backyard BBQ cookouts.

Next on my list: Pinakbet.

Photo credits: All I Wanna Do is Bake and Ang Sarap

Introducing UniSpotlight

New this week to UniPro's list of community building events and initiatives is "UniSpotlight." UniSpotlight is an online series of video interviews that showcases notable Filipino Americans in the community here on the East Coast. They will be sharing their stories and discussing their current or upcoming projects. The new project allows us to inform our network of young professionals and students to connect with interesting leaders and organizations.

UniSpotlight #01 - Ron Morales is the writer and director of the independent film, Graceland. The film was a featured selection in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, Fantasia 2012, Fantastic Fest 2012 and is the winner of Best Narrative Feature in the San Diego Asian Film Festival 2012. The film will be premiering nationwide in 20+ cities on April 26th and staying in theaters until May 2nd. 

(They have a screening in lower east side at the Village East Cinema and will be holding a Q&A session on Sunday 4/28 and 4/30 at the 7:50pm screening)

Graceland is about a family man named Marlon Villar - a longtime chauffeur to corrupt Filipino politician Manuel Chango - is faced with an unthinkable predicament when he is ambushed while driving both his boss's and his own daughter home from school one afternoon. In the chaos of the kidnapping attempt, things go horribly awry and Marlon's daughter is taken and held for ransom instead. Desperate to save his daughter, Marlon must navigate the conflicting motives between the ruthless kidnappers, untrustworthy Chango and determined detectives eager to name him a suspect without letting on the wrong girl was taken hostage. As events spin wildly out of control, Marlon, Chango and their families are forced into a rapid downward spiral of deceit and betrayal that will leave no one innocent.

For inquires or interested in being on UniSpotlight, email meriden.villanueva@unipronow.org.

Planning Summit 2013

Note from the editor: This text was originally delivered as a speech to the UniPro staff at April's staff meeting as written and performed by UniPro Vice President, Iris Zalun. For more information about UniPro's third annual Summit, or to purchase early bird admission (offer valid until 4/30), visit the event's Facebook event page. Scarily enough, Summit 2013 is quickly approaching. Even though it’s stressful, even though I’m losing sleep over it, even though Gecile and I spend hours and hours every week in meetings talking about logistics, speakers, the itinerary … I still love this shit.

But I didn’t always. Last year, as most of you already know, I was the Summit speaker chair. Which means I was in direct contact with almost 39 community figures and had to make sure they would actually show up on June 2nd. THAT is stressful. The emails, the meetings, the late hours … I asked myself, “Why? Why am I even doing this?” I wasn’t getting paid for what was essentially a second full time job. No one was. How was planning a small conference for a bunch of Filipino kids going to help me at all?

But I realized during last year’s Summit, it wasn’t about just helping myself. Last year, through all that hard work, through my bugging speakers for their bios, photos, magazine responses, and for their commitment to come to Summit at all, through the hard work of our co-chairs Rachelle and Judy, and our entire staff … we contributed to something bigger than ourselves, to the “Renaissance” of our people. It was a day to celebrate the successes of individuals from our community, from Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga, which builds sustainable communities in slum areas, to Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant, fighting for immigration reform, to Ayesha Vera Yu, who worked as an investment banker then used her business knowledge to found Advancement for Rural Kids, investing in poor, malnourished children in rural areas of the Philippines to help them climb out of poverty. It was a day to celebrate these individuals and to recognize the progress of the community due to their work, but also to acknowledge that more needs to be done. It was a day to inspire the eager delegates like us, the passionate leaders like us, the ambitious young lawmakers, nurses, and writers like us, who will take up the struggles of our community and the unfinished work of Tony Meloto, Jose Vargas, and Ayesha Yu, to make positive and tangible change.

Being in UniPro, to be sure, is damn hard work. Once in a while, all I want to do is just go home, not talk to anyone, and watch The Walking Dead in my bed. But I can’t b/c more often than not, I’m Google hanging out with at least three of you. Do I really care about watching Rick kill zombies? I mean, a little bit, but mostly no, because at the end of the day, I care about our development as leaders for the ultimate purpose of helping our community.

Filipino historian Renato Constantino said, and I’ve quoted him before, “Leadership is the opportunity to learn.” One reason why we are in UniPro is because in order to solve issues, we have to learn about the issues. Did you know that one in ten Filipina women aged 15-49 has experienced sexual violence? That the voter turnout rate among Fil Ams in ‘04 and ‘08 was at less than 10%? That the Philippines still adheres to laws set in place during the Spanish era? This, and so much more, is the kind of information our peers need to know, and which I learned because of UniPro.

Learn from our own events and from the amazing work of other community organizations. BAYAN-USA and its many chapters confront problems such as the trafficking of Filipino migrants. PAGASA provides programming for our senior citizens. FALDEF, AF3IRM, FACE, Kalusugan Coalition, Leviathan Lab … they all have worthy causes and it is our job as UniPro to provide a platform for them to reach the community.

The “community.” We always talk about the “community.” Who are the faceless and nameless members of the “community” that we are working so hard for? They are our peers - the youth who are curious about the issues, or who feel passionate about certain campaigns but may not have the knowledge or tools to take action. They are the disenfranchised and the underrepresented. They are the undocumented immigrants, hiding and afraid, whose families brought them here to pursue a dream, but whose “illegal” status is preventing them from following their own dreams. They are the migrant workers, vulnerable and eager for jobs, who are tricked into being trafficked. They are the hungry children who drop out of school to sell dried flowers in the streets, already broken by a system that has failed them. We cannot pass up this opportunity to help those whom opportunity has passed over. UniPro is that opportunity. Rise and grab it.

The State of Undocumented Immigrants

Note from the Editor: This post was submitted by emerging leader, Adinah Lagud. Adinah will be attending the upcoming State of Undocumented Immigrant Rights and Resources at the Philippine Consulate on April 18 at 6PM. Click here for more information about the event, to which you are invited to attend. The immigration debate, in recent weeks has garnered a substantial amount of attention in Congress. Though not a new issue, this increased attention was brought about by a bipartisan group in Congress known as the “Gang of Eight”. These members have been working on an all-inclusive immigration reform plan to present to Congress. With the rekindling of this national argument, I believe that it is particularly important for young leaders in the New York community, i.e. college students and Filipino organizations, to become actively engaged and cognizant of an issue that directly impacts the future of the Filipino and Fil-Am community.

As a leader in my own Filipino organization at Stony Brook University, I’ll readily admit if I was asked about my views on immigration a year ago today, I would have shrugged my shoulders in indifference. Not because I didn’t care about those struggling around me, but because I did not take the time to educate myself in order to formulate an opinion. I had ignorantly viewed “illegal” immigration as a matter pertinent to the west coast and their undocumented workers. After all, growing up in a conservative Southern town, that was dialogue surrounding me. I didn’t realize that the Philippines came in second (only after Mexico) in the number of annually distributed family based visas. These are the same visas that some members of Congress are looking to decrease. Not to mention that some petitions dating back to 1990 are still backlogged, so Filipinos have been waiting over twenty years to be reunited with their families.

In regards to undocumented immigrants living in the United States, people who relocated here as minors are able to apply for President Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” but only a little over 3,000 undocumented Filipinos have applied nationwide. To put this into context, 2009’s estimated amount of unauthorized immigrants from the Philippines was 270,000. It’s safe to assume, many are not taking advantage of the resources available to them. Whether it is caused by fear, shame, misunderstanding, or pride, immigration reform is not a topic limited to other minority groups, we Filipinos are standing at the forefront of this issue.

I urge young adults, students, and Filipino clubs to take this up as an important issue to be educated on. We need to support organizations and institutions in our community who are working towards creating a viable way to distribute information and resources on immigration. If we collectively become informed and engaged on this debate, we have the power to thwart incorrect assumptions on undocumented immigrants and the immigration process as a whole within the Filipino and New York community.

You Bring Out the Filipina in Me, A Poem

In the spring of my junior year in college, I decided to write a poem every single day for an entire year. This project evolved into something much more. I decided to continue writing until Commencement exercises, until the day I had my diploma in hand. Today, my project stands at 390 days, with 391 individual poems; early on in the project I had so much to say, that I ended up writing two pieces for one day. During this journey, I expected my pens to pour out my thoughts and troubles. I wanted to make space in my cluttered mind, and be at peace with myself. So, I kept a paper with me at all times, scribbling in the margins of class notes and my planner. Any emotion that I was feeling, or event I was experiencing, I tried to capture it in a concise handful of words. At the end of the day, I’d sit down for about an hour to piece together my thoughts. Most nights, I’d begin three or four different poems before deciding on a common theme or concept. Then, I’d just go with it. This often meant most of my poems were written between the hours of midnight and 3:00am.

In February of my senior year, I attended the East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) conference. I went with a few of my closest friends from William & Mary’s Filipino American Student Association; we embarked on road trip from Williamsburg, VA, down to Duke University in North Carolina. There, we had the opportunity to meet amazing leaders in the Asian American community and participate in various workshops.

As a young writer and poet, I immediately chose to attend the "Spoken Word and Activism" workshop, facilitated by Bao Phi. In the workshop, we watched and discussed 1700% Project: Misaken for Muslim, a piece by Anida Yoeu Ali, which challenges racial profiling and hate crimes against those perceived as Muslim or Arab. Afterwards, Phi shared some of his own pieces. One that stood out was titled You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me.  I connected with the piece instantly, as it inspired me to write my own version as part of my poetry project.

It’s been a year since I wrote this poem. I’ve only performed it a couple times before some close friends, but I’ve been too afraid to share it because it never seemed relevant for any of the open mic events I’ve attended. After my project ended, I started reading through all of my poems, from start to finish. It’s really interesting to see how my writing has evolved over the course of my project.

Originally posted as Day 314, I present it to you now. Maybe I’ll have the courage to perform it on stage one day.

Inspired by: Sandra Cisneros’ “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me” and Bao Phi’s “You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me”

You bring out the Filipina in me.

The jeepney-riding miracle worker. The island sweetheart of art. The gutom na ako, but not really in me.

You bring out the Filipina in me. The war-stricken tropical paradise, pained by martial law under Marcos, trampled by the feet of Imelda and her closet of over a thousand shoes.

The anti-Colonialist mindset that might set the world on fire. The tainted skin that refuses lightening creams. The Illocano and Kapangpangan and Tagalog and Spanish rolled into a single dictionary in me. The easy to assimilate into American culture because of English-infused classrooms in the motherland.

The Magandang Gabi, lechon-eating, Soon-to-be doctor and lawyer in me. The OFW working in the Middle East, sending remittances back to children, or the daughter of a US Navy officer, for he joined the Americans out of necessity. And yet you still bring out the true Filipina in me.

The young, activist peacemaker, that yearns to clean up corrupt acts that plague the Philippine Sea. The “I want to return to the homeland to give back” because that all I’ve worked for. The wealth of knowledge, once I graduate from college, need to make a difference in me.

You are the one I turn to, and turns to me for love, for my home is built with always-open doors. With it’s plastic-covered couches, fully-stocked pantry piled high with cans of Spam, dried manga, sweet condensed milk walis-swept tiled floors, and sometimes kneeling on piles of kanin for being naughty in me.

You bring out the feisty, ghetto-fabulous wannabe itim in me. Yeah I said it. The lover of all R&B

and jammin’ to old school rap in me.

You are the rays of sun on my very own flag, the guiding stars that surround me.

You have taught me the truth of mahal kita and salamat, for I love to give thanks when it is not required.

Oo : you, have been woven into the mosquito nets that shield me. You are the protector of me.