Filipino: We are what we Eat

When I was in the Philippines, I don't care what kind of food I ate; Filipino, Italian, and Japanese. The food that I ate depends on my taste of that day. Mostly of course is our Filipino dish. Like sinugba, kinilaw, adobo, steam okra with vinegar, pansit and nilagang manok. And all kinds of native dish such as bulad, ginamos, and papait. As they say, what you eat is who you are.

 I have just observed from the previous months, from my friends here on Maui. They have Filipino ancestors. One has 50% and the other one has 25% Filipino by blood. Even they don’t raise and born neither in the Philippines nor visit the Country but they still have Filipino in their blood. I say this because the way they ate. They also longed the steam half cooked okra with vinegar in which maybe how their Filipino ancestors prepare food those times. They sometimes cook nilagang manok (chicken soup with papaya) as what their ancestor taught them. As my friend told me today she sometimes cooks and eats the Filipino dishes. And she is 25% Filipino by blood.

I hope we will value our food and our culture and teach our new generations to embrace who they are and be proud of it. When we are out of the country, we're not only represent ourselves as individual but we represent our country as a whole. And one of this is the way we eat.