nutrition month 2012

When I go home, which is rather infrequent, the people in the house know already what to serve.  You might think that since my brother is a caterer I would be so fond of eating food with foreign sounding names.  At home even during fiesta my menu will be brought in only stealthily upon my arrival even if the buffet table is full of a great variety of food.  Home would always be grilled fish, fresh tomatoes, and dried salted squid.  The fish is ordinary, not the lapu-lapu or tuna types but something you can buy fresh in the wet market a few kilometers away.  If there is soup, the simple fish broth or the simple vegetables is preferred. 

If fancy cooking is served, I prefer those accompanied with memories.  Sotanghon chicken soup and pork barbecue with sauce consisting of vinegar and ginamos, garlic and onion, are always associated with birthdays at home.  Pressured cook chicken with pineapple and mushrooms are always associated with excursions and family outings.  Adobo chicken with lots of tomatoes and vinegar, with the chicken sliced to bite-sizes and with crumbs cooked almost to being burnt, is associated to a typical Sunday meal.  And the best, the kilawin, with pig innards - pig liver, kidneys, intestines, etc, and vinegar aged to perfection is always associated with the fiesta. 

These are good food, the best recipes with simple but strong spices coupled with wonderful memories of my young and carefree days.  Wonderful memories associated with a particular food make a lot of difference in the food.   In other words I grew up in a family at a time when mothers were still considered wonderful cooks and where home cooking is at its best and still eaten where it should be, at home.  Now you can see restaurants offering home cooked meals.  It’s quiet illogical for our age because if I have wanted to eat home-cooked meals, then I would have stayed at home, and not eat in a restaurant.  It was a time when, if you want to treat your guests a good meal on special occasions in your life, you don’t bring them to Tatoys or to Breakthrough, you don’t hold birthdays welcomed, entertained and fed by Ronald McDonald or by a Big Bee.  No, you host it at home with the best cook in the world, our mothers.

I think this is what nutrition month misses greatly - home-cooking, with mothers and fathers as cooks or at the very least supervise our home kitchens. 

When I was your age home cooking avoids several things which contribute to what is wrong in nutrition today with carinderias and fastfood and fancy restaurants.  These are my observations:

First, home cooking does away with the same menu repeated over and over again but instead offers you variety.  Thus we avoid too much of a bad thing.

Second, in home cooking you are forced to eat what is served instead of merely eating what you would have wanted to eat by ordering from a set menu, which, in most cases do not contribute to proper nutrition.

Third, there is no such thing as unlimited at home (unlimited rice, unlimited coke), you always have to share and that means you have to eat less of the same thing.

Fourth, mothers as cooks, or at least kitchens supervised by mothers are always guaranteed to provide the best food although many times it will not be liked, but with father at the head of the table it will be eaten.

I am a believer of eat everything except poison, but you have to watch out for the quantity.  Eat a little of everything - tig-diutay-diutay lang, indi magpatama.  Butang kalamay pero isa lang ka kutsarita; kaon cake, pero gamay lang nga slice, kaon chesse pero duha lang ka kihad.  Kaon steak or hamburger, pero once a week lang; lechon - pero tagsa lang ka piesta.

Obesity and diseases associated with food are somewhat prevalent among the priests probably because people love their priest so much they stuffed us with so much food.  It will always be a great balancing act for a priest to say no to food without being rude on people who believe that we priests are underfed by the amount of food they give us.  That is why I always advise moderation.

Tandaan nyo pirme, everything in moderation.  This is my contention, home cooking, home meals have always taught us moderation.  That is why this afternoon to end our nutrition month you will go home and eat your mothers’ home cooked meals.