When I was small December was the most special month. It began with my mother’s birthday on Dec. 1 followed by my grandmother’s birthday, which was really on Dec. 4, the feast of St. Barbara, but which she always celebrated on the eighth, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Her name was Concepcion Barbara and I was named after her, though I dropped the Concepcion and kept the Barbara after high school. But the Catholic Church dropped St. Barbara from their list of saints sometime in the ’50s. However, I really love my name even if it is saint-less.
From there it would flow into Tita Caring’s birthday on the 15th. She was my mother’s oldest sister. Then Christmas would come along and before you knew it, it was the end of December, the anniversary of Rizal’s execution. There was always something to observe or celebrate in December.
Now they are all gone. Instead I know I have two male cousins with birthdays in early December but they hardly celebrate. Dec. 3 is the birthday of my grandson, Julian, except that he lives in faraway England. Dec. 6 is my mother’s death anniversary but that’s just like a marker. My mother has been gone longer than that to me. When her Alzheimer got worse, she hated me and that sort of marked the moment when she left, when she stopped being my closest friend.
But what does one do? Life is like that. Sometimes it can get very sad. So I go out with my son and we eat steak. I think maybe we are the steak and roast beef authorities in our part of the world. Whenever we get tired or just a bit depressed we go out and eat steak.
Our latest favorite is Studio Kitchen on the second floor of that building of restaurants in Alabang, where Mona Lisa is. Mona Lisa you can see from the street but Studio Kitchen is right beside it. It has the most delicious little chorizo-flavored buns that I always take as my appetizer. It reminds me of the chorizo buns my mother used to bake when I was small. Then they have a huge, wonderful steak, which my son loves and can handle. I can handle it only when I am extremely hungry. It is so huge. Then they have a Snake River Wagyu, equally delicious but smaller portion. Those steaks will take the sorrow off you anytime.
My lament these days is that restaurants tend to cut off the fat from their steaks because of all the anti-cholesterol propaganda. I hate the propaganda and the cutting away of the fat because that is my favorite part. Beef fat is delicious; tastes better than butter. I don’t know why everyone is so afraid of eating meat now and especially eating beef fat. It is supposed to be good for the brain. Wherever I go for steak I ask first if it has fat and I ask them to choose the one with the most fat and give that to me. I don’t believe in having a long, tedious life anyway, cannot imagine myself as a wrinkled 100-year-old worried about how to support myself. I believe in the having the highest quality of life, then dying while I still look all right.
When I need something closer to my home, I like to go to Zuni and drink their vodka martinis, which strangely enough go well with their tenderloin steak with Roquefort topping. That is a good dinner for me. They arrange it so you must have two vodka martinis because they give you two for the price of one and they have a lot of lychees in the martini, which makes it almost taste like a lush, light dessert.
I guess this is about what you can do when the world sort of overwhelms you and you have grown old. You focus on the things you like. You eat and drink and laugh with a friend or two and you have a good time that will put an end to a hectic day and prepare you for tomorrow, probably your next harassing day. You tell yourself, better to have some harassment than nothing at all.
And at my age you bring up memories. I remember when I was very young and unmarried I used to manage the kitchen for my mother, who cooked well but only once in a rare while. I would make us New York-cut steaks. I would season them with lemon, salt and pepper. I would put olive oil in a frying pan and put lots of garlic while the oil was cold. Then when it heated I would throw in the steaks and cook them for a short time. Medium rare is how we liked them.
I will never stop enjoying steaks. You can tell everyone everything about turning vegetarian. I have only one thing to say: Let me eat steak!
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