I did not grow up playing curiously around a kitchen table, cookie batter on my fingers and face, with pots and pans as my playmates. But I was good friends with our dining table – a round dining table with a lazy Susan on it, white and shiny.
Right before the kitchen, in an alcove, was our fridge; and beside it, a wrought-iron square stand wedged with shelves. That was one of our favorite spots. One shelf held coffee and its friends, but the rest were devoted to ready-to-eat treats of different kinds and in many flavors and shapes. There was the ubiquitous blue-and-red square Skyflakes tin, a round one that held Titay’s rosquillos, galletas, packets of dried fruit, mangoes, usually; chips, cookies and many other colored packets that were balms for either hungry bellies or nonsensical cravings. There was always something delicious happening on that wrought-iron rack.
But even more delicious were those that happened behind it, beyond the walled partition. In the kitchen, Yaya Juling would be making pork tapa from scratch and Yaya Hilda would be curing ham. Homemade: I just love the way that sounded, more so the way it tasted.
Yaya Juling was also famous for her jelly roll, and because she was such a good storyteller, we ate up her stories with as much gusto as we did her special sweet treat. Mommy always told us, although my sister and I were too young to remember it, that whenever she would have the flu, Yaya Juling would roll into the bedroom a rectangular service tray with wheels, about the size of a personal ref resting on its side, and on the surface, she would prepare her jelly roll for baking, all the while regaling Mom with her stories, making her laugh more than she really should. Yaya Juling was like a friend first, a house girl next. She was very young when my mom took her in, and she practically grew up in our house. She was crazy, in a happy kind of way. She laughed with us when we were glad, cried more than us when we were sad. Yes, she was family. All the way until my mom married her off to a good Australian man. To this day, she still keeps in touch, is happily married, and has two good-looking kids. And as a sideline, she makes siopao, lots of it. The Australians in her neighborhood love it and cannot seem to get enough of it. The money she earns from all the siopao she sells, she saves up. That is what she uses to buy plane tickets for her and her family when they come to the Philippines for a visit.
Mealtime was always a family affair in our house. All activity stopped for lunch and dinner. We always took our meals together; it was quality time like no other. To ensure that it would be satisfying for everyone, the cook would, each night before retiring, list down the menu for the next day. She would ask all of us what we wanted to eat, and from there, she would find a common ground for all. At mealtime, no one complained, no food was wasted. And unlike the stories I grew up hearing from the maids about the other households they once worked in, the cook did not have to pull out her hair, trying to figure out what to serve four always-hungry, growing children, plus parents who loved to eat.
As such, whatever was served on top of that lazy Susan was, eight out of 10 times, food we really liked to eat. Mealtime was always something to look forward to. Sure there were some hits and misses – the overcooked pasta, the over-seasoned fish, the too-pale and too-bland chicken, the undercooked slab of barbecued meat. But there was more of the good than the bad. The meals made for happy memories growing up, and I somehow trace my constant love for food today to those times.