It feels good

Fashion has been my job for quite some time. I wrote about it and even went so far as to be part of it by launching a small swimsuit and T-shirt line at some point. Try as I might, I was never really as fashion-forward as I should be. I don’t read incredibly trendy magazines with crazy pictures and cutting-edge layouts that deal in obscure references and carry a tone of indifference to the trends.

I know I ought to be more daring, but I like my fashion comfortable. Like the raw food movement or molecular gastronomy, both which fail to move me, I have always preferred pasta in Tupperware with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom as sauce when I want to feel good. I don’t want frozen bacon bits on some raw salmon or an Osterized forest to nourish my soul.

I’m the kind of person who eats in the same restaurant all the time.

Correct that: I’m the kind of person who eats the same thing in the same restaurant all the time. Once in a while I get obsessed with something that keeps things interesting. I’ve been known to go through food phases. It’s a spell that compels me to eat the same thing over and over again, moving heaven and earth if needed, until finally, I can never bear to eat it again.

My marrow phase was the most taxing, memorable and time-consuming of them all. I ate marrow twice a day. I Googled how to cook it and even if it came out more jiggly than it was meant to be, I still ate it. I ate it with bread, rice, sometimes bathed in soup. I read somewhere it was “divine” to have it with some fruit gelée; all I had was a really old jar of grape jelly. It was disgusting. But aside from that, boy, it did feel good.

Now I know marrow is a gourmand’s delight. Good marrow, mind you, not the one churned out in my kitchen out of desperation. Chefs eat it all the time. I dated a French man who was impressed that I ordered marrow for the main course. He thought maybe this little girl from the Philippines knew something about the soul of the French kitchen. We suddenly had something in common. Or so he thought.

I got captivated with marrow purely by accident. My mother decided to cook bulalo on a whim. These whims of hers are grandiose. When she has a whim, it has to be large-scale. So she cooked bulalo in two vats in our kitchen. I ate bulalo for weeks until the vats were done. We’re a family of leftover eaters. We cook to eat leftovers. We love that microwaved feel in our food. We don’t like fresh food, we love heated food. Our fridges are filled with Tupperware containers. Like wine, we believe that Filipino food gets better with age.

This is the taxing part. High cholesterol does not run in our family so at least I knew I wasn’t going to die… yet. I always got a headache after eating it, though. I spent many silent minutes during lunch and dinner scraping the marrow bits from the bottom of the pot. I put it on top of my rice and squeezed kalamansi over it and made a marrow rice pudding. I left the beefy parts to my more sensible brother who didn’t have a death wish. I loved it but my Pilates trainer always asked me if I was nearing that time of the month. I looked “juicy.” I was. You could squeeze marrow out of me if you hugged me tight enough. I was juicy with marrow. I just couldn’t get enough of it, far after the vats have been scraped clean.

I would fool my friends: pick them up and say we were going to eat in some Filipino restaurant but not really giving details. We would end up in a small restaurant in Cavite that had only bulalo on the menu, the only choice being “regular” or “family” size. Now, that’s a confident menu. That’s when you know you’re in the right place. It’s like steakhouses that offer 10 entrees from la mer. WTF? I understand they are just trying to be accommodating. So yes, in today’s very polite society I get it. However, I get a rush when I enter a real steakhouse with just steak and its side escorts on the menu. The best for me is Elbert’s, which is walking distance from my house. It does offer fish, but only in a very small font that makes a big point. I love it when I bite into a caramelized salty bit. Real steak needs rock salt.

Anyway, here we are eating bulalo on a Thursday night after braving two hours of rush hour traffic. Eating meat with a spoon. One of the transcendental joys in life! My friend finds eating marrow disgusting. He probably just saw the movie Hannibal, particularly the airplane scene in the end. Smack. Smack. So this is a great advantage for me and I make him promise to spend Sunday brunch with me here again. He agrees, maybe because my eyes are so big and desperate and my grip is making his skin white.

The marrow is truly getting to me.

As I mentioned earlier, I also cook marrow at home. I bake it with herbs on top and rock salt. Rock salt is a carnivore’s best friend. I served it when I entertained at home during that phase. My friends who were unaware of this phase thought I was trying to be pretentious and highbrow. They knew my version of culinary porn: instant noodles with raw egg and tuyo, sweet spaghetti, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup on top of anything, four-day-old flaked adobo and pasta with cheese and butter. But marrow? It was too off-tangent.

So this is where I strangely juxtapose fashion and food and its role in my life. I guess if you translated my food preferences onto my fashion ideals, I’d be in trouble. Look, I like a great gourmet meal if I have the pleasure to be offered some. Hell, I would even have bacon ice cream from a cyborg chef just for the hell of it. But my all-time favorites are made shamelessly at home.

My taste in food is a reminder of my childhood. I didn’t have swanky parents who fed me sushi when I was in grade school. We ate war food at home. Anything canned, storable and oily was ideal. I eat to feel good. For some, greens are the way to go, but I like mine cheap and salty. After years of crazy dieting (which I realize now is a sin against humanity!) I feel very ashamed of my self-denial. One should be so lucky to eat! Not in copious, Ancient Roman amounts, but simply to appreciate that you have enough on your plate and you don’t have to attend a court hearing just to put something into your mouth. Never mock food.

Being in the fashion/business/writing world (well, sort of), one is expected to undergo foot surgery at some point due to wearing stilettos all the time. I learned to wear heels at age 19. Real ones, that is; before that I was wearing those kitten heels for the kitten me. My best friend taught me how not to die while wearing them. So after months of leaning against tables and walls, I gained my footing, so to speak, and learned to totter in those skyscrapers. Now I only wear them when I’m trying to impress a boy. I now find myself incredibly attracted to more compact men, maybe because my subconscious is telling me that I won’t have to wear heels when things get serious. I’m done with this high-heel business. I did it when I was younger and I had very different priorities. Dieting was one of the priorities then, so go figure. Now I’m a ballet flat girl. I even wear flats with long gowns.

Life is challenging enough, I don’t need to worry about what’s happening south of my ankles. I also wear lots of dresses, not because I’m feminine and old fashioned. It’s so, as Shakespeare says, I can get ready in “one fell swoop.” This get-up is alternated with gym outfits. There are two types of people who go about their day wearing gym outfits: the incredibly athletic kind and the incredibly lazy kind.

Guess which kind I am?

I do exercise. I do old-person exercises. The kind that injured ballerinas do. Gentle exercises. For the gentle me. I can’t do yoga, though. I hear it’s life-changing and all that but I can’t seem to interweave being spiritual with concentrating on my abs. I’m not there yet. I’m hoping to be at some point but for now, I’ll stick with the soulless type of workouts.

I’m not bashing heels, sophisticated food and cardiovascular exercise. It’s just not me. And I had to go through this long journey of experimentation to figure out who I am. I’m no longer wearing heels to get closer to heaven; rather, I’m wearing flats to keep myself grounded. I am nourishing my soul with food made with love and hopefully, at some point, spiritual exercise. But I wear what feels good and eating food that makes me smile. I’m finally feeling good.