Culture

Most of the time I don't notice that I'm married to a Filipino guy, pinoy. Sometimes when he does something odd I might call him "island boy." Ha. This weekend while visiting the fam I took notice of a huge cultural tradition. I'd seen it before, but now that I have a new sister-in-law (Mark's brother's wife, an American) I have a witness. Mark's sister's husband is also an American, but doesn't seem to complain of this particular quirk. It's food. Whenever we visit my mother-in-law she prepares the most delicious Filipino food! It's really very good. The problem is that there is so much of it. I mean there's pounds and pounds of meat...chicken, pork, lamb...caldareta, adobo...coupled with bushels of white rice. It's for dinner, then breakfast, and what-the-hell we'll have it for lunch and snacks, too. Meat and rice.

I once asked if we could incorporate vegetables in a meal and was informed that, yes, there were vegetables, onions. Now I see more potatoes, you know, to go with the rice. (The funny here is that it's starch on starch.) I am happy to report that tomatoes have recently made an appearance here and there. There was a discovery some years back that they are great with the adobo (chicken). And this year, low and behold, there was one meal with steamed broccoli and cauliflower (my doing) and peppered corn (Will, I think).

I made a joke about this phenomena during a dim sum outing and found that nobody else seemed to find it funny. Very gently and carefully, Patricia, Mark's sister, explained to me that it's a cultural thing (I knew that already) and Mark's mom does it to celebrate the family being all together (knew that, too), which only happens about once a year. It's a feast of days and the sons are the guests of honor. She percieves that they want meat, for every meal, for five days. To prepare that much meat for that many people really does take a lot of planning, work and love. I do appreciated her efforts to celebrate our family. There is never a shortage and everyone is left will a full belly.

Okay, so here's the funny part. On our way to the airport, Sarah (my new sister-in-law) was talking about stopping at the grocery to get peanut butter and jelly sandwich fixings. Ah, good, someone who understands my thinking. Now consider what these fixings include: a loaf the bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jelly. No more, no less. So my mother-in-law (whom I love), concerned that Sarah might buy, I don't know, four loaves of bread, says politely "Don't count me in, I don't want any." Sarah and I looked at eachother. Clearly, peanut butter and jelly is not a global custom. One does not count the number of slices of bread, nor quanity in each jar. One just buys the three items and saves the rest for later. It just struck me as so funny that there might be a counting of heads for PB&J. Okay, maybe if it were an overnight of 15 girls.

So food is truly a cultural thing. We Americans take our sandwiches for granted, so do the Filipinas take their adodo.