Most of the first memories I have of food take place in my grandmother’s house in Quezon. I remember very vividly sitting with my yaya at the long, wood table in the dirty kitchen where I was being fed a simple meal of rice and munggo. Back when I actually liked munggo. It was at this same dirty kitchen that I would escape to years later when I got too tired from walking the Santacruzan in my vintage ‘60s gown, and eat pancit luglug cooked by the housekeeper, Aling Conching. I remember many fiestas when I would be woken up at dawn by the squealing of a pig, fighting for his life not to be that day’s lechon. All the cousins would jockey for the crispiest piece of skin and the best place at the table. But what would interest me then (as it does know) would be dessert. The best dessert would be when my lola would ask the sorbetero to make buko sherbet and send along a couple of cans of lychees to mix in. I would peer down the cold metal bucket cradled by ice and salt, hoping for seconds and thirds.
