A Moment of Epiphany

There have been many momentous occasions in my life, some of them large (graduating from college!) and small (my first chain of single crochets!). But this one I feel strikes a chord that was more like "I always knew I could do this, but I always denied it".

I am a baker. Less so a "cook", but I'm adequate at making meals. However, baking is what really gets me inspired and motivated.

Let me tell you a little story:

Growing up, my mother cooked Filipino desserts and sold them to various Filipino bakeries and stores all over San Diego. I guess you could say "caterer", but the word sounds too cold and American for what my mother made. What my mother created was culture and community and memory. She would make carioca, bibingkang malagkit, suman sa lahiya, pitsi-pitsi, kutsinta, puto, maha blanca, cassava cake, and a host of other things depending on what people ordered and if my mother wanted to make it.

Year later, what she made for me was what I remember is feeling like I'm at Home.

What I like about cooking is the sense of agency that one has while they're cooking. Consuming the food is a community endeavor (and a part of the cooking process I enjoy a lot!), but the actual making is really only a solitary activity. Sometimes you have more than one person cooking, but usually that involves teaching and learning. Once you have the cooking aspect down though- it is usally room for one in the kitchen. As the saying goes, "too many cooks in the kitchen" is a negative thing.

This blog is for my mother, the First Cook of my life, and really everytime I cook I feel connected to her even though she lives many many miles away. So that's why I say its "diwa" on many levels, but cooking is almost spiritual in a way.