Writing about food from one’s personal experiences in the kitchen has become one of the most vibrant components of the blogosphere. Food bloggers painstakingly post photos of their culinary experiments on their sites, complete with step-by-step guides and even historical backgrounders of the dish or cuisine at hand.

This week, we focus on the small but interesting band of Pinoy food bloggers who are scattered all over the world and yet  remain Filipino in spirit. Ting Aling, who can be found at www.worldclasscuiscene.blogspot.com, is an accountant based in Vancouver Canada. Celia Kusinera  is a mom who lives in the Greater London area. Her site, located at http://desarapen.blogspot.com, is aptly titled “English Patis.” Jeanette, or JMom, who showcases her specialties at http://inourkitchen.blogspot.com, looks after her hubby and three daughters down south in Durham, North Carolina. Stef over at www.stefoodie.net, is based in Northeast Pennsylvania and is aboutweblogs.com's network
blogger on Asian food. Karen hosts Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans over at http://karen.mychronicles.net  and is one of the youngest food bloggers around. She calls herself “an entrepreneur and a policy researcher who has no formal cooking training.”
 
Okay, let’s get started with this exciting roundtable discussion on food, glorious food!: 

Q.  If you were to invite at least four people to a sitdown dinner, who would you invite and why?

Ting Aling: I would invite my husband, two kids and my sister.  I know you probably think I am boring.  Yes, I have none of those wishes to sit down with the President of the United States or the Director of this and that.  Dinner for me is a combination of gastronomic explorations and of good, lively dinner conversations.  I want to be comfortable while dining and at the same time eager to try new things.  I don't want to be anxious about whether I cooked my recipe the proper way or I served enough.  I always dread that a person I invite for dinner does not like what I prepared.

Celia : Eric Clapton, because over the years I always fail to buy tickets to his concerts due to them being sold out within minutes ! He has to sing for his supper of course. Jane Austen - one of my favourite authors. I bet she's as witty in person as her fictional characters. Andres Bonifacio – matapang na tao nga kaya siya? For him, I will serve a fiery spicy dish. My HighSchool Physics teacher - so that I can tell her how her  her constant haranguing of our section left me and other classmates to have a 'phobia' of the subject which took me years to overcome. For her, Baygon-laced red-tide seafood! (joke lang…)

JMom: If I were to invite four people to a sitdown dinner, I would invite my food blogging kumares, and it would probably be more than four, and it probably won't be a proper sitdown dinner, it would be a kitchen party. I would invite Karen, TingAling, CeliaK , Thess the Suplada herself, Stel the Baby Rambutan, Ajay who is munchin’ in Manila, Toni with the wifely steps, and of course the Pinoy Cook herself, Sassy.  Stel  actually had a virtual party like this recently, and it was a blast!

Stef: My hubby -- because no matter what i cook, even if it's a disaster, he'll eat it.My parents -- because they're the wind beneath my wings.My 2 brothers -- because they're foodies like I am. I also won’t forget my late lolo -- because he was such a foodie, and a lot of us, his kids and grandkids, inherited his love of food.

Karen: Friends. Getting together with my closest friends is always time well-spent. We usually have wonderful conversations, from the most mundane to some profound topics. Sometimes, we unknowingly resolve the major issues of our lives by threshing them out in the open.

Q. If your food blog was a dish, , what would it be?

Ting Aling: Hot Sinigang.  Mainit, tamang asim, kumpletong sahog.  I try to cover everything, from appetizers, main course, dessert.  I love exploring other countries' specialties.  I try to accommodate readers' requests.  Sometimes I get a few e-mails saying kulang yung sinabi kong sukat ng asin but to me, taste is relative.  I post my recipes more as a guide.

Celia K: A combo platter - you know a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I don't usually dwell on just one type of dishes I like to sort of explore from starters to main dishes to desserts.

JMom: it would be a seafood gumbo. Although gumbo is a very Southern dish, its components incorporate a lot of Filipino ingredients. It is literally a melting pot of a little bit of everything in the kitchen.  It is also soupy, and comforting, and healthy with its numerous vegetables, and you can make it spicy or not.

Stef: Uhm, halo-halo?  LOL

Karen: Something low-key and very native but can be dressed up to face the world if the situation calls for it. Perhaps it would be rice paddy snails. Prepared with ginger and sili leaves, they're peasant food but they can also be fancy as escargot.

Q. What’s your most memorable kitchen adventure?

Karen: The most memorable catastrophe bar none happened when I was nine and burnt a pot of tagilo (burong hipon). It's still the one which stands out because I was scolded by my grandmother for days. One may say that's too much for a child but if you consider that fermentation takes 3-5 days, a burnt pot is a waste of materials, time and effort. I suppose that's my turning point for learning respect for food

Stef: There was this one time I cooked chicken breasts for my hubby, then
boyfriend -- it was baked in lemon and honey and the instructions
said to cook it for four hours -- which I did.  Needless to say it
turned out like "bato".  Guess what, the boyfriend still ate it and declared it
delicious (I was so relieved he didn't lose any teeth).  That's probably when I knew for sure I was going to marry him. 

JMom: My most memorable cooking adventure was my best and worst rolled into one. My first Thanksgiving Dinner. When I first met my turkey-loving husband, one of his first requests was an old fashioned turkey dinner like his momma made. I'm open to most anything, so I said, sure, I'll give it a try.  So while prepping the turkey, I made sure I washed its cavity properly, inspected it for stray feathers, but alas, they must have neglected to put back the gizzards and liver back in the cavity for all I found was the neck. I was really wanting those for the gravy, but, I figured I could do without them, I'll use something else to flavor the gravy.  This turkey came out of the oven in it's golden glory, good enough for a Norman Rockwell painting. All the sides were also delicious. Everyone raved at my first solo thanksgiving dinner…  that is, until it was time for seconds. My brother-in-law to be cut into the last piece of breast meat, when he said, hey what's this? and proceeded to pull out a plastic bag from the neck cavity, dripping with bloody juices. Eureka! we have found the missing bag of liver and gizzards!  Needless to say, that was the last of the second helpings.

Celia: My earliest memorable kitchen adventure was when I first attempted to bake a layered chocolate cake back when I was in the Philippines. I got all my Pyrex baking pans ready, Betty Crocker's cookbook ready,even  went to Rustan's and South supermarkets for my ingredients. That night I got down to the business of doing it  but I completely forgot to put in the sugar in the batter!!   Kun todo nilagyan ko pa ng icing in the middle and all around. Tapos nung tinikman namin naku - phwoarrr!  Ang pait ! Hehehe!  But my father - bless his heart - pinagtiyagaan ang luto ng anak niya. Naubos din niya after 1 week.

Ting Aling: One night, my family was craving for Pizza.  When I say craving, they were not just craving but were also willing to pool their funds just to have the best pizza there was that night.  Frugal mom as I am, I decided to buy pizza shells from the grocery instead and prepared my own with a few foreign ingredients here and there.  I think that was a few days before payday.  It turned out soggy and funny tasting that we had to put an emergency order from Pizza Hut.  To this day, no one has dared to express their pizza craving anymore unless I brought it out myself. 

Q. What are your observations of the food blogosphere?  As a Pinay food blogger, what do you think is your role in  in promoting Filipino food globally?

Karen: What I notice is a close-knit community who have online and offline events which make their authors and readers aware of other cultures and food preparation practices. For me, reading food blogs also make me better understand my own culture, like similar cooking methods, the genealogy of Filipinised Hispanic food and that which we share with our neighbours, the one that Doreen Fernandez calls our Malay matrix.

My original intent was to document the fast vanishing recipes from my hometown and make them accessible online. One good by-product of this is, I am told, is that it shows others, even non-Filipinos the many facets of our culture as I always write down the context surrounding a particular dish. By knowing more about the background from which our cuisine comes from, I hope others would appreciate Filipino food better.

Stef: I think of my role as somewhat of a liaison:  to the uninitiated I can be a guide, a teacher, someone to hold people's hand as they make their way through the maze of Pinoy food choices.  I'd like the world to know that our food is interesting.  It's exciting.  It's versatile.  I'd like them to know that Pinoy food is not just adobo and pancit and lumpia. That our food can be healthy.  That our food does not have to be labor-intensive. 

But there are two sides to this coin:  my other goal is to help Pinoys think differently about our food; I want them to realize that our cuisine can be good without having to be laden with fat and other unhealthy stuff.  That there's a way to enjoy our food without forgetting to take care of yourself.  I also would like to encourage all Pinoys, no matter where they are, to look into growing some of their own food, kahit pechay lang, or sitaw, or kamatis, or talong.  Not all of us will want an agriculture degree (I don't have one), but I feel that more than ever, our generation and subsequent ones need to get to know the land intimately, because it's what feeds and sustains us.  We need to reawaken the connection that our forefathers had with the earth.  We need to witness the journey that a seed takes from the time it is sprinkled into the dirt to the time it is harvested and prepared for our tables:  the Filipino table.  That journey is elemental as it is spiritual, but ignored or forgotten all too often in our unending quest for speed and efficiency and high-tech everything.

JMom: If there is a Filipino gospel on food I would like to spread, it is our love of food and celebrations. Our lives revolve around food, food is our driving force, literally and metaphorically. Food should not be a tool, a means to an end. Every meal should be a celebration of food. We celebrate not only because there is food on the table to nourish us, but we should also savor food, make love to it. Don't wolf it down just so you can go on to the next thing on your list of to-dos. Food is meant to be shared. Ever notice how unappetiing it is to eat alone?....well, except at 1 in the morning with a bowl of ice cream over a rich brownie.

Celia: As Sassy Lawyer said, food bloggers have this mutual admiration society which is true. We try to spur and encourage each other on while helping out through  tips and techiniques.

My role? I think I'm just a miniscule part of making people outside of the Philippines be aware of the virtues and nuances of our cuisine. I believe I also contribute in helping fellow Filipinos adapt our dishes to ingredients available in the West.

Ting Aling: A lot of foodies have already come out.  It's fast becoming a replacement for recipe books for me anyways.  The only thing is, I have to make sure that I get to the right sites. 

(To be continued…for inquiries/comments, email annalyn.jusay@gmail.com)