What's on the menu?

Greetings friends and family!

This post is dedicated to all things scrumptious and delectable. What, you might ask yourself, is Kelly actually eating while in the Philippines?
For those whose first question is actually “Why should Kelly’s food intake be something that I am wondering about?”, first let me draw a deep breath. Will someone start the stopwatch? I am a phenylketonuric; I have phenylketonuria (PKU), a heritable metabolic disorder. Normal human metabolisms convert excess amounts of phenylalanine (Phe), an amino acid naturally occurring in most proteins, into tyrosine. Phe is a neurotoxin in large concentrations, whereas tyrosine is not. My body lacks the mechanism by which this transformation is accomplished, so I must carefully monitor my diet to limit my intake of Phe. This means eating very little natural protein and relying on a medical dietary supplement to fill in the sizeable nutritional gaps. Categories of food that constitute “gaps” here are meat, fish, dairy products, most grains, nuts, beans (including soy), and some vegetables. Basically, anything about which your parents ever said, “Make sure to eat all of your ___or no dessert!” I was diagnosed nine days after birth, so I have never tasted any of these foods. Pizza, burgers, peanuts, you get the picture. I actually had dinner Friday night with my boss Andrey and a new friend of IJM’s who just happens to have gluten and lactose allergies. Between my diet and his, our waitress must have been sweating bullets.

So – I live on specialty foods, potato products, fruits, most vegetables, and some cereals. Other than making the grocery cashier look twice at the ridiculous contents of my shopping cart, it doesn’t really present a problem in the US. Here in Cebu, the food staples are a little different. Pork here in Cebu is pretty much everywhere and in everything. Walk down the street for about ten minutes, you should see at least two whole roasting pigs, called lechon. If there’s not pork in a meal, there will be chicken or seafood – fish, dried or not, shrimp, mussels, something. This is true even for the “vegetarian” dishes. The word vegetarian is understood in the Philippines much as it was in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Cebuanized: He doesn’t eat meat?! That’s okay, we’ll have pork!

Luckily, my Filipino friends and I have one staple in common – rice. I love rice, they love rice. Filipinos say that it’s not a meal if there’s no rice. It’s just not filling. Sure, I can dig it. That means any provided meal at some sort of social or work function will invariably have rice and I will be able to eat. Sweet. However, Filipinos also say that while it’s not a meal without rice, rice itself is no meal either. Kan-on, the cooked rice, just is not eaten without some form of sud-an, or meat/fish/seafood/noodle dish to eat with it. So picture the faces of the Filipinos as they watch this tall (oh, I’ll be sad to come back if only for that reason – I’m a giant here!) Westerner get in line for lunch. Delighted smiles greet me as I shovel a heap of rice on to my plate. They nod approvingly to one another – this is one whiteboy who at least eats properly! They eagerly watch me survey the sud-an options before me. “What of our food does he like?” they wonder. Surely the pancit (glass noodles) and, of course, a nice helping of lechon. Of course he will take the lechon, he’s probably still growing, the freak. Suddenly, their faces drop. Approval turns to confusion and then shifts to dismay as, having noted all the meat and fish in each option on the table, I return to my table and promptly begin attacking a pile of plain rice. Heathen!!

Seriously, I have had to repeat four and five times to the same people how and why I eat rice plain. When I explain the rest of my diet, I am often met with the shocked response, “…but you’re so tall! Yet you eat nothing!” Not the truest of statements, but certainly one of the most oft-repeated. I do eat other things here aside from rice. As I said before in a previous post, there are two western supermarkets within walking distance of my apartment, so I have access to a few of the foods I would eat at home. I also brought some specialty foods with me – little candies made of fake chocolate and a phe-deficient protein bar that also masquerades as chocolate. The candies, incidentally, perpetrate a much more convincing fraud. Seriously, the put cocoa butter in this bar and they think that makes it taste like chocolate. Ask me for a taste next time you see me, you can be the judge.

But I digress. My pantry is not chock full, but I get by rather well. Dry cereal for breakfast – at home, I would put liquid coffeemate on it, but no such product here. And just In case you were wondering, you cannot mix the powdered coffeemate with water and get the same effect. Been there, done that, not pretty. Anyway, dry cereal for breakfast. Lunch consists of a lunch-sized chips portion, non-chocolate bar, fake candies, a nice fruit cup, and applesauce. Sound like a lunch a third grader would bring to school in a plastic lunchbox? Maybe so. Does it do the job? Absolutely. Dinner here is a bit odd. I might steam up some rice, which provides dinners for the next two to three nights in addition just because it makes more sense to do it like that. Anyone looking for my immense cooking talents, in case you blinked, those were they. Operating my rice cooker is about as close to cooking as I get. I have a few spices and olive oil I put on the rice, but given the stickiness and consistency of rice-cooker rice, I might end up abandoning them. If I don’t have rice, new or old, I’ll have either Pringles (yes, twice in one day) or popcorn. I’ll often supplement with some juice and fruit, dried or otherwise. The fruit in Cebu is by and large delicious, especially the pineapple (pina) and the mangoes (mangga). Cebu is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost mango producers. Unfortunately for me, I’m not a huge fan of raw mango. Dried is pretty tasty, but not so much raw. I’m sure I’ll sing a different tune in a few months, but for now, no thanks. In fact, my tune about cooking in general might change drastically as I tire of these foods. No time like the present for a little kitchen wizardry experimentation, right?

I don’t eat out much, but when I eat out, I might get a salad (depending on the location, if it’s high quality enough to have washed the vegetables in filtered water), more plain rice, or French fries. Finding plain fries here is not easy. More often they are flavored somehow. Barbeque is particularly common, which is simply strange. Not too bad, though a bit strange. Other than that, my options out are a bit limited.

That’s pretty much it. To sum up: one of the first Cebuano phrases I learned was how to say “Plain rice only, nothing else please.” I won’t bother putting it here, only because somehow I don’t think you’ll get too much use out of it, should you come here. Hmmm, maybe I should write a PKU language phrasebook…

Anyway, take care everyone! You are all in my thoughts and prayers, and please keep the correspondence coming!

Peace,
Kelly