The Joy of Self-Reliance Part 1

I know my way around the kitchen. My paternal grandma was a wonderful cook and she ordered me around the kitchen since age 10. My younger sisters and I were also often left on our own and we would try cooking stuff based on basic Filipino cookbook that's always lying around at the house. In High school and college, my barkada also enjoyed playing titas -- shopping on a measly budget at the wet market or the grocery and cooking all of it together at home while sharing drinks and stories. My grandma would probably still find my cooking skills dismal, but for most of my friends, my cooking is pretty passable.

Maybe my familiarity with cooking is the reason why I really enjoyed living independently in Makati many years ago. I enjoyed all parts of food prepping from researching recipes, meal planning, grocery shopping on a budget, the actual cooking, and packing lunches. I even had one dependent - my roommate Paula. She wasn't good at cooking so she appreciated my willingness to cook our meals.

I was thrifty and Pau spent a lot of money on clothes and books so we both liked setting food budget challenges for ourselves. It’s a good thing that we enjoyed eating vegetables and dried fish because misua, patola, and tuyo got us through many dinners. Pau’s mom and sister are both amazing cooks and would always cook too many dishes on weekends and my roommate would happily pack two portions of the leftovers. We also shifted to eating toast for breakfast so we could splurge on one tasty viand per week. All those things put together made it possible for us to survive on a 500-peso weekly food budget. I learned how to make cheap food tasty while I was in that Makati apartment.

Here’s a sample weekly menu:

Breakfast: Toast, cheese, egg salad sandwich spread, or tuna spread
Lunch: Weekend Leftovers
Dinner: Adobong kangkong, Misua + patola + giniling, tortang tanong, steamed sprouts and carrots, kaldereta, all the soup-based food like tinola, nilaga, sinigang, etc.
Snacks/Dessert: canned peaches, canned mandarins, lychee jellyace

Of course, we would also buy beer but that falls under the leisure allowance. ;)

I was the main food prepper in our apartment for the majority of 4 years but Pau did try her hand at cooking a few times. There were some funny fails and happy accidents in her food adventure.
She made huge progress after I left the apartment though. She made a simple tomato and basil pasta for us recently and it was really good. I was surprised and felt a little bad when I realized that she didn’t learn how to cook before because she had me to depend on. I became independent but my presence somewhat held her back.

Of course, I’m not blaming myself for anything. It just made me understand how quickly a person can learn when they have no choice. If you only had yourself to depend on and had high standards for yourself, you wouldn’t make poor excuses and instead strive to learn. I also realized that if you want someone to learn, you shouldn’t always hold their hand or make it easy for them. They will survive with your help but they will not grow. :)

-Len