Foot and Fire

Melodramatic with tempered magical realism, Ang bahay ni Marta is a nice read and not that demanding for one's time because it is just a small thin book. As at any other times, Ricky Lee emphasizes the obligation of a writer/storyteller/everyone to tell the story so we won't forget. And it is not just a storytelling of an anecdote but of one's history. Given the background of Ricky Lee as an activist imprisoned during the Marshal law where he went to the point of committing suicide, I believe it is our obligation to not forget how we fought for democracy, we should not forget the times it was violated. The tangible house of Marta may be dismantled but once the story is told, it is still intact in our consciousness and we will never never forget what happened inside the house, to our nation. I am happy to discover that I liked reading this book and Ricky Lee's Para Kay B and Kung Alam Nyo Lang because even when I was in high school, I don't read Taga...

AS TENTH AND FINAL POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my  too-pretty-not-to-share mocktails. I bought a small jar of cherries to garnish or color some. My nephew would open the fridge and get one cherry but I warned him not to touch any more cherries as it is reserved for my Shirley Temple. He was intrigued and behaved and waited for the Shirley Temple.  What started as something to stop him from devouring my cherished cherries turned out to be the "pressure" on my part to make that Shirley Tempe one day. He always asks me when I will be making one. I said soon. And soon happened on the last week of September. And it is an apt celebratory conclusion to our September #foodflixflex. Shirley Temple was a Hollywood child actress and the drink was said to be named after her because she's at the bar all the time with the elder actors and needs something ...

AS NINTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my monstrous  QUARTER POUND BURGER with cucumber, lettuce, onion and two cheeses that left everyone full and satisfied that I think they won't be salivating for it for the time being when they would see it in the screen. When I decided to make a real beefy burger, I had the Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs 1 & 2 in mind because they are the movies of my nephews when they were still younger.  But while I was contemplating of writing about it, Anthony Bourdain kept entering my mind, maybe because he's a New Yorker and burger for me means American. Well, given the life story of Bourdain, I sure love that he's prolific as a writer given the number of his books, and as travel-host of many food series. But like my craving for burger which is just once in a blue moon, I liked some episodes of his travel shows but I could n...

AS EIGHTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my instant ensemble of spicy noodle soup, sweet and spicy fish cake, scrambled eggs, kimchi and rice wrapped in nori which I would like to connect to Reply 1988, a Korean teleseries which has a high rating for me for good casting and directing though there was a bit of struggle to keep some side story interesting before the story finally concludes at the strange number of 19th episode.  The story is about the two generations of friensdships between and among the four families in the 80s. The story started with the four friends who were told by their parents to bring some side dishes to the next doors and the four took turns in going in and out of the doors as if they were in a maze, and Deoksun, the story's narrator, concluded why don't they all just eat together. That part was visually witty and just so memorable for me, a...

AS SEVENTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my Duck in Rose Petal Sauce (turned out to be more like Duck with Macadamia Sauce) which is inspired by Laura Esquivel's magical realism novel and the 1992 movie version of it which was very faithful to the book both entitled, Like water for chocolate. I always have a slip of the tongue when saying the title. I say, Like hot water for chocolate. Maybe because this book is about deep longing, true love, hindered desires. So I imagine that Tita melts like chocolate because Pedro is the hot water.     On the March entry, Tita received a bouquet of roses from Pedro to congratulate her on her first year as ranch cook. The roses which were pink became red when Tita clasped it and her blood mixed in the petals. A chemical reaction began without her knowing. Tita felt she has to do something special abou...

AS SIXTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my Pandesal Crostini and oven-roasted Eggplant with Mayo-Wasabi Dip using what's available in my garden, in the wet market and in my pantry. I have to do something out of what is around me. With flair, with inventiveness, with celebration of flavor. This philosophy I gathered from watching Chef's Table, a documentary feature of different chefs from around the globe by Netflix. I'm still learning more as I progress in watching the documentaries. Pandesal Crostini Pandesal Olive oil Tomato sauce Tomato paste Basil leaves Sliced tomatoes Cheese Preheat ove. In an oiled pan, arrange halved pandesal. Drizzle with olive oil. Mix tomato sauce and paste, then spread a spoonful of paste on each   bread. Top each slice with basil, tomatoes and cheese. Bake at 200F for 20 minutes. Serve hot. Oven-roast...

AS FIFTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my  Calzone or Closed Pizza and Pasta with Meatballs and whole tomatoes with the PIZZA inspired by Julia Robert's Mystic Pizza and Eat Pray Love, and by my childhood-siblings fave Home Alone and the PASTA WITH MEATBALLS inspired by my nephew's fave Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and the whole tomatoes inspired by Japanese film, Little Forest. In real life, I am challenged to recreate  Bacolod's defunct HR Pizza, a little nook famous for their calzone. My first try is not bad but I will definitely make another one soon. I was blessed by my Genovese Basils with lots of healthy leaves and I had more than enough for my pizza and pasta sauce. I also bought tomatoes as I plan to make whole tomatoes for my pasta sauce. White onions abound in our market so I grabbed the chance to buy more for my meatballs and sauce. Here...

AS FOURTH POST FOR THE #foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate food and cinema, I present you my My Pear and Apple Pie in the City of Angels. If others have a theme song in their lives, I have a theme movie in my life and it is called City of Angels. I wanted it to be A walk in the Clouds but I just have to give the spot to COA given the storyline. COA has all the factors of being a classic movie given the actors, the script, the storyline, the directing. It is a love story and a celebration of our mortality. Who would not feel loved when an angel gave up his mortality for a human? Okay, there is nothing about pie in that movie but it definitely captured me with something about pear, a favorite fruit of mine. It goes: Seth: What's that like? What's it taste like? Describe it like Hemingway. Maggie: Well, it tastes like a pear. You don't know what a pear tastes like? Seth: I don't know what a pear taste...

FOR MY THIRD POST FOR #foodfilmflex which my friends and I will be doing this September to celebrate cinema and cooking, I present to you, Eggs. How do you want your eggs? I want mine cooked in a small amount of canola oil, scrambled with chives, tomatoes, onions or chilis. One of the first cooking I learned was eggdrop soup which I cooked for my siblings when our parents, a policeman and a social worker, were responding to typhoon victims. Heat some water, put onions and tomatoes, and add scrambled eggs and voila, we have a soup. Variations may be to add spring onions or malunggay leaves. My mother taught me that. On top of that, she taught us to mix raw egg in our steaming hot rice. To convince me, she said raw eggs are even good for those with TB as they are advised to drink one from the shell every day. And then, as a kid, I saw Rocky and was convinced that raw eggs can be the breakfast of a champion. And I love everything about The Runaway Br...

THIS IS A SECOND POST FOR OUR #Foodflixflex which my friends and I will be doing to celebrate cinema and food this September.  A movie should evoke something from us, not just rob us with our time, and we should demand something from it, not just spend our time endlessly. Wok of Love is a romantic comedy but well-acted and the story is well-crafted. The K-drama evokes from us to reevaluate our definition of friendship, and true love. Most of all, Wok of Love evokes our desire to taste Jajangmyeon.  Jang Hyuk is so handsome and manly in this tv drama and he often winked at me while I was watching. I saw him in Windstruck but he was not that good actor yet there. Having seen him in the Empire of Lust and Wok of Love, he sure perfected his craft of acting. The lady who acted in this film is Jung Ryeo-won and actually I liked her too, and remembered her from Kim Sam Soon. Well, forget about the very neat fair red-lipped leading man because for me, he was th...

MY FIRST POST FOR #foodflixflex2020 is ONE FORGETTABLE K MOVIE AND UNFORGETTABLE CHICKEN FEET SCENE. Well, I just got lucky for having gotten hold of fish cake, a Korean streetfood delicacy which has a Japanese origin (fish cake is Odeng in Korea is Oden in Japanese) which is like a fish ball to ours. The Koreans prefers to use Eomuk as part of preserving their own language. My brother who facilitated the buying of my fish cake exclaimed that oh, they make fish as cake? Okay, he was not being funny, as he really thought it was like a birthday cake with fish flavor. Well, my househelper asked me why they named it cake, I said, it must be because it's flat like the pancake.  Well, this would kick-off my first post to my friends' cook-off theme for September featuring cooking and film. Now, I have seen this forgettable Korean movie (the reason why I forgot its title) about a girl who aspires to be a mystery writer but always interferes or get caught up in n...

Dahil hindi mo pwedeng mahalin ang isang tao nang hindi mo minamahal ang hilaga, silangan, timog at kanluran ng kanyang paniniwala. - Ricky Lee, Para Kay B I read the Para Kay B novel of Ricky Lee and since I am now a nonfic follower, I believe I am not someone to rave about it. But then let me, because after all the five stories are laid to me like all fictional movies with tight plot and all scenes should serve a purpose and as in short stories that should focus on one matter and give it a redeeming factor, I am not so enthralled, until the writer's thought came in and seasoned the porridge which I would otherwise not like to eat. The power of writing.                              *** Naupo siya sa paborito niyang lugar. Pinag-isipan niya ang lahat, kung paanong mga pangyayari ng nakalipas ay nagiging kuwento, nagiging kasaysayan, puwedeng baguhin, puwedeng imbentuhin, puwedeng k...