AVANT GARDENER
April is Filipino Food Month. Created under Presidential Proclamation 469 in 2018, the event celebrates the vibrancy (and deliciousness) of Filipino culinary heritage and foodways. According to the Department of Tourism (DOT) website, it also encourages Filipinos to “promote, preserve, and embrace our culinary traditions.”
Because we grew up with our food traditions, it’s easy for us to think of them as lackluster and commonplace. Many Filipinos would rather eat and learn about foreign cuisines and foodways because they seem exotic and exciting, particularly if they’re widely represented in media. We tend to forget that our own cuisine is just as important, and just as worthy of attention.
Filipino Food Month doesn’t just remind us to pay attention to our local dishes. It also reminds us that agriculture is an important part of our foodways. Sadly, this is something not a lot of people understand.
More than our usual food crops and livestock, the country is rich in edible indigenous plants and animals, important ingredients in food cultures that, due to various reasons such as loss of environment or market demand, are slowly disappearing, or have disappeared altogether.
Foodstuffs that were once common in the market or in backyards have become rare or have disappeared altogether, especially in cities. For example, in the 80s, chico used to be sold in Manila when in season. Not anymore. And even then, something like mabolo, Rizal’s favorite fruit, was already hard to find. I only got to taste one just before the pandemic, and it was on a Rizal tour in Laguna.
On the other hand, demand has made something like batuan, which used to be found only in the Visayas, a common sight in specialty food in Manila, albeit in powder form (I can only speak about Manila because this is where I am based. I am sure it is different elsewhere).
There are movements to preserve our heirloom ingredients and foodways. For example, you can look up the Slow Food Movement’s Ark of Taste, a compendium of endangered ingredients and foodways around the world and see what’s been recorded under the Philippines.
If you have a hometown, you can ask around to see what local food crops or livestock are used in dishes that can only be found in your area. You can also find out what ingredients were used plentifully in dishes but are now hard to grow or forage.
When many people think, “Filipino food culture,” they tend to think of Manila as the trendsetter, when this shouldn’t be the case at all. The Philippines is incredibly biodiverse, which means a vibrant hyperlocal food scene for every town, city, district, or province, given the right circumstances. Every local ingredient, every local dish should be celebrated for what it is: the result of the harvest of the land and the culture that thrives on it. We should be celebrating our local and hyperlocal dishes and putting them on our social media instead of following what millions of others are already putting on their feed.
April may be Filipino Food Month, but it doesn’t mean that we should only promote and celebrate Filipino food during this time. Let’s hope that people use Filipino Food Month as a jump-off point to a lifetime of savoring our local foodways, one barrio at a time.