Pizza

Like most Pinoy I know, if I don't eat rice in three days, I feel strange. Let me correct that, if I don't eat any Pinoy food or something similar in three days, I feel incomplete.

Most weekdays, I eat irregular hours and irregular food. Morning toast or bagel with cream cheese or peanut butter, a cup of cold cereal and coffee. Then I sometimes forget lunch or go by a sandwich. Dinner will be rice or something else.

When going on long driving, I make it a point to stop at a Chinese restaurant, and it seems there are Chinese eateries in the farthest nooks of Canada and in even the remotest of US states.

In the small city of Steubenville, Ohio where most of the populace is still white, there are at least
four Chinese restaurants. As far back as 1985, there were two.

Driving to the Outlet Mall in Buffalo, you'd have one Chinese restaurant inside, and an eat-all-you-can buffet outside.

Even in Europe, you cannot miss Chinese restaurants. In one big Paris mall, the Chinese restaurant was full to the brim when we ate.

Chinese cuisine is the closest food to Filipino. Rice, noodles, sweet and sour chicken, stir fry beef and veggies, soup, even their spring rolls.

Yesterday, the household had pizza for lunch. Shadow, the mini pinscher, had a bite of it with crushed white banana as dessert, eaten from my palm.

Pizza Hut is one of the pizza brands I like; I also like Domino's. In the Philippines, I used to eat at Shakey's a lot.

Pizza is one of the foods I haven't tried preparing. Although there are frozen pizza crusts sold at the groceries, I prefer to just buy rather than do it myself. Two weeks ago, I tried my hand in making a quiche - I had a bite, then threw the rest.

But my spaghetti is prepared from scratch. I don't use the can or bottled sauce. And some nieces and nephew who visited one time really liked my recipe.

My sister in Ohio whose married to an American only gets to eat Pinoy food occasionally. So when I visit her, I bring various mixes like "sinigang, palabok, kare kare," and the "kakanins -
polvuron, puto and sometimes, bibingka," and she would praise to high heavens my "sinigang" because she has not had it in a long while.

Years ago, if you go to the Casino Rama in Rama, Ontario, you'd see a Chinese Restaurant on the way. Now, there's a Chinese buffet inside.

Most Pinoy restaurants here in Toronto are the take- out types. In the area where I live, there are two of this kind.

Now that summer is in full blast, picnic or barbecue is the most fun thing to do. And when you go to Filipino picnics, it's like you're eating in your house or a restaurant - table full of "pot luck" dishes - pancit, adobong pusit, barbecue, menudo, white and fried rice, balot, lumpiang shanghai, alimango, even a whole lechon. Plus the dessert - turon, puto, pichi pichi, palitaw, etc.

Then, when you look at the next picnic table, you see an Anglo family, barbecuing no frills hot dog or hamburger with side potato chips and pickles.

Then further down, you see other Asian families, Chinese or Japanese, and the aroma of kimchi, stir fry and tempura will float in the air.

I haven't noticed what the Italians bring at the picnic. I suppose it'd be pizza, Italian sausage and spaghetti.