Written by: seigfredtristan on August 9, 2010

This is one of the entries that make me stick my head inside a pail and start shouting until I go deaf so I can hear my inner self answer brain-pounding questions about Filipino Cuisine. Maybe that’s the reason why I find myself rewriting and rewriting this post for the past 2 weeks. So I grab myself at the back of my head, squeeze whatever juice that comes out of it, and smudge them on these webpages. This is as difficult as poetry.

Maybe I’ll start with asking questions:

1. If you are married, would you think you would be better off single or with another man/woman?

2. If not, have you ever thought that if you took that different major that you’ve been pondering on transferring to while you were in university,  you would have been in a better place?

Let’s talk about your history and how fate makes us the way we are now.

It’s funny to think that the things that formed us in a big way into what we are right now were out of our control… like being a Filipino, like going to a grade school that you did not choose for yourself, your skin color, your curly hair, your huge bones (you always tell people that you are not fat), your grandmother with energiser batteries built-in on her back…. love or hate these things, these could have been the reasons why you are where you are and why you behave the way you do. And you were not given a chance to have a say at all.

Hernando de Magallanes or as everyone knows as Ferdinand Magellan, the reason why the Philippines was colonized by Spain. From Wikimedia Commons

And no, I did not forget that this is a food website.

Let me rephrase my questions:

1. What would have happened to Filipino Cuisine if the Spanish did not  colonize Philippines? Would we be better off?

2. If it were up to you, would you have the Philippine Cuisine not influenced by the Malay, the Chinese and the Spanish at all?

Would Filipino Cuisine be better off? Would the difference make it as famous as Chinese take-away?