Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Kitchen Kwento

In the space of two days — during the windup to Tales of the Cocktail next week — this week has gone from normal-busy to crazy-busy. For good measure, dozens of liquor PR reps from LA to London have been calling with invitations to parties, launches, after-hour shindigs, and meetings with various distillers, spirits brand reps, burlesque artists, and...I...I think one pitch today had me meeting Bruce Willis in Los Angeles. It's all a bit of a fog. Friends are visiting with four kids (or is it five? I lose count), and several interviews, including one with a film crew here at the house doing a piece on home distilling, have me feeling like a need a drink and a home-cooked meal.

Yes, things are moving briskly here at the Whiskey Forge.

My usual practice of juggling 5-7 books at once and devouring all the blog I can is on hold. But one new blog did catch my eye: Kitchen Kwento. Subtitled Recipes & Stories from a Pinay Kitchen, the blog is written by Aileen Suzara, a San Francisco Bay-area Filipina American who tackles — as she puts it — "connections between food, memory and place through a Filipina/American lens."

Growing up in the American Midwest, my exposure to Filipino food was limited to a few family friends. I got more of a taste for it in Philadelphia and once had a wild ride in London after being rescued from a predatory drag queen by a trio of Pinoy sailors who adopted me for the night and hauled me from restaurant to restaurant feeding me the food of their youth. Settled now in California, I have the great fortune to have become close with a few groups of Filipino friends. I have learned never to say no to lumpia and that Filipino bartenders make some of the best tropical drinks out there.

So I was happy to run across Aileen's site. I'll continue to check in now and then, but as I ready myself for the boozefest that is Tales of the Cocktail, I'll be mulling over one of her lines: "When was the last person in your family a farmer?" 

I have no idea. But now I'm curious.  


Goes well with:

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1 comment:

  1. UnknownJuly 18, 2010 at 4:34 AM

    That's one way to simultaneously discover London and Filipino cuisine...sounds like one long night. As the years go by, food IS memory.

    There is a very good upscale Filipino restaurant in Amsterdam (or at least there was when I lived there two years ago), which left me wondering why the cuisine hasn't made greater inroads.

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