April is Filipino Food Month
Official poster-- Poster of Food Month 2024
This year, Food Month focuses on the youth as heralded by its poster and theme --“Kalutong Filipino, Lakas ng Kabataang Makabago (Filipino cuisine, strength of the new youth).” There will be seminars on all things culinary.
Among the scheduled speakers are writer Felice Sta. Maria and Erwan Heusaff. Sta. Maria will take attendees to the colonial period, armed with her research expertise, while Heusaff, a James Beard awardee, will bring the food scene to the present in the medium the youth know very well—a digital presentation.
It’s important to note that “food Issues” do not only involve the end users—the diners—or even culinary researchers and writers, but also, and most importantly, the producers – farmers, fisherfolk, ingredient processors, small household entrepreneurs, and large-scale manufacturers.
Food Month stresses culture. “Food is culture,” declares Massimo Montanari, author of the book Food Is Culture, because what we produce and eat and how we eat express what we are.
Food Month Awarding in 2021 with judges and winners. Front row from left: Krip Yuson, Mol Fernando, Nana Ozaeta, Datu Shariff Pendatun, Ige Ramos, and Amy Uy, Onstage: DGF Awardees from left: Raymond Macapagal, Elmer Nocheseda, Marie Joy Rosal Sumagaysay, Winona Sigue, (DGF chair Michaela Fenix), Cecilio Laurente, and Francis David Lacson Selorio.
Filipinos, with our diverse culture, have so much to show. Inhabitants of our more than 7,000 islands have developed their own local practices as even today interisland travel has many limitations. Food Month will focus on food culture in Albay, Antique, and Tawi-Tawi, hopefully spotlighting distinctive culinary features of each area.
Albay should show the “power of pili,” heritage sweets made with this worthy nut as well as its oil, which is all the rage today in the cosmetics industry.
Antique, on the other hand, should show reflections of its pastoral life despite the challenge of pronouncing its dishes. For instance, Tabuan, the recent Western Visayas Culinary Competition, featured a milky dessert called nagaeugaeog, an Aklanon tongue twister that means to wallow like a carabao in a mud hole.
And Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost islands that are still a mystery to many of us, will show culinary similarities and differences among neighboring Muslim provinces.
Food Month 2024 also celebrates Iloilo’s recognition as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, another notch in the rising awareness of Filipino cuisine internationally.
Food Month since its inception has always invited the participation of our group, which has been part of the Doreen Gamboa Food Writing Award (DGF Award) for 20 years. We launched the book Sangkap: Basic Philippine Ingredients, a collection of winning essays from 2013 to 2017, as a Food Month activity. Then our award ceremony, dubbed “Ang Sarap,” was one of the Food Month activities in 2021.
Sangkap -- compilation of the winning essays of the DGF Award (2013 - 2017)
Just before the start of Food Month this year, study papers on culinary differences were presented during a food culture event in Pampanga, which the Food Month write-up designated as the “culinary capital of the Philippines.”
Food Month, however, should stress that no region can claim to be the culinary capital because regional food is as varied as the archipelago’s many islands. Instead of a unifying effort, designating one culinary capital will alienate rather than unite.
[Editor’s note: In the US, the Filipino Food Movement spearheads Food Month activities.]
Micky Fenix is the author of Country Cooking: Philippine Regional Cuisines which won the National Book Award. She is president of the Food Writers Association of the Philippines and chair of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award.
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