new beginnings (again).

i am a lucky girl.

maybe, blessed is what really describes it.

i am blessed.

grandma’s pancit malabon

Soak the noodles in hot water shortly before adding ricado.
Make sure the tofu you use is soft or medium.
Freshly flaked tinapa makes the most flavorful dish.

I call my grandfather on Sundays and his voice is becoming more and more hollow each time I call. He coughs more frequently, wheezing between his words. He passes on the phone to my grandma only after speaking to me for minutes. I hear the hum of the oxygen machine in the background.

My grandpa complains that they’ve eaten another Budget Gourmet dinner again. The nearest 99 Ranch store in Palm Desert isn’t in the desert, it’s in LA. Back home, they’d just drive a few miles in each direction and come across Manila Oriental, 99 Ranch, or Nipa Hut.

Sometimes, they would get udon noodles at the Japanese restaurant at the strip mall in their neighborhood. Other times they would go over to my aunts house a few miles away to eat dinner.

It’s been years since Grandma has made her signature dish.

With the addition or subtraction of an ingredient it would be malabon, in which my grandmother would proudly assert, named after her hometown. She would assemble the dish, topped with salty pearls of tinned oysters. I would sniff the briny oysters and proceed to to pick them out, pushing them onto my mother’s plate, savoring the remnants of the oyster juice that would tingle in the back of my throat as I took a bite from the top of my plate. Rings of squid would squish in my mouth and shrimp that would add the subtle flavor of the ocean.

Sometimes it would be palabok. My grandmother would use lean pork and saute it with chopped onion, garlic. Powdered achuete would color the sauce a deep, rich earthly reddish brown hue. The color of lava rocks that would crunch below my shoes outside in her backyard, where my cousin and I would pick the crabapples and make apple soup and apple tea.

A powder of crushed chicharron and fried garlic, slivers of hard boiled egg and the greenery of chopped green scallions topped off her pancit.

This is my grandmother’s special dish that she proudly makes in massive quantities so that all would get their fill and have enough to take home in containers. It’s soul food that clings to your ribs. When I was in college, I used to eagerly await coming home for Thanksgiving to savor plate after plate of my grandmother’s pancit malabon/palabok. It would coat my stomach till I am left in a state of bliss. I am satiated and warm in a haze of rice noodles and rich sauce with a squeeze of kalamansi or lemon juice.

I miss your pancit, Grandma, I tell her.

Ay nako! Mahirap maluto. Pero, kumain ka na? (Oh goodness! It’s hard to cook. But, have you eaten yet?)

Hindi pa, po. Hindi pa. Mamaya. Kumusta na kayo, po? (Not yet. Later. How are you both?) I say, with a heaviness in my heart that only now washes over me.