by: Azul Bustamante

I ADMIT, I am a self-confessed food addict and I have absolutely no intentions of changing. I will devour any dish, from the exotic Adobong Cicada that I’ve ravaged in the deep recess of Cavite to the raw Norwegian Salmon that I tasted in one of the five star hotels in Manila. I am a glutton’s glutton, and I have no shame.

But then, amidst my voracious appetite, I still crave for this one type of food that I last tasted when I was in high school. I was a sophomore back then when my uncle invited me to my home province of Bicol to celebrate the feast of Peñafrancia. By bus, reaching Bicol took a few hours; reaching Naga took another hour or so. The trip back then was grueling and long on account of the bad roads and the occasional checkpoints that were prevalent at the time. When we got to Naga, we immediately went to my lola who was more than willing to take her city slicker apo as a temporary housemate. It was here that I first tasted, please forgive my unoriginality, my version of Soul Food. My lola fed me with everything that she could think of: Murcon, Kinunot, the legendary Bicol Express, Bali Susu, Laing and other Gata based dishes. I saw, in this lifetime, what a gastronomic heaven would look like and I was happy. Then the feast day came, I saw the fluvial parade and I was awed at how my province mates adhered to the Lady of Peñafrancia. In the late afternoon, I roamed the town, and every house that I came to offered me food and drink and when I say every house, I mean every house. By the time I went home, I was holding my stomach, praying to the Lady of Peñafrancia for deliverance from my sins of gluttony and its physical effects. The next day, I went to church, then the cemetery to visit my lolo. As I walked home, I got attracted to a shopao and Maruya vendor. I took out a ten-peso bill, thinking which of the two I would get for a snack. I asked manang how much her Maruya was; she said two pesos. Shocked at how cheap it was, I asked the shopao vendor about the prices of his goodies: four pesos for large Bola Bola and one peso for an empty shopao. Needless to say, I went home satiated with Maruya and shopao, but then, during my three-day visit to Bicol, I always went home with a full stomach, which is also the case every time I would leave lola’s house.

Looking back, I discover why I consider everything I ate in Naga as food fit for the soul. It was because everything I ate was prepared with love and care. From lolas Murcon that I always ate during breakfast to Manang’s Maruya. They were all prepared not with the intent to earn money, not with the intent to feed. They were prepared for the sole purpose of making every meal as memorable as possible. They were in the truest sense: Food for the Soul.