Speaker 1: If anything is going to survive the end of the world,
Speaker 1: it's kind of bean. Yes, girl, I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that. This is my friend Joanne Randelia. Let's see
Speaker 1: some important facts you need to know about Joanne. She's
Speaker 1: a professor of Asian American studies at San Jose State
Speaker 1: University in California. She never comes to an occasion without
Speaker 1: a gift in hand. Oh, and she loves that little
Speaker 1: blue tin of salty meat deliciousness known as spam. She
Speaker 1: grew up in a Filipino family on Guam, a US
Speaker 1: island territory about fifteen hundred miles from the Philippines. Guam
Speaker 1: is regularly hit with typhoons that knock out electricity on
Speaker 1: the whole island, So Joanne knows the importance of a
Speaker 1: food that knows how to survive. The few remaining survivors
Speaker 1: are gonna live and repopulate the world on cans of
Speaker 1: spam and coined beef in Vienna sausage because that is
Speaker 1: what the gods intended. Oh my God, that's the lesson
Speaker 1: we're supposed to learn, right. I was like, my spirit
Speaker 1: chose this moment for a reason. Yeah, no, I think so,
Speaker 1: man like, because you know, like with the fires, with
Speaker 1: all the rolling blackouts and people are like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I lost power, and I'm like, welcome to Guam every year, bitch,
Speaker 1: Like you know. My friendship with Joanne started about six
Speaker 1: years ago with an angry Facebook message. Now, she wasn't
Speaker 1: angry at me. She was angry because I was the
Speaker 1: only fat person who had entered to be a model
Speaker 1: for this body positive fashion show and I didn't get chosen.
Speaker 1: The whole search had been very publicized online and Joanne
Speaker 1: was following the whole process. She took my rejection really personally.
Speaker 1: Her Facebook message detailed all the ways that she felt
Speaker 1: I had been robbed. I knew we were going to
Speaker 1: be friends when she said she would have picked me
Speaker 1: hands down, no question. As a Taurus, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: when someone expresses unconditional loyalty before I've even met them.
Speaker 1: One of the beautiful things about being Joanne's friend is
Speaker 1: that she's always cooking delicious Filipino food and sharing it.
Speaker 1: Before we talked, we each ordered one of her favorite
Speaker 1: snacks and mine too, A small rectangular pillow made up
Speaker 1: of a chubby layer of spam on top of white
Speaker 1: rice and delicately wrapped in seaweed. It's called spam musubi.
Speaker 1: Do you have your spam musubie? Of course I came ready.
Speaker 1: I went and picked up some spam Moozubie. I have
Speaker 1: a spot down the street from where I live where
Speaker 1: they serve spam moosubi from like seven am to one
Speaker 1: thirty pm. I can just get a latte. It's like
Speaker 1: a slightly quote unquote what one might call like an
Speaker 1: elevated item or something like that. But they capture the spirit.
Speaker 1: But there's another point to be made that the spirit
Speaker 1: of spam cannot be contained, right, it cannot be domesticated.
Speaker 1: So like whatever you're gonna be doing, like it's gonna
Speaker 1: shine and it's gonna be its true authentic self. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm excited. So I put mine on a pink plate
Speaker 1: and it's just so cute because it's like in conversation
Speaker 1: with the spam. I just love a color story, you know. Um, okay, cute,
Speaker 1: all right, So I'm gonna I also have a little
Speaker 1: dipping sauce that they included, So I'm excited about my
Speaker 1: spicy dipping sauce. I have a dipping sauce too, so
Speaker 1: I cheated and had some last night, and I think
Speaker 1: it's like you cannot put a plate of spam in
Speaker 1: front of me and not like and have me not
Speaker 1: eat get like fresh money, right, yes, yes, yes, are
Speaker 1: you ready? Yes? Okay, three, two, one, okay bite m
Speaker 1: mm hmmmmmmm wow yeah mine. They put like a fried
Speaker 1: egg in m hmmm, which is so good. So there's
Speaker 1: like that kind of gummy sort of like yolk, like
Speaker 1: that kind of creamy yolke and it's just working all together. Yeah, whoa.
Speaker 1: You may not always love spam, but you know it
Speaker 1: spam doesn't care because its always going to look be back.
Speaker 1: Tell me about like spam within the story of like
Speaker 1: growing up on Guam. I feel like everybody eats spam
Speaker 1: on Guam and so you know, people buy it by
Speaker 1: you know, the case Massubie, I think is fairly new
Speaker 1: because like growing up, I did not actually eat massubi.
Speaker 1: I ate a lot of like spam, rice and spam
Speaker 1: and eggs. So yeah, like it's just I think that
Speaker 1: spam on Guam has this it's survival food. But I
Speaker 1: think that it's also associated, you know with like American
Speaker 1: colonialism and American militarism, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: like like a lot of Filipinos, a lot of Pacific Islanders.
Speaker 1: We get demonized for our love for spam. You know,
Speaker 1: we took this food that four Americans was this rejected food,
Speaker 1: and we turned it into something that you know, it
Speaker 1: is palatable and you know, like enjoyable to eat. So like,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to like, um, you know, like
Speaker 1: to be open minded about food. And the way we
Speaker 1: open our minds about food is to really you know,
Speaker 1: understand like the significance of this food. Spam was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven in a little town called Austin, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: the home of Hormel Foods Corporation. The people who bought
Speaker 1: us Denttymore beef stew and Skippy peanut butter. It was
Speaker 1: the Great Depression and people wanted cheap, easy access to protein.
Speaker 1: Back then, pork shoulder, the main ingredient in spam, was
Speaker 1: an unpopular and cheap cut of meat. Spam got its
Speaker 1: name during a New Year's Eve party when Hormel CEO
Speaker 1: had a naming contest and an employee entered spam maybe
Speaker 1: a combo of the word spice and ham. He won
Speaker 1: the contest, and one hundred dollars. The canned meat wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly popular though, until World War Two, and this leads
Speaker 1: us to how spam ended up on Guam. Short answer
Speaker 1: about four hundred years of military occupation. I told you
Speaker 1: everything ties back to colonialism. Guam went from Spanish occupation
Speaker 1: in the sixteen hundreds, to US occupation in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: to Japanese occupation, and then back to US occupation in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. During World War Two, the US military
Speaker 1: sent one hundred million pounds of spam to Guam to
Speaker 1: feed soldiers. Think about it. They were small, cheap, non
Speaker 1: perishable protein bombs that could stand tropical heat without spoiling.
Speaker 1: Pretty much the perfect food. Some of the cans made
Speaker 1: their way from the soldiers to locals and Guamanians known
Speaker 1: as tamotos. Elevated spam from something that the soldiers had
Speaker 1: written thousands of complaint letters about to something fried, flavored
Speaker 1: and delicious. Yeah. So, you know, growing up Filipino, especially
Speaker 1: like growing up this island style Filipino, right, Fluid is
Speaker 1: the language of love. It's how we show love and care,
Speaker 1: It's how we show connection, you know. But but being Filipino,
Speaker 1: especially like my mom's side of a family in particular,
Speaker 1: like they're all beauty queens. They all like, you know,
Speaker 1: like take pride in being beautiful. And so when you're
Speaker 1: like the fat, dark skinned, ugly daughter of like this lineage,
Speaker 1: you know, it becomes really you know, like you learn
Speaker 1: your value very quickly, you know. I remember being a
Speaker 1: kid and being a fairly you know, like happy, go
Speaker 1: lucky kid. But then when we went to the Philippines,
Speaker 1: I think I was about seven years old, and like
Speaker 1: I was always picked on in my family, and I
Speaker 1: assumed it was because I was the youngest, and so
Speaker 1: I was so excited to go to the Philippines because
Speaker 1: I had a cousin there who was younger than me.
Speaker 1: Well we go and no one picks on her, and
Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of the you know, like
Speaker 1: the name calling, the teasing, it continues, and I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of it was because I was the
Speaker 1: dark kid, because I i you know, like I was
Speaker 1: the fat kid, right, So like I learned very quickly
Speaker 1: that oh okay, there was something else wrong with me,
Speaker 1: because it wasn't my age anymore. Right, So I remember
Speaker 1: that trip being the trip where I understood I understood
Speaker 1: my lack of value in the family, and like it's
Speaker 1: funny because recently my mom was, you know, like she
Speaker 1: was sharing this memory with me from that trip. She
Speaker 1: was saying that, like, one day I was playing with
Speaker 1: that cousin and like my mom and her brother, which
Speaker 1: is my cousin's dad, we're watching us, and my uncle
Speaker 1: just flat out told my mom, he goes, your daughter
Speaker 1: is so ugly, like like look at her, like look
Speaker 1: at her next to my daughter, like, you know, and
Speaker 1: my mom was telling me the story, and my mom
Speaker 1: was saying that, um, you know, she she was so
Speaker 1: like taking it back. She didn't know what to say,
Speaker 1: so she didn't say anything. And I get it, like
Speaker 1: she's just sort of shocked. But like what that's what
Speaker 1: the seven year old me needed was hard to defend me? Right,
Speaker 1: Like for me, I'm sure I took her silence as agreement,
Speaker 1: like you agree. You know. It's like you, my mother,
Speaker 1: the person who's supposed to love me unconditionally, you agree
Speaker 1: with my uncle who just called me like disgustingly ugly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about like relating to that so deeply
Speaker 1: and how I mean because I had I remember the
Speaker 1: first time that I went to Mexico with my grandmother.
Speaker 1: And this was a big deal, right, I mean I
Speaker 1: went a bunch as an infant, and then I didn't
Speaker 1: go at all until again until I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: And it was a big deal. And I was going
Speaker 1: with my grandma for a month that she was going
Speaker 1: to kind of it was like the pilgrimage to like
Speaker 1: where I come from, you know, and to show me
Speaker 1: that place and you know, at home, you know, in California,
Speaker 1: she was always so sweet and kind. She always she
Speaker 1: constantly gave me compliment. She always told me how beautiful
Speaker 1: and special I was. And then in Mexico she started
Speaker 1: to go. She started to she code switched into the
Speaker 1: femininity that is expected in her family, which is to
Speaker 1: insult your child. It felt like this extraordinary moment of
Speaker 1: betrayal that was like out of nowhere was she calling
Speaker 1: me ugly. We had an aunt that would visit us.
Speaker 1: This aunt is from like the beautiful side of the family,
Speaker 1: and you know, like she during one of her visits,
Speaker 1: you know, me, my auntie and my mom, like we're
Speaker 1: all chatting and my auntie goes, you know that my
Speaker 1: nickname is Joy, she goes, you know, Joy you have
Speaker 1: the same smile as your cousin Chacha, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the beautiful cousins. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's an interesting observation. And my mom immediately
Speaker 1: cuts my auntie off and like, I don't understand tagalog,
Speaker 1: but when shit is being talked about me, I'm hella fluent, right,
Speaker 1: And immediately my mom like cuts in and she goes,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't tell my daughter that she's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Don't tell my daughter that she looks like her cousin.
Speaker 1: She goes, you and I both know that chat is
Speaker 1: a much more beautiful woman. Don't don't don't say that
Speaker 1: to my daughter. And my aunt is just sort of
Speaker 1: like I can't build like she they don't say anything
Speaker 1: to my mom because again it's that that shock, right,
Speaker 1: that's silence, right, But she I can see in her
Speaker 1: face she's just like I don't even know what to say, right,
Speaker 1: like this is you don't say that, but you know,
Speaker 1: like she's just like I don't know what to say,
Speaker 1: and like and she's looking at me and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I motioned her. I'm like there's nothing to say,
Speaker 1: like this is just you know, like this is what happens.
Speaker 1: Every generation of women is taught what we've got to
Speaker 1: do to be considered a good woman. Some ever present
Speaker 1: lessons in femininity might be remembered to sit with your
Speaker 1: legs closed, or the way to a man's heart is
Speaker 1: through his stomach, or always order the salad. Women learn
Speaker 1: these lessons in childhood and pass them onto their own children.
Speaker 1: Teaching your child how to perform gender correctly is part
Speaker 1: of what turns a so called good woman into a
Speaker 1: quote unquote good mother. Though some of these gender lessons
Speaker 1: have been around for decades, many rules of femininity change
Speaker 1: from one generation to the next, especially in immigrant families.
Speaker 1: That change can create major tension with our mothers and
Speaker 1: our grandmothers. Take my grandmother for example, she was born
Speaker 1: around the same time spam was the thirties. In Mexico,
Speaker 1: where she grew up, women wouldn't have the right to
Speaker 1: vote for another twenty years. Because she was raised during
Speaker 1: a time when women didn't have the right to be
Speaker 1: financially independent. She sees marriage as part of a woman's survival.
Speaker 1: She saw me as a beautiful person, but she knew
Speaker 1: as a fat woman like her, I would have fewer
Speaker 1: romantic choices, and in her mind that meant my survival
Speaker 1: was at risk. So in part that experience we had
Speaker 1: in Mexico was her attempt to show me that this
Speaker 1: is how women and fat women like us especially act
Speaker 1: in order to get the things we need the most.
Speaker 1: In some cultures, part of being a good mother is
Speaker 1: teaching your child that they're gifted, gorgeous, and special. In
Speaker 1: other cultures, part of being a good mother is teaching
Speaker 1: her child to be humble, not stand out, and preparing
Speaker 1: her to walk into an at times harsh world and
Speaker 1: not have her ass handed to her by a complete stranger.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's as simple as that. Our mothers
Speaker 1: are all just passing on their idea of how to
Speaker 1: succeed in the world. I think Joanne's mom and my
Speaker 1: grandmother incorrectly thought of us as extensions of themselves. A
Speaker 1: lot of lessons in femininity actually have to do with food,
Speaker 1: both eating and cooking. In a patriarchal culture like ours,
Speaker 1: preparing food is seen as care work, so cooking sits
Speaker 1: squarely on the shoulders of women. For my grandmother, the
Speaker 1: kitchen was her domain. She is the queen of Thamalis.
Speaker 1: If anti lavas were an Olympic category, she would win
Speaker 1: a gold medal and no one can touch her manudle.
Speaker 1: She's fluent in the language a flavor, and she kills
Speaker 1: it on deliciousness one hundred percent of the time. The
Speaker 1: kitchen is a place where a woman like my grandmother
Speaker 1: can safely be truly excellent, be a genius, be a master,
Speaker 1: be the best, all while being non threatening in a
Speaker 1: patriarchal culture that is hell bent on making her feel
Speaker 1: like a second class citizen. Because cooking is so gendered,
Speaker 1: this means that some women are going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of ownership feelings about it. In a culture like ours,
Speaker 1: not a lot of things offer my grandmother that same
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense of gratification, return on investment, and power. She
Speaker 1: guards it fiercely, even from her favorite grandchild, Me and
Speaker 1: Joanne has a similar dynamic with her mom, who's a
Speaker 1: powerhouse in the kitchen. Joanne told me she's been asking
Speaker 1: her mom for some of her recipes for years, and
Speaker 1: for years her mom has been dodging her until one
Speaker 1: day Joanne and her sister were helping her mom clear
Speaker 1: out the attic and and I found it, said, I
Speaker 1: found this thing and said nineteen eighty nine appointment book
Speaker 1: and I'm like, why does my mom have her calendar
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty nine. I opened it, boom, the treasure trove,
Speaker 1: her recipe for puto, her recipe for yes, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I know it's legit because the appointment book says
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. Yes. I brought her. I was like, Mom,
Speaker 1: look what I have. And she's like, oh, yeah, just
Speaker 1: you know, she goes, I don't know if the recipes
Speaker 1: are right. I'm like, mmm, I was like, yes, insisting
Speaker 1: on deflection. I love it. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's I don't know if it's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, you're in trouble, mom,
Speaker 1: because you know how I am in the kitchen. You're
Speaker 1: afraid I'm going to cook better than you. But I
Speaker 1: just I told her, I go when I make this
Speaker 1: boot though, and it's better than yours, I just don't
Speaker 1: feel bad. Just be proud that I could pick up
Speaker 1: the skill. Right as you were talking, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about my uh sort of similar levels of sabotage. Um,
Speaker 1: like my grandmother, uh, you know, like raised me. She
Speaker 1: was the she was like the mother of the household,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, she was very territorial about cooking um,
Speaker 1: and she still is because that's like her thing, Like
Speaker 1: she excels at that thing. And it's definitely connected to
Speaker 1: like the womanly art of cooking. My desire to learn
Speaker 1: how to cook the food that she made. I think
Speaker 1: she interpreted it as me trying to take her crown.
Speaker 1: And I think she took so much pride, like, for example,
Speaker 1: when she married my grandfather. Before that, my grandfather had
Speaker 1: been he grew up, he grew up fat and a
Speaker 1: way of dealing when fat phobia for him was becoming
Speaker 1: like a bodybuilder, and so he was like a competitive
Speaker 1: bodybuilder in his late teens early twenties before he got
Speaker 1: married to my grandmother. And my grandmother speaks with pride
Speaker 1: about making him fat again, like you know, and enticing
Speaker 1: him with her irresistible food. And I don't know, like
Speaker 1: it's just interesting because like I really I really wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to make what she made. And I
Speaker 1: remember moments in the kitchen where I, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, can you show me how to make that?
Speaker 1: And it was kind of like trying to get it
Speaker 1: was like trying to get secrets out of a spy
Speaker 1: where I felt like she would actively like do weird
Speaker 1: things and like turn away or ask me to go
Speaker 1: get something, and then she'd do something secretly while I
Speaker 1: was looking the other way. I just felt like he
Speaker 1: did not want me to have this thing. And I've
Speaker 1: just been relating to the story of like this this
Speaker 1: hidden nineteen eighty nine archive. It's just so it's like
Speaker 1: so strange and also so beautiful. I don't know, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it's a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: like she doesn't want her crown being taken away. But
Speaker 1: I think also too, like she grew up like with
Speaker 1: maids and like cooks, you know, because like you can
Speaker 1: be middle class and have that in the Philippines and
Speaker 1: so like you know, immigrating and like having to work
Speaker 1: and you know, like developing this sense of independence. Part
Speaker 1: of that was learning to cook. And so I think
Speaker 1: part of it is like she earned her recipes, you know,
Speaker 1: like she earned her her way of cooking because it
Speaker 1: wasn't something that came naturally. And so I think part
Speaker 1: of the reason she's having me like earned the recipes
Speaker 1: is because she had to earn them. So I can
Speaker 1: definitely see some of that happening, because yeah, like the
Speaker 1: first recipe I conquered I tried to like replicate was impanada.
Speaker 1: And my mom was known for the maticulous way that
Speaker 1: she would wrap each individual impanada in this wax paper
Speaker 1: and she put it on like the cardboard trade that
Speaker 1: used to hold like soda, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, it's like it was just like this
Speaker 1: really beautiful thing. And like this is a few years ago.
Speaker 1: She finally gave me the recipe. She holds up this
Speaker 1: piece of paper to my face and she goes like
Speaker 1: this exact, exact exact like this. Okay, Yeah, I look
Speaker 1: at it, and I'm like these it doesn't I can
Speaker 1: tell it. I was like, this does not look right,
Speaker 1: Like this is way too dry, and she's like, no,
Speaker 1: exact exact like this. I'm like okay. So like and
Speaker 1: you know, I was making it for New Year's Day
Speaker 1: and my sister and I are tinkering with it, like
Speaker 1: we do the exact measurements, and yeah, it's like super dry.
Speaker 1: It's crumbly, it doesn't hold together. And I was like
Speaker 1: Mom's holding out, man. So like we tinker with it
Speaker 1: and we get it to like the consistency, and we
Speaker 1: make it. And like my mom, you know, was feeling ill,
Speaker 1: so she couldn't go to my aunties party, which is
Speaker 1: where we always have New Year's Day, but like I
Speaker 1: saved some pieces for her. And after we left my aunts,
Speaker 1: I went to my mom's and like, you know, so
Speaker 1: I give her the impanada and she's like, oh, how right,
Speaker 1: she goes did they eat it? Did they like it?
Speaker 1: I said, she's awaiting, she's a waiting for the disaster.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, they ate it, like there
Speaker 1: was no impanada left. I go, but here's you know,
Speaker 1: we saved you some. And then she's like shocked, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure she knew she didn't give the
Speaker 1: right recipe, so she takes a biden to it. She's
Speaker 1: like and she just you know, like tosses it to
Speaker 1: the side of the table and I'm like and I
Speaker 1: looked at her and I was like, mom, you know
Speaker 1: this is good. I'm like, you know, this is delicious,
Speaker 1: Like don't take this away from me. Yes, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: That reminds me. So that's like literally like I feel
Speaker 1: like step first step some version I may have this,
Speaker 1: like I remember one. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: like is a big thing in my relationship to my
Speaker 1: family is like the ritual of I would make a
Speaker 1: dish or I would bring a dish from a restaurant
Speaker 1: that I liked to in order to kind of share
Speaker 1: this food experience with my family. And my grandmother is
Speaker 1: like the royal taster, right, she has to have the
Speaker 1: first taste, you know, she has to be the gatekeeper
Speaker 1: of it. And I have literally seen um, my grandmother
Speaker 1: like spit out food that i've she's and she is
Speaker 1: a pretty reserved one. Like she's a woman who like
Speaker 1: sort of was raised is like a little bit of
Speaker 1: like a Northern Mexican debutante. Um. So like the idea
Speaker 1: of spitting out food is like unthinkable, right, but like
Speaker 1: she I mean literally remember one time I made these
Speaker 1: like rose truffles and she fully, like dramatically and enthusiastically
Speaker 1: spitted out and I just I just knew that it
Speaker 1: was like about just being like, you think you're hot shit,
Speaker 1: but you can't touch may enchiladas with your fancy ass
Speaker 1: little rose truffle, So don't try. So this truffle, it's
Speaker 1: actually a story about something much much bigger. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that after the break. We've been taught that power
Speaker 1: is a zero sum game. You only get power because
Speaker 1: someone else loses power. For women, we are often competing
Speaker 1: against other women, sometimes women we love deeply. We become
Speaker 1: competitors rather than collaborators because we haven't imagined a world
Speaker 1: where there's more than enough to go around. In the
Speaker 1: absence of that beautiful world, we create the fantasy of
Speaker 1: one perfect woman, the one who wins in every category.
Speaker 1: In fact, all of us are actually already her, and
Speaker 1: none of us will ever be her. Patriarchy pits women
Speaker 1: against one another for the title of queen, a crown
Speaker 1: which can theoretically only be worn by one person. I
Speaker 1: think it's easy to say that my grandma was being
Speaker 1: mean because she saw my innocent attempt at cooking as
Speaker 1: a threat to her kitchen kingdom. But it's harder to
Speaker 1: admit that I was equally coming for her that day.
Speaker 1: We were both vying for the ridiculous, toxic crown. What's more,
Speaker 1: my grandmother's spit take was also about checking my snobbery.
Speaker 1: Here's my grandmother, the matriarch of the family, a woman
Speaker 1: with a third grade education who speaks two languages, who
Speaker 1: married a loyal man who worked his ass off his
Speaker 1: whole life to bring home the bacon, A god fearing
Speaker 1: woman who raised kids and grandkids and still had the
Speaker 1: time to put her hair up in pincurls every damn night.
Speaker 1: And here I am, fresh from college, high on my
Speaker 1: ability to reference Carl Marx, a no at all feminist,
Speaker 1: but also a heartbroken girl who couldn't understand why my
Speaker 1: grandmother hadn't stood up to my grandfather's verbal abuse or
Speaker 1: protected me from my mother's emotional volatility. I was ready
Speaker 1: to take my revenge by attempting to beat her at
Speaker 1: a game I didn't think she could play in her
Speaker 1: most prized domain, the kitchen. I didn't grow up eating
Speaker 1: dark chocolate or rose flavored anything. She didn't prepare those
Speaker 1: things because neither I nor any other member of the
Speaker 1: Tobar family would have eaten them. I developed a taste
Speaker 1: for them after I'd moved away from home. In Berkeley's
Speaker 1: slow food movement and gourmet culture, these flavors are considered
Speaker 1: complex and sophisticated. Let's be real. One might taste of
Speaker 1: really oaky wine, or a super bright coffee, or a
Speaker 1: very dark chocolate for the first time, and honestly think
Speaker 1: this is kind of gross. Gourmet culture takes the foods
Speaker 1: that invoke that reaction and then uses one's ability to
Speaker 1: appreciate them as a sign of superior taste. That's classism,
Speaker 1: but it's also got roots in racism. And my grandmother
Speaker 1: wasn't having it. She was saying, no matter how fancy
Speaker 1: you become, I will always be the woman who raised you.
Speaker 1: Don't try to come in this house and show me up.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah to her setting that boundary with me, and
Speaker 1: also hell yeah, I'd hurt my feelings. As rebel eaters,
Speaker 1: I think we have to recognize the ways that systems
Speaker 1: like patriarchy use food to separate us, whether it's through
Speaker 1: diet culture or gourmet culture. As rebel eaters, we can
Speaker 1: recognize these games we play with food, and that gives
Speaker 1: us a shot at smashing that crown that my grandmother
Speaker 1: and I were struggling over, and in its place we
Speaker 1: can grow something new. You are married to a foodie,
Speaker 1: a lover of food. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 1: I love is I've always loved watching the two of
Speaker 1: you interact around food, because you guys are so cute
Speaker 1: it's like clearly like a love like a very clear
Speaker 1: love language. And I'm kind of like, you know what,
Speaker 1: what's it like being married to a foodie? So the
Speaker 1: fellow booty. So the funny thing is when we first dated,
Speaker 1: Jose was not a foodie at all, Like really, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, oh this was I could tell you Jose's
Speaker 1: daily what he would eat daily. He would have a
Speaker 1: morning shake and then he'd go to work and like
Speaker 1: have Mexican food always like a burrito or something, and
Speaker 1: that's like his big meal, his one big meal a day.
Speaker 1: And then he'd go home and for dinner he'd have
Speaker 1: a protein shake. So when we first started dating and
Speaker 1: I would like sleepover Virgie, there was like water in
Speaker 1: the fridge and milk in the ridge and nothing else.
Speaker 1: And I can't I'm not a smoothie person, Like I
Speaker 1: need food in real food. Like so yes, the one
Speaker 1: thing that I that I regret. So Jose's mom passed
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, just before I left for Arizona. I
Speaker 1: was a lecturer at Arizona State and like the one
Speaker 1: thing I never got to do was like cook with
Speaker 1: her and like you know, figure out like recipes, you know,
Speaker 1: that that he really liked. And when I came back
Speaker 1: for one of the breaks, we were watching a movie
Speaker 1: and you know, like of course, like before the movie ends,
Speaker 1: I take up my yell pap and I look at, okay,
Speaker 1: what are we going to eat after it? Right? And
Speaker 1: there happened to be a Guatemalan restaurant sorted walking distance. Um,
Speaker 1: you know from the theater the season He's Guatemalan. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they served pepion and I know that pepion is
Speaker 1: his favorite dish. It's the one thing like on his
Speaker 1: birthday he would always ask his mom or his ought
Speaker 1: to make. And it's like it's like pumpkin seed and
Speaker 1: chile and like you know, slow cooked pork. I remember,
Speaker 1: we're in this restaurant he had peppion. He started getting
Speaker 1: emotional because you know, it sparks this memory. And I
Speaker 1: don't think he had processed the passing of his mother
Speaker 1: until that moment. And I thought, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: it hit me how how much it sucked that I
Speaker 1: didn't get to learn this recipe. And so when I
Speaker 1: went back to Arizona, I started scouring the internet and
Speaker 1: so I found this recipe. I made it for him,
Speaker 1: and like you know, it's it's never gonna be like
Speaker 1: his mother's. But I think he was just really touched
Speaker 1: that it was close, and like I did that, you know,
Speaker 1: like I tried to replicate something that meant so much,
Speaker 1: because yeah, like that's how food is the love language.
Speaker 1: When I was single, my ultimate litmus test was like,
Speaker 1: if I can't bring you to a family party to
Speaker 1: enjoy our food, I can't bring you into the family,
Speaker 1: Like I just I can't because this is our love language,
Speaker 1: and like it's so hard to genuinely be a part
Speaker 1: of like our family if you don't eat the food,
Speaker 1: right what you said about him getting emotional with this
Speaker 1: dish and sort of like that being maybe an entry
Speaker 1: point of really processing his feelings about the loss of
Speaker 1: his mother. And it makes complete sense that if all
Speaker 1: you're eating is like a protein cheek and food that
Speaker 1: you didn't grow up eating, that that wouldn't that, you know,
Speaker 1: you could have these unexamined feelings because like food is
Speaker 1: that is that like it's I don't know, it's like
Speaker 1: that evocative, immediate that like emotion is connected to it.
Speaker 1: I hear this a lot in like these diets, sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, circles where it's like food is fuel.
Speaker 1: Food is fuel, and it's like food isn't just fuel,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's history, it's the story of your
Speaker 1: of your family and your people. It's it's like it's
Speaker 1: not fuel, it's like heart and soul, spiritual like nourishment.
Speaker 1: And when you lack that, you lack the nourishment that
Speaker 1: you need to continue going. Right. I used to teach
Speaker 1: a class on food and culture in Arizona State, and
Speaker 1: like I would talk about hands and I would tell
Speaker 1: my students, like look at your hands, and I go,
Speaker 1: you know, I Filipinos we eat with our hands because
Speaker 1: there's something intimate about like eating with your hands. Your
Speaker 1: your relationship to your food isn't muddled by like a utensil.
Speaker 1: It's that like you know, you have to you know,
Speaker 1: like when you eat with your hands, you feel the food,
Speaker 1: you touch the food. You it sparks this intimate relationship
Speaker 1: with your food, you know. And I tell my students, like,
Speaker 1: you really have to understand the importance of hands because
Speaker 1: I want you to reflect on the hands that created
Speaker 1: the food, who made the food, think about the hands
Speaker 1: that picked the food, right, you know, So like food
Speaker 1: isn't just fuel. It's about like how we connect to
Speaker 1: each other. You know, food is politics, right, especially like
Speaker 1: in the pandemic, I've been thinking a lot about like
Speaker 1: essential workers, farm workers, and of course like nurses. A
Speaker 1: large percentage of nurses here in the Bay Area are Filipino, right, So,
Speaker 1: like I've loved the way in which Filipino restaurant owners
Speaker 1: have gotten together and like you know, they make food,
Speaker 1: and like they send it to the hospitals. I feel
Speaker 1: like they do that because they're reminded of the fact
Speaker 1: that so many of the nurses and like hospital workers
Speaker 1: are Filipino themselves, and in order to function and to
Speaker 1: help other people breathe, this is a community that needs
Speaker 1: to eat food that is familiar and comfortable to them. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's like, I feel like how we understand nourishment also,
Speaker 1: how we understand the way in which we feed people
Speaker 1: is connected to how we like, you know, fundamentally take
Speaker 1: care of people. Yeah, Joe, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you. I so
Speaker 1: loved being here. And of course you know, ver j
Speaker 1: I love hanging out with you. And when we are
Speaker 1: able to, we shall have an incredible meal at prebet
Speaker 1: you yes and yeah. And also we have a dining
Speaker 1: table at our new apartment, so like you will come
Speaker 1: over and I will cook lovely, lovely Islander Filipino food
Speaker 1: and we shall feast over the different ways in which
Speaker 1: I can handle a can of spam. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: head to Rebel Eatersclub dot com for this week's journal prompt.
Speaker 1: We also have brand new badges for this season and
Speaker 1: advice on starting your own Rebel Eaters Club courtesy of
Speaker 1: the babes of the Wesleyan University Rebel Eaters Club. We're
Speaker 1: taking next week off, so look out for our next
Speaker 1: episode in two weeks. In the meantime, revisit season one
Speaker 1: and check out Snacks and Recaps on my Instagram live,
Speaker 1: a series I've been doing to recap Rebel Eaters Club
Speaker 1: episodes with the rest of the podcast team. I'm at
Speaker 1: Virgie Tovar on Instagram and Snacks and Recaps is every
Speaker 1: Wednesday at twelve pm Pacific. Rebel Eaters Club is produced
Speaker 1: by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is Jordan Bailey. Lacy
Speaker 1: Roberts is our managing producer. Sarah knix edits the show
Speaker 1: and Our executive producer is Greta Khane and I'm your
Speaker 1: host Virgie Tovar. Ben Shano is our mix engineer. Special
Speaker 1: kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer, and Mitchell Johnson
Speaker 1: for the production assist and Taka Yasuzawa, who wrote some
Speaker 1: of the music we use in the show. If you
Speaker 1: love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the
Speaker 1: love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 1: See you next week. M