Whoever said that Love only comes from the heart was lying. It also comes from the kitchen.

I cooked dinner today-- sopas (for non-Filipinos, it's a milky macaroni soup) and fried chicken. I love to cook and bake. I really do. My father and my sister said that it's like my mother's version of sopas so that's a very very good sign! I hope I am a successor of her great cooking because as tough or as cosmopolitan womanish I may be, I like the domesticated female role-- you know, baking and cooking and taking care of the family. But not to keep my future husband's hopes up, I don't think I'll ever settle down to be a housewife because I like keeping busy (i.e. WORK!) no matter how tempting the bumming and being bored seems.

My mother really knows how to cook and bake. Everyone loves her for that (among many other reasons, of course!). All of my friends love her brownies. And when I say all of my friends-- friends from every school I went to and that's like four! Isn't that just great? She's famous for her brownies, chocolate cake, and orange-cheese chiffon cake. Oh, lets not forget the custard cake too! So you must understand why this family loves food-- we grew up being fed like guinea pigs of my mom's cooking-- we were the testing guinea pigs. Or maybe you should scratch out the "guinea" part and leave the "pig" part. Like this one time when she tried out a new recipe of cinnamon rolls. She baked two dozens and when they were hot off the oven, my sister and I finished the whole batch in one day. It was so good we couldn't stop eating. There was also a time when she tried baking fresh ensaymadas from scratch. Again, my sister, my father, and I finished the whole batch. And it was supposed to be "not good", according to her, because it was her first time to try the recipe.

My childhood consists of a lot of memories of Mama's baking. She'd be in the kitchen all day preparing snacks for us or for family friends. Our birthday parties (we used to throw BIG ONES in our garden all our childhood lives) were not catered. They were all cooked by Mama and as expected, the birthday spread would be very very delicious from pasta, spring rolls, to the chocolate cupcakes and birthday cake. Yezzah. We were (and still) well fed!

I want my future children to have that. Mama did not only bake or cook food out of nothing. As cheesey as it may sound, I actually know what it really means when they say that food should be made from love. Mama's baking and cooking were all sprinkled with love and we shower her praises to show her our appreciation for her labor of love. She knows that I am her biggest fan when it comes to her baking and cooking. Whenever I see her in the kitchen preparing a meal I'd tell her that it's hard to diet when I have her as a mother. And she smiles everytime she hears that. I think it is from our faces, which are full of hearty appreciation and love for her food, that she gathers the inspiration to cook/bake more even if it's a really tiring task.

And I know this for a fact because today after more than an hour of cooking dinner it was really tiring but the end result and the appreciation of those who ate what I have prepared was enough to make me want to cook for people again.