A pot of mechado, a bottle of beer and thee

Indulge this Aling Kusinera for awhile. Mechado is special to me and my siblings. We associate it with our mother, the great cook Gliceria D. Lolarga, who lived (almost) to feed and care for us to a healthy adulthood. Her mechado wasn't special Sunday fare--it was served on a regular day with us fighting over the sauce and the meat.

That is, until I tasted the mechado of sculptor Jerry Araos that used the fat-marbled batok of the cow. The dish is served at Gourmet Gypsy Cafe, 28 Maginhawa St., Up Village, Qc, immortalized in the menu by his daughter Waya.

For today's lunch, I brought down a couple of beef shanks from the freezer last night to thaw out overnight in the chiller. After breakfast, I rubbed garlic salt on the meat, a tip I picked up from Chef Mike Tatung of the FB program Simpol. The salt helped speed up the tenderizing of the meat.

With Kai as my kitchen helper, we prepared the carrots, potatoes, garlic and onions while I nagged Rolly to look for a slender bottle of black olives to add further flavor to the dish. We had run out of bell peppers.

Pot of mechado simmering on the stove

Using my daughter Kimi's cast-iron pot, I sauteed what Chef Tatung called the aromatics together with overripe cherry tomatoes. The meat was fall-off-the-bones tender after almost 45 minutes of simmering in its marinade, water and tomato paste.

When it was time to serve my take on Mommy's mechado, Rolly said that all it lacked was a dash of red wine to enrich the sauce.
He rated our ulam for lunch and for tonight's dinner a "7.0." I didn't ask for Kai's opinion anymore. It was enough that she was part of the preparatory stage.

Another day in the life in the kitchen.

Sunday at Steve's

Farmer Steve Salonga

The trip to Sampaloc, Tanay, wasn't exactly planned. What was was my visit to Dr. Melendre Araos, a yearly ritual that was a month delayed because of our full December schedules.

After we exchanged gifts on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I sat down for another tradition--eating the Araos pancit molo, a Christmas fare without which my year was incomplete. With us eating Cunanan ensaymada were Chef Waya Araos-Wijangco and hubby Ernie who called the special pastry a real brioche.

I always had this simple-minded idea that sculptor-farmer Julian Araos had a workplace in Tanay that was just a "kembot" or one or two zigzags away from their Antipolo home.

I couldn't be more wrong. Amara, the daughter of Roja Encabo and Melen's granddaughter, once went to Steve B. Salonga's farm and counted 64 zigzags that the car passed through to get to the roadside farmers' market. Easily an hour's drive to get there.

The view from Ka Teban's farmer's market at El Refugio Sampaloc, Tanay

The view was scenic--rural Philippines at its best. We climbed higher and higher. My ears started popping, something that happened only when I was ascending, or descending from, Marcos Highway in Baguio.

Steve calls his farm El Refugio Sampaloc. The farmland sits below the highway market. You won't miss the sign "Ka Teban's" (yes, that's the term of endearment for the farmer-informal trader).

It was towards noon already so most of the fresh vegetables that weren't drenched by the Christmas rains were sold. Melen bought some mushrooms and tinapa, Waya a bagful of fresh arugula leaves that she was going to turn into pesto for supper, tree-plucked papaya and a plant whose name escapes me now. I bought three bags of organic mushroom chicharon as gifts for a friend's children.

Freshly plucked arugula

Cuchinta with ricotta cheese on top

Golden tinapa

Red lettuce

Romaine lettuce

Steve and wife Girlie invited us for coffee and cuchinta in the shaded area. The cuchinta had that special nuttiness of flavor and was deliciously chewy. Ernie had the bright idea of putting fresh ricotta cheese on top of it for an extra kick.

Then it drizzled a bit and the fog and cold rolled in. Julian wrapped his mother Melen with a jacket and prepared piping hot tarragon tea for us. He threw in sprigs of lemon mint as an afterthought.

As I sipped my tea, I thought, despite everything, life's good!

Pompom, the Salonga family's pet, in his Sunday pose

Except for Steve's portrait from his FB photo collection, all photos by Babeth

Forever Norman

Norman Chow, my painting teacher for over 12 years, and I were supposed to "plot out" what would have been the 12th and last of 12 paintings for a two-person show I am scheduled to be part of in November. We began leisurely work as early as the first quarter of this year. We hated being hurried. But the 12th work isn't meant to be because just as Baguio was waking up from the debris left by super-typhoon Ompong, we who loved and respected Norman learned that he died Sept. 17. To say it was sudden is an understatement. I haven't totally come to terms with the loss. I will miss his quiet guidance, his humble ways (he was an excellent visual artist skilled in dry and wet media, able to paint in the traditional Oriental style and also come up with contemporary images) and his patience in imparting his technical knowledge. He helped me find my style and feel confident in it, not to be apologetic about a childlike view of the world and of shapes and colors. In honor of Norman, I am giving the title "Norman's Feast" to my show of still lifes of food painted in acrylic. The show, which will also feature the paper cutouts of Sinag de Leon, opens Nov. 7 at Waya Araos Wijangco's Gourmet Gypsy Art Cafe at 25 Roces Ave., Quezon City, and will run until the end of December. Waya comforted me, texting, "I'm sure he has given enough in the last 12 years for you to keep painting forever." In photo is Norman's rendition of what Green Valley in Baguio looked like before it was developed into the subdivision it is today.

The dreams that he inspired

Jerry Araos and those dreams are alive and growing healthily in The Garden of Two Dragons in Antipolo even as the urn containing his ashes was lowered last Sunday in a corner of The Mandala. The Mandala, the central section of his garden, has always been sacred space. There his immediate family led by widow Melen Araos and participants formed a semi-circle during a short commemorative, celebratory program. After his death on Dec. 23, 2012, and the homecoming of two overseas-based daughters and their families over the holidays, he finally got his send-off party. Yes, there were lumps in some of our throats, a few tears when the music swelled and words of remembrance were spoken. But all in all, like the white butterfly and breeze that passed by, there was Jerry's lightness of being all over the place. Godspeed once more!

For three years, the ashes were stored here on the balcony overlooking the garden. When we'd visit, we'd mentally talk to Jerry as if he were still there.

View from the balcony on a sunny morning

A reproduction of the Jerry who's still written large in our hearts and minds

Violinist Coke Bolipata plays "Amazing Grace" with what we can only call a Southern drawl to the arrangement.

Princess Nemenzo reads Louis Untermeyer's "The Prayer" part of which runs thus: "Ever insurgent let me be, / Make me more daring than devout; / From sleek contentment keep me free, / And fill me with a buoyant doubt."
Jerry handwrote these lines on a piece of paper. At first the family thought that they were his composition until the lines were entered into a Google search. A family member surmised that he may have encountered them while he was a political prisoner.

Waya Araos Wijangco, Jerry's eldest daughter, on the five things she and her siblings learned from their father's example: Live life with courage; live life with purpose; live a life of work; live life generously; and live life in love.

Apart from "The Lord's Prayer," young tenor Nomher Nival sang two of Jerry's favorite Mario Lanza songs: Nicholas Brodszky's "Be My Love" and and Irish tune "Danny Boy." Jerry used to waken his then young children by belting out these songs even if he was a little tone deaf from a childhood accident (he fell off a tree).

Although Pastor Noel Suministrado didn't have the pleasure and privilege of meeting Jerry when he still walked this earth, he could tell that the departed's life was one "lived in passion, a life lived to the fullest." With him inside The Mandala are Mira Araos Mariano, Kulas Besa, Nina Araos, Waya, Ernie and Sam Wijangco, and Dodo Defeo. Dodo recalled in his remarks a "Jerry-ism" that he picked up: how art at its basest is prostitution and how art at its loftiest is philanthropy.

Jerry's lust for life is encoded in the DNA of the next generations: his daughters Liwa and Waya and granddaughters Nina, Sophia Espanola and Amara Encabo. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

My incredible week in review

Waya Araos-Wijangco, Jerry and Melen's eldest daughter, with her niece and everyone's fave little girl, the sociable Amarra Araos Encabo

Old ties renewed: Host Doc Melen, writer Gemma Corotan-Kolb stand behind Nympha Saño, who Odette Alcantara used to call "Nymphette", and a blogger who has adopted the babushka look (coming soon, when her budget finally allows, peasant blouses)

The week of July 7 to 10 will be recorded in great detail in my personal diary as a very full one--the jingle lang ang pahinga kind of week that has taken a toll on a bum knee. The Sunday began with a visit to the Araos family, a hi and a ho to remember Jerry by. He would've been 70, a milestone year.

While I was there, Melen and youngest son Julian brought out some bubble-wrapped paintings that are bound for Florida, the US of A (not Florida Bus Lines). These were gifts to Jerry when he was hale, hearty and the biggest "encourager", after my husband Rolly, when I returned to art school. He saw to it that I would exhibit with his art guild Salakai in one of the biggest simultaneous art show events at the old SM Megamall Art Walk in May 2007 (them were the days when the SM chain of malls still had a veneer of credibility). These works haven't been exhibited; they were personal gifts to JVA's family. Now Jerry and Melen's youngest daughter Mira, who's infanticipating, will hang them in her nursery.

It just occurred to me now that these works remain untitled. So, Mira, it is with extreme pleasure that I give them the "names" they need for after all, they are the babies of my mind, heart and hands. Dear Mira, these are all the "authentication papers" you'll need.

"C Is for Crabs, C Is for the Cancer-borns" (Jerry, Mira and I are all born under the zodiac sign of Cancer.)

"Tea Time for Stones and Two Jars"

"Cubes, Ovals and a Ripe Orange"

After Jerry died, Melen said when she met my grand-daughter again two years after she delivered Kai/Butones that she hoped Amarra and Kai would become friends. This is to continue the deep ties of the Araoses and Lolargas--what Jerry had written in the past about how our families are intertwined. But due to geographical reasons, it may be Amarra and my grand-niece Machiko Skye Lolarga Susi (right) who'll hit it off. Max, as the family calls her, is, like Amarra, an Antipolo resident.

Monday, the seventh of July, was Maestro Darrell Ang day. When he arrived at NAIA the day before, Joseph Uy, consultant of the Manila Chamber Orchestra Foundation, who was there to welcome him, texted immediately: "Ma'am, Darrell is now here. He's gorgeous. You'll like him."

I texted back: "Baka naman himatayin ako!"

Joseph: "Don't worry, Ma'am, I'll catch you."

That's what I love about Joseph. He has this deadpan humor, and he doesn't add cheesy smiley emoticons on his messages the way I always do.

I had to give up a ladies' lunch (postponed for the nth time) for this coverage for Vera Files. I always am thankful for good, kind cab drivers, even the talkative ones, who bring me to my destination and back to the house without incident. I can't tip them anymore, but if there's an anti-hypoglycemia pack of sugar-free anything (mints, candies, cookies), this goes to the driver of the moment. Better than a tip because their faces light up when they say: "Mommy, solved na merienda ko." With the babushka look, they initially speak in English and ask from what country I am. Naks! I'm inclined to say Greece or Ukraine, but I don't want the discussion to get political and complicated so I quickly confess I'm Pinay and I have a pangit haircut to hide which is true. The barber (yes, barbers are cheaper than salon hair stylists) is still alive, by the way.

Group shot around Maestro Ang (seated second from right between classical music blogger Andrian Lontoc and a babushka) at the Makati Sports Club. Others in photo are Jasmine Cruz (bending left) of BusinessWorld, Baltazar Endriga, chairman of the board of the MCO Foundation, Ellen Tordesillas of VERA Files, Malaya and Abante, and Allan Pastrana, contributing writer of Philippine Daily Inquirer and a teacher at Miriam College. I told Mr. Endriga it must be nice to called Chairman of the Board like Frank Sinatra. His quick reply: "But he was Sinatra, and his friends in the Rat Pack were all millionaires! I'm not."

Tuesday I filed my story only to learn that the Vera Files site had been spammed and hacked.

Wednesday was teaching day--the first time I went to school accompanied by a yaya, my mom's. Never, not even in my nursery and kindergarten years, was I ever accompanied by a yaya to school. But this time, someone had to help me carry my students' notebooks (the equivalent of theme notebooks in my high school years), other teaching materials, my umbrella and backpack of personal stuff.

Should I also be grateful for over-frank students who ask for my exact age, what the matter was with me and if I'll be due for retirement soon because of disability? One asked, "If you're sixty by next year, will you have to go? And if you do, will they dissolve CW (creative writing)?"

My answer was diplomatic: "When the time comes for me to leave school, someone will take over. No one is indispensable in any organization."

Thursday, oh my! It was La Gilda Day, her vernissage at Silverlens Galleries in Makati, but I'll reserve a full-length account of that wild evening for another outlet. I wanna share this precious pic of funny girl Chit Roces Santos who's always Not Quite There and her babushka pal. I asked what did she come as. She said, "Masahistang bulag!" We sat together for a bit by the registration table at the entrance, and I said, "If people ask, you're my caregiver. Class ako ngayon--tisay ang yaya ko!"

Chit and blogger

Don't even talk of Friday because from the moment I woke up with my husband by my side (a rarity when I'm in Manila), I was in a go-go-go mood. His idea of a treat was to cover all meals in one blow--yes, a luncheon buffet that started at 11:30 a.m., ended at 2 p.m., 15 minutes before all the stations closed. He seemed insatiable and steadily ate through plates of sushi, sashimi, chorizos, three flavors of green ice cream, halo-halo with just the sangkap, not the ice and milk, buko pandan, mango sago, all downed with beer. I was waiting for him to turn comatose before my eyes, but it was I who got sleepy from just two plates of sushi.

What woke me up was when the waiters started singing table to table where a birthday celebrator was seated. They were a threesome: guitarist, a maracas and a tambourine player. One of them carried a portable sound system. I envied the tables that had a celebrator each so when our neighbors enjoyed the birthday song plus another pop hit, I asked if anniversaries were counted (our 30th was coming up in a few days). Yup, they "performed" anniversaries, too. A waiter proceeded to fetch this huge tarpaulin with "Happy Anniversary" writ large. When the singing started, I felt an instant shot of adrenalin. It was my cue to rise with my cane, sit on Rolly's left leg and do a lap dance. Guess who walked with a limp after? And the song we were serenaded with? "Kahit Maputi Na ang Buhok Ko!"

Old couple marking their Pearl Anniversary with a cheerful photo bomber behind them. I'm pretty sure that if I die ahead of him, Rolly will miss me acutely because of moments like this one and thus forgive my past transgressions.

Hubby and I capped date night at the Mostly Mozart 2014 Festival. Knowing what a screeching, shameless fan girl I am when the gods and goddesses descend from Music's Olympus, Rolly kindly took my photo by the grand piano with an Adonis, Maestro Darrell Ang.

As if all those activities weren't enough, I met some of my CW students yesterday, a Saturday afternoon, at the entrance of the Ayala Museum for a field trip. They not only visited the permanent diorama and the Fernando Zobel retrospective, they were present for Dr. May Jurilla's lecture-presentation on "Romancing the Book." My instruction to the kids was to listen well so they could ask one well thought out question each. In the end, only three overcame their shyness to raise their hands during the open forum.

One, two, three: Hashtag Ayala Museum!

Photos by Angel Reyes Nacino, Babeth and Suzy Lolarga, Maite de la Rosa, Rolly Fernandez and others like another restaurant customer

Ma, I'm in the magazine!

If you look closely enough at the left page, over there in the background on the right after the curtains is a vertically shaped canvas--it's a 2011 work of mine, acrylic on canvas, entitled "Mother, I Have Something to Tell You." It was originally exhibited at Nineveh Artspace in Santa Cruz, Laguna, with four other works in the same size. This one is now in the collection of Waya Araos Wijangco. That's her sala in Teachers' Village.

Wondering why I feel good? 

Baritone Andrew Fernando at Kiss the Cook Gourmet

Mark your calendars, particularly this date, the 13th of March, a Sunday. The Intimate Concert Series resumes at the restaurant/alternative art space Kiss the Cook Gourmet at 65 Maginhawa st., UP Village, Quezon City.

Featured artist for the evening concert that begins with a dinner first at 6 p.m.is internationally acclaimed baritone Andrew Fernando who was triumphant at the Philamlife Theater in a landmark concert with tenor Arthur Espiritu, soprano Rachelle Gerodias and the Manila Symphony Orchestra last year.

Fernando is the first Filipino first prize winner of the prestigious Loren L. Zachary National Vocal Competition in the United States and an alumnus of the world-renowned San Francisco Opera Merola Program.

He is also a prize winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions in the Los Angeles district and in the Pacific region, The Palm Springs Opera Vocal Competition, a recipient of the Opera Buffs Inc. scholarship grant and the Grand Prize winner in the Pasedena Opera Guild Vocal competition in 2004 and a grand finalist in the Licia Albanese Puccini International Vocal Competition held in New York in 2003. He was Opera Pacific’s resident baritone from 1999-2002 where he worked constantly with internationally acclaimed conductor John De Main.

His March 13 program includes Mozart’s "Se vuol ballare" (from Le Nozze di Figaro), Donizetti’s "Bella siccome un'angelo" (from Don Pasquale), "Kennst du das," , "Being Alive," from Little Women, "Some Enchanted Evening," "Impossible Dream," among others.

Concert comes with full-course dinner. Menu: Beefy mushroom and barley soup, Tropical Chicken and Mango Salad, Fish Fillet in Piripiri Sauce, Brown Rice and Corn Pilaf, Asparagus and Mushroom Saute, Watermelon, Melon and Honeydew with Honey Min

Call tel. 748-4152 or 0906-510-4270 for details. Kiss the Cook Gourmet (KTCTG), with tel. no. 434-3700, still has a few tickets left at their location.

This fourth concert is personally meaningful to me. It's a make-or-break thing. We are raising bail money for a cultural worker unjustly jailed for illegal possession of firearms in Western Samar.

KTCG's Waya Araos Wijangco has been sympathetic in lending her venue and arranging a full-course dinner at a loss in order to get more donations to the kitty. If there are enough kind hearts to enable us to pay the performing artists Andrew Fernando, his accompanying pianist Mary Anne Espina and the piano rental, the detainee has a chance to start afresh and be reunited with his family while the intimate concert series can hope to continue with its classical music outreach on a shoestring.

The concert organizers, Pablo Tariman and myself, are NGIs (non-profit individuals), and it would be great if we can increase our ranks so concerts for worthy causes can continue at KTCG and similar intimate venues where audience and artists can interact.

Photo shows Andrew "Drew" Fernando.