globally aware

Hong Kong food writer, blogger, and organic market founder Janice Leung Hayes didn't think there was anything left about her birthplace's food culture that could surprise her. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia, Janice started her popular blog e_ting in 2003 while living in Melbourne.

Michelin-starred restaurants, street food stalls, and bucolic vineyards have always been top destinations for gastro-tourists, but open air markets and farmers' markets are now making the food tourist’s must-visit list, as well. Full of sights, sounds, and smells missing from sterile tourist centers, these sensory wonderlands offer visitors a way to experience authentic local foodways, especially in foreign countries, where the marketplace can be notably different than the neighborhood farmers market.

Two years after moving to the Philippines, I am finally getting the hang of local lingo. I've learned, for instance, that taxi drivers are called mama (Tagalog for 'uncle') and that unli (short for 'unlimited') refers to any all-you-can-consume product, from rice to cellphone minutes. Some terms, however, took a bit longer to decipher.

The first time I went to the supermarket as a newly minted Metro Manila resident, I threw items into the shopping cart as if our old SUV was in the parking lot, waiting to haul two weeks' worth of groceries home. Only after I had paid and was staring at eight bags with the combined weight of a full-grown man did I remember having walked to the store.

Later, as I glared at modestly sized cupboards that refused to hold any more jars and cans, it was easy to blame our compact space for being too small. But the truth was that my old buying habits were simply too big for our new home.

I was excited to see an article in this Sunday’s local paper entitled “Alimentos, Por que no saben como antes?” (“Food, why doesn’t it taste like it used to?”)

The article discusses fruits and vegetables and the fact that what is available today does not taste like what was available in the past. In an optimistic tone however, it goes on to say that there are alternatives to return to the pleasure of the flavors of the past, and highlights various options such as seeking out organic and local agriculture, saving seeds to grow your own, eating seasonally and generally restructuring or re-prioritizing one’s philosophy of life. 

If you haven't yet, check out part 1 of my exploration of food issues from Argentina.

As I have attempted to continue writing about the food traditions, habits and beliefs of my acquaintances in Argentina, all seems to turn to the topic of the social life here. While food rituals are shared by families and include specific familiar dishes and routines, the social culture, and its rules and expectations dominate most interactions, and thus, any shared experiences of eating.

Once a month, when I was a kid growing up in the 70’s in Minneapolis, my entire family would pile into the car and head over to North Country Coop on the West Bank. We would go into the ‘back room’ where giant blocks of cheese waited for someone to cut and wrap them. In exchange for our contribution as working members of the coop, we received a sizable discount on our organic fruit, vegetable, dairy and bread purchases. This was my first exposure to the culture of organic and sustainable foods and the cooperative system of bringing this food to the public. It was not fancy or grandiose. In fact, it was more like a warehouse than a grocery store.