Balikbayan boxes are boxes that my mom brings to the Philippines filled with Spam, M&M’s, and my favorite toys. It’s hard lugging these boxes around (sometimes 5 to 130 boxes each trip) but once you get there and the family is gathered to open them up, it’s worth the spinal cord injury. Just call the local Hilot for the back pain when you arrive. If you can’t move or feel your lower body, try hitting it with a bat.

I saw this billboard on Ocean avenue and Capitol in San Francisco, CA. It isn’t up anymore but it brought ‘a tears to my eye’ to see the word “Filipino” on a billboard. Pinoy power.

People call it the Filipino egg-roll. I call it the Filipino pocket of suprises. You go to a party and try Tita Baby’s lumpia; it has peas, corn, onions, green beans, and chicken. Good shit. But then the next weekend it’s Ate Ay-Ay’s birthday and you find a different batch of lumpia by Tito Tak-Tak filled with spiced ground pig: lumpiang shanghai.

From fried lumpia to fresh lumpia, different families use different ingredients. And even though you can’t predict what’s inside, true Filipinos never ask; we just grab the damn things and take a bite, knowing that the Filipino who made it, no matter what they put inside, has a good idea of what decent lumpia is all about. Except for Kuya Bong’s lumpia… or that fob kuya in a typical Filipino family who messes around too much and likes to scare people as they walk down the hallway.

Adobo is Filipino fast food. Just grab garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, black pepper, and chicken (or pork or beef), in a hot pot and you have your adobo. It’s a Spanish dish, but the sugar and the Filipino making the adobo make it a Filipino dish. Although many Filipinos don’t add sugar to their adobo, sugar is usually somewhere in a Filipino’s life. Filipino’s who don’t eat sugar are Filipino’s who have had too much of it. These Filipinos are called diabetics.