A Note on Bitter

 A couple of months ago, along with a larger institutional conversation about pay equity and the lack of advancement opportunities for BIPOCs across the board, I decided to investigate the wages of the previous title holders of my current job position. Sometimes when you're eating a crisp, refreshing salad, you accidentally bite into a stray citrus seed and it turns everything bitter. And you're mad that it ruined your palate. In my case, I bit into the seed deliberately. As a matter of fact, I bit into so many bitter seeds, I started foaming in the mouth. I induced and triggered my own bitterness.

Bitter is a contrast. And it makes you aware of everything. I haven't been able to stop comparing myself to others. The bitterness from my job spread to other projects. Constantly scoffing at every twitter announcements of success, especially from white chefs and food writers, and the POCs who put them on a pedestal. We are far from the reckoning we think is happening. And when my desperate calls for advice from writers I looked up to were ignored, more bitterness was extruded. But I get it, they don't owe me anything. Bitter at all the books being published that contained ideas very similar to mine. Bitterness from questioning if I am actually skilled or if I'm just delusional. Food media seems to circulate through the same roster of writers, even though I think anyone who can string words into sentences and are given the proper and right amount of information and resources can write a decent article. (Yet, I have trouble writing shit). Gatekeepers make it that much more bitter.

Bitter is raw and we find every which way to cook it out. I've been cooking out for a long time that i'm swimming in my own steep.

I am burnt to crisp. Is bitterness a defense mechanism if i'm a deboned fish on the grill, being open and vulnerable about it?

Bitterness is a sore loser.

But, in the same way as smelling the bitter, roasty notes of coffee beans clears your olfactories and sets you up for accurately smelling a fragrance, bitter resets and serves the magnetic north for my personal moral compass. how much more sweetness do I add? How long do I want to stay in this? How much success do I want to gain from it? How much bitter to relieve the salt? Do I continue writing? How much sour to mask the very flavor I'm embodying?

Bitter aggregates. Bitter is a call to action, asking, is everything else about you balanced?

A Note on Sour

During sticky, humid evenings, piping hot sinigang is refreshing. I used to try and find the largest kangkong stalk from the large bowl of the soup set on our lazy susan at dinner time, and then use it as a straw to drink up the tart refreshing broth in my own bowl. There are always a couple of floral patterned platitos on the table filled with freshly squeezed calamansi juice combined with patis. Its citrusy funky scent wafts as the round glass spins by. My mother, the genius that she is, separates the meat off the pork bones, dips it on the platito using her bare hands and puts it back on her plate only to scoop it up again with steamy jasmine rice. This wisdom that I observed from her, is the ultimate bite of sour on sour. Sourness lingers throughout the meal. Thick pineapple slices that pricked my tongue usually followed the course. That, or sweet mangoes bleeding yellow, scored and flipped like a blooming flower. In Manila, this is how we dined.

Immigrant mothers who work two jobs cooked foods that lasted days on their only day off. A large simmering cauldron of this sour liquid rarely gets eaten fresh, as each family member rarely saw each other to have a meal together. This sinigang is designed to be eaten later. In America, I preferred charred burgers and fruity milkshakes. But sinigang reheated over the stove the next day is far superior than freshly made sinigang. It all boils down to the broth: melting taro roots thicken the stew, disintegrating pork bones add grit and milkiness, meat reduced to miniscule shreds, and the kangkong leaves’ sliminess lend a silkiness, while its hollow stalks remain ever. so. crisp. This is the sinigang of dry winter; a heavy coat. And while I prefer the flavor of day-old sinigang, I usually eat this by myself. No merry-go-round of food on the table, no platitos containing sour salty amber, no sweet flowers nor pricked tongues that follow. In Los Angeles, this is how we dined.

Sourness has duality. It adds freshness, yet it’s a sign of ferment. It uplifts, but it sits on a high note. It tenderizes, but it also preserves. It awakens the senses, yet it’s an indication that something is approaching its expiration. We turn sour when we part from things we love. In thinking of sour moments, sweet foods are eaten for comfort. But when sugar sits in the mouth for too long, the more sour sweetness becomes.