MANILA, Philippines?At the Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa Valley, California, you enter a museum dedicated to cuisine.

There are talks scheduled, wine tasting, food sampling. You can eat at Julia?s Kitchen named after Julia Child, the American cooking teacher icon, or walk through the center?s Edible Garden and be informed about herbs and salad greens.

Almost every corner of its multilevel building has exhibits. I recall marveling at the antique bread toasters, elaborate and intricately designed appliances that must have involved skilled metalwork craftsmen.

There was a display of art involving soda bottle caps where I searched in vain for the flattened tansan strung on a laundry wire that serves as a percussion instrument for our Christmas carolers. And then there was a photo exhibit, ?Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.?

There were only about eight families from different countries featured in the photographs. In front of each was a week?s worth of food either bought or gathered. I saw more processed food in highly industrialized countries like the US and more fresh produce in places considered as Third World.

I searched for the Filipino family. When I couldn?t find any, I thought to myself that we have been ignored again.

I remembered that exhibit when I saw the book version and finally put author, photographer and their work together. ?Hungry Planet: What the World Eats? (Material World Books, 2005) is written by Faith D?Aluiso with pictures by Peter Menzel who traveled the globe documenting 30 families in 24 countries and what they eat. Then I saw that there was a Filipino family among the lot, the Cabañas of Malate, Manila.

Eduardo and Angelita Cabaña have three sons, one married with two children, who all stay in one house. Eduardo repairs watches for a living. Angelita inherited the watch repair business from her father and can do that work also apart from selling Tupperware and offering massage therapy to a steady clientele of women. She is also the cook, the one who shops for food. The week?s spread was displayed on the table, chairs and floor of the sala in their family photo.

Week?s supply of food

What the authors did was give the families in the book money to buy their week?s supply of food. What the Cabañas had could have been my food at home, at least the majority of it. Vegetables and fruits (dalandan, latundan and saba) and eggs were fresh. There was more fish than meat (chicken and pork) all from the wet market. There was about 12 kilos of white rice.

There were the pantry staples of lechon sauce, ketchup, soy sauce, vinegar and patis, salt and peppercorns.

From all that some meals were fashioned including Angelita?s recipe of sinigang na baboy (pork in soured broth) which is in the book. She does it from scratch which is commendable for someone as busy as she is, using green tamarind as souring agent and hugas bigas for broth (rice washing).

For snacks or breakfast, there were sardines, luncheon meat, packaged tortillas, local chocolate bars and Halls.

Two ubiquitous items in many Filipino homes amused me?Skyflakes and instant noodle soup. There were three kinds of bread?white sliced, pan de sal and cheese buns. Milk was powdered. Streetfood bought were siopao and kwek kwek, quail eggs covered in batter and deep-fried. Sometime in the week, Jollibee hamburger value meals figure in the mix.

Beverage consisted of soft drinks, tetra-packed orange juice and instant coffee.

The authors wondered about the one pack of cigarettes that was part of the food budget that was included in the picture.

Misgivings

While I thought having a Filipino family in the book was recognition at last, those who have seen the book had misgivings about the choice of family and its surroundings. Horrors, they said, a wake was even included where food is cooked nearby for the mourners and then pictures of garbage piled near the Quiapo market. There?s the ramshackle carinderia.

The book doesn?t say how the family was chosen and if they are the average Filipino family. I know they are part of crowded Manila. I think what worries some people is that the feature projects the underbelly of our country. It?s like showing our exotica of balut and only that when featuring our cooking.

I don?t adhere to simply showing what is good and beautiful even if true. And I don?t think the whole story is in the pictures. The writer went with Angelita Cabaña as she went to market and bought the week?s provision. Through that she became acquainted with the suki system, buying by the tumpok, and wrote an accurate account of the descriptive names of streetfood.

And she talked with our kababayan enough to conclude that despite the problems of living in urban Manila?the cramped quarters, crime, traffic, pollution?what holds the city together ?is the cohesive nature and inventiveness of the Filipino family.? Hardly anyone can argue with that.

E-mail the author at pinoyfood04@yahoo.com