Friday, August 11, 2006

An Open Apology to My Filipino Colleagues

Guys, I'm sorry.

I know you do better for my patients overnight than I can during the day. Gerb, I appreciate your attempts to teach me to talk dirty in Tagalog. Michelle, thanks for the custard cakes and the joke about the sausage and bread and fish. Ester, you rock my world when you start IVs for me. Jay, you've pulled more folks back from the brink down in post-op than I can count. None of you complains about the schedule, or about the bigots you have to work with, or about the assholes that pepper your day. Along with the Indian and African immigrants and the occasional Slav or Russian, you make my hospital a fun, interesting place to work. I love you all.

But I cannot, cannot eat pork adobo.

I have tried. I like fried eggplant and little squiddy-squids for breakfast. I rock the lumpia whenever you decide to bring some extra. I'll eat anything that you put in front of me, really.

Except pork adobo.

Kill a chicken, pluck a parakeet, slay a sturgeon. Put it into adobo sauce or dry it and fry it and serve it up cold; I don't care. Just don't put pork in front of me, please, with or without that delicious white rice that I can't seem to cook myself.

I feel *so bad* for not liking what is supposed to be the summit of Filipino cuisine, at least according to my coworkers, who can debate for hours the relative merits of various recipes for it, all the while switching into and out of English at baffling speed.

I had a big bowl of the stuff yesterday for lunch. Don't get me wrong; I love the way it tastes. But after? Oh, my stars and garters, it was like trying to work out with a hangover today.

So no more delicious, soft, tender, perfectly-cooked, meltingly wonderful bits of pork in a tasty sauce for me.

I think I'll go on a four-day juice fast now.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I ate a helping of everything at a Filipino banquet once. It had been cooked just for me and the lady who did it would have been crushed if I'd refused anything.

When I see tentacles in the meat counter, I still have flashbacks.

So sorry about your hangover.

Anonymous said...

i guess i get to say thanks for the compliments, even if i don't work with you...

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RN Moxie said...

Have you tried pancit sotanghon? I always thought pancit was the summit of Filipino cuisine myself.

Sometimes the combo of lard, porkfat and garlic is too much to take - even for me, a GERD suffering Filipino 8-).

UnsinkableMB said...

i'm kinda picky about my filipino food and can't eat just anyone's adobo - pork or chicken. my grandma skims out most of the fat and yet manages to make it very tasty. i'm not sure what the secret is, but whatever it is, i'm NEVER sick from grandma's adobo!

Anonymous said...

I like chicken but don't like pork. It's too fat.

Anonymous said...

Hi, nice to know that you have a multi-cultural group of friends. Filipino foods are really very delicious as long as you are not to picky. One of my favorite is their shrimp paste (bagoong), as long as you can stand the pungent smell.