FIRST DRAFT: ROOTS & RECIPES ESSAY

Imagine this, it's your birthday & you're darting & running with your goofy cousins playing hide-n-seek, while your older relatives prepare for your party later that day. You're super exhausted and you just took a break from the game, so you go to quickly grab a juice pack from the fridge inside. All of a sudden, you get a huge whiff of steaming oxtail & tripe, with the aroma of peanut butter that just tingles your nose & makes your stomach growl like an angry grizzly bear. You take a quick look in the kitchen to see what your mom is whipping up & wonder what could smell so heavenly & pleasant. There's open peanut butter jars that are half empty & pretty much oozing out of the jar, the lid on the pot is covered in steam & overflowing with piping hot water, & mom is cutting, dicing, & chopping to veggies as she prepares to add them into the already-filled pot. You automatically know that this dish is going to be something that nobody has ever tasted before, & you just can't wait to be the first one to take a bite of it. This whole affair happens to be my 7th birthday.

Ever since I could chew, I've always loved to feast on my mother's oh-so famous, Kare Kare. It was just a dish that i grew up loving to eat, mostly with family. The dish is quite unusual & you think, well, out of all the foods you've eaten, why is this your favorite? First off, you don't have a kind of recipe like this that combines all these ingredients into one dish. It's not like any other recipe, & I like trying different & far-out things. Second, if you gave this dish a try, boy are you in for what I call a TASTE FRENZY. There are so many flavors that just pop in your mouth & stir up your taste buds, making you crave more & more each time. The tripe & oxtail feel like marshmallows on your mouth & pretty much melt on your tongue, no need to chew. The green beans & eggplant are so full of flavor because they've been sitting in delicious peanut butter flavored gravy. I know it sounds a bit unsatisfying & unappetizing, but trust me you'll love it just as much as I do within your first munch. And did I mention that it's also healthy for you too? That's right, because you get your serving of veggies, protein from the meat, & vitamins from the gravy. So when you eat this dish, there's no need to feel guilty.

My mom always used to tell me stories about her childhood in the Philippines & how different it was then than it is now. Boy, was she right, especially in the making of kare kare. She said that her grandmother used home made utensils & cooking tools to prepare this dish. Instead of the instant kare kare mix we have now, they would brown & pulverize rice on a pan for hours. The preparation for this recipe back then was time consuming & required hard work & toil. When my mom cooks it, she doesn't break a sweat! I don't know how people survived back then without our technology.

Man, do I have quite a few memories & moments with this particular dish! I clearly remember when it was my 5th birthday, I was standing in line impatiently waiting for my turn to scoop up kare kare onto my plate. My cousin took one look at it & said, "EWWW, that looks so GUH-ROSS!" I told her to give it one try, just a teeny-bit, & that she'd like it. She was skeptical about it at first, but trusted my taste buds & took one bite. With that first taste, I could already tell she was surprised & fell in love with it. She went running back for more servings & just chowed down on it like there was no tomorrow. I said to myself, "Well, looks like your work is done. Mission Accomplished!"

This particular dish makes me so PROUD to represent my culture. I am proud to say that I am a true filipino & part of the brown nation (; Kare Kare, Pancit, Adobo, Puto, & Ube Ice cream are all parts of the filipino tradition. Food is pretty much a way of passage in our culture. By exchanging recipes & sharing all-time favorite dishes brings family closer, whether they know it or not. 

In the Philippines, family is really all you have. They say if you turn your back on family, even if you're a millionaire or you're as famous as can be, you truly have nothing. Kare kare is not just a food that's good for your stomach, but it's also good for the soul & the heart. It strengthens the bond & relationship you have with your family members by creating lifelong memories that you'll take with you even after you die. 

Kare kare, like many family dishes, is a family legacy that you pass down from generation to generation. My great-grandmother passed down the recipe to my grandmother, then my grandmother passed it down to my mother, & I intend on passing down this recipe to my children.