Eating Tripe With Your Hands In Public

Last night was my first experience at a Filipino Salo. I'd been eating Filipino food all week, so I was already prepared enough not to be worried about eating tripe or quail eggs.

The long tables were lined with banana leaves and we each got a paper napkin and a plastic cup for our drinks. Garlic rice was scooped out into mounds in a steady line going down the long table set with thirty chairs. Every five people or so, a dish full of peppered vinegar was poured out and a circle of fried mesentary was placed around. Mesentary is chitlins, or chitterlings. They look like little dumplings made of scrotum, but they tasted pretty good.

On one side of the rice mounds, a dish with lots of vegetables, tomato-y broth, chickpeas, ham hocks and tripe was scooped out. On the other side was a fried noodle dish with quail's eggs, roast chicken and mushrooms. So basically, you reach out and pull handfuls of food toward you across the banana leaf. I kept forgetting not to lick my fingers so much because I'd be sticking them back into a communal pile of food, and I also had a hard time resisting the urge to clean my fingers with my paper napkin after every bite. I'm just conditioned to mitigate my slovenliness and wasn't prepared for this much acceptance. My husband leaned over to me halfway through the meal and whispered "I wish I washed my hands before we started."

After those two dishes, we were rewarded with a pork dish, boiled in sugar and vinegar with banana blossoms and that was my favorite, except for dessert, which was the best flan I've ever had, ever.

There were a lot of Filipino Americans at the dinner, which was nice, because it's not a culture I'm extremely knowledgeable about, but it's at times a hybrid Latin-Asian dynamic because The Philippines was once colonized by the Spanish. They got a lot of American t.v. shows, but not The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, so nobody understood when I was showing them my dog Truffles honoring greatness:

The dinner table was full of good conversation, bottles of beer and wine (bring your own) and I think it was the first time I ate with my hands in a well-lit setting in front of other people as an adult. I typically save that sort of behavior for dark closets when nobody is around. Here is the aftermath:

The staging for a pop-up dinner is intense. This food-circus travels from State to State, finds a location, figures out the local food scene and tests recipes before the big dinner. On the side, they are continuing the marketing to get people to buy tickets in advance and to get newspapers and food blogs to mention them, and they have about 40 States to go. Next week, New Jersey and the week after is Connecticut. In CT, they are staying with my parents, who will probably love this. After dinner, my husband and I were comparing our parents' potential reactions to eating with fingers off of banana leaves in front of strangers at a communal table. We agreed that if his parents went, they would look around, and his dad would immediately go to the bathroom, sneak out and wait in the car with the doors locked until it was over. His mom would probably hang out and see what it was about, but ultimately might not eat. I think my parents will dig it, and I hope they do me proud by being the sloppiest at the table. It was fun, I learned a lot, and I got messy. I had flan for breakfast.

www.thesaloproject.com

Have You Ever Had Filipino Food?

You Racist! Just kidding. I've Been Privvy To Some Genuine Inspiration This Week. My husband and I, along with our roommate Pete, have been host/hostessing a small traveling food/film initiative this week called The Salo Project. The film half is my friend Cassandra, who I met when I lived in Los Angeles (2008-2009) and the food half is her friend, who is a chef of Filipino origin, who has started this project to make 50 meals in 50 States, pop-up fashion, showcasing Filipino cuisine/culture, eating with your fingers with no judgment about slopping up your ugly shirt, and raising money for typhoon victims. They've completed 9 States and are currently working on Pennsylvania, namely Philly.

Lemme back up a hot minute: my husband and I have a roommate, which I never talk about because I'm heavily censored on subjects that "certain folks" feel aren't cool. Pete has never said "hey don't blog about how I eat protein powder at every meal and measure my daily intake of water by drinking out of measuring cups," but my husband is like "roommate is cool, no bloggo, si?" and I'm like "Ok, fine, I'll add it to the list of things hubby says I can't blog about, like his job and personal habits, the high-pitched voices he uses to make our animals talk and such."

So I dropped it on my husband and Pete last minute that we'd be collectively hosting the Salo Project for the week while Cassandra and Yana explored Philly and set up a pop-up Filipino dinner for a good cause. They are two very creative and inspiring ladies who have embarked on a project of making a meal for 20+ in each State of the U.S. I'm inspired. They are creative, driven, humble, interesting, funny and food is involved. I really love food.

They cooked for us tonight and the only reason there is still some left is because I want to use the leftover food to con people into helping them. We had fried noodles with rat's ear mushrooms and quails eggs alongside some spicy shrimp okra. I managed to save room for the dessert of mashed purple yam with salted caramel ice cream. If I thought that I could talk these lovely ladies into sister wife-hood, I'd be changing my blog topics like toute suite. Dang, son. Here they are, The Salo Honies:

Here is the website: http://www.thesaloproject.com/#!/landing
Youtube channel where you can sample Yana chasing a hog around a weird farm in South Carolina:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+salo+project
Instagram: @saloseries - or find her on Facebook. C'mon, just connect, what else do you really have going on?

Chef Yana is working with Feastly for marketing, locations, foodie networking, etc., but there are so many States to go and they still need assistance and hosting. Am I asking for money? Not really, I'm saying host some cool people, couch-surfing style, or maybe you have a nice spare room that your cats let other people use occasionally, and eat some awesome food. They have been cooking for us. I'm nodding in your direction Nebraska Kate, New Haven is the week of May 18th. Massachusetts/Boston is June 1. There is currently a glitch in the calendar on the website, but it'll be fixed soon, so if you're wondering when can I find this pop-up Filipino dinner in my State because I live in New Hampshire (Rachel?), or Seattle or Colorado or Louisiana. . . send me a note or go to the website and email Yana. Not convinced? Well, next week she cooks for CNN and Philly sold out after being featured on Philly Eater. You know what's cool? Pop-ups. You know what's awesome and that we all love? Eating good food. I urge you to seek out The Salo Project when it hits your State and buy a ticket, you will not regret it. Plus, how fun is it being around people who are creatively and consciously pursuing what they love? Loads of fun. Don't we all want to be doing that?