Find the transcript of my interview with Charlene Tan below.
INTRO
Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I’m your host, Nastasha Alli.
I know I’m a little late to the game, but one of the best books I read this year, hands down, was “The Third Plate” by Dan Barber. I loved it because it asks this really big question - “How do we save ourselves from what we’re doing to our food systems?”. And it triggers the kinds of conversations I love having. Basically, the idea behind “the third plate” is that we - meaning you, and me - can actually make a difference with how good food and good farming come together.
I also want to tell you about something amazing that happened this week. So a couple months ago I submitted an essay for the “Food Sustainability Media Award” given by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. They are incredibly well-known and respected name in journalism. I was so excited to hear they had this contest that basically recognizes the work of journalists and emerging talent from all over the world, for reporting on issues and stories around food security, sustainability, agriculture and nutrition. It was so up my alley.
02:05 Food sustainability in the media
Last month, they emailed me to say I was a finalist, and as you can imagine I was over the moon. And then just this week, at the end of November 2018, I had this “out-of-words” opportunity to fly to Milan - in Italy - to accept the award for my entry. My essay was called “Why the Philippines may run out of fish by 2048.” I know the title’s a little clickbait, but it is based on facts and figures around how the fishing industry in the Philippines is seeing an incredible decline, with no immediate signs of resurfacing. Anyway, I won. And you guys, I can’t even begin to describe it. I won an international journalism award writing about something I really really love: tuyo, or dried fish.
It blows my mind that Paolo Barilla - like, the heir of the Barilla pasta company, and head of the Center for Food and Nutrition - actually handed me something to say that he, and the world by extension, are eager to listen to stories about food security and sustainability in places like the Philippines.
So on this episode of Exploring Filipino Kitchens, we’re talking with Charlene Tan, who founded a community supported agriculture program called Good Food Community. They are, quite literally, planting the seeds for a new future - offering “a third plate” - for Filipinos ready to make a change.
We’ve got a lot to cover this episode. Let’s get to it!
INTERVIEW
04:00 About Good Food Community
CT: I’m Charlene Tan of Good Food Community. It’s a social enterprise that runs a community shared agriculture program. The big idea is to connect people to where food comes from, through a subscription type system - so kinda shifting people from a consumer mindset to a co-producer mindset. Believing that agriculture is a community affair, or should be supported by a community, we all put in our stake by paying upfront for a share of the harvest, and we get a share of whatever’s fresh and in-season, in order to support our farmers and farming properly. So that’s kinda the big idea that we’re trying to grow, in the Philippines, to work for smallholder farmers. That’s what Good Food Community does.
NA: So how many farming communities do they work with now, I asked?
CT: Communities, I’d say…we have Capas (in the province Tarlac), Benguet in Mountain Province, Rizal and (the Aetas)…so five communities. The farmers we work with, they range from like 10 to 20, or 60 to 100 (per community). It’s a range because we invite a lot of people, but not everyone participates, right. So we visit all their farms, and we can [help] accredit them, but it’s really up to them if they want to take the opportunity or not. So some benefit more, others less so.
NA: And how did they start?
05:35 Starting a community supported agriculture program
CT: I worked for an NGO years ago. I’ve always been kind of passionate about rural development, I like the outdoors, being close to nature, trying to find a way to be of service in that area. So I worked for an NGO that worked with these communities, on sustainable agriculture and small-scale renewable energy. What I saw is that…well, the way an NGO works, is that you’re grant-based, right. So sometimes, the people who are funding the project don’t know what’s happening on the ground, and you may need to change in the middle of a project - but because you’re beholden, you can’t really do that. So that’s one issue. The other issue is, say the proposal is about food security. But it’s not where the farmers are at. Maybe a better incentive would be a livelihood or something.
So when I heard about CSA - or community shared agriculture - I learned about it through a volunteer, who was really good at cooking. So when I asked him, “how’d you get this good?” - he was from the UK - he said, well we get a box of vegetables every week, and you kinda just have to make do with what you get. Also we know exactly where it’s from, [so] my creativity comes from that. When I heard about this idea, I thought it would be brilliant for our smallholder farmers. I really love the idea. So I was like, okay, sure! I thought we should try it, you know. Famous last words.
So that’s how we started. I was pitching it to different people before, when I was working at the NGO. Then finally, my prayer group - we’ve been meeting since after college - they were looking for an area of service to do together. And I said, oh. At that time, social enterprise was still kind of a new concept, and kind of exciting. So I was like, we can do this! How hard can it be, you know? That was back in 2010. There were 12 of us who started. And since I was working for an NGO, we were connected immediately to a community, where they had a demonstration farm in Tarlac. So we talked to the farmers and said, this is the basic idea. If we were to order in advance for these kinds of vegetables, would you be able to deliver? We started with 11 farmers in that area.
NA: And as we can hear from Char, selling local farmers on this idea - to plant vegetables according to what’s in season, basically trusting the idea that people would buy them, even if they knew it wasn’t the kind of stuff that their regular customers, say at the local palengke, or wet market, would buy - that was a challenge in itself. Because, let’s put it this way. If you lived in a farm, would you trust someone from the big city - this well-meaning, but total outsider - to KNOW what you could actually sell? I mean, few people would. And if you had your whole family’s earnings on the line - well, that’s another bridge to cross. So I asked Char to give us a little backstory on what the farmers they were working with, at the beginning, were actually growing at the time.
08:55 "It was something completely new"
CT: At that time they were growing rice and sugarcane. I mean, we didn’t know. We thought oh, farmers are farmers. When we offered them this, it was something completely new. I mean, not completely new in the sense that they don’t know how to grow it, but they never really had a commercial mindset for growing vegetables. Vegetables were like a backyard operation. Some of them would grow it for themselves, some of them not. But when we said, okay, if we were gonna order this much, and we need it at this time, they couldn’t imagine it, three months from now. They were very risk averse, it depends on if it rains the right time, if the flowers get pollinated, there were fruits…it was very interesting, because we just took it for granted and thought, you’re a farmer - you know what to do. It was interesting to begin working with them.
NA: That definitely seems like so much work cut out for 12 young people in a prayer group. Did anyone have some experience with farming or agriculture?
CT: No, none of us did. Not even business or whatever. We just thought, it’s a good idea, we’ll figure it out. But of course there were a lot of meetings, and each person had something to offer. We had someone who was good at graphics, good at media stuff. Another was a writer, someone who had a marketing background, I had the NGO background, another person wrote the business plan. So everyone had something to contribute, but not agriculture. So what we did was was hired an agriculturist at the beginning, to be at the farm and coordinate among the other farmers. That was part of it. But we didn’t cost ourselves into the business model or anything. We kinda just had to quickly change as we go along.
NA: That’s what interesting to me about Good Food Community. To give our listeners a little context, as to what community supported agriculture is like in the Philippines. In the US and Canada, to give a specific example, it’s pretty common now to get a CSA subscription and have it delivered to your door. And people are really open to that concept, because they are very much aware of supporting locally grown ingredients, to support smallholder farmers. But in the first year that you started Good Food Community, could you share one big challenge from the consumer side? What were the challenges of introducing this idea to consumers. And what was another challenge on the farmers’ side?
11:30 Consumer challenges
CT: One of the biggest challenges with the consumer side was the perception and knowledge of local vegetables. Remember we started with one community, in Capas, Tarlac. The kind of vegetables we would get are the “bahay kubo” vegetables, like ampalaya, squash, eggplant, mustasa, lowland spinach, alugbati, things that you don’t usually see in your supermarket. I mean, sometimes…
12:10 The "bahay kubo" vegetables
NA: And Char talks about this a couple times - the bahay kubo vegetables - which, to me, were such an interesting part of our conversation. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the bahay kubo nursery rhyme, it goes a little something like this: “bahay kubo, kahit munti, ang halaman doon ay sari-sari”…
I know, it’s hard to get out of your head. The bah kubo song is a Tagalog folk song about vegetables that grow around the “bahay kubo”, or nipa hut, in the Philippine countryside. It’s idyllic - calls back this totally different time and place, even from the Philippines I know in Manila. Someplace where people lived in huts raised on bamboo stilts with slatted floors and kids raised and chased their chickens around the yard. Maybe dad would chop off banana leaves from the tree and that would be your plates for dinner. In this particular setting, people would plant vegetables like jicamas, eggplants, winged beans, peanuts, long beans, hyacinth beans, lima beans, ash gourds, sponge gourds, bottle gourds, squash, radish, mustard, onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger and sesame. Kinda feels like I’m doing a little rap thing there. But those are literally all the vegetables in the bahay kubo song. Like I said, idyllic - but totally something that a lot Filipino kids know by heart, thanks to the song.
In practice, though, growing and eating these vegetables have long been out of the picture. At least for most kids. Going back to some of those challenges that the Good Food Community CSA had, with convincing people to support community shared agriculture…
CT: I felt like sure, they’d try it once for the idea, like to try it. But they did not prefer it. Or they wouldn’t know what they were, you know. A lot of our local vegetables are not valued as much as, say, carrots or cauliflower and kale. So it was alright, but they wouldn’t subscribe. So it’s the perception and knowledge of vegetables. Um, a success…
NA: But I guess that’s not really a surprise - that people would pay more, even two or three times as much, for imported vegetables, like the trendy kales and cauliflowers of the world, that have become super popular in the Philippines as well, because western food marketing absolutely reaches them and totally impacts local food economies. Why would farmers grow indigenous Philippine vegetables that no one wants to buy, if they can grow kale and cauliflower that, even if they have to invest money to buy seeds for - has way more demand and is way more profitable, when they go about selling it to people in the city who pay.
Looking at these kinds of issues really forces you to think about the bigger picture. What was it like working with farmers, I asked?
15:45 Farmer challenges
CT: A big challenge was just planning. And it remained a challenge for a number of years. As I mentioned, there was no sense of like, okay, if I want to harvest this much at this time, when should I be planting? Apparently, with rice…
NA: This goes back to something we talked about a few episodes ago, with Cherrie Atilano - who runs another farming social enterprise in the Philippines called AGREA. And, well, simple as the concept might be - to plan for planting and harvesting different vegetables throughout the year - a lot of farmers in the Philippines today just haven’t learned any other way of farming. The average age of Filipino farmers is 65, with many having gone to school maybe only as far as the third or fourth grade. And the idea of upgrading skill sets - like, having government-sponsored programs to further educate farmers - that don’t really exist, and if they do, they’re very likely paid for by companies that sell modified strains of rice, for example, that farmers need to be trained for because they grow differently from traditional, local, indigenous rice varieties that their parents planted, and they learned how to plant.
CT: Apparently with like, rice, it’s very different the way they think about it. I mean, it’s very cyclical, [like] every three months. It all depends. You pay attention to the rain, to the environment. But with vegetables, there are times when [certain] vegetables are in season, [so they have to think about] when do I grow it, how much do I need to grow, so that I’ll be assured of at least this much harvest, and then how do you work with it…
NA: So for farmers who’ve grown rice most of their lives, the idea of just needing to grow certain things for this CSA, this delivery that needs to get done at the end of every week - it’s so different from what they’ve relied on for most of their lives. Which is this traditional three-month cycle of planting. As an aside, that also makes me think. Because, before most Filipino farmers get completely retrained, or, you know, they pass on - how do we make sure that the existing knowledge they actually have of these different indigenous rice varieties, that’ve been growing for forever - how do we make sure that isn’t lost? So many things to consider.
CT: And then, how do you work in a group, so that we’re all not planting the same thing? So planning was a big issue. Even just to get them to commit. You know, we needed [at least] one in that room. When we first proposed it, we were like, okay, if we’re gonna have 20 kilos of tomatoes at this time, can you do it? [We’d get] like oh, I don’t know. It took one farmer to be like “hindi, kaya yan!”. For sure, we can do this, to kinda believe [in] something they hadn’t done before, for them to take that risk.
NA: Honestly, I laugh every time I hear Char go “hindi, kaya yan!”. Because it’s so Filipino - that’s another thing Filipinos like to say. It’s that relentless optimism with everything that I’m kinda happy to carry myself as well.
19:25 Food accessibility in the Philippines
NA: I talk about all these details a lot - these mannerisms and behaviours ingrained in Filipino culture - because I find that it really helps give us context to these different issues surrounding food accessibility in the Philippines. Let’s jump back to Manila.
You mentioned earlier that vegetables, for example, they don’t think of it as something that can generate income for them. It’s just their backyard vegetable crop, the bahay kubo vegetables, that you wouldn’t necessarily grow a lot of to make money from. When you introduced this concept, or idea, to them, that we’re gonna order a set amount from you - did they have to build their own cooperatives, or was that already in place?
20:10 Building a cooperative
CT: We had to build a cooperative with them. Specially where we started, in Capas, Tarlac, there wasn’t much organization at all. We had to continue to meet with them, we had to register as an association or cooperative. You need to elect your leaders, you know, just have one voice, to talk amongst yourselves. It took like two or three years - even now, the story continues to unfold. As we met with other communities, we did see different examples. But for rice and sugarcane in Capas, there wasn’t that kind of organization.
The sense I got from NGO work was that associations are formed to get stuff from the government. Because unless you are organized, you can’t receive grants or support. So often times, they would organize for that. It’s not new, but…
NA: And early on, it become really important for them, at Good Food Community, that farmers owned their land - for a couple of reasons.
CT: So we chose to work with smallholder farmers, we wanted the farmers to all work on their own land. Each of them would have two hectares or less. They’d have their rice growing in it. What they would do is typically clear an area behind their house, to start growing vegetables. And it’s usually what, like 500 square meters.
NA: That is not a lot of space. 500 square meters is like, the size of a bachelor apartment in downtown Toronto. But, even with this amount of land…
21:45 On rice and food security
CT: What we found was, it really helped in terms of food security. Because apparently with rice, there’s a lean season. There’s a time when they’re actually hungry, or they don’t have enough. That’s usually around July, August. So with this cycle of rice, combined the the cycle of educational expenses, etc…they would have sold most of their rice from the first harvest, and then put in money for the second planting season, and then not have enough stored to just kind of tide them through. So there are periods of actual hunger. Which we didn’t know. With vegetables, at least there’s something to eat throughout the year.
NA: So in other words, by halfway through the year, by July and August, farmers have very little - if anything - to live on. Three big things basically stack up at this time. Like, they need to purchase seed and fertilizer for the year’s second rice harvest - which they need, because the first isn’t enough. And if they’ve got kids in school, which a lot of farming families do, they need to buy things like school supplies, books, uniforms. None of this is for free. And at this point, they’ve spent most of the money they’ve actually saved from the first part of the year, on everyday expenses like food and electricity, very big things. If they had set some of their rice aside for personal use, by this time, that’s gone too, Char says.
CT: With us, we have purchase agreements. So every week we’re like, what do we actually have, and what can we deliver? As long as they can grow vegetables to sell to us, they have a little bit of pocket money to feed themselves.
NA: Could you give us a sense of what the profile of some of these farmers are like? Like the community in Capas, for example?
CT: They’re generally in their 50s to 60s. There’s a main farmer representative who goes to the meetings, but usually it is a family affair. With many of them, their kids are already somewhere else. They’re either in the city, or studying somewhere, and they have no interest in farming. So the parents are the ones doing [farming], just as generations before, they continue to til the land.
24:10 Ate Lady - a young, model farmer
CT: In a few cases though, when we have younger farmers, their kids get involved. Actually I have only one farmer in mind for that area, she’s like the model farmer. Ate Lady has four kids, and they all have their respective duties. She was very entrepreneurial, she really has a sense of the opportunity with this. So when she joined, we were all really like, like yaaay! A younger farmer, someone who could, like, text, you know.
So what we saw, from a small garden, when we started with her, you could see that area expanding and cutting out less and less of the rice. So it’s more and more vegetables, less of the rice, because it simply makes economic sense to her. So she really saw the benefits. And her kids are involved, they all have their respective chores. When to water, when to harvest, stuff like that. It’s quite nice to see. And she’s become a community leader for their association.
NA: That’s awesome! So what kinds of vegetables did Ate Lady plant in her garden?
CT: It’s a mix. Like the “pakbet” vegetables, bahay kubo vegetables. So squash, eggplants. I remember we had a lot of saluyot (an edible, leafy vine), sitaw (string beans), sigarilyas (winged beans), tomatoes, what else…patola (spong gourd), upo (bottle gourd), lowland spinach, talbos ng kamote (sweet potato leaves), amaranth.
NA: So my big question was, have the farmers themselves actually started eating more of the “bahay kubo” vegetables, as well?
CT: I don’t think the kinds of vegetables in the bahay kubo were as alien to them, like to us living in the city. They always kind of knew they existed. But having them in their backyard changed their diet, in the sense that…you know, there were always vegetables, in the house or in the farm, but then it became more accessible. And I think just physically, knowing what it took to farm them, to grow them, and what they actually taste like…they’re like, I don’t trust what I would buy in the wet market, in the palengke anymore, because I’ve had fresh vegetables, I’ve had organic vegetables, I know what they taste like. So there’s that.
Another happy effect was when their kids would visit from the city. They would eat up all the vegetables. So it was a risk to us, who like, have an order, but at least, you know, they’re able to be fed quite well. But it’s interesting, because I have to admit, we did ask them to also plant salad greens, since people are willing to pay much more for that. They were like, what are these greens, you know? And then, [after] the first few meetings, they’d be like hey, I know how to eat this now, you just add like canned tuna or something and you have a salad. Or sardinas and you have a salad. So it was interesting just sharing like how to eat more vegetables, and what they do with it. Except with arugula. They’re like, take it, take it all! Not even our pigs would eat this stuff.
NA: Different flavour profile.
CT: Yeah. Cilantro, too!
27:55 Weekly "bayong" deliveries
NA: The Good Food Community CSA brings vegetables to their customers in something called a “bayong”. A bayong is a bag made of long, green leaves that are braided together, dried and woven into these beautiful, intricate styles. They’re like the OG farmers’ market bag, before it was cool, the one your Lola brought everywhere she went. These things are built to last. Sometimes, they’re made from panda leaves, like the same ones that people stick into a pot of rice to make this everyday food just a little more special. I love the smell of pandan leaves.
So, when people who sign up for the Good Food Community CSA get this “bayong” bag full of vegetables delivered to them every week…by doing that, it’s a direct way of establishing a connection with Filipino farmers - supporting the local economy - and enjoy these amazing produce that, honestly, people just need to eat a lot more of. I asked Char if she could tell us a little more about some of their customers at Good Food Community.
CT: They’re generally women, when I look at Facebook or Instagram, at our stats. They’re mostly between 30 to 50, young families, mothers who kind of understand the value of organic vegetables, not just in a health sense, but in a wider social sense. They’re also typically people who would at least try to compost, or who are just generally conscientious. Who would kind of take the inconvenience to source their food properly.
NA: So by now, we’re kinda circling back to a central theme in our conversation so far. At the heart of it, community supported agriculture model…this model is about creating a more just, a more fair, sustainable food system. But what does that really look like in the Philippines?
29:45 "There are many ways to talk about sustainability"
CT: I mean, there are many ways to talk about sustainability. But I guess the root of what we’re proposing is that we need to take care of each other. You know, I mean, that’s just it. So it’s a very real invitation to [that] relationship, to inconvenience, for the sake of something that is long term. I’m not sure if people can buy into it, if all they’re thinking about is their welfare. Because it is not very convenient to not be able to choose your vegetables. It will take you out of your comfort zone, to be beholden to what’s in season. But you’ll learn a lot about how things taste, the freshness of it, what we actually have locally. And I guess, knowing where it comes from. If you want to visit the farm, you’re also most welcome. That’s the value, it’s really kind of [showing] care, fair trade, health, you know. Not just personal health, also social and ecological health. It’s been fulfilling in that sense to get people’s feedback and go hey, those vegetables tasted amazing! Or it smelled wonderful, or like I’ve never tasted patola that’s like this! Just to see people buy into this whole kind of living differently, and like being creative.
NA: It creates a sense of community too, I guess.
CT: Yeah.
NA: With that vision, where do you see Good Food Community going in the next five years, for example?
31:50 Hopefully, a movement
CT: Well I’d like for this to be a movement. I mean, it does take a lot of awareness. But I guess the vision is for people to be connected with the rural areas and for us to kinda revitalize our agriculture, in our choice for a healthy ecological growing. But also, may that also sort of ‘heal’ the city. In our busyness and our consumerism, stuff to make us slow down and see what’s important and choose to really nourish ourselves with the food, with these relationships.
33:10 Choosing the riches we have
CT: I’d like to see models of these community shared agriculture all over the Philippines. In five years, it may not be exactly the same, like in Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro. But the basic idea is to have a place where farmers and urban dwellers can work together, to kinda shift consumers’ attention to looking back at what we do have, you know. And the second thing would be, to choose it. What grows well in the Philippines? What should we be growing in the Philippines? What’s the point in growing things that don’t grow well [here], you know? It’s first, like shifting the attention to what riches we do have, and then also…
NA: But as anyone with some experience in marketing - or I mean even social media today, knows - people don’t just “care” about something overnight, unless you’re like royalty or a celebrity. It takes a lot to spread the word on ideas, especially if it’s about changing systems that have been in place for a really long time. We all just need to learn why we need to change, and how. For Char and her team, Good Food Community, what did some of those educational parts or components look like, I asked?
34:00 Working with agriculturists
CT: Well we had an NGO partner. The NGO I used to work for had agriculturists, so there was that sort of support, in sourcing the seeds, and teaching them how to compost, to build their own soil health, how to program crops and stuff like that. Alternative pest management, what to do if you don’t want to spray chemicals. There would be refresher courses, because we don’t ever learn everything the first time. And it’s a continuing thing, like for farmers to learn how to grow in their craft. Like if you’re planting this, what should I be planting, and how do we work together to fulfill an order. There are so many other things that go into community organization.
On the consumer side, we would often put a recipe into the baskets, specially in the first few years. There’d be a new recipe, that actually we would just find. Also we would do community kitchens, invite people to come over, and let’s play with these vegetables and see what comes up! And it’s really like, you don’t have to conform to a particular recipe, long as it tastes good. And when you’re with a group, it’s kinda like safer, and fun. Our markets too, in a way, are somewhat educational, just by displaying our vegetables and other sustainably sourced products. To have a conversation with you, as a consumer, I think is an interaction that you don’t have in the supermarket, or even the palengke sometimes, with middlemen.
35:45 Building relationships and presence
CT: So I’m learning that a lot of it is really, relationships, you know. And relationship building takes time. And the best kind of education is when you can interact one on one, by like, just talking. Or doing things together. Like when I talked to my team after seven years of working, I said, what do you think is the single success factor in like working with the farmers? And they’re like, [it was] presence. You just have to be present. If they don’t see you, you know, you don’t know what’s happening, they don’t know what’s happening. But the more that you talk to them, the more that you’re there to kind of troubleshoot and listen. It’s all the relationship.
NA: I guess that physicality of being there is also reassurance for them, for the communities as well…that you’re in it for the long run.
CT: Oh yeah. That you’re there, you’re still interested, you know. That you’re with them.
36:40 A sense of place
NA: That’s what makes farmers’ markets really popular all over the world now, is that you really get that one on one sense of being able to connect with the people who grow your food, or at least as close as you can get to it as possible. From a consumer perspective, I love going to markets, local markets, in Canada, because it does kind of give me a better sense of place, I guess. Like for myself, and where I see myself in that area and in that community. I also would really, kind of, be interested in seeing where that goes in the future. Like how much that community of people in the Philippines grows, where they really want to make that connection, and be part of this kind of community.
CT: Also for the Philippines - you’ve seen the gap between the rich and the poor - to me, there are just these centres in the cities of incredible wealth. But [with] very little sense of place. You know, like I grew up third generation Chinese, born in the US, I’ve lived in Quezon City most of my life. I have no recollection of, you know, I couldn’t tell one vegetable from another. The cuisine I would eat was whatever was served. But, terroir, you know, seasons? I know cereals or whatever, you know. And that’s fine, but my life is just disconnected completely from the other 90% of Philippines. And meanwhile, people just want to flock to the city, looking for better chances at life. So there’s gotta be a better way than that, right. So it takes us to kind of ask, what’s going on in the rural areas, what grows here? That’s kind of the movement that we’re trying to drive. Like what do we have growing, what can we further together?
WRAP-UP
That’s like the best call to action as I can think of. What do we have growing, and what can we take further, together?
My sincerest thanks to Charlene Tan, who I met and interviewed on my last visit to the Philippines. Visit goodfoodcommunity.com to learn about their CSA, or community supported agriculture program. Find them on Instagram @goodfoodcommunity, and even if you don’t live in the Philippines, I still recommend you follow. You’ll totally learn a lot about local vegetables, I know I did.
Head over to my website to read the article I talked about at the top of this episode. Because, when you love “tuyo” - that dried, salted fish - as much as I do, it can lead to pretty great things, like winning an award for journalism.
Our theme music is by David Szeztay, segment music is by Eric and Magill and Blue Dot Sessions. Follow the show on Facebook and Instagram @exploringfilipinokitchens, then head over to exploringfilipinokitchens.com for past episodes.
If you know someone who’d enjoy this show - word of mouth means everything! Tell them about this podcast. It really means the world to me.
Maraming salamat, and until next month - thank you for listening.