Felice Sta. Maria on Heirloom Rice Cacao Champorado Balatinaw
Felice Prudente Sta Maria is a wonderful woman, a kind, generous person, beyond being a distinguished author and culinary historian. We’ve been very lucky to have collaborated with her on several projects over the years. A couple of weeks ago, we asked her to produce a video featuring her talk about what she could share with our followers on heirloom rice + cacao and champorado. Guess what! She produced it on her own—with minimal tech support from us who have minimal knowledge on tech, too!
What we learned is that at some point, we all really got to adapt to this new normal way of doing things, tech-savvy or not. The medium changes and evolves over time, but the message somehow stays the same: relevant.
And this is one relevant message from history, from our ancestors, which Ms. Felice delivered very well in this video: each grain of rice has a soul, and we shouldn’t waste it. It sounds fantastical, but pragmatically speaking: rice indeed has sustained us for generations and has given our cuisine depth, richness, and yes, soul. We must give rice the honor it deserves by simply giving importance to it in our day-to-day meals.
Ms. Felice has shared more interesting stories about heirloom rice, how cacao became our first caffeine, and the origin of our beloved champorado. Watch the full video here:
Follow @felicepstamaria for fun doses of Filipino food history
on Instagram and Facebook.
