21/08/2026
Want to hear a story?
A love-and-hate relationship.
The kind of relationship between me and lumpia. 😂
6 years ago, before everything else happened, lumpia was probably the last thing you’d find on our fiesta table.
Whenever there was a fiesta, I would cook all kinds of food. Menudo, afritada, fried chicken different dishes - you name it. But lumpia? Nope.
For two simple reasons.
First, lumpia was never my favorite Filipino food.
And second, making lumpia was such a boring job. 😂 Especially the wrapping part.
I would always catch myself getting sleepy in the middle of wrapping. It felt endless. Wrap, seal, wrap, seal, repeat.
Then came one fiesta celebration—if I remember correctly, it was in 2020, before the pandemic.
For some reason, I decided to make pork lumpia for the first time.
Just half a kilo of ground pork for the celebration.
I prepared everything: the vegetables, spices, seasonings, and all the ingredients. Mixed everything together, prepared the wrappers, and got ready to roll.
But before wrapping everything, I made a few pieces first.
Wrapped them.
Fried them.
And finally—the most exciting part—tasting.
I let her taste one.
First bite: *“Inita.”*
Second bite: *“Hmm…”*
Then after the third bite, she looked at me and said,
“Maypa imo ni baligya.”
I just laughed.
I took it as a joke and completely forgot about it.
Little did I know, that simple sentence would eventually become part of my story.
Because then, life happened.
The pandemic came.
Like thousands of people in the hospitality industry, I was affected by the lockdown. Restaurants temporarily closed. Operations stopped. Work stopped. Income stopped.
And honestly, I was frustrated.
I didn't know what was next.
I didn't know that the thing I used to find boring—the thing I never even wanted on our fiesta table—would eventually become the beginning of something I never imagined.
Sometimes, life really has a funny way of bringing us back to the things we never thought would matter.
And sometimes, a joke someone says over a plate of lumpia...
isn't really a joke after all. 💚💛
