Sustaining friendships, sharing food in online dinners
Sustaining friendships, sharing food in online dinners
By Althea Manasan
The Philippine Reporter
On a chilly afternoon in December, just a few days after Christmas, five cars pulled into a Canadian Tire parking lot in North Toronto. The occupants emerged and cheerfully greeted each other (while maintaining a safe social distance), and then popped open their trunks to reveal their bounties: legs of ham, loaves of embutido, pinakbet, dinuguan, tiramisu and bottles of wine, all to exchange with each other.
For twelve longtime friends, all ranging in age from their fifties to their eighties, this is how you celebrate the holidays during a pandemic.
“We conversed there, we took some photographs, selfies … We opened up all our trunks, and then we started having a little fun right there, keeping distance, all with masks,” said Joe Zagala, a retiree who made the drive from Mississauga with his wife, Lita. “It was really, really fun.”
Once all the friends arrived back at their homes, each of them set their tables, plated their assortment of dishes, poured glasses of wine, then logged onto Facebook Messenger to share the meal with each other virtually.
These online gatherings and food exchanges have become a highlight for them during the pandemic. The group, which calls itself the Kaladkarin Buddies, consists of five couples and one former couple who met each other through the University of the Philippines Alumni Association of Toronto (UPAAT), and have now been friends for years.
“[We were] a group of friends that had some time on their hands,” said Zagala, who explained that before the pandemic, they would meet up for lunches and dinners, and sometimes even take trips out of town. Then in March 2020, that all changed.
“So comes COVID, we were forced to adapt,” said Zagala. “So we said, ‘Well we gotta do something,’ and lo and behold, technology is there.”
They began holding weekly video chats every Saturday evening, often for hours, talking about their children, grandchildren, Trump, Duterte, UPAAT affairs, Nespresso machines and the Constitution — “anything under the sun,” said Zagala. “It was so enjoyable, we just lost time.”
Meanwhile, a smaller faction of Mississauga-based friends — the Zagalas, Fred and Diana Gamboa, and Beth Ruivivar — began informally exchanging food with each other, driving extra portions to each others’ homes.
Ruivivar’s daughter, Erika Daswani, did the cooking and driving for her mom during these early exchanges. “During the height of [the pandemic], everyone was cooking,” Daswani said. “I was making so many dishes, and I was like, ‘Okay, we have so much food. What are we going to do with it?’”
By the summer, the rest of the group wanted to get in on the culinary action. “Tita Alice was like, ‘Hey, we want to be involved in this, too,’ and then it kind of just went from there,” Daswani said.
Alice Herrera, who lives all the way on the other side of the city, offered to make the deliveries for the first big food exchange. She made six stops from Scarborough to Markham to Mississauga and back again, dropping off packages to the Zagalas, the Gamboas, Bay and Daisy Bernabe, Ruivivar, Cress Vasquez, and Agnes and Rex Manasan (who are the parents of this reporter).
“Because I like driving, I volunteered,” Herrera said, who delivered batches of her husband Romy’s homemade chicharron. “I told them … perhaps you can also think of some food that you can exchange with so that my trip will not be wasted — so that if I go to their place, there will also be food for me and the other group.”
The trip took her hours, and once the deliveries of chicharron, pancit malabon, pancit molo, ube pandesal, empanada, fish balls, siopao and leche flan were complete, a tradition was born.
The next big food exchange, held in the fall, was the first time they decided to eat together over video chat, and they agreed to make it extra special by using their finest plates and cutlery. For the Christmas dinner, they planned a menu together in advance so that there were no duplicate dishes.
Daswani said that amidst the pandemic lockdowns, she thinks this experience has been “very beneficial” for the group, especially for her mom.
“She had just retired, she had just come back from [vacationing in] the Philippines, and then all of a sudden, she’s just stuck at home,” she said. “So having this was almost like a blessing, because at least you’re able to foster some relationships still, in a small way.”
Almost all of the members of the group are seniors and are either retired or working from home. This along with the fact that they are at higher risk for severe illnesses from COVID-19 means that opportunities for human contact outside their households are limited.
“The pandemic has been hard, but having this kind of support group … I think it just helps … for them not to be so isolated from the world, especially because they can’t really see people,” Daswani said. “It definitely helps, especially with the emotional toll of staring at the same four walls.”
Zagala said the dinners and weekly meetings have been “rejuvenating” and “refreshing,” and compared the experience to a second childhood. He has suggested changing the name of the group from the Kaladkarin Buddies to the Ulyanin Buddies.
“This pandemic is not all negative … You appreciate friendship more, you appreciate family more, you miss your family more, and then you realize there are things you don’t need, so you try to become a little more minimalist,” he said. “Those are the good things.”
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