Feeding the ones we love

Plus, a chicken adobo stir fry

Food is my love language. This realization of mine came to me only a couple of years ago, long after I had started developing recipes for a living and writing about dinner. I don’t remember the specifics around this realization, but I do remember that it was an oh-my-goodness-I’m-my-mother moment, and suddenly it all clicked.

There’s something really beautiful about preparing a meal for the ones we love.

I get that depending on the day— or the mood— cooking can feel like this mundane chore. Some days it is. Dinner… again? But have you ever stopped to think about how creative and artistic and really cool cooking can be? We’re bringing together individual ingredients that each play a unique role to create an end result that is so very different from what we started with. And when you’re strategically choosing each ingredient based on what they can do for your health, cooking becomes more than art: it’s science at play, too.

It’s labor, sure, but on the best nights, making dinner is a labor of love.

Preparing food, sharing food, gathering around food. It’s one of the ways we show love, receive love, and interact with the people we love.

It’s why we celebrate a birthday with a favorite meal and favorite cake.

Why we wake up early, forgoing valuable sleep, to make an extra special breakfast because a sleepy kiddo requested it the night before.

Why we bring a meal to a new mother in those foggy newborn days / a loved one under the weather / a friend who could use a little bit of help. Sometimes, it’s just because. Because there is plenty, because we made something good, because we want to share it.

Food can bring comfort and nourishment and sustenance and joy, and those are certainly worth sharing.

A love language inherited

I’m 1000% certain the idea of expressing love through food came from both of my parents. It was not uncommon for my dad to cook up a large, diner-style breakfast on a Tuesday morning before we set off to school, or let my sister and I have seconds on dessert just because. He was also willing to cook us anything we felt like, even if it was the middle of the night.

But my mom, a Filipino American, was well-versed in the art of giving food. We would never show up to any event empty-handed, even if there was no expectation of bringing a dish (or expectation of eating anything at all).

If you came into our home, you would leave with food (whether you wanted it or not).

And decades before people began leaving snacks out on their doorsteps as a thank you for hard-working Amazon drivers, my mom made sure the garbage man received his Christmas box of chocolates or fruit, placed strategically on top of our trash can lid so he couldn’t miss it.

She immersed my sister and I in the culture of Filipino potlucks and parties, Asian markets and trips to Seattle’s Chinatown, searching for the perfect roast duck. I sat at our table so many times, helping her hand-roll lumpia (quite possibly the ultimate labor of love). I can still remember what the buttons on our rice cooker felt like, an appliance which held prime countertop real estate since it was used almost daily.

At meal time, my mom would ask “Do you want more?,” followed by “Are you sure?”, repeatedly, and to anyone who spent any amount of time in our home (you’d almost always end up with more).

When I went off to college, I would call my mom to have her walk me through making traditional pancit or chicken adobo. Even after I began choosing lower-carb foods and lower-glycemic options, I’d still occasionally call her for those comforting recipes because she would never measure out the ingredients and I would never write the recipe down. Eventually, I adapted her recipes for low-carb versions of pancit and chicken adobo, recipes that now live on my site for anyone anywhere to enjoy.

A couple of years ago, I realized that food is one of my mom’s love languages and that naturally, it had become mine.

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My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in November, began treatment in January, and I’ve been thinking about food as a love language a lot since then.

She lives thousands of miles away from me, which means I can’t easily pop by with a comforting and nourishing meal— love in food form— to help ease a burden and show that I care.

My sister Tiffany lives near our mom. We’ve talked a lot about food lately. We brainstormed recipes in a shared Note and Tiff spent a Saturday preparing 4-5 meals for our mom, simple and tasty and freezer-friendly meals that would relieve her of the task of cooking for about two weeks.

There’s something really beautiful about preparing a meal for the ones we love.

With this week being all about a certain holiday dedicated to love, I decided against the cliche date-night-in dinner recipe and instead, wanted to offer up a different idea: a simple stir fry with nutritious protein and vegetables and a dreamy sauce with Asian flavors, inspired by my mom’s chicken adobo.

If I could bring her a meal, it would be this.

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Chicken adobo stir fry

The flavor of Filipino adobo is brought out by four main ingredients: vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and black pepper. I took those same elements to create the stir fry sauce, but added a sweetness to it that works nicely in a stir fry.

Like most stir fries, this one is versatile. Swap in asparagus for green beans or add mushrooms or bok choy instead of bell pepper. I have even made it with cubed pork tenderloin instead of chicken, with equally delicious results.

Yield: 4 servings

Prep time: 20 minutes