Grilled pork tenderloin with peach ginger glaze

And thoughts on my mom's legacy

Hi there, I hope you’re having a lovely week post July Fourth festivities. Since returning home last week after a tough June, it has been so nice to get back into the regular rhythm of work and recipe creation. And rest, too.

Grief has a way of creeping into that routine — heavy and unexpected and exhausting. Regular life without my mom is foreign and sometimes I forget that she’s not a phone call away for me to share the mundane details of every day that only moms really care about, like what I’m making for dinner or how the kids are in need of new shoes again.

One thing I have really thought about this past month is the importance of legacies. My mom, Nelia, deeply cared about people, a fact that became so apparent after she passed. It was a recurring theme in every card and comment.

My sister and I threw her a Celebration of Life, a big, fancy party with her favorite foods, favorite people, held at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley gardens, her favorite place. She would’ve loved it and called it beautiful. (As opposed to the funeral home which she would’ve absolutely hated and called depressing before cracking a joke that people were not, in fact, “dying to get in”.)

At the event, one of her friends shared how my mom changed her life after prying into details about her broken sibling relationships. (My mom was never one to shy away from asking deeply personal questions no matter how rude or off-putting they might seem.) Because of that, her friend eventually reconnected with her siblings and repaired those relationships.

Flowers being wheeled in for the event. My sister and I spent two days sourcing and arranging flowers for our mama, who especially loved white roses.

Other friends and neighbors in her apartment building shared with us how she always threw get-togethers and special events for the residents there (my mom loved any excuse for a celebration).

She cooked, she shared meals and invited people into her home for dinner, even in her final weeks. “She took good care of us,” they told us.

And that sums up my mom perfectly. She had a servant’s heart. She believed in showing God’s love to others and she did it well.

Over the years, I’ve made low-carb and keto-friendly versions of Filipino dishes that my mom (who was from the Philippines) often cooked when I was growing up. This chicken adobo is one of my favorites. You can easily add a touch of low-carb sweetener if you prefer a sweeter dish over the bold, briny flavor of traditional Filipino adobo.

I also have this low-carb Filipino pancit recipe, another popular Filipino dish that I re-created to be low-carb by using kelp noodles, the perfect keto or low-carb substitute for rice noodles.

I plan to create more Filipino and Asian-inspired recipes for the blog and this newsletter so if you have any requests, please share.

Being back at home means I’m back to grilling a lot, taking advantage of easy cleanup and the fact that I can cook several protein options all at once and have them for meals later in the week.

Grilled pork tenderloin is so delicious and surprisingly fuss-free. Today’s recipe is a really simple, no-marinade-required pork tenderloin that I paired with a sweet and zingy peach-ginger glaze / chutney. You’ll likely use only half of it and any leftovers are just as good on grilled chicken!

The fresh peach chutney cooks in a saucepan on the stove while the pork tenderloin cooks on the grill. You can even swap out peaches for another stone fruit like apricots or nectarines. It tastes like summer and I guarantee it will get a lot of fanfare.

Yield: 6-8 servings (see notes for smaller yield)

Prep time: ~30-35 minutes

For the pork tenderloin