A nostalgic look at how cooking classes shaped young minds—and why it’s time to bring them back.
There were no fast-food joints when we were growing up, so trips had to be scheduled with home meals written in—either packed in our bags or taken at home before and after the trip. For this reason, it was important for girls in the family to know how to cook as soon as they could walk.
My first formal cooking lessons were in public school—the Las Piñas Central Elementary School, which had a very dedicated home economics teacher: Miss Carlos. Primary school in the 1950s meant whole-day classes that began at 7 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m., with a lunch break at noon. Morning and afternoon recess allowed short breaks for between-meal snacks.
Many of us walked to school to save the 10 centavos baon for jeepney fare (5 centavos each way), a daily allowance that we used to splurge on munchies from food vendors lurking outside the school gates. Depending on the season, we had fresh fruits such as siniguelas, duhat, kamachile, green mango with bagoong, kaimito, chico, balimbing, and ripe tamarind.
A few enterprising housewives sold simple cooked snacks: maruya (sliced saba bananas dipped in batter and fried), boiled saba and camote, balinghoy (cassava), and apulid (water chestnut). Bananacue and camotecue had not yet been invented. Neither were street foods now very common all over the islands, like kwek-kwek, fish balls and French fries.
Some of my classmates who lived on the shores of Manila Bay would spend weekends digging sand to gather small purple shellfish called halamis, which they steamed and sold to us either for lunch or to munch on much like today’s kids eat junk food.
Home economics was part of our school curriculum from Grade 1. Once in a while, our HE teacher would announce a special snack treat three days in advance. The timing allowed us to save our baon for three days. Miss Carlos collected our saved allowance and bought ingredients to bake muffins, cupcakes, fruit salad, pancakes, ginatan, arroz caldo or macaroni soup. We all watched and learned.
Our classmates who could not afford to contribute were excused. Collected funds were audited and used to buy ingredients and materials for other HE projects, such as threads, needles, sewing machine parts and kitchen utensils. Our cooking classes subsidized the other HE lessons.
By the time we graduated from elementary school, we had mastered the art of making mayonnaise using an old egg beater. Our parents proudly showed off our steamed lapu-lapu topped with mayonnaise, the star of birthday parties and fiesta buffets for many decades. We had also learned to make several kinds of kakanin: putong puti, kutsinta and palitaw. The boys in our class helped by turning the heavy stone mill that ground the rice for the kakanin.
Home economics was an enjoyable subject that introduced me to dishes my grandma did not cook at home: Bicolano ginataan, Pangasinan binagoongan, real Ilocano dinengdeng (as opposed to Tagalog pinakbet). From Miss Carlos, I learned to add to pancit and chop suey some sliced carrots, celery, sayote and cauliflower, which my grandma was encountering for the first time.
I was in Grade V when our school opened a two-story HE building. It had all the tools needed to teach young girls basic homemaking skills: an electric sewing machine, a dough mixer, a blender, a four-burner range oven. I spent most of my free time in the HE building listening to Miss Carlos talk about her adventures with food and some funny anecdotes about failed kitchen experiments.
Tourism and exposure to other cultures helped fuel the rise of culinary schools in the Philippines. Young men and women are now flocking to take expensive lessons in culinary arts. Ironically, cooking lessons have all but disappeared from schoolrooms. Perhaps it is time for parents to lobby for the full return of home economics in our classrooms.
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