Some of my happiest and earliest memories involve Filipino food.

All of my friends and loved ones know I really enjoy creating happy memories around a good meal.

So you can probably imagine how excited I was unboxing the Patikim Gold Edition Food Box I purchased from the Filipino Food Movement website.

It’s Valentine’s Day this Monday, so I was interested in finding out the origin of the word “MAHAL”, or "LOVE” in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

Not only did I learn there are more meanings for the word Mahal, like precious and expensive, I also learned the word originally comes from India.

Before social media took over about 10 years ago, Filipinos and Filipino-Americans didn’t have a platform where we could share our culture and our lives with the world.

I don’t very often look back. My mantra is typically, “onward and upward, my friends.”

However, in order to move forward, I believe it’s important to understand your past in order to understand what lies ahead.

It was December 2020, just before the new year. My eyes shot wide open in the dead of the night. An idea so strong and crystal clear had taken over and got me SO EXCITED I couldn’t sleep for another 2 hours.

The idea was this…