Menudo (Red Chile Tripe Soup) | #SoupSwappers

Menudo is touted for it's ability to help cure a hangover. This is due to its high Vitamin B content. I'm guessing that the chile-laden broth probably aids in helping you sweat it out a bit, too. Whether that's a Mexican urban legend or not, I don't know. But ask any Mexican you know how to cure a hangover, and menudo will be the answer. Alongside a big glass of water for hydration, it definitely couldn't hurt. Or you could choose to go hair of the dog. You know, if that's more your style.

Kare Kare (a traditional Filipino dish)

How is it that something brand-new can seem so familiar?  I'm standing in my kitchen, thirty four years old, one minute...and the next, I'm thirteen years old again and running up my friend Christine's staircase.  The one in her gigantic or so it seemed house. My bangs are plastered up...the sides of my hair plastered out.  Waterfalls and wings.  My stocking covered toes are digging into the plush carpet as I practice my dance moves and sing along to Paula Abdul ...he's a cold-hearted snake.... Christine hands me her camera so I can take a picture of her with her larger-than-life-sized poster of Martin Gore and the rest of the Depeche Mode guys (though he's the one she has a crush on).   These are the things that I remember on the surface...but underneath lies the exotic, seductive smell memories.  The ones that crept out of the kitchen where her tiny Filipino grandma was every single time I went to her house.  And I was at her house a LOT!  We would walk through the front doors- double doors... that was unheard of...to me. ...and the scent would begin to seduce me.

I'm sure that underneath that mysterious medley, there were individual scents that I would recognize if given the opportunity, but by the time we walked through the doors, they were already in the midst of their heady marriage and my chance to take a peek had vanished.   I was always mesmerized by those unfamiliar smells that came from Christine's kitchen.  And yet, looking back, I cannot remember ever eating a meal in her Filipino kitchen.  Not once.  I mean, how does two years of being close friends with a 100% Filipino somebody pass by without ever sitting down to an authentic Filipino meal?  We ordered a lot of pizza.  That I remember.  Could it be that thing that first generation children go through?  Trying to "forget" their ethnic identities and just blend in with their friends?  I'm thinking it probably was...although I wish that my thirteen year old self had just once thought to ask her friend if she could eat a home cooked, authentic-Filipino meal that her grandma had made.  Typical kid.