July 13, 2014. Friday night, I went out with my good friends, Angie Laborte, Mongsie Wulff, Miri Medalla and Marie Segura. Mongsie, a friend from my first job after AIM, is our erstwhile leader. She organizes all of our get togethers, and is always a lot of fun to be with. Angie is our social directress. A friendly person, she knows just about everyone. She is also the one who encouraged me to attend Bible Study Fellowship, to which I’ve been going for four years. A cancer survivor, she and some friends put together Project Pink to help others cope with the dreaded C. Miri is a saint. She is the kindest, gentlest person I know, and her brood of seven boys and one girl are so lucky to have her as their mom. Marie is a late joiner to the group, but beloved nevertheless. Marie together with her husband Rodrigo run a training and leadership development team. And then, there’s super banker Chloe Medalla and Dr. Mae Corvera who could not join us that night.
We get together as regularly as Mongsie can arrange, and each time is a breath of fresh air. It’s great to have girl friends to hang around with, share stories, laugh and cry with. And the fact that our husbands are all friends makes it so much easier to go out with each other (read: no need to ask permission). Also, now that both Sam and Mike are in heaven watching over Miri and me, we get to go out even more often.
We began the night at Draft, having dinner and Hoegaarden beer (yes, it was Miri’s first time to have beer, and my third), and ending it with wine and Sweet Bella dessert at our favorite watering hole: Ralphs in Molito. A lot of teasing always accompanied our get-togethers. This time, I was the target, but didn’t mind.
On the way home, I recalled how we all met seven years ago. I checked my diary. It was August 2009, and here’s what I wrote then.
“A funny thing happened Friday a week ago. It was the end of the workweek, and Mike asked me to go with him and our friend Paco Sandejas to a wine testing at Wine Depot. I turned him down and just asked him to pick me up after the event as I was determined to work late at the office to catch up on backlog. But I couldn’t find some important files I needed, so when Mike popped back into the office to check on me before he left, I changed my mind and went with him. Little did I know what was in store for me.
At Wine Depot, I bumped into neighbors Ped and Carol Pido, whom I hadn’t seen for quite awhile. I also met two elderly gentlemen, one of whom turned out to be my father’s student in law. Then, I met two interesting women, Angie Laborte and Miriam Medalla, who asked me if I was interested to join them in a cooking competition since they lacked one more person to form a team. Apparently, Paco Sandejas had told them I knew how to cook. By then, I was already a bit tipsy and very red from wine (just a few sips and my color comes out in full glory, especially when I’ve had nothing to eat) and so I gamely said yes.
Well, this turned out to be the Iron Chef competition at Palms Country Club, and the captain of our team happened to be Mongsie Wulff, a friend from when I was young, single and working at my first job after AIM. We found out later that all three of us (Mongsie, Miriam and I) had husbands who were on the Palms Social Dining Committee, and Angie was a full-fledged member of the same committee. I resolved to have fun. After all, I needed the break from all the stress related to work.
And what a break it was! After an initial discussion, we resolved to meet at Mongsie’s home in Southwoods for a practice session one evening. We exchanged recipes, cooking and laughing while drinking wine and getting to know each other. The Iron Chef was scheduled on Saturday. As the day neared, tension began to mount. None of us were professional chefs; we only cooked for our families, and some of us (ahem) just occasionally. Captain Mongsie made sure all bases were covered: faxing recipes, making plans, following up, and calling a special meeting at 1pm on D-Day (the competition was supposed to begin at 3pm).
After lunch at home, Mike and I left our village headed for Palms only to find out that both the West Service Road and SLEX were clogged. We took our chances on the service road, and what a mistake that was! As we inched our way to Palms, I get a message from Mongsie: “We meet at library. I am here with oxygen mask,” followed shortly with “Group 5 withdrew. The professional group. Rumored they were intimidated by Group 6 (that’s us).” Mongsie’s dry humor was infectious.
After donning our red kerchiefs (thank you, Miriam) and saying a short prayer (“Lord, thank you for the friendship you have given us and guide us so that we do not embarrass ourselves too much”), we were ready to cook up a storm. We signed ourselves in as “The Wine Lovers” in tribute to our first encounter, but pretty soon the emcee began calling us the Desperate Housewives team.
Six teams were competing, one of which was from Palms. We were the amateurs. We were handed our uniforms and toques (pretty nifty!) and introduced to our gentle kitchen assistant, Christian. No, he was not allowed to cook or cut, only to carry things for us and wash the dishes. Nevertheless, he was a real boon, an angel in disguise!
After the first frenzied hour of deciding how to cook the salmon, tiger prawns and beef blade for 12 people, we hardly felt the next three hours as we worked on the task at hand. We agreed to do Miriam’s mom’s secret recipe for the salmon as appetizer, coupled with a green salad with Angie’s dressing, and a duo of Mongsie’s special beef goulash recipe, and my prawn and mushroom stuffed capsicum for the entrée.
With only two stove top burners assigned to us and both being used by Mongsie, Angie and I retired to the main kitchen to cook. What an experience! And I thought organizing international conferences was hard. Well, I now have a real appreciation for chefs!
After seeing all the dainty and pretty-as-picture dishes the other teams prepared and comparing our hefty servings (hey, we all know how much our children and husbands eat!), we were all laughing so hard tears sprung to our eyes. There’s no way we could compete presentation-wise, but since taste was 60% of the criteria, we felt we might just squeak by. So, we just decided to relax and drink after all the hard work.
Well, we didn’t bring home any of the three awards, but we all felt like winners, with husbands, children and friends cheering us on and declaring us the winners in their hearts and stomachs. What a wonderful experience it was! We all resolved to meet once a month to cook for our families and continue the beautiful friendship that began a week ago at a wine tasting event which I almost passed up.
Here’s a toast to friendship!”
It’s been seven years since that cooking competition, and I thank God for these girlfriends of mine. I look forward to getting old with them. Love them all!