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How Frozen Dinners Sustained My Immigrant Family
Prepared meals were a saving grace and anchor through my Filipino upbringing
In the 1940s, frozen food emerged from ambiguous and humble roots as prepared meals for the armed forces. Then, the meaning and function of frozen food took a complete turn during the 2000s when a Filipino-American family moved into a small, upper-unit apartment in Orange County, where the dad’s bike was stolen off a balcony and the children were lulled to sleep by drug deals on the sidewalk. In that household, every time the melody of the microwave rang through the kitchen, a squirrely little girl would bounce through the house and perform disco moves to the sound of each beep as she ran toward the siren call of a “cooked” TV dinner.
That girl was me.
My family immigrated from Pampanga, a province in the Philippines known for having the best food of all the country’s 81 provinces. The most iconic dishes that come to mind when people think of the Philippines, like lumpia and adobo, are prepared best in Pampanga. Whenever I tell other Filipinos my parents came from this magical province of culinary excellence, they always respond with, “You must eat very good then, huh?” In my parents’ defense, they probably did not intend for me to love the freezer aisle so much in the first place…
