Food comprises much of my favorite childhood memories.
For instance, when I was four, I was hospitalized at Iloilo Polyclinic and Hospital for pneumonia. My room was on the top floor of the hospital. It was on a sunny hallway that looked out upon the roof of the multi-story building near the high school where my father taught English. I remember the white-garbed hospital staff bringing in a bowl of alphabet soup. My mother told me the broth was made from paras, pork neck bones, that she said made the richest broth for soups. Ever since I've been looking for that elusive soup.
At the Mexican groceries sprouting all over Indianapolis I would sometime find small cellophane packets of alphabet-shaped pasta but I've never been brave enough to attempt to recreate that wonderful soup when I was four years old and the world was an unexplored universe I couldn't then even imagine.
This soup, served in an oddly shaped Sam-&-Squito bowl, is the best I can do for now. Chicken broth simmered with bok choy and noodles, garnished with diagonally cut scallions.
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