We were like Gummi Bears strolling through a town made of Fruity Pebbles cereal. The houses of Lucban were dressed in multi-colored edible leaf-shaped shingles called kiping—hanging from the roofs, from the eaves, along the doors, like shutters from the windows, in bunches and strands and baskets and flowers. The kiping chandeliers, which sometimes hung several stories to the ground, resembled Chinese paper lanterns. The leaves were stacked front to back, but fanned out in a globe. I wanted to run my fingers across the leaves like thumbing a deck of cards. Tina (our guide to Quezon), Mom, and I arrived four days before the parade, but preparations began weeks in advance, and already the town was adorned with Lucban’s traditional steamed rice wafers.

It had been fifty years since Mom left the Philippines, and fifty-five years away from Quezon Province. She was adopted by a military family and whisked away to America. It was my first time in the Pacific country. The Philippines celebrates throughout May, and Mom and I planned our trip to coincide with the festivities and to beat the rainy season that drenches the islands usually starting in June. Our plan was to eat our way across the archipelago, starting with a Kulinarya tour of her homeland.

Every year on May 15^th, Lucban celebrates the Pahiyas Festival, an annual harvest thanksgiving and feast of San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers. The festival is thought to date back to 1500 right around the time that the native Tagalogs were being converted to Christianity. They had already been holding elaborate harvest rituals, but then the Catholics added a saint to the mix, and the festival began to take shape. Originally the natives held their feast in a gathering hall. When Catholicism arrived, the local farmers would bring their harvest to the church to be blessed by the priest. But eventually, the harvest improved, presumably because of all the blessings, and the church could not accommodate the rush. So farmers and their families would display their harvests on their doorsteps, and a priest would make his rounds through the town blessing each house's bounty. The procession would carry a picture of San Isidro Labrador, a tradition that continues today with a papier mâché effigy. Each year the procession became more lavish, with the participants trying to one-up each other by making their displays grander and more intricate.

During the festival, families have displays made of hundreds of kiping leaves strung together in intricate designs, with fruits and vegetables anchoring the kiping. If the head of the household is a textile artisan rather than a farmer, and his house is on the parade route, he will intersperse his wares with the kiping, like woven bags or hats. The Pahiyas committee offers prizes for most impressive display, such as a live carabao or a color TV.

Because of the time and labor involved in making kiping and decorating houses, the Pahiyas festival is also a time for family reunion. Relatives come to Lucban to make kiping, prepare dishes for the feast, decorate the house, and dismantle the display on May 16^th. They catch up on their lives, dine together, and when the relatives leave, they are given edible kiping for the road.

When we arrived in Lucban, it was bustling with out-of-town family members, there to help prepare and celebrate. A mini-fair (by American standards) occupied the town square, with tables selling snacks and drinks, and a band playing on the steps. Down alleys were food and gift stalls, games and contests. In one alley, a vendor had set up a triple-decker cage housing dozens of dyed chicks; pink, baby blue, green, and lemon-yellow down feathers pulsed and shimmied through the chicken wire. In another alley, a group was setting up tables end on end to string down the road a ridiculously long sausage (longganisa, the traditional Philippine encased meat, was a specialty of Lucban).

In the center of town stood the Church of St. Louis of Toulouse, completed in 1738 atop the ruins of two destroyed churches. The first church was built in 1595, the year Saint Isidro was proclaimed patron saint of farmers and Saint Louis Bishop of Toulouse was made patron saint of the town. The church's crumbling gray stone facade, with vegetation growing along window ledges, looked menacing next to the colorful Spanish-style homes and storefronts along the streets, particularly in their kiping costumes. It stood in even greater contrast to Kamay ni Hesus (Hands of Jesus) Healing Church on the other side of town. The Healing Church had a terraced hill from which the world's third largest Jesus statue stood fifty feet tall, beaming down on life sized statues depicting the Stations of the Cross. Kamay resembled a beachfront miniature golf course.

Tina led Mom and me to a historical landmark building named La Casa De Doña Ana, which housed a coffee house/bakeshop/diner called the Dealo Koffee Klatch. By this point, our last stop of the tour after two full meals and a snack, Mom and I were busting at the seams. Mom had stopped eating at the previous stop, just tasting a bite here and there. I, on the other hand, often eat myself stupid to the point of questioning my ability to learn from my mistakes. Tina called over the matronly woman behind the counter to tell us about her shop, and with her, she brought plate after plate of Lucban specialties.

First came a plate of longganisa, the Chinese style sausage links. Throughout the trip I would learn more about how much influence the Chinese had on Philippine cultural development. The sausages were the same shape but half the size of American links. They were pink in the center, with the casing fried crispy. They were slightly greasy, but flavorful and juicy.

Next came a platter of pancit habhab, another famous Lucban dish. The pancit is a dish made of fried rice-flour noodles with pork, snow peas, and carrots, and is served with vinegar. It is yet another dish appropriated from the Chinese and fit to South Seas tastes. "Habhab" means to eat directly, from a banana leaf. The traditional way to eat pancit habhab is to serve it on a trimmed leaf, which you then raise to your mouth and gobble off. That is how street vendors sell their pancit. We were sitting in the diner, though, so the matron brought us forks. I had eaten pancit in America, but it had been nothing like this dish. The noodles were oily, but tangy from the vinegar. The pork was tender, and the noodles were firm and chewy. I ate far more than I should have considering my swollen belly. Mom picked a noodle or two here and there to taste. I could tell she was not only full but too hot to eat any more. She had been dabbing her handkerchief against her forehead and neck with increasing frequency.

Between dishes, the matron came to the table to hover and talk. She wouldn't sit; she needed to be at the ready for any new patrons who came through the door. Tina had been mostly silent since arriving in Lucban. It was the last of our stops, and I think she was mentally wrapping up. "So..." the matron sighed.

"Linda is from Quezon," Tina said to the lady.

"Ah, from where?"

Tina curled her lips around the name, "Atimonan." Earlier in the day, Mom had off-handedly mentioned that she was born in Atimonan. Tina had gasped. "Ahhh, really?! You are from Quezon, too?" Tina's demeanor seemed to change; she transitioned from friend to sibling. "Tsk, I wished you had told me earlier! I would have rearranged the tour to include Atimonan. It's not far, just further east, on the coast. It's a fishing village."

Mom and I had both protested. "No, no need for that." We tried to explain that we thought we would be on the tour with other visitors, so of course we would not have expected any sort of accommodation. We did not try to explain that Mom didn't know her birthplace was Atimonan, or even Quezon Province, until a few days before our departure. Until she dug up her Philippine birth certificate, she thought she was born in Pampanga, as her American birth certificate incorrectly stated.

Next came the broas, the one famous Lucban specialty that I had read about specifically, and particularly wanted to try. Broas–the name of which made me think of snakes–were Filipino ladyfingers. The Koffee Klatch matron brought out a plate piled high with a pyramid of broas, which were mildly sweet and crumble-starchy. They were similar to Mexican pastries, in that they straddle the line between dessert and bread. The broas were frosted on one side with the thinnest possible, quasi-sweet glaze, and though we had none, I knew they would be the perfect side to a steaming cup of coffee. But after a hot day and several tangy dishes, they were too dry and too bland to be appealing. But broas were what the Koffee Klatch was known for, so we ate them with the aid of a glass of warm water. The matron handed me a tin, which had a removable, circular lid cut in the top, full of broas to bring home. The side was printed with the Koffee Klatch design, a cartoon rolling pin with a tiny house, tiny palm tree, and tiny apple or cherry tree perched on top. It was a cross between the Royal Dansk Danish butter cookie tin and the Nestlé’s Chocolate Quik tin from my childhood.

The matron asked Mom, "You will visit your family?"

"Oh, I don't know my family. I was adopted when I was five years old," Mom explained for the umpteenth time that day. The lady looked disbelievingly at Mom, shocked and dismayed that Mom didn't know anything about her family—not quite, but almost, just the tiniest bit accusingly, as if Mom had shunned her family or in some way chosen her fate. She made a quiet clucking.

"Nothing, you know nothing?"

"Well, I know the family name. Amador." Santiago, my brain said. I grew up thinking her name had been Santiago, though I have no idea where this came from. No, Amador.

"Ah, well!" the lady exclaimed. "Yes, Amador." She nodded knowingly.

"See, she knows the family," Tina explained. I presumed that inhabitants of certain regions with the same name were in fact related, not like the numerous Smiths or Jones that exist unrelated in the States. At least that is what Tina and the matron's raised eyebrows seemed to imply. But Mom’s family was dead; the adoption papers said so.

The matron disappeared once more into the kitchen.

Finally, when there was no possible way that our stomachs could hold even a nibble of anything else, the matron carried out on a white plate fried kiping, colorful leaves gingerly stacked and sprinkled with large granules of sugar. Of course we had to try it; it would be criminal to attend Lucban's largest festival, held only once a year, across the world from our homes, and not try the town's famous kiping. The leaves were translucent when fried, the oil heating a window through the rice bubbles. The wafers were brittle and thin, and the sugar clung to the crevices made by the leaf mold. I broke the tip off one leaf and placed it on my tongue like communion. The wafer's sugar sparkled on my tongue before the rice crackled and then gave way to almost nothing. It was like eating static electricity. I greedily took the whole leaf, biting it in small nips, savoring each crunch. Luckily it took almost no space in my stomach, so I kept eating. Mom tasted a corner, but she stopped after a bite. She kind of shrugged (out of view of Tina and the matron.) Her eyes looked checked out. She was ready to go back to the hotel.