Filipino Picadillo

Five months since the floor. Five months since Angela found me and drove me to Dr. Reeves and the word PTSD entered my vocabulary like a diagnosis I should have seen coming but didn't, because nurses are trained to diagnose everyone except themselves. Five months of therapy, medication, cooking, writing in the journal Angela gave me, and going back to the ER with boundaries that feel like guardrails on a highway — artificial, restricting, and the only thing keeping me from going over the edge.

The boundaries are holding. Three shifts a week, no more. I leave the ER at the ER. I come home, I cook, I eat, I sleep. The nightmares come once a week now instead of nightly. The sertraline is leveling something that was uneven for years, smoothing the spikes without flattening me entirely. Dr. Reeves says I'm progressing. I say I'm surviving. She says those are the same thing, some weeks.

I made mongo guisado this week — mung bean stew, the humblest Filipino dish, the one Lourdes made when money was tight, when Reynaldo was on dialysis and the medical bills were eating through savings like acid through cloth. Mung beans are cheap, nutritious, filling — a poor person's protein, a working family's insurance against hunger. You cook them with garlic, onion, tomatoes, and whatever greens you have. Spinach works. Malunggay — moringa leaves — is traditional but impossible to find in Anchorage. I used spinach. Lourdes would say it's not the same. She'd be right. She'd eat it anyway.

The mongo simmered on low heat for an hour, the beans breaking down into a thick, porridge-like consistency, the garlic and onion dissolving into the background. I added a few pieces of smoked fish — a Filipino touch that Lourdes taught me, the smoky saltiness cutting through the earthy blandness of the beans. The result is simple and sustaining and tastes like every hard year the Santos family has ever weathered.

After dinner I opened the journal and wrote. Not about the ER — about the kitchen. About the way mongo guisado smells when it simmers, about the way Lourdes's hands move when she stirs, about the way Reynaldo used to eat three bowls of it and say "Your mother could make cardboard taste good" and Lourdes would say "I do. You just call it pancakes." I wrote and laughed alone in my apartment and the laughing didn't feel like pretending. It felt like remembering. It felt like the version of me that existed before the floor. She's still in here. She's just quieter now.

Mongo guisado brought me back to myself this week, but it’s not the only dish in Lourdes’s repertoire that does that work. Filipino Picadillo — ground meat, potatoes, tomatoes, the whole humble architecture of a weeknight dinner — is cut from the same cloth: cheap, nourishing, honest. It’s the kind of recipe that doesn’t ask anything of you except that you show up and stir. On the nights when showing up is the whole victory, that’s exactly what I need.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef (or ground pork)
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced
1 cup frozen green peas
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
2 medium Roma tomatoes, diced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup water or low-sodium beef broth
1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
Salt and black pepper to taste
Steamed white rice, for serving

Instructions

Sauté aromatics. Heat oil in a large skillet or sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 3–4 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Brown the meat. Add ground beef to the pan, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. Cook until no longer pink, about 5–6 minutes. Drain excess fat if needed.
Add tomatoes and season. Stir in diced tomatoes, soy sauce, and fish sauce. Cook 3 minutes, letting the tomatoes soften and the liquid reduce slightly.
Add potatoes and carrots. Stir in the diced potatoes and carrots. Pour in the water or broth, stir to combine, and bring to a gentle simmer.
Simmer until tender. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover partially, and cook for 15–18 minutes, stirring occasionally, until potatoes and carrots are fork-tender and the sauce has thickened.
Finish with peas. Stir in the frozen green peas and cook uncovered for 2–3 minutes until heated through. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and black pepper.
Serve. Spoon over steamed white rice and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Filipino Picadillo — The Dish That Reminds Me I’m Still Here