Arya News - Fr. Buddy cooks, people buy, and little by little, he can help students and scholars—a process that is, for him, meditative.
MANILA – When Fr. Buddy Agualada goes to celebrate Mass, he sometimes brings more than what he needs for the altar. At the request of friends and parishioners, he also brings some of his homemade specialties: laing, Bicol Express, and ginataang santol.
Fr. Agualada is a Claretian priest, theologian, professor, author, and budding painter, with a licentiate and doctorate in Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He teaches at the Loyola School of Theology, the Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, and St. Vincent School of Theology.
But there is another side to this priest and scholar: Fr. Buddy loves to cook. And he cooks very well.
Cooking for a cause
Those who attend Fr. Agualada’s regular Masses know this, too. When he has food to sell, his sukis know they are in for something lovingly prepared—and all for a good cause. The proceeds support a scholar and, every now and then, students who need shoes, uniforms, school supplies, or help with tuition.
“I cook because I love to cook,” he tells me. “There’s a deeper part of me that feels so satisfied, so contented, so happy when I cook. It’s not a task for me or a chore.”
“There’s a deeper part of me that feels so satisfied, so contented, so happy when I cook. It’s not a task for me or a chore”
So he cooks, people buy, and little by little, he is able to help students and scholars. The process, he confides, is meditative.
Sometimes we think we need to have a lot before we can give. Often, we simply have to look at what is already in our hands. Fr. Agualada spoke of the simplest things: a meal, a little time, a smile, a prayer, a phone call, our presence.
His famous laing
In his case, it also happens to be a very tasty pot of laing.
When I asked him to tell me about himself, he said simply, “I am a servant of the Lord, a servant of God, and a servant of the Church and His people.” Because for him, service—and cooking, in its own little way—has become part of it.
A family of cooks
A smoky kitchen in Bicol was where it all began. Fr. Agualada is the eighth of nine children and grew up in Barceloneta, Cabusao, Camarines Sur. “As a child, I would wake up to a very smoky kitchen,” he recalls.
Dinalian
With nine children to feed, practically the whole day revolved around food. Breakfast, lunch, merienda, dinner—and almost everything in it—was homemade. There was arroz caldo, estofado, tikoy, and atchara. His eldest sister made polvoron that the family sold. She even made nata de coco from scratch.
“We’re a family of cooks, really,” he says.
“As a child, I would wake up to a very smoky kitchen…We’re a family of cooks, really”
His mother, Mercedes Grimpluma Agualada, was known for her arroz caldo and estofado in their barrio. Sadly, none of the children thought to ask for her recipes while she was alive. They assumed there would always be another time to ask.
Recipes are part of a family’s story. The people who make them, even more so. Much of the food Fr. Agualada grew up with lives on in his cooking.
Home tastes like Bicol (and gata)
In the course of his cooking, Fr. Agualada’s Bicolano roots immediately come out: laing, Bicol Express, kinunot, ginataang santol, ginataang tilapia, ginataang tulingan—everything with gata!
And he takes his gata seriously. He buys fresh coconut, has it grated and squeezed, and brings home the kakang gata.
Laing
Champorado with gata? Mas masarap. Dinuguan with gata? Mas lalong sumasarap. And I have to agree. There is something delightful about hearing a theologian who spent years studying in Rome become animated over coconut milk.
Food does that. For Fr. Agualada, home tastes like Bicol.
Fr. Agualada learned to cook young and continued cooking in the seminary for parties and community gatherings. Then came Rome. In 2020, while awaiting his doctoral defense, Rome went into lockdown. His international religious community suddenly had a basic problem.
Who was going to cook? The community asked who knew how. Fr. Agualada raised his hand. And that was that.
Here was a priest in Rome, doctorate almost in hand—and what everybody needed from him had nothing to do with theology. They needed to eat.
Father’s paradise
Inay Mercedes died on July 12, 2018. When she was alive, Father Buddy loved going home to Bicol. “Our house in Bicol was really a paradise to me,” he says. But after she passed, he no longer felt the same pull to go home.
Then he understood. “I realized that place was paradise to me because of the presence of my mother.”
We think home is a place. Often, home is a person. Fr. Agualada was very close to his mother. For the first three years after she died, he dreamt of her hundreds of times. Even now, she still comes to him in dreams. “My mother has never ceased to take good care of me,” he says.
From her, Fr. Agualada says he inherited his love for cooking and his patience to endure suffering. And from his father? His intelligence, he says.
To love is to give
In Fr. Agualada’s life, cooking has simply become another way to give. The long process of cooking laing gives him time to think, pray, and be thankful. At the end of it, there is a meal to share.
So much goodness happens quietly. And through cooking, one small kindness makes room for another.
Fr. Agualada has spent much of his life studying, teaching, and writing theology. But the lesson he leaves us with is much simpler: Give what you have. Give it gladly. And luckily for Fr. Agualada, he has the added gift of making what he gives delicious.
If you would like to try some of Fr. Agualada’s homemade Bicol delicacies, you may contact him at 0917 324 0153