The month of June is upon us. Although I am still suffering in this stifling and sweltering tailend of summer, I can imagine the flitting crisp moments of the nights. I can almost hear the raindrops pitter-pattering on the roofs and peter out on the unforgiving concrete floor of our jungle, almost feel the drizzle gently touch my hair and slowly trickle down to my skin, and almost taste the cloudburst like I did on those wet afternoons of my childhood where we took a shower in the midst of a downpour or ten.

Those afternoons of bed weather motivated my mother to whip up a kaserola of something steaming to cure our laziness or bout of sickness brought by playing in the rain.

Among the bowls of something steaming my mother (or father) prepared, three of them stand out: arroz caldo, pancit Molo, and sotanghon soup.

Arroz caldo is my all-time favorite Pinoy comfort food. This porridge-like golden snack has glutinous rice (or leftover rice), chicken, ginger, fried garlic (anything with fried garlic is heavenly!), chopped onions, and topped with boiled egg. The ginger and the fried garlic are my favorite parts of this yum dish. I could eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!

I remember when I was in college, living in an apartment, missing lutong bahay food, and had an irrational craving for arroz caldo. There was a raging typhoon naturally and stores were closed. So, I went to a small grocery (now replaced by a big name grocery) in Katipunan Avenue and scoured the aisles for something that resembled lutong bahay food. Luckily (or unluckily), I found a ready-to-cook arroz caldo mixture. Each pack makes three to five bowls, so I bought three of those. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that it was all rice and the ginger flavor was too powerful for words. I was not able to finish a bowl of it, and worse, it turned me off from eating arroz caldo for quite some time.

Pancit molo soup is meat-filled dumplings, sprinkled with shredded chicken, fried garlic, and chopped spring onions, with flavorsome stock that can cure all types of illness. I have always enjoyed unwrapping the dumpling, taking the filling apart, and submerging it in the broth. I eat the molo wrapper on its own. I am weird that way. I usually add a lot of pepper to taste. The whiff of the pepper hitting the broth is wickedly glorious.

Sotanghon is a hearty chicken noodle soup. It is not only good for the body but also for the soul. It has sotanghon noodles, shredded chicken, chopped carrots and onions, and fried garlic. It is also topped with boiled egg.

The bowl of sotanghon soup I had recently had a full-bodied broth that made eating it in the middle of a stuffy summer afternoon in an open-air eatery on the side of a busy street bearable. The boiled egg was served on the side, but I decided to slice it in two and revel in the goodness of soft-boiled egg bobbing up and down in an aurous liquid of deliciousness.