COMMUNITY CHEFS LA: Farmers Markets & Cooking with Kei
Kei shops at the Harbor Area Farmers Markets and cooks from Long Beach. In a future video, she’ll teach us how to make mushroom lugaw (rice porridge) and vegetable lumpia (fried spring rolls)! Read more about this Community Chefs LA story below!
Meet Kei
Kei Karayan (she/her/siya) is a queer Ilokana doula, community organizer, creative, and chef serving communites in Long Beach, California on Tongva Land. Her ancestral roots are from the provinces of Northern Luzon in Cagayan Valley. Kei honors her Pilipinx lineage through her collection of work, Kasama Culture. Her work is an extension of her ancestors and is guided by the Bayanihan spirit, resilience of her pamilya, and Earth’s muse. Kasama Culture values building and uplifting the community through reclaiming, remembering, and honoring our Pilipinx identities through activism, birth work, and the arts. Kei is currently a baker at San and Wolves Filipinx Vegan Bakeshop, runs her pop up kitchen— Kasama Culture Kusina— out of her home, and is working on her first short documentary on Pilipinx love.
Language, Identity, & Geography Lessons
The Philippines is a archipelagic country (collective of islands) in Southeast Asia. There are over 180 languages in the Philippines!
Pilipinx are people of the Philippines. This is a solidarity term that uses “P” rather than “F” to reflect a decolonized recognition of identity. The “x” represents gender and non-binary inclusion. As language evolves to be more inclusive, there are variations including Filipinx. Currently, Filipino or Filipinos are the most common words.
Diaspora means a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic locale, where there is a mass movement or migration of a population from its indigenous regions.
Kasama is a Tagalog verb meaning “to be together” and as a noun it means “friend”.
Bayanihan is a Tagalog word that means in the spirit of communal unity to achieve a particular goal. An example of this is the mutaual aid movement where community members exchange of resources.
A doula is a trained birthworker who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to a mother before, during and shortly after childbirth.
Food For Thought
Culturally relevant foods mean food that speaks to your cultural connections. What are some food items that connect you with your culture(s)? How does that make you feel?
Need Help With Food?
Chef Kei mentioned how her family used CalFresh at the Farmers Market. Many Farmers Markets offer extra food dollars for CalFresh and WIC participants. For a list of participating Market Match locations for CalFresh, click here!
