About Maida
MAIDA PINEDA’s life has been nothing short of a delicious adventure. Fueled by her twin passions for food and travel, she has written hundreds of published magazine and newspaper articles. She is also the author of Do’s & Don’ts in the Philippines, a cultural etiquette guidebook.
Maida’s love affair with food began at age five. While all her older siblings were still asleep and she had no one to play with, this early riser found much joy in assisting her mom in the kitchen. Together, they baked cakes, cookies, and pastries for the family-owned bakeshops. She learned to fold egg whites, before she even learned how to fold Origami paper animals. From making Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes and baking her first cakes, she progressed to baking and cooking on her own.
Her love for food extends to many aspects of her life: from selling it in the family bakeshop, to working in advertising agency to produce ads for a finger-lickin’ chicken brand, to working as a waitress in the Hilton Adelaide’s The Grange Restaurant, to selling gourmet olive oils and breads in the Adelaide Central Market. This diverse immersion in the rich food world provides fresh insight and perspective in her writing. Maida lives, breathes, eats, sells, writes, and even plays with food. As a trained food stylist in the US, she brings life to otherwise ordinary dishes, through the creative use of color, texture, and mood to simulate an enticing dining experience.
Recognizing her intense commitment, talent, and interest in food, Maida was awarded the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) scholarship towards her Masters of Arts in Gastronomy. She graduated from joint program of the University of Adelaide and Le Cordon Bleu in 2006. Her dissertation, “Home and Away: Lutong Bahay ng mga Kababayan in Adelaide: A Study of Ethnic Identity as Evidenced Through the Foodways in the Homes of Filipino Migrants Married to Australians in Adelaide,” was marked with distinction.
Maida’s love for food is complemented by her love for travel. It was also at age five that her father gave her first instamatic camera. On her first trip to California, he gave her a small spiral notebook instructing her to write a travel journal. Maida obediently followed often writing one-line entries like, “We went to Disneyland today.”
At 17, Maida left home to study half-way around the world in Smith College, a top liberal arts college in Massachusetts, US. Since then, travel has become central to her life. It is not surprising that she became the first one of the first writers for LAKBAY TV, a cable channel devoted to travel around the Philippines. The archipelago of 7,107 islands became her big classroom of learning. She traveled from the northernmost island of Batanes, up to the mountain province of Banaue and Sagada, through the salt beds of Pangasinan and the exotic eats of Pampanga, down to the amazing surfing destination of Siargao, and weaving through all the provinces in between in search of interesting features for magazines.
After living in the Philippines, the US, and Australia, the world is her oyster! Whether she is stalking balut vendors, or spraining her ankle finding cheap and cheerful hawker food stalls, or gate-crashing a tribal wedding reception, or partaking of the decadent meals at the Orient Express, Maida is happily living her dream of eating her way around the world.
Maida is now based in Singapore, with her company Maida’s Touch- providing food, travel writing and styling services. She spends her days living in the delicious adventure of turning the ordinary into gold!
email me at maida@maidastouch.com