I recently joined a CSA… a community supported agriculture farm. Not only that, it’s ORGANIC too!!
I can’t really remember how I found out about it… but I was doing a search on the internet and it showed me that in Puerto Rico there was a weekly organic farmer’s market in Rincón at a vegetarian restaurant. We also have one in San Juan at la Placita Roosevelt, but it’s only 2 weekend a month and if I do not write it down in my calendar I usually forget.
Back to our story… I wrote the people at the vegetarian restaurant in Rincon to ask them if they knew of any CSA’s in Puerto Rico. They immediately directed me to Silka and Siembra Tres Vidas. Silka runs, what we believe to be, the first organic CSA farm in Puerto Rico.
The cool thing about joining a CSA program is it brings together community members and farmers in a seasonal relationship of mutual support. Community members pay the farmer a seasonal fee to cover cost of production. As a benefit to their sponsorship, community members receive an equal share of the weekly harvest during each season. This mutually beneficial arrangement provides the community member of the freshest, sustainable produce and assures financial support to the farmer.
The SIEMBRA TRES VIDAS Mission is to use farming methods that work with nature to produce healthy food and improve the quality of the soil with which we have been entrusted. Neither chemical pesticides nor fertilizers are used on the land or the crops. They grow food to enhance people’s health, and the health of our land and our planet, hoping to set an example to other local farmers and farmers-to-be on the island.
Siembra Tres Vidas is located in Aibonito and offered their crops at the farmer’s market in Rincón, which is basically 3 hours away from San Juan, where I live. The travel time was definitely not attractive… STV started coming to the Placita Orgánica Roosevelt in San Juan and I kept reassuring Silka she would have great success with a route in San Juan, which finally started last March.
I get a box each week for a period of 12 weeks. Each week I get the seasonal crops. As you can see here, we’ve been getting lettuces (arugula, romaine, “lechugas del pais”, Japanese Mizuna, mesclun greens, among others), carrots, radishes, cabbages, fennel bulbs, broccoli… This week we received for the first time French green beans (haricots vert), grapefruits and cucumbers. I also get some complimentary herbs – like basil, tarragon, flat leaf parsley, lemongrass, cilantro, among others.
What’s cool about this project is that:
In the weeks to come, I will be sharing some of the dishes I have created based on the bounties of my CSA basket each week. It will become a series titled – FROM MY CSA BASKET…
A few of the recipes I have done already are:
Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli
Silka is always in search of crop-sharing sponsors who will gain satisfaction from knowing they are part of our small effort to minimize global warming thru local sustainable agriculture in Puerto Rico. If you would like more information about Siembra Tres Vidas, you can contact them at:
And you can also get their produce at these Organic Markets in Puerto Rico
Mercado Orgánico Madre Tierra
La Placita Roosevelt, Hato Rey, San Juan, 8 am – 1pm – all year.
1st & 3rd Sunday of month
Mercado Agro-Ecológico de Rincón
Town square, Rincón, 8 am – 1 pm
1st & 3rd Sunday of month. We participate from October thru March.
When I was a little girl I was a very picky eater… so much that my parents put me in a school where they offered lunch to see if I would expand my eating horizons. For 2 years I ate white rice and ketchup for lunch. True… my mom would ask me everyday what I had for lunch and I would reply – Arroz con ketchup! Proudly…
But my pickiness never came because my parents never offered me a wide variety of foods. They always instilled in me I had to TRY EVERYTHING BEFORE I could say I didn’t like it. In my former life, before I became a vegetarian, there used to be a time where I would only eat the paella rice and not eat anything else in it. I would only eat the sauce of stewed beans and still remember how my dad tried to teach me to swallow oysters with cocktail sauce… never did it, but became a fan of the sauce and horseradish. Also, when in a ballet summer camp, they made us go on a diet where we ate steamed broccoli and cauliflower… I hated the taste, the smell, the texture, but now I eat them regularly. I also remember how in my Quinceañero I spent the whole evening eating these delicious “onion rings”. When I told my mom how good they were, my mom told me there wasn’t any onion rings on the menu… that they must have been the calamari rings!!! I never took the calamari off the paella anymore after that. And I remember the first time I had marinated tofu in a sandwich and fried gluten… that fried gluten tasted like pork “chicharrones” rinds and I was “scared” that someone at the yoga center got confused and made something not suitable for the vegetarians at the party.
Don’t they look like onion rings???
My point… people, kids and adults alike are many times prejudiced with what THEY THINK something tastes like. They think they do not like to eat something because of its color, its appearance, their idea of its taste. Something I have learned throughout the years is that you might not like a specific ingredient in a specific preparation… but if you give it a few tries you might like it prepared differently. For example, I much prefer eggplant battered and fried than stewed. I very much prefer garbanzo beans in a hummus than in a bean salad… you would “never” see me eating a bean salad. That’s something I have not been able to conquer or think I will…
Being such a finicky kid, believe it or not, I was not the finickiest… My friend Mariví was worse than me. We have a LOT of history together. And it was not until we were late in high school that she came to eat at her first salad bar. We went to Ponderosa to eat and she asked me if she had to eat the salad… I said emphatically “OF COURSE!!!, why else would we come to Ponderosa if not for the all-you-can-eat salad bar???” She confessed, with her salad plate in front of her, that she thanked me because it was the first time she had tried lettuce, tomato and corn. I could not believe her mom had not taught her to eat salad… It was so far-fetched to me, as finicky as I was…
Now time has passed… Madelyn is vegetarian and Mariví has 5 kids!!! Yes, that was not a typo… 5 kids – Ignacio who’s 11, Diego who’s 10, Kamila who’s about to turn 8, Daniel who’s 4 and the newest one, Sergio who’s just 3 months old. They’re as finicky about eating as Madelyn and Mariví were when growing up… the thing is that by having also a finicky mom, it’s my theory they’re not as exposed to as many foods as they should be… And this might be my own impression, but I see plain hamburgers without an ounce of lettuce, tomato, or even ketchup at their birthday parties… and when I mention certain things to eat to my goddaughter Kamila, she makes faces at me…
So I decided to hold a little experiment… I would prepare a meal for Mariví and her 4 oldest kids without telling any of them what is in any of the dishes. They will eat them, enjoy them, hopefully even LOVE them and then afterwards tell them what was in it… to prove to them that they do indeed like to eat more than what they’re exposing themselves to and to expand their eating horizons. It is my belief that kids learn mostly by example and what better example than their parents habits. If the parents do not eat something or do not expose kids to certain things they will not gain an appreciation for them.
They came over without knowing of the experiment… I did not want them to prejudice themselves knowing I am vegetarian. I explained to them I had made dinner and I assured them they would love it all. And if they wanted to know about how anything was made, I would tell them at the end of the meal.
Here was last night’s menu:
Lettuce, Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Thousand Island Dressing
Vanilla Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce
THE TASTING
I can remember the first time I ate an asparagus sandwich at a birthday party. I just ate it thinking it was a regular “sandwichito de mezcla” just rolled into a different shape and loved it. It was not after I had eaten about 10 of these little sandwiches that someone told me it was asparagus. I was hooked.
I knew Mariví’s kids would be surprised about liking them too… I just make a mixture of jarred asparagus and egg-less mayonnaise and spread it onto whole-wheat bread. I flatten the bread so I can roll the sandwiches and give them a fancier look. Sometimes people place a whole asparagus spear in the center and then roll the bread around it, but because I knew these guys are finicky, I just made a puree out of the ingredients to avoid any apprehension before they tasted them.
Both Ignacio and Diego smelled them before putting them in their mouths… so typical of a finicky kid!!! Ignacio, Diego, Kamila and Mariví all loved them. They were all trying to figure out what was in them. Ignacio and Diego had about 4 each and even told me they would love to have them again…
This was Ignacio’s face when I told him the sandwiches were made from asparragus – HUH?!?!?
A few weeks ago I tested my Undercover Carrot Mac and Cheese as a way to “sneak in” some added veggies into my niece’s, Mariana, dinner. A reader suggested me to try it also with cauliflower. So this is my version of mac and cheese with added cauliflower.
I usually make mac and cheese with a white cheese sauce. I thought it would be something different the kids would enjoy – steering away from the orangy sauces they’re so used too. I cooked the cauliflower in the same water as the macaroni. I used Jerusalem artichoke pasta instead of the regular semolina pasta. I then combined it all with a cheese sauce made from soy milk, gruyère, pecorino romano, cream cheese, an Italian-blend grated cheeses and Parmesan. I baked it all in the oven for about 30 minutes to get the crust golden brown.
Mariví was amazed that this has cauliflower and was so good. Ignacio felt there was something more in there than just mac and cheese and kept asking me how I made it… Diego just didn’t care and started shoveling it in. The two little ones did not understand how a mac and cheese was white instead of orange. So I convinced them to try it again after I mixed in a few slices of American cheese into their portions – bringing to the cheese total to 6 – the cheesiest I have ever made a mac and cheese before. The learning… when you make mac and cheese from scratch for the little ones, make it ORANGE with regular cheddar cheese. They’ll find it more familiar and will not look at it as funny as Kamila and Daniel did.
Tostones in Puerto Rico are typically made from plantains… but you can make tostones also out of Breadfruits. We call them PANA in Spanish. Breadfruits are very polarizing – people either love them of they hate them. There’s a breadfruit tree behind my grandma’s house and I decided to expose Mariví’s kids to breadfruit.
These were a complete hit!!! Everyone wanted to be in the kitchen with me when I fried them and everyone gobbled them up. Even the little ones went for the tostones first before they started on the fixed-up mac and cheese.
Tostones need to be fried twice… so I had fried them for the first time earlier in the week and kept them frozen in a Ziploc bag. I defrosted them in salted garlicky water and fried them again right before eating them.
Diego going first after the Breadfruit Tostones…
Lettuce, Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Thousand Island Dressing
I knew this was going to be the most difficult one to “sell” to these kids. They are just not used to eating salad. But I had to give it a try… I used organic romaine lettuce and organic cucumbers. I bought mini cherry tomatoes and told them these were tomatoes specially made for kids.
I made them a Thousand Island Dressing to go along with the salad. That used to be the only dressing I liked when I was a kid, so I figured they might prefer that to any vinaigrette I could make. I started with a Mayo Ketchup base and added some sweet pickles.
Some of them tried the tomatoes only but they were not impressed. It was so sad to see all the salads left almost intact… I was the only one who really ate the salad. Everyone else, including the mom, left salad on their plates. This was the real challenge… but I will not give up. I will make them eat salad if it’s the last thing I do for that family…
Vanilla Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberry Sauce
Recently, Kamila had told me she loved strawberry ice cream. So when this idea started I decided to make strawberry ice cream from scratch for her. Unfortunately, I live this crazy life that I did not have time to fix it. So I decided to do the next best thing I knew… prepare a fresh strawberry sauce to top vanilla ice cream.
This is great with any berry, in fact, the original recipe I learned from Ina Garten in her Barefoot in Paris book. I had made it with raspberries, but strawberries are cheaper and more readily available.
Just cook some fresh strawberries with some water and brown sugar. Mix them in a food processor with strawberry preserves and voilà!! – Fresh Strawberry Sauce. Kamila even wanted hers with a fresh strawberry as a garnish.
Surprisingly, the little ones loved this strawberry sauce, not so much the older ones. They exchanged it for plain ice cream.
THE RESULTS
I believe all in all this VERY VEGGIE EXPERIMENT was a SUCCESS!!!! More thumbs up than thumbs down… overall.
Marivíand her kids were exposed to a bunch of different foods they are normally not exposed to – asparagus, cauliflower, gruyere and pecorino romano cheeses, Jerusalem artichoke pasta, pickles, breadfruit… And out of the 5 things I prepared, they liked 4 of them with the salad being the most challenging of all. Which I was really expecting…
I hope Mariví now has learned how exposing her kids, and even herself, to foods she might not be familiar to is a good thing. They will in the end be healthier and better-rounded individuals.
Based on this experience, I will make an effort to invite the kids over more often to expose them to foods I know they might never try otherwise and even teach them how to prepare these dishes for their parents.
For complete directions on how to prepare all these dishes, stay tuned in the next few days to KarmaFree Cooking when I will share the recipes and instructions in detail.
I remember when I was in college when I first heard of Earth Day… and about how we should contribute to the preservation of the natural resources of our planet. I bought myself a book called 50 Simple Things you can do to Save the Earth. It was something I developed a great passion for and instilled it into the rest of my family members – I made people start recycling at home, I wanted to buy air-flow aerators faucets, buy products with less packaging… those are the ones I remember mostly. I even did a project in college about influencing and persuading people to recycle. 
However I do not remember ever reading in that booklet that GOING VEGETARIAN would be a way to really contribute to the preservation of our beloved Mother Earth. Maybe because at the time I was not prepared to make the lifestyle change to becoming vegetarian… maybe I just skipped that recommendation altogether. Hey – this was about 12 years before I discovered Vegetarianism as a lifestyle I wanted to follow.
I also have seen the trailers for the award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I’ll be honest… I didn’t see the movie because I was afraid of what I was about to see and learn. I did not want to be panicked. If you have seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, at least you can see a trailer right here…
But in doing some research for a lecture I needed to do for our Yoga Center on the benefits of Vegetarianisms I was surprised that if you really love the Earth and would like to make the least impact for generations to come… going vegetarian yields the most benefit in comparison to other more “commonly accepted” ways of being GREEN.
What’s the MEAT INDUSTRY’s impact on our Planet?
How does being VEGETARIAN contribute to saving the Environment?
A carnivore has 16 times the impact on the environment than a Vegetarian… why?
Because it takes 16 lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of meat. So it is almost as throwing away in the trash those 15 lbs of grain that otherwise could have been used to feed other people/vegetarians. Could you imagine if all those extra 15 lbs of grain/food would be used to feed people? Don’t you think we could possibly…
If you are vegetarian and minimize the demand for meat products, you are actually:
We live in a world of demand/offer. If the demand for meat products is less, eventually the offer will decrease too, which will yield the benefits I am describing here. The impact is so amazing, that it is said that becoming vegetarian yields more benefits to the environment than driving a hybrid vehicle.
What other Little Things can we do to save the Earth?
You might be thinking… what impact could I make?? I am just one and there are SOOOOOOOOO many people in my community and around the world that do not share this same conscience. I will not make any difference if others continue to do the same…
Well I say that change must start somewhere. And it starts with YOU. It starts with ME. It starts with educating others with our example and behavior. Imagine if everyone thought the same and no one would change… however if we all did something, something different from what we are doing today, the effect will be exponential.
And to close with the great words of the great living philosopher of today, Michael Jackson… with pieces of the lyrics of a song that impacted me from the day I first listened to it in 1987- Man in the Mirror:
I’m Gonna Make A Change,
For Once In My Life
It’s Gonna Feel Real Good,
Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right . . .
I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself,
And Then Make A Change
While most people celebrate Holy Week with the official beginning of summer in Puerto Rico, too few people celebrate its true religious meaning. I remember when we used to stay in on Holy Thursday and Holy Friday to watch religious movies – the life of Jesus, the Passion of Christ, stories of Moses and the Old Testament and the stories of the Virgins, like the Virgin of Fatima or the Virgin of Guadalupe. That is certainly here a thing of the past…
To me Holy Week is a time to reflect on Jesus’ life and our life as well. And since I started practicing YOGA, I’ve been celebrating Holy Week with a spiritual retreat. I just returned from one Easter Sunday. We do these retreats by fasting… and some people think we’re nuts. But if you want to be a healthy individual you should start to practice fasting more often.
When most people think of fasting, in the religious sense, they think of doing something to sacrifice themselves, as a punishment for whatever they did wrong… in yoga, we see fasting as a way to improve our health, to give our body a break from the hard-to digest foods that might not be as good for us as we think. It’s a way to bring more health into our lives.
The purpose of fasting is to help detoxify your body. This detoxification helps to eliminate and alleviate many ailments that might be creeping up on us because of the unhealthy eating habits we might be holding. And the fasting I am speaking of if to spend a day without eating cooked or processed foods… to spend a whole day eating lots of fruits, raw vegetable salads, water, juices. These are things we already know we should be eating more of… why? Because eating raw fruits and vegetables is the best for us to maintain our health. So isn’t it neat to select a day out of our week to try to eat only fruits and veggies?? Letting our food be also our medicine…
Here are a few of the benefits of doing a weekly fast:
How to do a day of fasting? Simple:
Some words of extra advice…
Hope you might have learned a bit about FASTING and might be inspired, or at least not afraid, to try it. I try to do it as often as I can and I can attest to its benefits.
KarmaFree Cooking 