Oh, May Gulay, Featuring Phytochemicals for Our Second Cooking Demo at Plant Base

And we’re back to our usual Sunday appointment at Valencia City, where Plant Base, a health-food store opened their doors to the community by offering free health lectures and cooking demonstrations.

I still can’t believe that I am giving cooking demonstrations when a few years ago I myself have been clueless on how to make steamed rice or even fry tofu. Praise God for multiplying talents!

Since it’s a two-person team, my husband usually takes care of the sharing the health lecture and the interpersonal mingling-with-others kind of stuff. While I take care of making the slides, preparing the food in the kitchen and doing the demo.

Oh, May Gulay!

Filipinos hardly eat salads. Sure, every now and then we eat them as a side dish. But it’s not a regular, crucial part of your meal compared to rice. When we have salads, it’s usually a fruit salad with a lot of cream, buko (coconut meat) salad with a lot of condensed milk, or macaroni salad with a lot of mayonnaise.

Over the years, I’ve met so many people here who have no idea that lettuce or cabbage can be eaten raw. To many, all veggies need to undergo some kind of heating process (aka boiling, roasting, frying) before they can eat it. What a waste of very important nutrients that easily evaporate when cooked thoroughly!

So Davin and I thought, why not educate people on how to eat and enjoy raw veggies? At the same time, I wanted to feature salads that can be the main course, the star of the show. We’ve always treated salad as a side, it’s time to make them shine.

What’s even better is that there are local farmers here who sell organic greens. The local market also sells alot of veggies. What’s more, Plant Base itself sells greens that would be perfect in a salad.

Phytochemicals and Cancer

As we made our presentation more relevant to Filipinos, we discovered that cancer, specifically breast cancer, is the leading cause of death among Filipino women. We also found out that according to the most recent survey that was done by the Food Nutrition Research Institute, Philippines is one of the countries with the lowest consumption of vegetables. And if and when we do consume “veggies,” the top three consumed by Filipinos are garlic, onions and eggplants. Like, seriously?!

Many studies have proven that eating foods rich in phytochemicals have the beneficial effect to delay or even cure cancer. These foods are exclusively found in plants. It’s what gives them color, flavor and nutrients.

Sure, there are many reasons slated on the survey as to why Filipinos hardly eat veggies. But we wanted to convince the people, at least those who would come to the lecture, that salads with at least 90% raw components (as ‘un-Filipino’ as that sounds like) is very beneficial to our bodies.

Our menu

This past Sunday’s menu included two salads: Crunchy Noodle Salad with a Peanut Dressing and Shawarma Chickpea Salad with Ranch Dressing. It seemed easy because it was “just a salad.” However, it proved to be really challenging to me, at least on the prep side because it involved a lot of chopping, slicing, blending, etc. Good thing, one of the health store volunteers, helped me slice and chop while I prepare the other stuff.

Some people trickled in around 3:30 pm which was supposed to be the starting time for the lecture. But by 3:45, the health store was full and had standing room only.

One of the other challenges I personally faced as I gave the demo was the noise of the busy street outside. Vehicles honking at pedestrians, a man’s elaborate chants in a nearby mosque is amplified through a loud speaker, vendors shouting at passers-by, etc.

Thankfully, the attention of the people was gathered to my slides as they took pictures of the recipe. The ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ were unmistakable as they see me pour the freshly blended dressing on the salad.

Through this initiative, an invitation was extended to us to spend a weekend in Cotabato where we can share the health message. Please pray for us as we make plans to prepare for that appointment.

We capped the afternoon with a prayer of gratitude for the food we were about to eat and for bringing in people to the store.

If you or your friends and family are in Valencia City, we would like to extend the invitation to join us every Sunday at 3:30 pm at Plant Base (close to Robinson’s Supermarket and Gaisano).

And for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, here’s one of the recipes we featured last Sunday: