by Wina Velasco Javier
During this Quarantine season, I believe we’ve tried almost everything. From making a little profit via online selling, getting into baking and cooking, playing indoor games, holding online reunions or learning crafts.
It is fun to try something new and different. For my family, it’s trying a new healthy lifestyle. My two youngest kids introduced my husband and I to a vegan diet. A vegan diet is a plant-based diet with no meat, dairy or eggs. However, my husband and I will occasionally eat fish or a slice of cheese to balance our diet from soy-based or mushrooms, which are high in uric acid.
As a family, we try to cook and bake using new vegetarian recipes. We create plant-based burger patties, cookies and anything else we can make up in the kitchen.
The downside of this diet is that, it seems like many quality vegetables are becoming quite expensive. Shifting to vegan would need more varieties of ulam recipes so, I realized I needed to produce our own crops. I started saving the ends of kangkong, spring onions, papaya seeds, tomatoes seeds etc. and planted them in pots. Then I remembered that my mom had a green thumb when she was still alive. In front of her house she had an empty lot and was able to produce a lush garden there and harvested a basketful of leafy vegetables. She passed away six years ago and I just thought of resurrecting this empty lot to develop my own little farm, just like hers. I gathered my seeds of watermelon, papaya, ampalaya, labanos, sitaw, tomatoes etc. (I can sing the Bahay Kubo song to name the variety of vegetables) and planted them. Now I hope and pray for a bountiful harvest in due time..
