Why Vegetarian?

In 2003, the year I got married, my entire Milwaukee family spent Christmas in Puerto Rico. We had a wonderful time, especially because my maternal grandparents were there with us.  Abuela Isabel and Abuelo Millo were excited to be back in their homeland and share it with their grandchildren.  Also, it was the first time my brother and I took our respective (non-Puertorican) spouses to visit our family on the island.

That trip will be forever engraved in my mind and in my heart. Especially because it was the last time that my grandparents would ever go back to their native Puerto Rico.  In fact, after that trip, my grandmother endured 6 years of surgeries and treatments for her increasingly worsening diabetes that would leave her bedridden and without legs.

It was after that trip, and the events that ensued that I began to make drastic changes to my diet.  As my grandmother became increasingly ill, I began to look into Diabetes and why it seemed so prevalent in the hispanic community.

I am not a doctor, or dietician, but it doesn't take one to recognize two things: 1. many, many of our (Puertorican) people succumb to the ugliness of this disease every day and 2. diet is a huge part of controlling (and sometimes preventing) diabetes.

When I realized half of my grandparents and one of my parents had diabetes, I made the choice to start looking at my fridge as a medicine cabinet, using food as preventative medicine for diseases...one of the first choices I made in that department was the elimination of meat.

So, as I cook...I will not be using pork, chicken, turkey.  I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, so I will be using eggs and dairy products (only organic).

I am excited to bring this spin to Puertorican cookery and I am sure the results will be delicious!