HER love for fruits and vegetables keeps my Lola Vita stay strong at age 90. She had eight siblings who were fond of eating meat who have all passed away. She likes to cultivate and plant vegetables she loves to eat. She claims that too much meat protein is not good for the body. Instead, fish and seafood mixed with vegetables comprises her balanced diet.
“At my age, I noticed that eating meat products, especially processed ones, causes body aches,” she said.
Her source of protein is mung beans or munggo. She claims it’s one of her favorites because of its versatility.
“You can cook it with coconut milk, add muscuvado organic sugar to make a perfect snack or cook it with fish sauce either with malunggay leaves or ampalaya to come up with a delicious dish, ” she said.
Besides, planting munggo keeps the soil fertile because of the rich nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root system that creates humus, the organic component of soil that decomposes leaves.
Lola Vita also said she plants ginger not only because of the spicy aroma it provides to varieties of delicacies, but she noticed it is an effective pain reliever. Likewise, she keeps growing native pandan that also provides a captivating aroma when she cooks rice.
The fully laden bilimbi or kamias tree she planted at the backyard of our ancestral home in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, is a hand-reached source of fresh ingredients for her porridge or sinigang combined with lemon grass. She also claims that bilimbi fruits are perfect against sore throats and colds.
Lola Vita grows spring onion, horse radish, bitter gourd, string beans or sitaw, eggplant, wing beans, bell pepper, siling labuyo, lima beans, okra and sweet potato —the so-called “bahay kubo” vegetables that are always available when she likes to cook the original Ilocano pinakbet dish.
Lola Vita also plants salad vegetables, including the flowering pechay, romaine and iceberg lettuce, radish, carrots and cabbage, not only for their rich fiber contents but for the health benefits they provide.
Aside from the Perante Oranges, the legacy named after my late grandfather Leonardo Perante who bred what is said to be the first Philippine oranges, my Lola Vita still grows at our ancestral farm fruit trees like citron, lemon, pomelo, calamansi, chico, lanzones, longan, coconut, rambutan and the rare “thousand bananas” variety grown organically.
“I do not have to go to the public market to buy vegetables from other provinces when I can grow them myself, and serves as my daily exercise to keep me fit,” she said.
Image credits: Suzanne June G. Perante