#a bodega

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Food Photo Monday: Eating Bell Pepper

the most satisfying of all snacks

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Recipe Thursday: How to make Yuca Frita (Fried Yucca)

An experiment in a stop motion recipe how-to video.

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The Healthy on the Block initiative is working with community members and organizations to increase access to healthy affordable food through corner stores.   Our goal is to help corner stores in East Boston and Mattapan to offer healthier options, including better quality fruits and vegetables at a reasonable price.   ​

Link Out Wednesday: BPHC Corner Store Initative 

This is such an awesome way of working within a community to come up with answers to food access problems. A few similar projects have been going on in a couple of other cities (Lawrence, MA; New York, NY) and it shows a lot of promise.

There are a lot of factors that go into a decision to eat something (advertising, familiarity, cost, taste), but the first question that must be asked is pretty simple: can the food be physically accessed by a potential customer? Stocking fresh produce in corner stores that people already visit is one way to increase access to fresh food in neighborhoods without supermarkets. Working with people living in the community can help to ensure that local residents sign on to these changes and guide them in a useful way. A lot of larger corporations don't have experience selling fresh food in low-income neighborhoods or neighborhoods with a high population of ethnic minorities. Doesn't make sense to work on a project like this with people already doing so?

There seems to be a common misconception that change is not possible in neighborhoods experiencing poverty, and that people aren't willing to work for it either. I have a deep appreciation for work like this that helps prove otherwise.

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Recipe Thursday: Habichuelas Guisadas (or something like it)

Beans are a staple food throughout Latin America, and for good reason: they store well, they're relatively inexpensive, and their full of flavor/protein which makes them super satisfying. My parents would always make a huge pot at the beginning of the week, and we'd have beans pretty much at every meal. The basic idea is pretty hard to mess up, and is nice because it doesn't require a lot of action. It's almost meditative:

rinse

soak overnight

drain

boil (for how long? Until they're soft enough to where you actually want to eat them... which is probably going to take a good hour and a half)

Making habichuelas guisadas, a sort of stew-like dish, is fairly common in Dominican households. I had it for the first time in Lawrence, MA, and immediately had to add it to my cooking repertoire. As always, though, I sort of end up just making things taste kind of like they would at home. So, while this is still a basic yummy recipe, I can't say you'll be making habichuelas guisadas exactly. Here's what you'll need (btw, I don't typically like exact measurements, so... you'll have to just sort of feel out the measurements and resent me in the process):

about 2 cups of beans

olive oil

cumin, salt, pepper, and whatever spices taste good to you

1 medium red onion

2 cloves of garlic

tomato sauce (less than a cup...)

1 medium tomato

Prepare the beans as mentioned above--soak, drain, and boil. (I'll usually boil them with some salt and big old chunks of onion in the water.)

Drain the beans, saving the water this time (You'll want it later).

Wash and dry the pot, and heat some oil in it.

Peel/chop the onions/garlic, and add them to the oil, cooking until they start to turn golden. Add your spices and cook a little longer.

Chop the tomatoes, and add them in along with the tomato sauce.

Add in the beans and cook for a few more minutes.

Add the water back in, mash the beans lightly, and cook until they're a deliciously soft texture.

Enjoy!

For best results, pair with rice. (coming next week)

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Link Out Wednesday: The United States Department of Agriculture's mapping tool for food access in the USA

This is such an awesome tool I used to look into the presence of food deserts a little more (and to help me make my Hot Cheeto maps from this week). You get an in-depth look at the burden of low food access, with the ability to zoom-in on a census tract level. What's really interesting to me about this tool is being able to look within even one city to see how people living in different neighborhoods might be supported differently by their environments.

What do you see when you look at your own city? How about the neighboring ones?

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Inaugurating this blog with the trailer for A Bodega, the animated short film.

After ten months of planning/animating/editing, countless trips to Lawrence, and many meals, I am so happy to call this film done. I needed an outlet for more food pics, recipes, and discussion of issues around food access in urban areas, so in came this blog.

Hope you enjoy!