Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
It's an honor for KPC Buddhist Relief to partner with The Upcounty Hub, whose focus is on eliminating food insecurity and providing assistance to access social services. Every week, we bring over half a ton of nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables that the Hub staff then distribute the following day to over 100 families in need, many of whom are Latino.
It's Hispanic Heritage Month. Buddhist Relief volunteer Rudy is excited to share about the produce - food staples in Latin American cuisine - that we are about to deliver to the Hub:
"We have jalapenos, tomatoes and a bunch of onions. These are the staples of a lot of Hispanic cooking - salsa - pretty much the base of a lot of recipes. You brown the meat, you've got the salsa, and you've got a stew or whatever you like.
These are products that people that are around here - our neighbors - they really really enjoy especially the salsa stuff but also the fresh bananas, oranges, carrots and also another favorite - this one over here - zucchini, in Spanish we call it "la calabacita". A lot of times, we start with pork and like I said before, fresh salsa.
So here, I know that our community really appreciates this. Here's another example of a staple called yuca. Also used in a lot of traditional cooking in our area, for our neighbors. And also, this delicious bushel of pears. These are also one of the favorites, and right around this time of the year, they are very very sweet and something that our neighbors really appreciate - and something that really we try to get - whenever MegaMart has available. And oh of course, potatoes ("patata") also a staple, especially for cooking for the Hispanic population right around here and yeah, everything is fresh here from MegaMart - everything is beautiful, I mean look at the quality of the product. This is just beautiful and the way they are packaged - everything carefully packed - it's amazing. The tomatoes- once again - perfect, not a single squashed tomato - they're all in perfect shape and ripe - so we love it and we hope to get many more of these for the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years - for however long it takes."
