Jaime Desormeaux

Oceans contain marine life.  For many cultures, people depend on marine life for food. Oceans are also providing water through desalination processes in places like Israel and Cape Town, South Africa.

We can take care of the oceans by not overfishing, by supporting careers that focus on marine life and oceanography to continue awareness, and learning about our daily impact on oceans as consumers who buy, use, and waste.

Often times when we go to local markets and corner stores in an urban environment, such as in New York City, the boroughs, it can be challenging to find quality food.  Today, the options are many more than when I was a child growing up in Brooklyn.  I never heard of the word "organic" before adulthood, except when I was learning chemistry in high school, and then I didn't relate it to food.

What is super awesome about New York City is that there are so many options for food today because of the development of cuisines from various nationalities all over the boroughs.  Because of decades of immigration since the late 1800s from European countries and Asian countries especially, there is not one cuisine you cannot find from your mother country as a resident of New York.

I watched "Food on the Go" on Netflix, which was a snap shot of the journey Italians took to be accepted in the Americas from the time of mass immigration (around 1890) until now.  The commentators cited that this acceptance can be most attributed to Italian cuisine.

Coming to Argentina and New York in the greatest of migration waves, Italians were actually taken aback at how much meat was available. Most of them left Italy to gain a better economic position for themselves and their families and meat was rarely on their table.  And the meat in the Americas was cheap.  So they jumped at the chance to fill their plates with loads of their favorite dishes featuring the meats they missed back home.

One of the elements to their cuisine that they did lack in the Americas was variety and quality in vegetables.  Some of the early migrants traveled with some of their favorite vegetables and planted, grew, and sold in makeshift markets.  As I understand it, this is when they began to exercise their food sovereignty in the places they settled.  The markets took over the streets and the mayor or local official gave them places in markets in neighborhoods all over the borough.   Their markets had backroom cook shops that eventually turned into restaurants.  This brought wealth to the Italian population.

This wealth helped the Italian diaspora to be recognized in its culinary offerings to the Americas.  Italians were able to teach their cuisine and express pride in their cooking methods and offer their foods not just in restaurants but in markets and supermarkets globally.

In this documentary, Food on the Go, I understood that at some point the government has to see value in what a people bring to the economy and culture of a place and take a stand to make place for this ethnic group.  But if the Italians didn't advocate for themselves-to be able to sell the products they knew were lacking in their communities, and products that were essential to the totality of their everyday cuisine: vegetables-they would not have been seen.  The mayor may not even have known how many Italians were truly present and deserving of representation in markets where they lived.

As Italian food has become a favorite for most families in the Americas, Italians can continue to ensure their cuisine maintains authenticity, not by continuing to work on farms back home, necessarily, but by supporting the farms and investing in markets for every neighborhood in the Americas and abroad to feature the very best of their cuisine, in restaurants as well, from Sottocasa to the local pizzeria.

There never was such a place as Earth,

With all its unique creations from His work.

Emerging from darkness, bestowed with light,

Illumined by the sun, unapologetically bright.

When rain fell down, its surface became lush,

With all sorts of plant life and waters to enjoy in no rush.

Look at the species, beings--there are so many,

Defying extinction, despite the irony…

“How can I ever thank you? Oh, sweet Earth of ours!”

-Be kind to you and be sure to mind my human powers.

I used to throw out soft plastic packaging.  Then I learned that BUGS and my grocery COOP take these wrappings, so I have saved them to be recycled.

I create habits by first learning about the benefits.  I maintain a self-improvement lifestyle so I look for ways the habit can benefit me and then it isn't hard to start.  I use lists in an app called Evernote and on my phone's notes app to keep track of things.  If I really want to be reminded about something I may forget, I will mark it on a calendar I have that I can see when I first walk into my home.

When volunteering in one's community, you create a stake in that community for yourself.  It becomes part of who you are; in essence, your family, because you take care of it in some way.

It is nice to talk to others while in quarantine.  You are reminded that you are not the only one going through this and you can put forth thought on someone else's well-being right away.  The other person can feel the same and we supply the human need of interaction at that moment.

I use vegetable bags, but I reuse them.  I use them for storing things in my fridge.