Its true there are times when my work in its entirety in the situational occurrences of daily problems, hassles, issues, emotions, and in general simplicity can be quite irritating and certainly at times boring. 

In the world of produce whether it be organic and fair-trade or conventional as I have said a million times we like everyone else in the bulk of our days are “PAPER PUSHERS”.  Not a job I ever saw myself doing but as a lady with a good work ethic I do it diligently and with great detail.  For sure like every job there is a silver lining.  My silver lining is the travel I get to do an not only just the travel, but the people I get to see & meet and the places that I seek out along the way.  I have a philosophy when it comes to travel, when you travel far for work, seek out pleasure and learning in the same area, just for the heck of it.  And thus no matter how busy I get or how much I have to do I always allow myself to not only go off the beaten path of work but to stay a little longer in the place of work, get to know the people I am working with from a far a little longer and enjoy the culture to which I am visiting.

So as all my blogs thus far seem to have a theme for me not only in the experiences I am living but the learning that goes along with it.  This one is quite unique at a quite a unique time for me.  You see I happen to be in the midst of some growing pains, yes still growing at 37 years of age!  Life is not always as simple as we would like it to be, it’s not always laying the exact path we want it to but if we look clearly we can see the direction it wants us to go and I believe our job is to hear this call, and follow it, it leads to more growth and happy times for sure.  This latest journey took me to 3 different state sin Mexico for not only what was some amazing work we do, but the journey took me to parts of myself that apparently I could only discover while in the middle of Mexico, enjoying life and witnessing others doing the same.  Since I was a little girl living in Nicaragua, I have been consumed by watching others in the world happy and content with so little, it is a marvel I have and an ideal I wish was more coveted in my own land.  This latest journey was a reminder of how simple life really is and how happiness is simply a state of mind that yes is sometimes difficult to remember but truly not so difficult to achieve.

So whether it in Barra de la Cruz watching the professional surfers, or in Uruapan with the small blackberry growers, or in Morelia watching people just be, the moral of the trip was contentness and capturing the moment in front of you and in some cases like the surfers, don’t be afraid to go all across the world just because there are good waves.  Follow the direction of moving ahead in life, that is what I learned, don’t fall into the rut of negative energy, we are paper pushers some days and we are world explorers the next!

While the idea of the blog was truly to highlight all the amazing places in the world I find myself traveling to for business and pleasure, this month I have decided to take a little detour and and write about my own transplant backyard of Brooklyn.  While I had originally been excited to write about the food and culture that I recently experienced in Berlin and in Panama, those places will have to wait as I think truly this month, MAY, Brooklyn has indeed called and with that calling I have witnessed some of the most amazing food and culture right here in my own backyard.

While certainly this month in Brooklyn has been inspired by the events that have led up to my new Culinary & Herb Center opening that we had in April,  its been the process of promoting, marketing and spreading the word on the center that has led me to meet incredible people doing incredible things right here in Brooklyn.  The amount of support and inquisitiveness from the local food scene we are experiencing has been incredible. 

I cannot deny either the repetitive theme that pops up in most my blogs and that is family and friends and sharing experiences with them, in this case my entire family coming to Brooklyn and many of my closest friends and colleagues in business traveling from all parts of the country and a few from far off in the world  to basically experience the food and culture of Brooklyn.  The irony for me is realizing that all I seek out in the world and all I want to share with the world about food and culture all around our globe can also be experienced right here in Brooklyn and in our case in our very own center. 

Brooklyn has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.  I moved here eight years ago to take a job managing the supply and sales of Israeli fresh herbs for an Israeli company with an office in Queens, NY.  A southern California native, with extensive travels throughout most of the USA and México and Central America, I had never been to the east coast before I moved here!  Moved here blindly, found a place right on Prospect Park in Park Slope (8 years later I still live in the same place!) and have been in love with the place since. It was the first place I ever felt comfortable really comfortable in my skin.  Despite the millions of issues that arose within me after moving here from California, TRASH FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, PEOPLE AGGRESIVLY DRIVING AND CUSSING, THE SHEER AMOUNT OF PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, PEOPLE PUSHING WALKING DOWN THE STREET, VERY LITTLE EYE CONTACT, I had never felt so at home.  I still cant get used to the trash issue, I love driving aggressively and cussing, I love the amount of people, I can be a little pushy walking down the street and I still make eye contact, but what I love most is that it was the first place I felt like I was living in a part of the world, versus living in a particular state or country for that matter.  The diversity of people, languages, opportunities and sheer location (an epicenter of the world), has made NYC one of the most intriguing places to live food and culture wise.  I will admit I rarely go into Manhattan.   There is little reason to in the end, Brooklyn offers everything I need and it fills my food and culture soul up so completely and I have only just begun to witness it all.  The evolution of change that is occurring in Brooklyn and particularly in the food scene will keep me occupied for a long time.

The basic point being that I learned a valuable lesson this past month in Brooklyn, I can travel the world and go off the beaten path and into people homes and witness the diversity spanning the globe, but I must not forget that I can also experience it wherever I find myself.  Its more than just keeping your eyes open its keeping the limitations to your own judgment open, which is the basic element I try to promote while speaking about food and culture of other parts of the world.  I have to admit I find myself prejudice to my own countries food and culture sometimes and forget what an incredible food and culture scene I live.  I will do my best to no longer take Brooklyn, New York and the USA for granted in this manner!!  Now this doesn’t mean I’m not heading out around the globe again, on the contrary I will travel the globe more than ever and when I am here you will not find me complacent, I will be out and about adventuring the food scene in my own back yard!

Well, it’s been a long time and certainly life has been productive and therefore a bit restrictive in the world of my Sustenance blog, but rest assured I am back in business and I promise the be loyal to my desire to produce these monthly blogs on the food and culture I encounter as I journey through life and the opportunities Ger-Nis brings to me.

This month’s blog actually focuses on a recent trip to Nosara, Costa Rica. This was a non working trip. I tend to take one, non work related trip a year just for me. Sometimes work is encountered but it is never the purpose. This trip was planned for a while and had some kinks in the final destination, but in the end, I traveled to Nosara, Costa Rica with 13 members of my family on surf and a nostalgic & powerful trip down memory lane.

My family lived in Central America when we were children – specifically Nicaragua and Costa Rica – and we traveled extensively all throughout the region. I have to admit it is one of my favorite places, the land, the people, the culture and the energy are literally part of my soul. Central America specifically played a major role in my love of food and culture in general. I have an extreme & powerful attraction to the land & the people.

This was a unique trip as I traveled down with my entire family, my 3 brothers and all their family, wives kids etc. In total, there were 13 of us, 6 children and the rest adults. It was a pretty incredible reality for us all to travel back to Costa Rica and specifically the general area in which we lived as children. Despite my travels around the world, I had not been back to Costa Rica since I was 14 years old. None of us had actually, it was a surreal feeling. Driving from the airport in Liberia on the 2 ½ hour trek on roads that had not improved in the slightest since we had been there, was shocking to us. It was as if time stood still and we got to experience what we barely remembered what our life was like there. The trees, flowers and people – even the way the dogs looked – brought back memory after memory. It was a sweet, sweet feeling for all my siblings to be together during this.

The cousins, as we call the group of my nieces and nephews, had the once in a life time opportunity to be with their fathers and experience firsthand the lifestyle we had as children in Central America. For American children, experiencing international culture is rare, let alone 3rd world culture, and we all understood what a profound impact this trip would have on ourselves and our immediate families and especially the children.

We went not only for nostalgic reasons, but to journey south to escape the cold winters of NY, NJ, MI, and MO. Most of all, we journeyed to a special place in Costa Rica because the beaches were secluded, the location not highly touristic and of course for the southern waves of Playa Guionnes in Nosara, Costa Rica. We were the surfers, the sand combers, the jungle adventurers, the sun bathers, and of course the eaters and drinkers. Between the 13 of us, we covered all the options of what to do on our 2 week vacation in this secluded surfers’ paradise!

Our days were simple yet extravagantly rewarding. We woke at dawn each morning to the sound of howler monkeys and birds and frogs. We waxed the boards and headed down the hill to Playa Guionnes. The water was clear and warm, about 84 degrees daily. The sun shone brightly each and every day and the temperature was a steady 90 degrees. The waves were consistent and head high almost daily, with a few days being even higher and mighty powerful. After 2-3 hours of morning surf & socializing on the water, we retreated back to our camp, which was like MTV cribs in the jungle! We gathered up the group and shared in a big daily breakfast of fresh fruits, tortillas and eggs with a variety a freshly made salsas, and fruit juices. Some mornings we ventured out to one of 3 breakfast spots and had banana pancakes, gallo pintos and tamarindo and banana juice; a high calorie replenishment for the after surf crowd! After breakfast time was typically spent at the MTV crib pool. The cousins would frolic with hats and rash guards and loads of sun block. The little Scandinavian goldilocks got quite the burns on the first day! After pool time was typically spent taking siestas, going on little jungle hikes and doing arts and “Costa Rica” crafts with the cousins; body painting and basically a whole lotta nothing too important!! The evenings were spent on the boards surfing, water socializing and watching amazing sunsets dipping into the horizon while feet dangled in the warm waters. The exhaustion from the day, the paddling, the swimming, the jungle hiking, didn’t leave room for much more than amazing homemade dinners of rice and beans, spicy salsas, fresh guacamole, stewed meats, fresh caught grilled fish and my favorite, dorado ceviche.

In between finding grasshoppers the size of grapefruits, frogs the size of salad plates and watching the baby howlers cling on to their mothers as they swung through the jungle in front of our eyes, we reconnected with our youth and were able to share the experience with the cousins and spouses. In the end, when you revisit a childhood place of such significance, you cannot help but come out of the experience closer to yourself, which I think in the end is exactly what happened to me. I went to Nosara for a surf vacation with my family; a vacation I knew would be memorable, and I left with a new understanding of not only myself but my family and the impact that culture makes on children. For me, it was symbolic that we, my four brothers and I, were just now learning how the impact of living in this Central American culture as children affected us, by witnessing it first hand in our own children.

We cannot underestimate the impact experiencing culture as children makes on us. Do your children a favor- TRAVEL WITH THEM INTERNATIONALLY……NO MATTER THE AGE.

This is an exciting time for me to launch the first of hopefully what will be many food & culture blogs! I don’t want to brag but I’m a lucky lady, getting to travel the world for my business Ger-Nis International, an Organic & Fair Trade Produce company specializing in fresh herbs, peppers, tomatoes and fruits. (www.ger-nis.com) My work takes me past the obvious tourist destinations and into the homes of our growers and the lives of the real people, where I get to witness the reality of the lives ordinary people throughout the world live in and I get an amazing bird’s eye view into their kitchens and into the food world in each of the countries I visit. I’m currently on a summer “working” vacation in Israel, for Ger-Nis and so far it has been an amazing experience. The sounds, sights, smells and complete intrigue I have on a daily basis are truly inspiring for life in general, not to mention my rapid food brain at work 24-7! It’s a wonderful time in my life filled with great food, amazing HOT weather, daily sea swims and an incredible culture that is mixed with people and influences from around the world. I have mainly been nestled in Tel Aviv so far, running around with the locals, until sunlight peeks up over the east! The nightlife is an incredible experience here, with exquisitely fresh and tasty food served all night long, while the music pours out from funky DJ’s and the young and old crowds dance the night away. The experiences I have had here at night have been intriguingly diverse, from Kosher Moroccan , to Georgian, upscale vegetarian, incredible Thai, fusion sushi and some of the best steak places I have encountered anywhere. I’ll be traveling the country more in the next months and posting blogs throughout my time here with the many amazing cultural and food experiences I am having. I hope you enjoy and I hope my love and passion for the food culture throughout the world is delivered so all can experience…….but the best advice I can give is to get out there and see the world, experience it for yourself!