CSA

Gula Sana Restaurant

August 23, 2015 by Akiba 2 Comments

GULA SANA

(Gula – Glutton) (Sana – Healthy)

A Glutton for Health

Food and Friends – Tasty and Healthy

Gula Sana is a lifestyle concept restaurant designed especially (but not exclusively) for people who do sports/exercise. It’s a place for people to meet at the restaurant for breakfast, fresh juice, smoothies, coffee and daily lunch specials. The idea is to get together and exercise at 6:00 am every morning and then start the day with good food. The exercise could be cycling, running or yoga/pilates, stretching or breathing. Breathing you ask? Yes – breathing can be full on extreme exercise. Just ask Claudio Solano who practices and teaches the Mayan Fitness Secret, one conscious breath at a time.

I am always fascinated by the people I interview whether it be a restaurateur or chef or entrepreneur. The passion, imagination and perseverance are different for each and every person. When I interviewed Pako Moreno, one of the partners in Gula Sana, it was evident that his passion is exercise and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. He was a personal trainer at Palmilla and Esperanza before he decided to bring something more to the community. He is an avid cyclist and is in the process of training for the Iron Man competition to be held in Cabo on October 25, 2015.

As a personal trainer, Pako was always looking for healthy food choices for his clients when he came up with the concept for Gula Sana. It is a restaurant where people can eat properly with excellent quality dishes – breaking the idea that nutritious food is boring. He and his partner, Diego Sanchez, have created a healthy alternative to eating and they are giving this to their friends and customers at a very fair price. The restaurant was conceived for all those people who don’t have time to cook or they do not like to cook or are simply looking to improve their lifestyle. They are believers in “This is my lifestyle – not – “I’m on a diet” That is how Gula Sana, a complete, nutritious and healthy food concept was born.

Gula Sana has a full breakfast with many gluten free options:

Breakfast Menu

Along with a fresh juice bar with smoothies and green drinks.

Green Juice

Hotcakes Paleo

The lunch menu consists of 2 or 3 specials each day – whatever is in season, fresh and creative – fish, poultry, vegan and vegetarian options.

Special of the Day

Pako told me that he is not a chef but he is working on the new dinner menu with a very good friend and chef from Mexico City. He will bring in fun, interesting and delicious ideas for dinner which they hope to start serving by mid-October.

A celebrated mixologist, also from Mexico City, is devising sophisticated specialty drinks which will take advantage of fresh juice, fruit and spices. Gula Sana has a full bar with beer and wine and live music is planned for the fall.

Aahhh – Refreshing Sangria

The final touches for their new coffee bar (café) is underway where people can come and relax and just hang out – of course, after achieving their exercise goals.

I am confident that Gula Sana will be a success and will be a welcome addition to the Los Cabos restaurant scene.

Gula Sano is located at Paseo Finisterra y Blvd. Antonio Mijares, Local 8, San Jose del Cabo (where the old Local 8 Restaurant was located and in the same shopping center with the old favorite, Habaneros Restaurant).

Buen Provecho, Akiba

On A Different Note – Rancho Buen Dia – CSA Program

I am delighted to report that we have a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in Los Cabos. I spoke with Lope, manager of distribution and sales for Rancho Buen Dia located in Todos Santos. I arranged to meet with him in October when the growing season has more to offer. The Rancho is a wife/husband and sister/brother partnership. If you are interested in supporting the CSA or want information, see details below.

Rancho Buen Dia Family – Carlos, Lope, Caroline and Claudia

Local Organic Veggie Boxes – We are gearing up for the 2015-2016 Community Supported Agriculture season! Receiving weekly organic vegetables/herbs/fruit freshly harvested from your local farm is a great way to promote delicious clean eating in your home. Memberships are rapidly running out, but some spaces are still left in Los Cabos, Todos Santos and La Paz. Find out if our CSA program is right for you – visit our blog and check out the article: Pros and Cons of being a CSA member ☞ Caroline Benzel, ranchobuendia@outlook.com, https://ranchobuendia.wordpress.com, 6121310326, Baja California Sur.

Off the Baja Beaten Path to SHED in Healdsburg, California

July 25, 2015 by Akiba 6 Comments

I was going through my emails the other morning when I was excited to see my monthly e-mail from SHED in Healdsburg, California. I always savor reading what new classes and events they have planned.

I lived in Healdsburg from 1995 to 2001 when it was still a sleepy town. It is an hour and a half north of San Francisco in the heart of the Sonoma County wine country surrounded by Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley and Russian River Valley. My youngest son went to elementary school there and played sports and swam in a magical pond in the middle of a vineyard with our Labrador. I have memories of them running on the dock and jumping in together on hot summer days.

While I was perusing SHED’s monthly e-mail and looking at their blog, my friend, Karen, sent me photos entitled “My Morning at SHED.” What a coincidence? She told me that she was talking to the owner, Cindy Daniels, about me – that if I ever moved back to Healdsburg, I would want to live at SHED. Cindy got a laugh out of that and said she would put a hammock in the back garden for me. I may take her up on it one day.

A visit to SHED feels like a fun and friendly tour of what’s happening in food and farming in the region. SHED is a gardening store, restaurant, fermentation bar, market and modern grange.

Cindy described grange halls as follows: “To those unfamiliar with the Grange movement, there’s a rich history that goes back to the late 1800’s when farms formed collectives to create healthier, more resilient communities and built grange halls to provide a place to share ideas and socialize. SHED engages the Grange’s history as both a rural meeting place and farmers’ exchange but is firmly rooted in contemporary Healdsburg. We are a gathering place that celebrates our region’s farmers and makers while tapping into a global community of chefs, producers, and visitors. Our dinners and programs, crafted to revive the Grange traditions of fellowship, conviviality, and exchange, feed a cultural appetite for ideas and interests ranging beyond the realm of food and farming, including art, culture, civic engagement, and community.”

You can participate in their CSA program (community supported agriculture – and art) and pick up a monthly CSA crate featuring whatever is growing fresh at their Home Farm: think – greens in winter, corn and tomatoes in summer as well as such treats from SHED as freshly milled polenta or heirloom beans, a jar of house-made pickled vegetables, a fresh loaf of bread from the ovens, an excellent cheese, or some olio nuevo squeezed from their own olives.

Whenever I am in Healdsburg, I head to SHED to shop. They offer beautiful housewares, pantry provisions and farm and garden tools. I bought a black La Chamba cooking pot from Columbia that is so beautiful, I consider it a work of art and display it in my home when I am not cooking with it.

Cindy believes their fermentation bar may be the only one of its kind in the country. You can choose from house-made kombucha and kefir water or try something called Shrubs. Shrubs are cocktails or soft drinks that were popular during America’s colonial era, made by mixing house vinegars with spirits, water or carbonated water.

SHED Grange Hall – The design of the building and its contents are so striking that it won the 2014 James Beard Froundation’s “Best Restaurant Design or Renovation in North America since January 1, 2011”

SHED interior

Fermentation Bar

CSA crate

Chamba pot from Colombia

This is a lineup of their summer classes:

Saturday, July 25: Summer in a Bottle: Shrub Workshop. Learn to prolong the season by making Shrubs, a refreshing farm drink, with SHED fermentation crafter Gillian Helquist. 11am; $50.

Thursday, July 30: Trash is for Tossers with zero-waste activist Lauren Singer, who ably keeps two years’ worth of waste in a, you know, Mason jar. Free.
At 6pm: Americana Jazz Blues instrumentalists Doug Lipton, Chris Amberger, and Lorca Hart perform live in the SHED café. Free.

Saturday, Aug. 1: Farmers’ Market Tour and Lunch. Great for groups! Take a behind-the-scenes tour of SHED, learn about milling, and enjoy fresh juices before heading over for a guided tour of the Healdsburg Farmers’ Market where we’ll sample foods and meet the farmers. Then, we’ll return to SHED to learn about fermentation and share a private luncheon. 10am; $85.

Saturday, Aug. 16: Root to Leaf Tasting and Signing. Join chef Steven Satterfield, the shaman of vegetable cooking, for a tasting from his new book and a talk on using every part of the plant. 3pm; $30.

Sunday, Sept. 13: Fermented Hot Sauce Workshop. Learn the secrets of creating your own Southeast Asian hot sauce with Lisa Murphy of Sosu Sauces. 1pm; $25.

SHED is the winner of a 2014 James Beard Award for restaurant design.

Thank you Karen for inspiring me this week.

www.healdsburgshed.com

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Meanwhile back in the Baja:

The Saturday morning Pedregal Farmers Market is open and the produce was bountiful: Mixed greens, arugula, mustard greens, microgreens, tomatoes, beets, tomatillos, spring onions, cucumbers, fennel, swiss chard, bok choy, zucchini, butternut squash, dill, sage, cilantro, carrots, mangoes, papaya, cantaloupe, organic chickens and eggs.

Flora Farm has opened a very large market and bar in downtown Cabo and it is fully stocked with produce, herbs, fresh bread, cinnamon rolls, meat, eggs and natural skin care products. The bar opens today and they will be serving traditional cocktails, wine, beer and their signature drinks which are a full-range of fruit and vegetable infused specialty cocktails such as the heirloom carrot Farmarita, Flora Farm’s spin on the traditional Margarita, and the Farm Julep made with fresh watermelon juice. It’s located on the corner of Marina Blvd. and Cabo San Lucas Blvd. across the street and up a half block from El Tesoro Hotel.

For those of you not familiar with Flora Farm, it is a ten-acre organic farm in the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains. Flora’s Field Kitchen is handmade food using farm fresh ingredients. Flora Farm appeared in an article by the New York Times about 52 places to visit in 2015.