Meet Ronnie Guance, he doesn’t want to be called Chef but rather wants to be referred to as Kusinero Negrense. I’ve known Ronnie since I started working here in Bacolod eight years ago as one of our clients. When he learned that our agency is assisting a group in developing a product from sugarcane juice he eagerly offered to help. That’s Ronnie, always willing to share his knowledge.
Once again, he has shared his knowledge on healthy cooking using his own resources through a series of lectures he calls Healing Through Healthy Food. He believes our food should not only nourish our body but heal it as well. With Mr. Aboy Evaristo opening the doors of Aboy’s Restaurant for his lectures, Ronnie has found a venue for his advocacy. It’s very personal for him since he has once been diagnosed with pancreatitis more than ten years ago. His change of lifestyle and diet helped him overcome his illness.
Ronnie never had a formal education in cooking. He has a degree in Agriculture, worked in a multi-national food company, left the corporate world and started his bakery business. In spite of his lack of formal culinary education, his passion for cooking and natural innovativeness made him develop healthy food recipes from local ingredients. And he is all too willing to share all these so he can help other people start eating healthy foods.
Ronnie lectured on the benefits of healthy eating and demonstrated how to prepare different healthy recipes he has developed over the years which the attendees also get to taste. All these for free.
Ronnie makes healthy breads with a mixture of taro root and vegetables such as saluyot and malunggay sweetened with fresh sugarcane syrup. He didn’t use lard with the bread but instead used coconut oil. Lard has trans fatty acid which is said to cause hypertension. He also makes veggie siopao with okra and takway filling which doesn’t taste like vegetables.
Kusinero Negrense’s version of breakfast oatmeal is Pinipig Porridge with coconut milk and fresh mullberry toppings. Pinipig is more healthy than regular rice because it still has rice husks which has most of the nutrients.
He also concocts a delicious Organic Salad of fruits, vegetable and rootcrop salad with mullberry, coconut oil and pure tuba vinegar as vinaigrette.
Fresh Lumpia has fresh vegetables in it but Ronnie’s version has lots of fresh vegetables found locally with lots of nutrients and medicinal values – lupo, kulitis , alosiman, kangkong, malungay, cabbage, carrots, takway, saluyot, and okra. For the sauce, he blends together taro , garlic, camias flowers , honey, and mulberry.
It’s already been two sessions of Healing Through Healthy Food with the Kusinero Negrense and so far there’s been a great turn-out of participants.
If that’s an indication that more people are becoming health conscious then I guess our Kusinero Negrense is influencing more people to live a healthy lifestyle.
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