Piña Colada (Photo by Margarita Persico in Costa Rica)

The site was launched a year ago in New York City on October 11, 2010.  We have written on food topics from A to Z. From Aphrodisiac, to Diabetes to food Photography. Written on ethnic food and featured profiles on chefs, physicians and centenarians. On the first day, The Healthy Dish featured in honor of healthy African American Southern U.S. cuisine, Collard Greens – Soul Food, a nutrient rich vegetable, andSofrito, a natural Puerto Rican condiment, and Caravan of Dreams, a profile about a Spaniard restaurateur in New York City was published that week. Healthy lifestyle is the focus of the site, which is why posts as those featuring successful weight loss and diets including a movie on Bill Clinton’sdramatic weight loss and other stories were featured.

Beauty, food safety, food art, recipes, news, feature stories and movies were showcased during the year. I wrote wherever I landed—New York, Boston, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and California. Dishes from Asia, Italy, Costa Rica,Puerto Rico, Peru, Venezuela and many others were featured. Drinks, nut and seed milk recipes were shared. And to my surprise, one of those drinks, sesame milk, was the most viewed post followed by a wonderful dessert, Coconut Date Balls. Breakfast, dinner, snacks and a menuwere shared with readers.

There were so many more food and health stories I want to tell and much more recipes to share. I wrote and published nearly 200 posts this first year, including a diabetes series, childhood obesity and centenarian. This site is a labor of love. Perhaps it explains why visitors came from over140 countries/territories. Thank you!

The Healthy Dish has a Facebook page! Check us out. LIKE us. Let us know what you think, and please spread the word!

Art work by handsome husband. (Photo: Margarita Persico)

I like to thank the contributing writers– Carmen “July” Marrero, a vegetarian chef,Anghely Almonte, a mom and contributor of “TINKER BELL” juice, June Erlick,the editor-in-chief of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, Bruno Pezzuolo, Italian restaurateur in Costa Rica, and photographer Carl Warner and many other photographers from Flickr and who donated their time, photos and/or recipes. Also like to thank my publisher, Daniela Caride, at The Daily Tail. A special thank you to The National Association of Hispanic Journalist (NAHJ) and Knight Digital Media Center (KDMC) at UC Berkeley for all their support and training. This year I was a fellow atKDMC‘s Web 2.0.
Above all, a special thank you to all our readers!

A Piña Colada toast to good health! Cheers!

View the story “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!” on Storify]

Photo: Margarita Persico

On October 11^th I started The Healthy Dish, a website on healthy living, food and recipes that won’t break your budget. This site is my recipe journal and it’s my spin off as a reporter wherever I’m at. There I will also publish feature stories, profiles, and news on food. The site can be translated to any of the 52 languages available on the selection box to the right of the website. There is also a free subscription to this web healthy magazine—just enter your e-mail in right side box of The Healthy Dish: Get “The Dish” in your inbox.
I’m just starting and hope to build a repository of healthy dishes, tips, and information on food and health. Please pass on the link to all your friends, family and acquaintances; it’s really a labor of love. Written with good health in mind.

Buen provecho!

Margarita

The Healthy Dish is a web site about food, recipes and news about related topics.  I will be launching the site on Monday, October 11th. Please visit and tell your friends about it. I will be building a database of healthy recipes some from contributors like you, others from chef, nutritionist and other culinary aficionados. Thank you so much for visiting.

To visit, click below:

The Healthy Dish

A little piece of history about the Island country with the oldest city in all of the Americas: Old San Juan was founded in 1521. Puerto Rico first visited by Columbus in 1493 and settle by Juan Ponce de Leon over a decade later.

History of Puerto Rico, USA, since 1898

Puerto Rico, USA since 1898, Puerto Rico Democracy Act-1

Puerto Rico in the 1940s – Music: Lamento Borincano, Marc Anthony

Contemporary

About the people:

With nearly 4 million, it is one of the most populated islands in the world. One-third of the population is in the San Juan metropolitan area. People are a mixture of Spanish, native, African, Italian, French, German, Lebanese, and later in the 1960s Cubans and now Dominicans.

http://www.topuertorico.org/people.shtml

During my stay in Costa Rica I’ve been volunteering for several organizations — working six days a week. I’ve been asked to produce a historical documentary for a non-profit organization’s 70^th anniversary.  We are near the end of the researching and interviewing process for the mini-documentary. For this project, we’ve been running around the San Jose metropolitan and suburban areas. I’ve met many Costa Ricans and foreign residents. I’ll be doing my last interview, hopefully this Wednesday. Last Sunday, early in the morning after a photo shooting for this project, I decided to do a dry run and check out the location for my last interview. I found, an environmental paradise. A bird sanctuary with over 4,000 species, said the owner of an organic coffee plantation and vineyard. I also found a huge lizard, I walked near an active African bee hive and saw from a distance a crocodile. All of which I photographed! I ate anise leaves and grapes while I hiked the trails of this paradise — perhaps a story will come out of this once I finish the documentary in February.

Above are some photos I shot. Enjoy!

This performance has opened the hearts and brought a smile to many, and to some at the train station, regardless of age, freed their inhibitions to the joy of moving to the music. Below is the movie.

Enjoy life!

Compare the U.S. event against the Belgium train station event. Share with us why you think there was a different reaction?

[to leave a comment, click here]

Dr. Abhinash Srivatsa, Children’s Hospital Boston.   Dr. Erick Richmond-Padilla, Hospital Nacional de Niños, Costa Rica (Photos by M. Persico)

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Child obesity, rampant in U.S., now global issue

“When it comes to childhood obesity, Dr. Abhinash Srivatsa, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital Boston, doesn’t mince words.

Overweight children and teens are caught in a “tsunami of all these terrible things,” Srivatsa said, before rattling off several major medical conditions associated with extreme weight problems, including heart and cardiovascular complications, type 2 diabetes and kidney failure.”

[to continue reading, click below]

http://www.baystatebanner.com/health23-2009-09-17

Margarita and her brother, Brooklyn, NY. (M. Persico photo)

Last time I had visited my childhood neighborhood I was 19 years old. It was the mid ’70s. As soon as I got to Smith Street, I was happy to see a crowd.

“Great, there’s a parade,” I told Janet, my childhood friend.

“No, it’s not a parade!” she snapped back. “They are waiting for their drug dealers.”

In disbelieved my jaw dropped. I saw a crowd on one side of the street — mothers with babies in carriages, perhaps families. We were in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, near Dean and Hoyt Streets, where my first elementary school, PS 261, still stands.

Why weren’t there any cops? Were neighbors afraid to call the police? We did not say much after witnessing this. Janet knew what to do — she still lived in the neighborhood. We turned back and headed elsewhere.

During that trip to Brooklyn, Janet taught me how to French braid, dance the hustle and about the latest New York City fashion. I purchased my first Dance skin leotard — orange — and a pair of beige high heel sandals. Janet, who was studying to be a hair stylist at Sarah J. Hale Vocational High School in Brooklyn, cut my hair and dye it a few shades darker in order to tone down my reddish dye hair.

One day, I drove a bunch of childhood friends to Coney Island on Janet’s old family car. Later that week, we took a bus to visit Mama Rosa at her Park Slope apartment on Sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. And I even attempted to drive my friends, from Dean Street, to Odyssey 2000, a popular disco from the movie Saturday Night Fever, but their car broke down and we never made it.

Eight years later, I married and went back home to New York City, but not to my old neighborhood. It was not until a few years ago that I dreamed of visiting my childhood home where I lived until I was seven. I had moved to Puerto Rico when I was 15, then after college to Rio de Janeiro, and then came back to the U.S. Several years later, we started moving again across the country but never went back to Bergen Street. Not sure why — perhaps disappointment, fear, indifference or just the fact that I had moved on. My life had changed so much since I left Brooklyn, and so did Brooklyn.

The brown stone apartment building of my childhood memories had been home ever since I can remember. Perhaps I was a year old when we moved there and about 8 when we moved out briefly to Puerto Rico and then to Park Slope. During the time I lived on Bergen Street, Fidel Castro campaigned and took control of Cuba, and President Kennedy died.

How vividly I remember the day Kennedy was murdered. But the street and sidewalks seemed bigger, and I don’t remember any trees. There weren’t many cars and no organic grocer either – only Fidel’s colmado, a Cuban grocery shop, beside my father’s electronic shop, which he ran part time.

Around the corner, stood a great pizza shop where I used to purchase pizza for under a quarter. I remember the fish market where my dad bought seafood to make the most delicious shrimp, octopus and escargot salads. Dad was famous for his seafood salads.

And how can I forget the numerous candy stores and my favorite place for dessert, Valencia Bakery on Smith Street. They made a to-die-for pineapple cake.

I also remember our kind neighbors in the apartments above and behind us. One of them was an Irish lady. She gave me my first and only pair of roller skates, and I loved her for that. Though our neighbors did not share our fondness of her. They called her “la bona,” Spanish for the bum because of her alcoholism. And then there was Juanita, a tall and beautiful lady, who lived on the same floor, and cared for my mother numerous times when she was ill with asthma. But there were also bars, gangs, drugs and even a little piece of the Bowery.

[To be continued - please subscribe in order not to miss next issue.]

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Part 2

Part 3

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Part 7

Jimmy Carter on Ted Kennedy

The number of abused women are staggering according to “a U.N. agency estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, including sexual servitude,” reports NYT.

The report also exposes that once women are educated and can stand on their own, some become assertive, such as Saima Muhammad, featured in this report. She started her own business, employed many from her community, and paid off her husband’s debt.  This special report shows that when money is given to women, they manage it better.

“Put more money on the hands of women,” NYT reveals, adding that in poor countries these women use the money wiser, for food and caring of their families instead of alcohol and other frivolities.

Over a decade ago Larry Summers (former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University, and Obama’s chief economic advisor) said, “Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.” Bill Gates also point during a technology conference in the Middle East that to succeed women must be included.

There are organization that are empowering women through microloans, though I can’t recommend any, I can suggest looking into organization such as Kiva.

“Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.”

Kiva, the E-bay of poverty.

http://www.kiva.org/