Organic all the way

It’s a different organic fair that is being mounted at the Robinsons Galleria September 12-15. It promotes the organic lifestyle through and through – from the food and herbs you eat to the products you apply on your skin, from the fertilizers you use for fattening your plants to pesticides you use to vanquish pesky pesks, to fruit juices to native organic lechon (that’s new, isn’t it?, to free-range chicken that’s being broiled before your eyes.

Indeed the First Organic Harvest Festival, aims to live up to its theme, which is, Discovering the Natural Lifestyle – a Blend of Nature and Science.

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Then there is the organic fashion show called Katutubong Habi on opening night, September 12, at 6:30 – which is a new thing in trade fairs associated with agricultural products. The show will feature the fantastic creations of world famous Patis Tesoro and Dita Sandico-Ong, which will be using indigenous fibers.

Patis is the organizer of the Katutubong Filipino Foundation (KFF), which is devoted to improving the lives of tribal and rural-based Filipinos by providing them with livelihood opportunities and at the same time preserving their traditional arts and crafts. She is also engaged in organic gardening, and in 2001, she organized the Putol Organic Garden Input (POGI) through the KFF-SEEDSS program in Barangay Sta. Cruz (Putol), San Pablo City, Laguna. POGI is a community-based livelihood program that provides employment opportunities for out-of-school youth, farmers’ wives and unemployed members of the community. It produces organic fertilizer from kitchen and agricultural waste with the use of Effective Micro-Organisms (EM), herbal soap, ornamental plants and coco posts from coco peat.

Preceding the show is an organic dinner – which will serve only organically-grown plants and chickens – you better believe it. For the show and dinner, the tickets cost P2,000 – expensive, eh? But proceeds will go to the Organic Producers Trade Association, whose vision is to promote organic farming in this day and age of genetically modified organisms. For tickets, call 371-2347/ 3128624.

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Dita Sandico-Ong is president and designer of her own clothing company, Cache Apparels. She is the president of Earthlite, a wholistic center catering to alternative living, on the fourth floor of COD Department Store in Cubao. She’s also involved with the management of Earthhaven, a sanctuary dedicated to the preservation of traditional values and the protection of the environment.

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As if the Katutubong Habi were not enough, one gets to see the fashion creations of students from schools in Metro Manila. This you’ve got to see; the kids have probably wild imaginative works.

There will be free tasting of salads. There will be open circular pavilions showcasing "healing gardens" for aromatherapy. There will be seminars on organic farming, eco-tourism, organic livestock, pesticide alert, and medicinal herbs.There will be exhibits of machineries, including that which can crush to smithereerns even the hardiest coconut shell.

So, if you know what’s good for you, go visit the organic harvest festival.

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The Festival de la Cocina Mexicana at the Café Al Fresco of Hyatt RegencyManila, is drawing food lovers. The festival ends September 15, and you shouldn’t miss the exotic cuisine that’s especially prepared by guest chef Agustin Rojas from Hyatt Regency Merida, showing off as it does the gastronomic wealth of the amazing Mexican culture, with emphasis on the Yucatan Peninsula, homelands of theancient Maya.

This is the second year that Café Al Fresco is highlighting Mexican cuisine. This time, the menu includes pescados and mariscos, pollo pibil, cochinita pibil (slow roasted pork in banana leaves with the famed achoite sauce), papadzules, escabeche, and huevos motulenos panuchos – all with chiles and salsas ranging from hot to mild and salty, sweet, thick, thin, blended and chunky. Tortillas make the perfect accompaniment.

The festival is co-presented by the Embassy of Mexico in time for the 192nd Independence Day of Mexico on September 16, together with Cemex Philippines, Corona Beer, Philippine Wine Merchants, and Mexicana Airlines.

Adding more sounds to the Hyatt festival is a quartet of musical artists called Santa Cruz; they will be regaling diners with Mexican music at lunch and dinner.

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You might bump into the Mexican ambassador, Enrique Hubbard, who will only be too willing to explain Mexican culture as you sip ice-cold aguas frescas, savor the succulent dishes and the flan and churros. The ambassador, who hails from Sinaloa, is a history buff. He has written four books, one a collection of essays , the second, about Belize, a former British colony, which sits next to Mexico, near theYucatan peninsula. The third consists of memoirs that is both funny and sentimental, and the fourth, on the Mexican diplomatic career system.

The ambassador is a law graduate from the law school of Siniloa, majoring in administrative law, and later, constitutional law, and so is his wife, Mariana, who majored in criminal law.