Gourmet to Go: And then there was light

Now’s the right — or should we say the light — time! Now, there’s a place the eat-and-run crowd can dash off to for a healthy light bite. When it opened not too long ago, it was love at first bite for health buffs as Gourmet to Go of Rustan’s Supermarket Fresh showed the light way to go. A lot of greens to color our plates and strengthen the immune system, whole grain breads to add fiber to our diet, nuts to lower cholesterol and improve heart health, and fruits to alleviate digestive problems and, yes, make our lives juicier.

Led by human dynamo Donnie Tantoco, himself a picture of perfect health, Rustan’s Supercenters, Inc. turned to culinary consultant/book author Beth Romualdez to cook up delectable offerings for its Gourmet to Go — soups, salads, and sandwiches that promote a healthy yet satisfying diet particularly for upwardly mobile individuals.

It was Beth who founded the country’s first gourmet culinary school, Bon Appetit, in 1990. She was a founding member of the Slow Food Convivium and the Dante Alieghieri Society Manila (didn’t we learn in school that there’s a place in hell reserved for gluttons?). A former cooking teacher, the vivacious Beth made sure her classes were never boring (you bet!) and that her students had the chance to actively participate.

Having retired from teaching, Beth has certainly not hung up her apron — on top of cooking, she has taken up the cudgels for the Pink Kitchen, a yearly event for breast cancer awareness of the I Can Serve Foundation.

Beth is in the pink of health, thank you. But 10 years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “When I was first diagnosed, it was stage 1,” she relates. “Since breast preservation was the latest thing in the US, doctors only did a lumpectomy on me. But later, my cancer progressed to stage 2-A — there was a mass that didn’t show in the mammogram — so I decided to go for a mastectomy on my left breast. For some reason, all the women I know with breast cancer had their mastectomy on the left breast. There must be something about the left breast.”

Unfazed by the Big C, this feisty lady forged ahead. “I’m lucky because I’m not much of a dessert person,” asserts Beth. “Sugar is the culprit, it feeds on women’s estrogen. Also dairy. I love cheese, so I just had to limit my intake of this sinful dairy product. I went into healthy eating — brown rice, a lot of green leafy vegetables; lots of colorful stuff like tomatoes, carrots, squash (but not too much because you get the color on your skin); a lot of fiber like grains, corn, beans, broccoli.”

Beth tells us more of her clean and green lifestyle: “After my chemotherapy, I had to detoxify. I bought a juicer and I would blend fresh vegetables and fruits into a most refreshing and healthy drink — celery, apple, orange, cucumber, parsley. I take it three to four times a day. I eat raw vegetables. For instance, this week I would eat raw and the following week, 80-percent raw and 20-percent cooked food. I would munch on raw carrots, raw cucumber, singkamas. For a year after my chemo, I didn’t have coffee. Then I started drinking coffee (brewed) again because they say it’s got an antioxidant for good health. I also had coffee enema, which has a purifying agent that detoxifies. Because of my chemo treatments, my body was invaded by many chemicals and the coffee enema helped to replenish the dead cells after the chemo. I had my enema with homeopathic doctor Omar Arabia. It was like all the toxins in my body vanished in the thin air.”

And then Beth resumed her food trips. “I love traveling and food tripping, but I make sure it’s worth the calories, like I would binge on a beautiful steak or the best butter from Normandy,” she shares some delicious food notes.”

Today, Beth is doing what she loves to do and what she does best: Cooking healthy food at Gourmet to Go. “It’s all about healthy living,” she declares. “All our sandwiches are olive oil-based, except maybe for two that use mayonnaise. But even our mayonnaise is of good quality, to ward off salmonella, and made with olive oil, mustard, lemon juice. Our bread choices are either multi-grain, wheat or rye, which are all rich in fiber. We have salad bowls where you can choose your own condiments (roast chicken, sugar beets, green pepper, broccoli, etc.) and all kinds of greens. We have 10 kinds of dressing (like cranberry dressing, ginger miso dressing, Caesar dressing) for our salads. We only use olive oil for our dressing and imported vegetable oil.”

For those who are nuts about nuts, fret not! Gourmet to Go incorporates nuts in its healthy salads — walnuts, pecan, almonds, etc.

But for Manilans who go for the heavy stuff, Gourmet to Go is introducing next week its fresh and creamy clam chowder, which promises to be a soup-er addition to its growing menu.

Added fresh news is that Gourmet to Go is also introducing its fresh pastas — ravioli, tortellini, etc. — with their own sauces. It will also have Malagos cheese, homemade farm cheese from Davao, and Italian antipasti (appetizers). 

“Everything is prepared fresh daily in an air-conditioned kitchen under the strictest quality control standards,” Beth stresses.

Before she found out she had cancer, Beth would make it a point to go to Lourdes to bathe in its healing waters. When she had cancer, she promised the miraculous Lady she would visit her every fifth year of her remission. Of course, she would bring bottles of holy water from Lourdes to share with family and friends back home. But once, she came home with no holy water at all. “After Lourdes, we went to Milan and it was so hot there that I must have unwittingly consumed every drop of the holy water from Lourdes,” she recounts with a chuckle.

Now you know Beth’s recipe for good health: Tons of faith, hard work, and passion.

And so, we follow Beth as she leads us to the light.