My name is Geisha Ramirez. I am 17 years old and I have worked with The Food Project since the summer of 2004. I work in our Kitchen internship where we use the organic produce that we grow to cater events such as weddings and banquets. This year I got to attend the Bioneers Conference for the second time. IT WAS GREAT. I met many wonderful people my age and got to learn lot of knew ideas. Bioneers was more fun to me this year because I knew what to expect, not to say that Bioneers is predictable. I knew what to expect, in terms of the environment around me and how to get around the civic center. I knew the structure of the schedule and therefore could fill in my co-worker and my supervisor on how Bioneers gets down.

When we first got there we met with Bioneers’ Food and farming track that was made of youth around the world that work around the same work and issues that we here at The Food Project focus on. I met this group called TEAM and Sembrando Semillas. “The purpose of the Sembrando Semillas, Acequia Youth Project is to keep the land-based traditions of New Mexico alive by providing opportunities for New Mexico’s youth to participate in and experience first hand the traditions and customs integral to New Mexico’s cultural heritage. According to RJ Chavez, a youth participant from Taos, “Our acequias are precious and we want to keep them alive.”

We also got to be part of this thing that is called the grub dinner. Bryant Terry and Anna Lappe wrote a book about having grub dinner, which basically means bringing good organic food into an urban kitchen with some friends and family and some good music. He was great and we got to help him prepare this meal for all the other youth in the track. We prepared the best meal! We ended up making butternut squash pizza with sage, Swiss chard and raisin pizza with pecorino cheese, pasta with his famous tomatoes sauce with roasted eggplant, a green salad with a balsamic vinaigrette (that I personally made) and for desert we had a Asian pear and apple crisp.

The best part of this was that we got to help him make it and go shopping for the produce at the local Marin County farmers market that by the way is gigantic. What I liked best about my time at Bioneers was that Bryant Terry asked me to do a workshop with him that was actually a cooking demo. I felt so special that he picked me to mirror him in the cooking demo, it was just enormous to me that he chose me. I learned many things while at Bioneers. There was some great speakers and grand workshops that I enjoyed, but the one thing that I learned was organic food does not always have to be green and mushy but it can have some color and some good flavor. It doesn’t have to be the tasteless food that people dread to eat. I want organic food to be a food that everyone can enjoy as much as they enjoy the junk food that they eat. I would love to stay connected with the other youth that I met by having an e-mail list and a mail list also. This is where we can exchange ideas, Recipes and other things about food and framing. We could also exchange things that are happening at our jobs. I had a great time at Bioneers I just hope that I get to attend next year’s Conference because every year my heart and brain get filled with new and wonderful things.