Her sharing also highlighted how one can practice being conscientious when preparing food from scratch or even buying it off the rack from one’s local supermarket. Prof. Nieva goes into detail about the different food alternatives people can buy from the store or make at home in an effort to include friends and family with dietary restrictions. For example, vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free eaters may enjoy a simple vegetable salad which can be made by cutting greens and buying or making favorite dressing.

Lastly, she addressed every Filipino family’s dilemma in managing food waste with a simple habit we have commonly practiced: using leftovers for our next meal. Christmas ham can be incorporated into fried rice or macaroni salad, lechon manok can be an ingredient for macaroni soup, and so on. Prof. Nieva stressed the importance of having creativity in the kitchen—that leftovers need not feel repetitive if one can be creative with how they concoct their next meal with their leftovers.