Growing up in Mexico, Wendy Garcia did not like to cook.
“My dad, he was a farmer. He had cows, goats and he loved vegetables a lot and he loved meat, too, so he would do everything from scratch,” she said. “He would kill the cow and butcher the cow and cook for all of us. My mom she doesn’t like cooking. It was my dad all the time.
“I was the oldest. We had three girls and a boy and I was always with my dad — hold this for me or chop these carrots, these green onions,” she remembers of time spent in the kitchen with her father. “I didn’t like it when I was growing up because it was more work for me to do, a chore for me to do, so I hated it when I was little.”
She moved to Tucson when she was a teenager. Away from the farm, she began eating fast food and buying meats and vegetables from conventional grocery stores.
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“I was missing spices so much, good food from my dad,” she said.
Remembering those early experiences of farm-to-table cooking, Garcia became passionate about food and started working her way up through the ranks of local commercial kitchens, including stints at Feast and Primo. But after years of following other people’s recipes, Garcia needed a change.
“Too many late nights,” she said. “I was getting tired and burned out. One day it was, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to do it anymore.’”
The change gave her time to pursue another passion, yoga, and the idea to combine the two.
“I do yoga and I do training because I really like yoga. I had this idea somebody should come over and sell food for us because there were 30 of us,” she said.
Garcia started making healthy, vegetarian pre-packaged lunches to sell in small stores, coffee houses and at farmers markets. She called her business Tumerico, Spanish for tumeric. Recently she saw the small space available at East Sixth Street, across from Rincon Market, so Garcia decided to put down roots.
Why did you name your business Tumerico?
“I put it on almost everything. I like fresh roots when I can get it. I chop it and use it in all my cooking, in my soups, tacos, tamales. Everything has turmeric on it. My yoga instructor taught me to make chai and she used turmeric in it, so now I put turmeric in my chai. It’s full of life. It’s all yellow. One of my friends came over the other day and said, ‘Oh my gosh, everything is yellow here.’ Because it stains everything.”
What prompted you to expand from farmers markets and catering to a brick-and-mortar restaurant?
“It’s a lot of work to be renting a commissary, a kitchen, because I ... was going there early, early mornings and I had to go grocery shopping and bring my stuff to the kitchen. This is more convenient. I love having a location. I’ve been here for almost two months and I love my neighbors and it’s like home. Customers are having fun, enjoying the food and they are friendly and I want people to come and enjoy the food. It’s different than renting a commercial kitchen and being alone all the time. Customers can see you making food. It’s an open space. I want them to feel very welcome here. It’s local food made from scratch. A lot of people still have these big taboos about vegetarian and vegan food because they don’t think it’s tasty. I want them to taste it first before they judge.”
Why create a menu that is vegetarian and vegan?
“Health reasons more than anything else. I moved here and I started eating junk food. I was getting a little heavy and I wasn’t feeling good. My main reason was health. I wanted to be healthy again. I was a vegan for nine years and recently I started eating eggs and cheese again. Sometimes we work too much and forget about being healthy.”
Has your family tried your cooking?
“My mom thinks I’m crazy. She thinks you should be eating meat every day. My mother is very old school. She likes it, but it is different for her.”
Do you have tips for people who want to try vegetarian cooking?
“I don’t have a lot of recipes. I do it by eye and trust my instincts. I just want people to try the food, good healthy food that’s made from local ingredients and fresh.”
