One of my favorite uses of my garden peppers and tomatoes is making tomato veggies rice - not exactly Vietnamese but a classic method I learned from "Abuela," a Salvadorian woman whose deceptively petite frame hides the Herculean fire in her heart .

You see, "Abuela" was 8-months pregnant with her 13th child when the Salvadorian civil war was raging through the countryside of Morazan. One day, as she was farming in the corn field, she heard two precise gunshots in the distance that "cut through her heart," as she recounted the story through misty eyes.

Later, she would find her husband's and brother's dismembered remains scattered across the farmland of Perquin. To add insult to injury, they were not all together. She had to search for the rest of their body parts while carrying a child in her belly.

Just three decades earlier, a similar story unfolded in the war-torn province of Sơn Tây, Vietnam, where a pregnant woman was protecting her 5 children in the jungle while just a distance away, her husband was shot dead by French colonizers. She could only retrieve his body 3 years later, with the help of a friend who quickly buried him in the farmland nearby. This woman was my great-grandmother.

Like a cool cucumber, "Abuela" composed herself, did what she had to do to bury her loved ones, and a few years later, she migrated across the US-Mexico border to take a job in a New York laundromat to feed her children. Like steel magnolia, my great-grandmother picked up the charred pieces of life that war left her, evacuated her children south of the 17th Parallel line, and continued to raise them by selling home-cooked noodles on the streets.

And both of these women, who had nothing but the humble shirts on their backs and faded rubber sandals on their feet, were more badass than all of the "Boss Babes" in corporate power suits and expensive red-bottom shoes combined.

So no, I will not be showing you how to cook this tomato rice, because I don't think the recipe should come from me. I think you should seek out a Latina Abuela closest to your circle, learn from her, while she tells you her wisdoms and stories.