The person behind the broccoli

From Manila to 14 countries —
always with broccoli in the bag.

Hi. I'm Elena Ignacio — mom to Adam and Alfi, chronic over-packer, business class seat-sharer, and the person who once asked a Tokyo ramen shop if they could add steamed broccoli to the bowl. (They could. It was incredible.)

Somewhere over the Pacific. Adam is reaching for the broccoli floret. This is the photo that started everything.

Why broccoli, of all vegetables?

Honest answer: because it shows up everywhere. I've eaten broccoli sautéed in garlic oil in a trattoria in Florence, blanched with oyster sauce at a kopitiam in Penang, battered and fried at a food stall in Seoul, and folded into a cream sauce on an airline tray somewhere above the Pacific. Every culture makes it their own, and that fascinated me.

When Adam was three and Alfi was still a baby, I started keeping notes. Which cooking method kept the most vitamins intact? (Steam for 3 minutes, wait 40 minutes after cutting — that one changed how our whole family eats.) Which restaurant preparations were actually healthy, and which just looked green? I had four notebooks before I realised this was more than a personal project.

What BroccoliPedia actually is

Every claim on this site links to a real source — USDA FoodData Central, peer-reviewed clinical research from Johns Hopkins and Penn State, regional variety data from agricultural universities. I'm not a dietitian. I'm a mother who reads the studies so you don't have to, and who will never publish a nutrition claim I can't trace back to primary data.

The recipes come from wherever we've actually eaten them. The storage guides come from the specific mistakes I've made in hotel rooms with no kitchen and a bag of broccoli I bought at a local market. The growing guides come from the season we tried container broccoli on our condo balcony in Makati. (Palam Samridhi variety, for the record. It worked.)

Adam and Alfi's unofficial broccoli ratings

Adam (age 7, extremely opinionated): roasted at 425°F with parmesan is a 10 out of 10. Raw with dip is a "depends on the dip." Soup is a 6. Frozen broccoli is a hard no unless it comes out of a casserole.

Alfi (age 4, demolishes everything): undefeated. Has eaten broccoli off a tray on a plane, off a banana leaf at a Filipino fiesta, and directly out of a steamer basket while standing in the kitchen in her pajamas. Zero complaints.

"I don't believe healthy eating is a sacrifice. I believe it's a skill — and broccoli is the easiest one to learn anywhere in the world. That's the whole point of this site."

— Elena Ignacio, founder of BroccoliPedia