✨ Meet a Pearl Peep: Lauren DaSilva

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Member Profile

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Lauren DaSilva is the executive director of the Monterey Rape Crisis Center. She is a wonderful leader who deeply cares for her team and the cause she supports. Lauren is also an incredible chef (see her recipe below). I admire her capacity for work-life balance and how she shows up for her family.

Alora: What’s your strategy for preventing work overwhelm?
Lauren:
I constantly remind myself that survivors and our staff providing direct crisis intervention, counseling, and prevention are my highest priority. External deadlines come second, and internal deadlines are third. I can only do my best every day until 5 PM, when my family needs me to be present with them. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.

What advice would you give another organization considering coworking?
It’s nice to share space and resources with kind people. I really enjoy being able to focus on the content of my work at The Pearl Works, where everything just works: there is always paper in the printer, and I don’t have to troubleshoot the WiFi, alarm, HVAC system, or other logistical issues.

What’s a valuable lesson you’ve learned recently?
My baby teaches me that how you spend your time is how you spend your life. She wants to spend her life outside, and I am grateful to her for getting us to the beach, park, mountains, or even just eating dinner in the backyard.

What is your favorite place within walking distance of The Pearl Works?
I often walk to the post office, but that route also brings me to Parker-Lusseau, my favorite bakery.

What is a recipe worth trying?
I recommend a family-ish recipe for fasolia. This green bean dish is widely loved throughout the Mediterranean, Caucasus Region, Levant, and North Africa, with regional variations in the meat and spices. The vegetarian version I grew up with at my Armenian grandmother’s house simply omitted the meat because we probably had kebabs on the grill.

There are as many versions of this dish as there are households making it, with significant differences in the spice combinations. This is my preference, but you can also use solely allspice (common in Armenia and Turkey), dried oregano and basil (Greek), allspice and coriander (Levant), coriander and cumin (Egypt), fresh chilis (Palestine), or countless other variations. Use whatever spice combination sounds good to you and adjust the intensity to your preference.

This recipe makes quite a bit, but I like to share with friends, feed a group, or freeze leftovers for a night when I don’t want to cook. I make this dish at least a couple of times a month because it’s one of the few meals my toddler will eat a whole bowl of.

Ingredients:

  • ⅓ cup olive oil
  • 2 pounds fresh green beans, washed, ends trimmed, and cut into 1½-inch pieces
  • 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs or boneless leg of lamb, cut into large bite-sized chunks (This isn’t primarily a chicken dish, but sometimes you use what you have, and it’s so good you adapt the recipe.)
  • 8 large, ripe tomatoes, quartered
  • 2 onions, thinly sliced
  • 6 (or more!) garlic cloves
  • 2 tsp cumin
  • 2 tsp coriander
  • ½ tsp cinnamon
  • ½ cup chopped parsley
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Rice and plain yogurt for serving

Instructions:

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F.
  2. Heat a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed, ovenproof pot.
  3. Generously season the meat with salt and pepper.
  4. Add olive oil to the preheated pot.
  5. Sear the meat, letting it cook undisturbed for a few minutes until deeply golden brown. Flip to brown the other side. Brown the meat in batches if needed for even cooking.
  6. Remove the meat from the pot.
  7. Sauté onions in the olive oil and rendered fat until translucent, scraping up any browned bits.
  8. Add the garlic and sauté for a minute.
  9. Add the spices and sauté until fragrant (about 30 seconds).
  10. Add the tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes until their juices start to release.
  11. Add the green beans, browned meat, and a bit more salt and pepper to the pot.
  12. Add a few cups of water until almost everything is submerged.
  13. Gently mix everything together.
  14. Cover with a lid and place in the oven for two hours. Do not disturb, or the green beans will fall apart.
  15. Adjust salt and pepper to taste, and scatter parsley on top.

Serve with rice (I usually use long-grain brown rice, though buttery pilaf is even better) and a bit of plain yogurt on the side.

Lauren and the MRCC team have been using The Pearl Works as their temporary home for about a year and a half while they find the right long-term office space. Lauren and her team are a delight; we will miss them when they eventually move on.

But such is the nature of a flexible workspace—we are constantly saying hello and goodbye, building a welcoming environment for people to connect and work comfortably. If you’d like to be in a shared space with kind people, come by for a tour and see how The Pearl Works can support you!

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