 |
| Book cover photo by Tracey Kusiewicz and cover illustration, "Maiz Sagrado," by Veronica Perez |
La Bloga readers
are in for a treat today! The cookbook, Decolonize your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing is ready for YOU to bring
into your kitchen! Authors Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel are here to talk about their newly published book. I personally tried some of these recipes when
I first wrote about Luz and Catriona last year (click here) and, a few weeks
ago, after receiving an advanced copy of the book, I cooked some of the recipes
in my own kitchen, and can tell you the recipes are fabulous. I highly recommend this book and am grateful
that Luz y Catriona were willing to come back to La Bloga to tell us about
their journey to publication!
Welcome Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel!
 |
Left to Right: Catriona Esquibel and Luz Calvo with their
chickens in their "permaculture food forest" (photo by Miki Vargas) |
How did the making of this cookbook first
come about?
After Luz’s
breast cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2006, we started doing a lot of
research about food and health. This
turned into an all-consuming project, both in our home life and in our
work. At home, we turned the backyard
into a permaculture food forest. We
started to raise chickens for eggs and because they help in the garden
(providing compost, pest control, and weeding).
We acquired some design help from an Oakland-based group called,
“Planting Justice.” They produced a
garden design to transform our backyard into a place where we could grow food
with a focus on foods with anti-cancer properties. Following their design, Luz did most of the
work installing the garden. One day we
had a work party and rented a jackhammer.
Our friends helped us take out a bunch of concrete so we would have more
room to plant.
 |
| Luz y Catriona's garden (photo by Amelia Montes) |
In our work
lives, we devoted our research time to deepening our knowledge about food and
the medicinal value of plants. We were
especially concerned with Latina/Latino health and how to reclaim it, for
ourselves and for our communities. We
integrated some of these issues into the courses we teach and we found the
students to be very receptive. We
started giving talks in community settings, such as at the Women’s Cancer
Resource Center. And, we started the
Facebook group, Decolonize your Diet, as a way to spread the message and
disseminate knowledge, political analysis, and recipes. Early on, we had the idea of writing a
cookbook, but it took years of research and writing to figure out how to
structure it and what kinds of recipes to include.
How is your cookbook different from other
cookbooks that focus on Mexican or Mexican American dishes?
Most Mexican
cookbooks conceive of Mexican food as an “authentic” mixture of indigenous and
European ingredients and techniques. Our
take is a bit different. For one, we try
to undo the notion of “one” authentic way to do anything, since dishes change
so much by family tradition, by region, by the era, and by the individual cook
or chef interpreting the dish. We talk
about tamales, and the way that “traditional tamales” among Mexicans in the
U.S. are generally thought of as including lard, beef, or pork, along with red
chile. We trace tamales back to the
pre-Hispanic era, where there were literally hundreds of different kinds of
tamales, many with ingredients we have never considered putting in a tamal,
such as amaranth, or wild greens. Our
book is trying to recover some of those ancestral ways and ingredients, while
at the same time, encouraging our readers (and ourselves) to be creative in the
kitchen. We believe in a rasquache approach which means: the art
of making do with what you have.
Above all, that is what our ancestors have done over thousands of
years. It is their ingenuity and
inventiveness that got us to where we are today. Our book includes recovered recipes and many
recipes that take “traditional” dishes, that we refashion, so they don’t
include unhealthy ingredients historically brought by the colonizers, such as flour, refined
sugar, or white sugar.
What are some things you learned about
publishing a cookbook that you had not anticipated?
Oh, so many
things. First, it is really important to
record measurements, even if that is not how you usually cook. The press is going to require exact
measurements. Luz cooks by feel and
never follows a recipe exactly, so that made the process of writing recipes a
bit contradictory!
More seriously,
though, we learned that there is a lot of racism when it comes to popular
presses. We received so many rejections
that said we were catering to a “niche” market.
That is, they can’t imagine Latinas/Latinos as a book-buying
audience. Worse, we had one acquisitions
editor who told us that our whole premise was incorrect, which she knew,
because her fiancé, a graduate student in history, teaches his students that
Native peoples were malnourished before European contact.
We see this book
situated within Chicana/Chicano Studies.
Although we don’t often think of cookbooks as cultural or academic
production, they really are. Or, at
least, we think of our own book as having both cultural and academic
components. Our book has many references
to issues that are central to Chicana/Chicano Studies: such as critiques of NAFTA, solidarity with
farmworkers, a critical engagement with pre-Columbian histories and oral
traditions, Chicana/Chicano art, Chicana feminism, decolonized queer theory,
and borderlands epistemologies. These
theories and concerns frame our approach to decolonizing the food system and
cooking healthy meals.
 |
| Luz Calvo at work in her cocina (photo by Amelia Montes) |
How can educators, then, use your book in
the classroom?
I think, more
and more, professors and teachers are feeling the need to teach health issues
in their classes and our book would certainly help faculty develop that
curriculum. I think the book would fit
well in courses dealing with theories of decolonization, food studies, and
feminist theory. Luz is teaching from
the book this fall 2015 and plans to require students to cook from one of the
recipes for an end of the quarter potluck celebration.
You have pointed out that your recipes do
not have any empty calories. What does
that mean?
Empty calorie
foods fill you up and they might taste good, but they have no nutritional or
medicinal value. They actually do harm
to your body. Most processed food falls
in this category. Ingredients like white
flour, white sugar, and white rice are also “empty calories.” They give you a quick rush but without any
substance to sustain you. The recipes in
our book, even if they are “treats” (that is, dishes you would probably not
want to eat every day), have nutritional value.
For example, our chocolate cake recipe is gluten-free, and includes
amaranth and sweet potato, which provide good nutrition. The cake also uses raw cacao and raw local
honey, both of which have medicinal value.
The sweetness is balance.
The book is also beautiful. The cover, the artwork on the pages are
gorgeous. Who decided the cover design
and the artwork/photos within the book?
We worked with
the Arsenal Pulp Press graphic designer, Gerilee McBride. She was great because she was very open to
our input and also had many good ideas of her own. From the beginning, we hoped to include
Chicana/Chicano art inside the book, because so many artists are addressing
issues that relate to food, decolonization, and reclaiming indigenous
knowledge. We are so grateful to the
artists who allowed us to use their art:
Veronica Perez, Ernesto Yerena Montejano, Melanie Cervantes, Jesus Barraza, and Orlando Arenas. Their work
adds so much to the beauty and power of the book.
Were there many recipes that did not make
it into the book? What was your
selection process?
Some recipes,
even ones we make regularly, were too tricky for a cookbook. With a cookbook, you want the recipe to come
out right the first time. For example,
for a while, we were cooking amaranth-crusted pizzas every week, but the crust
was actually quite delicate to work with:
very easy to tear, and we felt like it would be frustrating for folks
trying it for the first time. Other
recipes were delicious and healthy but didn’t necessarily look all that
attractive. We share those recipes on
our Facebook page and will continue to do so.
We’re not planning to write another cookbook, so our plan is to use the
Facebook page to disseminate any new recipes we develop. Some recipes we rejected because when recipe
testers made them, we could see that our own vision for the recipe was
confusing.
The recipes we
did choose had to follow a few rules:
They had to feature native ingredients.
They had to be plant-based and “healthy.” And the recipe could not include flour or
refined sugar. Cheese or oils are
sometimes included, but in small amounts.
And, we only included cheese if we could provide a vegan
alternative. We made one exception and
that is the whole wheat flour in the “Borderlands Whole Wheat Tortillas,” our
ode to Gloria Anzaldúa.
 |
Cookbook Recipes: "Beans, Greens, and Chiltepines" (page 163)
and "Mesquite Corn Tortillas" (page 158) (photo by Amelia Montes) |
The recipes are quite user friendly. How were you able to achieve that?
Oh, we’re so glad
you feel that way! We wanted to have
basics in the pantry section of the book, because our readers include our
students and folks like ourselves who did not learn to cook at grandma’s elbow. Although, when Luz’s mom married into the
Calvo family, she did actually sit at her mother-in-law’s elbow and she wrote
down everything she did and even guessed at the measurements. No one else in the family did that, and no
one else has Nana’s recipes. In our book, we really tried to use our writing
skills to describe the process of cooking dishes in exact detail. I’m not sure we always achieved this
precision, but we did try.
You mentioned earlier that you had food
testers. What was that like?
Well, we had
many enthusiastic volunteers to taste the recipes. Our neighbors were expecting their baby at
that time, so we would carry over all these dishes to their house because we
had more food than we could eat and no time to invite anyone over to dinner. At one point, Luz was delivering pieces of
amaranth chocolate cake to five different locations in Oakland to get
feedback. And there was one day when
Catriona was encouraging friends to drive by the house and pick up
muffins. Eventually, we did pay a recipe
tester to test some of our baked goods (muffins, cornbread, cake, etc.) because
that is where we felt the least level of confidence, both in our own recipes
and our taste for those things. We
wanted to make sure a professional would approve. The tester gave some good feedback about
making slight tweaks to get the recipes in the best shape. And, several of our friends did the same
thing. Our friend, Hadas, in particular,
prepared every bean dish in our book and from that experience, we were able to
see how another home cook would interpret our recipes. It was very helpful.
What is your hope for this book?
We hope that our
book adds fuel to the fire and directs more Chicana/Chicano political energy
toward contemporary food-related issues.
We know that people in our communities grow their own food, as they did much before the so-called urban homesteader movement, but today we see young
people interested in reclaiming this knowledge in ways that they haven’t been
in the past. We’d like to see more
people recognize and appreciate the vast food knowledge held by rural
populations in Mexico and the travel of this knowledge to immigrant urban and
rural communities in the U.S. and Canada.
We’d like to see a specifically Chicana/Chicano political vision emerge
that is cognizant of the need to defend ancestral corn from Monsanto and GMO seed. We’d like to see more critiques of
NAFTA coming from this side of the border. We’d like to see webs of solidarity
forming across the border on issues related to food, environment, and the
rights of people to stay on their ancestral lands. We’d like to see our communities reject fast
food, both as a “solution” to hungry bellies but also as a way of life. We’d like to see Chicana/Chicano-run farmers’
markets selling ancestral foods like amaranth, quelites, verdolagas, heirloom
beans, organic corn, and traditional varieties of squashes. We’d like to see Chicana-owned worker
cooperatives that sell non-GMO corn masa and community workshops teaching young
people to make corn tortillas and tamales from scratch, using a variety of
native ingredients.
Now that the book is published, what
next?
We’ll continue
to do research, writing, and sharing but through community presentations and
through our blog and Facebook group. We
hope to have more time to devote to community organizing around these
issues.
 |
Luz y Catriona's dining room table: "Red Pozole with
Medicinal Mushrooms" (pages 101-102) (photo by Amelia Montes) |
What does cooking mean for you now?
Cooking is
self-care. It’s a creative outlet. It’s resistance to capitalism and an unjust
food system. And, to be honest, we just
get a lot of pleasure out of eating food we prepare from scratch. It’s a way of showing love, care, and
affection. It’s an arena of comfort,
healing, and familiarity.
Is there anything else you’d like to
share with La Bloga readers?
In Oakland, were
we live, Phat Beets is a food justice organization that has been doing
“Decolonize Your Diet” workshops for years.
We appreciate their vision.
Bryant Terry, an Oakland-based cookbook author, whose books Grub, and
Afro Vegan had a big impact on us. Terry’s ability to promote plant-based
recipes in ways that are appealing to communities of color inspired us and,
personally, he has been very supportive of our project. In addition, Luz was involved in a grassroots
affinity group called “Decolonize Oakland,” that tried to use decolonization as
a framework for political organizing.
Living in Oakland, surrounded by young people doing some really good
thinking and activism around issues of decolonization, gentrification, and
state violence, has helped us keep our focus.
In a larger
Chicana/Chicano context, there are several scholars and community activists
whose work we follow. Early in our
research, we found a blog, “Decolonial Food for Thought,” a project of two
graduate students, Claudia Serrato and Chris Rodriguez. They had already given a lot of thought to
these issues and put forward strong arguments for what Claudia calls an
“indigenous veganism.” And more
recently, we’ve come across other Chicana chefs who are on similar trajectories: Marinette Tovar, Marlene Aguilar, and Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz.
All this to say
that our project is indebted to many others who we see constructing an
interesting web of activity—some writing, some teaching, some cooking—but all
with the same goal. We hope our book is
a contribution to this web. We feel
fortunate to have been able to publish this book and we hope people find it
useful. We also hope that many more
books follow ours. There is so much more
to learn about our cultural food inheritance.
Thank you so
very much for taking the time to talk to La Bloga, Luz y Catriona. Readers, check out Luz y Catriona’s website
for information about the book, recipes, and for events where Luz y Catriona will be appearing. (Click here for website)
 |
| "Decolonize Maiz" by Ernesto Yerena Montejano (silkscreen print, 2012) |
