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Mujer de maiz. Guache La tortilla esta norteada Tenemos que voltear la tortilla The campaign for nixtamalized nonGMO tortillas: the political ecology and deep nutrition of our daily plate #PuroNixtamal Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | May 1, 2018 Like nearly every Mexican, I have been eating corn tortillas all my life. Or, at least as soon as I was able to chew on the crispy, slightly burned edges when I was a precocious 3 year-old. There is photo of me somewhere as an infant teething on a tortilla. I think all Mexicans must have such a photo or at least a memory of that primordial experience. I have also been thinking and writing about tortillas for a long time. Back in the 1980s-90s, when I was a professor at Colorado College (CC), I spent a good part of a decade  teaching in the College’s “Mexico Program” based at the time in Guanajuato, Mexico. Between 1986 and 1996, I taught several times in the Mexico Program. During those many month-plus visits I witnessed first-hand the transf...

Photographs of Mesoamerican vegetables, fruits, tubers, and grains courtesy of  La Jornada del Campo . Restoring heritage cuisines begins with native crops & how we grow them RETURNING AMARANTH TO ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE THREE SISTERS-PLUS COMPLEX Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | April 16, 2017 Today’s post is part of a continuing series on the discourse and practice of what my colleagues—among them Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel—call the decolonial diet . From our vantage points as farmers, gardeners, and cooks, the decolonial diet begins with the native crops we grow in the garden or milpa (subsistence farm or garden plot). How we grow them is also a vital factor. For example, annual native crops like corn, bean and squash are companion plants and should also be cultivated with perennial biodynamic herbaceous plants. This biodynamic approach is a vital factor maintaining the ecological health of the soil and thus the nutrient density and chemical composition of the crops. ...

Land race chimeras from Acequia Institute Seed Library. Crosses in 2015 included Hopi blue flint,  Zuni red flint,  and our local white flint Maíz de concho (Zea mays clibanus).  Photo by Devon G. Peña. Centers of Origin and Diversification of Maíz in the Río Arriba LINKING SOIL, SEED, AND FOOD  IN THE SURVIVAL OF HERITAGE CUISINES Moderator’s Note: This newly revised and edited essay was originally prepared by invitation of the editors, from a tip by Loretta Sandoval, as a contribution to the May 2016 special issue of The Green Fire Times on “Saving New Mexico’s Rare Seeds”. For the on-line version of the essay go to Deep Seeds and First Foods . For the full content of the special issue (Vol 8, No. 5), go to Green Fire Times . I wish to thank Seth Rothman and his colleagues at GFT for convening the authors of the special issue and the opportunity to educate food justice and slow food advocates in New Mexico about the acequia farmers of Colorado’s San Luis Valley a...