Hope for a Beleaguered Planet....

Our book Milpa: From Seed to Salsa - Ancient Ingredients for a Sustainable Future explores through a blend of essays, recipes and documentary photography how the ancient agricultural knowledge and the wealth of 1000 year-old seeds and planting practices still in use among the Mixtec peoples of southern Mexico can help us to meet the ecological and food crises of today.

The essays, written in conjunction with campesino farmers, serve as a warning about the complicated dangerous effects inherent in the rapidly expanding distribution of GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds in Mexico, the birthplace of corn. Our documentary cookbook discusses alternatives for campesino farmers across the world and gardeners and consumers who care about food safety. Using the example of the Milpa planting system in the Mixteca Alta region of Southern Mexico just north of Oazaxa City, the book supports recent studies by UN investigators that show that small plots of land, heritage seeds and sustainable practices can in fact feed the world while enriching the soils on which we all depend for life…….

Milpa contains the traditional recipes lovingly shared by the local indigenous Mixtec women, allowing readers to re-create the culinary magic that flows from this ancient agricultural system. Recipes are painstakingly tested and photographed in traditional indigenous kitchens as well as in a professional modern test kitchen. Please purchase the book, below.....


All Rights Reserved: © Phil-Dahl Bredine, © Kathy Dahl-Bredine © Judith Cooper Haden Photography, © Susana Trilling SOMH.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Eating Yucca Blossoms in San Pedro Quilitongo - Excellent!!!

Susana Trilling with the chefs of Quilitongo

FROM Susana Trilling's Food Diary.......Tacos de Izote  (Yucca Blossom Tacos)!

One of the best days I ever spent in the Mixteca was the day we went to visit San Pedro Quilitongo. We went to visit Manuela, the woman whom I call “dedo verde” (green thumb)  for her incredible ability to grow the most fertile and abundant milpa. We harvested many plants and vegetables to cook with that day. Walking through the village to the kitchen I saw a blooming yucca with a gorgeous huge white blossom. On a whim I asked if we could cook that also and before I knew it, a ladder appeared and people started coming out of their houses to offer help and advice.” It takes a village”…half an hour later it was being lowered on a rope. Everyone got in the act of removing the flowers and cleaning them and later they were fried simply with onion, garlic and eggs.  What a flavor!  It tasted so much like artichoke hearts that I am calling for them in my recipe, as you may not have a yucca plant flowering outside your door.  


Buen Provecho!! 




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