What I Did on My Summer Vacation--Food History in Oaxaca

Regular Blog commenter and writer Cynthia is just back from a Foodie dream vacation in Oaxaca, Mexico. Not her first visit,  this time she decided to delve deeper into the food history of the region.

" I signed up for a couple of courses with Susan Trilling at Seasons of My Heart.   Susana's classes were particularly well-suited to my interests--not only did she work overtime  exposing us to every possible traditional Oaxacan food, she also lectured on food origins, arranged for us to have a local scholar show us through the Ethnobotanical Gardens and lecture on the history of food domestification, cultivation, and processing in Oaxaca ( where the first maize may have been bred)
and she took us to a Zapotec village in the mountains, where the women taught us how to use pre-Hispanic cooking tools and techniques to prepare an almost entirely pre-Hispanic meal.

We also had heaps of fun in the classroom/kitchen at Susana's Racho Aurora, where we prepared a wide range of traditional Oaxacan specialties on both traditional and modern equipment. It was simply splendid--and just the sort of thing I thought might interest others interested in food history."