Food Systems Track: Week 1

As the first week of our specialized tracks comes to a close the wild reality that we're well into the second half of our trip is setting in!

The ingredients we collected at the market

Our week began by wrapping up our village stays. On Monday morning we all gathered, and group by group shared our different experiences to compare and learn about commonalities and differences between all of our experiences in the villages. Then it was time to part with our village stay pals and regroup into our new groups for the tracks that we will be in for the remainder of our stay.

And so the food systems track began our first course: Food, Culture and Health in Oaxaca. We started out by completing some introductory readings and response questions about the cuisine and culture in Oaxaca online by Tuesday night because our first professor, Amy Trubek, had not yet arrived in Oaxaca.

Wednesday morning we met with our teacher's assistants, Amber and Carey, to travel to Etla market, a larger market that was a bit of a bus ride away. Once we got there, our assignment was to split up into three groups to collect designated ingredients and to label what they were; the groups either had to purchase as many chilies, herbs, or spices as they could with 100 pesos. This proved to be more difficult for some groups than others, as often things referred to as spices, we may normally call herbs or seeds and vice versa. But nonetheless we completed our task and even made it back in time for comida in the city!

Our professor Amy arrived Wednesday night and we met her for the first time at Solexico on Thursday morning. We discussed our experiences here surrounding food thus far, learned a bit about Amy and what her experiences have been, and finally, we laid out the ingredients that we collected at the market the day before on a table. We tasted the ones we knew, and tried to identify the ones we did not.

 

The group in Huayapam

Friday morning we met with Amy and walked to a small nearby market together. We did a tasting/sensory evaluation of atole (a popular corn based drink in Oaxaca) and of champurrado (the atole drink combined with chocolate). We then walked around the market and tried to pick out what we thought were the primary fruits and vegetables, as well as some of the not so common ones, and to note any we could not identify. After, we returned back to Solexico to share what we had found. We then moved to our discussion surrounding tejate, another popular, historically significant cacao/corn based drink in Oaxaca. In the market Amy bought a mamey fruit, as the seed of the mamey is actually a crucial ingredient for the tejate. We were all more than happy to help her eat the mamey itself, which we decided has the consistency of an avocado but looked and tasted something like a sweet potato. We discussed the process of making tejate and started to prepare for our visit to a small pueblo outside of Oaxaca which is famous for their tejate, called Huayapam.

The Rosita de Cacao tree

We arrived in Huayapam on Sunday morning and began by taking a walking tour of the town to see the tree with a special necessary ingredient for the tejate making process: the Rosita de Cacao. Huayapam is said to be the only pueblo that grows this tree, so it is one of the reasons why their tejate is special. Ater that we went to a restaurant owned by a local couple for a tejate making demonstration, a process that requires far more skill and technique than any of us could have imagined. 
    

The tejate making process

When it was finished, we had the pleasure of tasting this unique Oaxacan drink. It is quite rich and filling so we then took a walk to the church to work up an appetite for the comida they were preparing for us. It’s a good thing we did because the food just kept coming and coming! We sat around a table with our hosts and discussed some of the looming questions we had about our observations before heading back to the city to hopefully finish, but perhaps get started on, our first food systems paper due in the morning! 

Next up, a week full of cooking (and of course eating) to look forward to!

Abrazos y Besos,
Olivia and Sandra