Chocolate, plantains,sugar, rum and pecans -- what's not to like? I am incapable of looking at these items without considering their origins. These commonplace foodstuffs were part of the self-propelling engine that was the Slave Trade which went roughly like this: baubles and trinkets to Af...

This year marks the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution. The Revolution started in November of 1910. This month, December, also marks the centenary of an act of kindness towards my grandfather by what some consider a ruthless man. Sometime in the month of December Pancho Villa and my grandfat...

These are my parents, Eva Andrade de Smith and Garfield Smith. In 1944 my father went to Los Angeles from Tampico to make arrangements for my mother and the children, Edith, Nehemiah and Abigail to emigrate to the United States. As he was tying up loose ends, finding housing and talking with ...

In July of 2009 I went to Mexico to attend the first international conference on vanilla, Veracruz a la Vanilla. The conference was held at the World Trade Center in Boca del Rio. I arrived a few days early. While I wandered around the city so great they had to name it twice, Veracruz, Verac...

I have been writing this blog for two years! I posted my first piece the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as President. I started Villa Victoria Blog in order to create a body of work for a book. To write that book I need to write it TO someone. Who out there gives a rat's **** about...

I have been writing this blog for two years! I posted my first piece the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as President. I started Villa Victoria Blog in order to create a body of work for a book. To write that book I need to write it TO someone. Who out there gives a rat's **** about...

[ad hoc|(") ad-'häk: for the particular end or case at hand without consideration of wider application] The most precious heirloom my mother gave me was a molcajete (mortar and pestle) that she brought in her suitcase from Mexico in 1945. A molcajete is a heavy three-legged bowl carved out of q...

The pineapple is original to Brazil and Paraguay. Before Columbus arrived, the Indians had already introduced it as far north as Central America and throughout the West Indian islands. The Spanish inaugurated trading ships between Acapulco, Mexico and the Phillipines in 1565 and introduced the p...

What to do with that package of old (but not moldy) corn tortillas that has been sitting in your refrigerator for weeks? This dish, adapted from Adela Fernández' 1989, "La Tradicional Cocina Mexicana" is the answer to that age-old question. I used sprouted corn tortillas which have become ...