Salvadoran Pupusas
There are different brands of tortilla flour to make the dough. MASECA, which can be found in most large supermarkets in the international section, is one of them but there are others. Follow…
Category: Food Culture and Nutrition
Salpicón Nicaragüense
Nicaraguan salpicón is one of the defining dishes of present-day Nicaraguan cuisine and yet it is unlike anything else that goes by the name of salpicón. Rather, it is an entire menu revolving…
The Lonely Griller
As “a visitor whose days were numbered” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he tossed aside dietary restrictions to experience the enormous variety of meat dishes, cuts of meat he hadn’t seen…
Latin American Cookbooks
The Culinary Collection of Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies’ Arthur & Elisabeth Schlesinger Library would welcome donations of cookbooks in English, Spanish, or Portuguese…
Audacious Reforms
For many Latin Americans, the hopes raised by political democracy over the past two decades have been dashed by the realities of persistent poverty and growing social inequality, and by the…
Caipirinha
1 lime, quartered, 1-2 tablespoons sugar, 2 ounces of cachaca (the fiery Brazilian brandy), Ice cubes…
Cachupa
Isabel Ferreira, known around the Harvard community as the language instructor who teaches Portuguese for Spanish speakers, is used to crossroads. Born in Portugal, she moved to…
The Transnational Villagers
It is commonplace today to speak of the “Global Village”. The growth of technology such as the Internet, cheap international phone service, faxes and satellite television shrink the distance…
Food in the Americas
People give food meaning. It’s easy to trivialize, because food is everywhere. But love of food is love of life…
What Food? Who Eats It? Why Does It Matter?
Searching for food together with growing, cooking, and eating it has consumed more time than any human activity except sleeping for most of human history. Curiously, historians have never…
The Challenges to Equal Opportunity in the Americas
Can education lead to social and economic equity? Think of your own educational experience, your current position in social and economic spheres and how you got there. Do you have…
Sustainable Agriculture
Famine and undernourishment are not due to lack of food availability. Rather they result from the inability of people to grow their own food or to purchase it from those that grow it. In other…
The Supermarket as Cultural Spaces
It wasn’t exactly a shopping trip. Nam was investigating supermarkets and department stores as social, cultural spaces. Consumption is not simply an economic practice, but one of the most…
Sugary Avocados, Mystery Flan
Food is the ultimate expression of one’s culture, and even our smallest assumptions about what we eat reveal a lot about where we come from. Sometimes this happens not only for those who…
In Search of Mexico’s National Cuisine
Growing up in the Midwest in the 1970s, I ate a bland diet of meat and potatoes and soothing Jell-O salads. Mexican food remained unknown territory until my brother moved to Las Cruces…
Rigoberta Menchú and the Politics of Food
I think everyone who reads Rigoberta Menchú’s famous 1982 testimonio remembers the part in editor Elisabeth Burgos’s prologue when she describes how she won the Guatemalan woman’s…
The Perils of Eating Feet
I was 19, in love, and eager to gain the acceptance of my boyfriend Guillermo’s family in the mountains of Imbabura, Ecuador…
Peanuts, Popcorn, Cracker Jack
While peanuts and popcorn were new to 19th century United States, both had been consumed as snacks in the Americas for thousands of years. Peanuts originated in Bolivia, domesticated by…
Nutrición, Lactancia Materna y Fertilidad
“2 de febrero, 2000: Es la hora de la siesta en Namqom. Todo está calmo, atemporal, borroso” Yo estoy sentada en la salita de enfermería en en el Centro de Salud. Desde aquí escucho roncar a…
The Maya Hand Down a Recipe for Chocolate
Inside the Harvard Peabody Museum Annex, rows and rows of metal shelving reveal hundreds of clay pots and shards, all catalogued with numbers on their sides. Most of these are decorative…
