I grew up in a Mexican family and community in the heart of the Midwestern cornbelt, 26 miles east of Chicago, in Aurora, Illinois. Growing up Mexican in the United States is what drives my research and work. At heart, I'm an artist who likes to cook. Over time, cooking has taken over my art practice so much that I've traded my art studio for my home kitchen. Just like a great artwork, learning how the people of North America, my ancestors, have eaten throughout millennia—the flavors, seeds and foraged foods they stewarded—orients me in space and time and positions me within that ancestral lineage. Working with recipes and food has also helped me understand how the things we grow and eat channel the energy of humanity and earth directly into our bodies through bites of pure sensual joy.
After receiving a master's degree in fine art from the University of Texas at Austin, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study textiles in the Sacred Valley of Peru and the highlands of Bolivia. During that time, I worked with artisans living in remote mountain communities where sharing meals at high altitudes with my weaving teachers shifted my perspective on art, food, and community. I came back to the States with a desire to write a cookbook that honors how recipes and ingredients (mainly plants) connect us to something much larger than ourselves. I quickly pivoted to a career in food and found a job working with cookbook author and tv host Ina Garten. During this time, I became mesmerized with the art of nixtamalization so much so that in 2019, I started selling freshly made, nixtamalized corn tortillas at my local farmer's market.
Today, I'm writing a foundational Mexican cookbook, my first, slated to be published by Hachette Workman Artisan September 2027, that teaches the building blocks of Mexican flavor through soups, stews, guisados, pozoles, and moles. I'm also a contributing recipe developer and tester for NYT Cooking and write about food, art, and motherhood on my Substack Kitchen Spanish.
My daughter and I grow unique varieties of corn, squash, and marigolds in the traditional milpa-style at my community garden plot in East Hampton, NY. I live there with my husband Bill and two terriers, Conchita "la bonita" and Freyja "la bella." Each year I grow corn, I learn something new about my culture, and it continues to inspire my food journey to this day.
