09/08/2026
Stories. Family. Tradition. Memory. Culture. Medicine. Love. 🌿✨❤️🪴☀️🌸🍄🥑
I love to cook. I love the whole process of it—the learning, experimenting, tasting, feeding people, and especially discovering the stories behind what we eat. Lately I’ve been diving into cookbooks again, sometimes reading them almost like novels.
I want to know where a recipe came from. Who made it before us? Who taught them? Why did they use those particular ingredients? What grew around them? What was used for nourishment? What was medicine? What was celebration? And what was simply the food that fed a family?
Being from Northern New Mexico, so much of this brings me home.
Having the opportunity to meet Chef Nite in Taos and experience his cooking touched something in me because it was food I knew. Food I grew up with. Flavors, ingredients and traditions that hold memories for me. Now, reading through The Taos Kitchen Cookbook has made me think even more about how important it is to keep these foods—and the stories that come with them—alive.
I’ve also been reading Alton Brown’s Food for Thought, and it has sent my mind in a hundred different directions. Some of his thoughts feel so similar to things I’ve believed for years, while others have given me completely new ideas about cooking, food and learning. And it has sent me back into other cookbooks and food stories, wanting to learn even more.
Then there was Oaxaca.
Eating in Oaxaca reminded me that our relationship with food can be so different from what many of us have become accustomed to in the United States. The freshness, the ingredients, the markets, the corn, squash, beans, herbs and meals prepared from what was available—it all felt connected to the land, the culture and everyday life.
There was something beautiful about good, fresh food not always feeling like a specialty product with a special label and a higher price attached to it. It was simply food.
And somehow it tasted different because of that. Maybe because you could feel the place, the people and the traditions behind what you were eating.
My path in curanderismo has made me think even more deeply about this too—the relationship between plants, food, nourishment, medicine, tradition and caring for one another. Sometimes those things aren’t separate at all.
And my fascination certainly doesn’t stop with the foods of Northern New Mexico or Oaxaca.
I am fascinated by food traditions all over the world. I especially love learning about Asian cuisines, but truly, I want to know about all of it.
How do other families cook? What foods do they make when someone is sick? What do they prepare for celebrations? What recipes have survived generations? What ingredients tell the story of where they come from?
Because a recipe is never just a recipe.
There is a story behind it.
And more and more, I think about how important it is for my children to know those stories.
I want my kids beside me in the kitchen. I want them to know the foods of Northern New Mexico and the traditions that belong to our family. I want them to know where we come from. I want them to understand why certain foods, plants and traditions matter to me.
But I also want them to remain curious about the rest of the world—to learn about other cultures and traditions with respect, appreciation and wonder.
And as a homeschooling family, I can’t think of many classrooms better than a kitchen.
Cooking is reading. Math. Fractions and measurements. Chemistry and biology. History and geography. Agriculture. Culture. Following directions and learning when it’s okay not to. Making mistakes. Problem-solving. Patience. Creativity. Using your hands. Trusting your senses.
But there are lessons in the kitchen that you can’t really put on a curriculum.
It’s standing beside your mother while she shows you how something is supposed to feel in your hands.
It’s hearing the stories that come out while something is simmering on the stove.
It’s laughing when something doesn’t turn out the way you planned.
It’s making the same dish enough times that one day you realize you don’t need the recipe anymore.
It’s a smell bringing you back to a person, a kitchen, a place or a time you thought you’d forgotten.
It’s feeding someone because you love them.
And then there is the magic of it all.
The magic of taking a handful of simple ingredients and turning them into something that nourishes someone you love. The magic of recipes passed from one set of hands to another. Of knowing when something is ready by the way it smells or feels instead of what the recipe says. Of herbs and plants that have fed us and cared for us for generations. Of a certain taste suddenly bringing back a person, a place, a kitchen or a memory.
There is magic in gathering around a table. In children standing on a stool beside you, stirring the pot. In flour-covered hands and vegetables being chopped and stories being told while dinner cooks.
Maybe that’s some of the oldest magic we have.
Growing. Gathering. Cooking. Feeding. Teaching. Remembering.
Cooking has all these little rhythms that teach us how to live, learn and love.
Someday I can hand my children a box of recipes or a shelf full of cookbooks.
But I think the greater gift is having them stand beside me now.
Cooking it.
Tasting it.
Learning it.
Hearing the stories.
Experiencing the magic.
And making some stories of our own. ❤️
Erica
