MamaLatina Mexican food blogger shares culinary customs with San Luis Obispo County and beyond
Words and Photography by Sylvia Martinez
In this Perspective piece, Mexican blogger Silvia Martinez shares how her desire to preserve the recipes of her elders inspired a food blog, captivated a following of Latinos and won her “The Great American Recipe.”
Rice and beans are a staple in Mexican cooking, so it was one of the first dishes I learned to cook. That was at the age of 12, when I asked my mother and grandmother to teach me to cook. I’d already been helping in the kitchen since I was about 8 years old — my grandma would ask me to peel tomatillos and do other easy tasks because she didn’t like us kids to be idle. But I didn’t really get the training until a few years later. One of the elements I learned to make first was gelatin, which makes sense because my family had owned a gelatin business for about 100 years. Then, I took baking classes from a lady down the street to develop my baking skills.
When I turned 14, my mother decided to stop cooking, since she didn’t really like it and I loved it, so I took over as the official family chef. This continued even after I went to college. I would return home on Fridays, and on Saturdays I would cook all day so my family would have food to last throughout the week. Then I’d return to school on Sundays. I wasn’t going out much with friends, I was cooking for my family, and I loved it. That’s where my heart was. Even though I was studying Industrial Relations in college, I was always drawn to cooking.
I moved to the U.S. in the early 2000s after meeting my now husband in Guanajuato, Mexico. He was from San Luis Obispo, California. We first settled in Los Osos, then moved to Bakersfield before returning to Mexico for a time. We decided to move back to San Luis Obispo County to raise our children in Los Osos and Morro Bay. It wasn’t until I had my kids that I started to feel the need to document the recipes I had grown up making. I started a lifestyle blog in 2009, sharing things about motherhood and raising kids. Then, I started adding recipes because they are part of my children’s heritage, and my digital blog seemed like an accessible platform. I realized also that my family in Mexico wasn’t documenting their recipes. My grandma knew how to make the food but she never actually wrote down the recipes. I started sharing these recipes and decided to make them bilingual so Spanish speaking families, including some of mine, could enjoy them, too. Many comments from people who visited my blog said they made certain foods with their families in Mexico but didn’t know how to make them anymore. I saw that people wanted to make traditional foods.
One day on my social media, I received a direct message from a casting company asking if I’d like to get on a call with them about an upcoming TV show. I agreed to do it and went through the casting process. This opportunity appealed to me as a way to share my family’s food and to share Mexican dishes that people may not know so much about. I also wanted to push myself to further my career. It was very different from my usual work and definitely out of my comfort zone. Plus, I love watching cooking shows; I always find myself competing in my head while watching them. I made two recipes per episode for seven episodes, plus a finale, 18 different dishes total. One of the prompts challenged us to show a dish that blended where we’re from and where we live now — I made tri-tip tacos with avocado salsa verde. Tri-tip makes me think of the Central Coast and was completely new to me when I moved here, and tacos are pure Mexican. Also, in the show, I made a torta de milanesa and a sopa tarasca (bean soup with tomatoes and served with crunchy tortilla, cheese and ancho chile) and many other family favorites.
After a few weeks of competing, I’m still amazed to say I won the whole competition. This made me both really proud and emotional, because it was called “The Great American Recipe” on PBS and here I was an immigrant cooking Mexican food. The show was another way for me to share my heritage and keep it alive, passing it on to family, friends, neighbors and the TV audience through food. This was the American dream for me and a reaffirmation of my cooking. You cook and your family says it’s delicious, but it’s another thing to have top chefs like Graham Elliot say they like it so much.
Food has been one of the highlights of my life. In the U.S., it has been hard for me to be the same person I was in Mexico because English is my second language. I can’t always express myself the same way in English as I can and do in Spanish. Earlier in my career, I was hired to write recipes for Cheerios, General Mills and ConAgra websites, among others, and use their products in my Mexican recipes. Now I have my own business called Mama Latina Tips, which encompasses my social media, consulting and blog. To many people’s surprise, there’s a lot of work behind creating a blog, lots of production: shopping, cooking, styling, photography, videography, editing and writing.
It’s a great honor to me that people trust me to give them a recipe to make at home that can unite them with their family that’s with them or remind them of their family who may not be. If they’re Mexican-American, the food may give them a special connection with each other and their past. If they are not, it can create a new one. I want to continue growing, maybe adding cooking classes or other projects. Much of my work is indoors in a kitchen or behind a computer screen, so I hadn’t really been out and about much until I joined At Her Table and started making connections with more women in this business. This work helps me feel I’m on the right path and I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Everyone has a gift and mine is an affinity for food — I can taste the flavors in my mind, I understand how one ingredient will go with another. I know that’s my gift and I want to share it with the world.
You can find my blog at MamaLatinaTips.com.
