South Texas and Life on the Rancho - podcast episode cover

South Texas and Life on the Rancho

Mar 13, 202536 minSeason 2Ep. 26
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Episode description

In this episode, Eva and Maite continue their exploration of the South Texas lands they grew up in. They share stories of hunting and digging for arrowheads and welcome chef and Texas food historian Adán Medrano to the show. Together they reflect on how the land can tell stories about the daily lives of the people who have lived on it, the animals that have inhabited it, and the changes it has undergone over time.

https://adanmedrano.com/cookbook-author-adan-medrano/ 

https://texasindigenousfood.org

https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Social-Conquest-of-Earth/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

My name is Eva Longoria and I am my Traon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.

Speaker 2

So make yourself at home.

Speaker 3

Even I am so excited about this episode because I grew up on a ranch.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, this episode is made for you. I want to know. I want to know more.

Speaker 5

I know, and when people think of northern Mexico and South Texas, people think of ranches, right, they think of Marco's cowboys. So today's episode is all about food on the rancho.

Speaker 2

This is how I grew up.

Speaker 3

I thought everybody grew up like this, by the way, I mean, I thought everybody grew up on a ranch. We never used our kitchen inside. We had a stove in an oven, but we always like the coffee was made on the fire outside. Oh, my dad would have the little percolator thingy. He would wake up and start

a fire outside. That was the first thing my dad would do and he and he would put this you know, rocks and this grill down and then the coffee would be right there and it'd start percolating, and then my mom would get up and she'd make Dorfellas and nokomal just on the fire, on the flame, you know, with her hand tossed test dogs, and then our breakfast sausage we'd cook on the grill. Like everything was outside on the girl.

Speaker 2

Rain or shine, hotter or cold.

Speaker 4

I was like, what's that.

Speaker 3

I we never used our kitchen. I'm telling you, we never used our kitchen.

Speaker 2

How cool.

Speaker 5

So this is your whole life, from when you were born to when you you know, went off to.

Speaker 2

College, yeah, and beyond.

Speaker 3

Like literally, if my dad, if I didn't move my family to San Antonio now, they would still be cooking outside. But I had to move him off the edge because they were getting older. But no, I mean this is how I grew up. I mean when I was in school during the week, we would be you know, not on the ranch, but this was this was daily life.

And it's so funny because there's things that you wouldn't think you could cook on the grill like that, like coffee, Like why would you Why wouldn't you just make coffee in a coffee pot? Nope, had to be on that. Oh I wish I still had it, and you know it was old. Yeah, the enamel, stainless steel percolator sing and it would just heat up when it heat it up, and then you know, say big Thanksgiving. My dad would

go kill the turkey. Wow, and we would grill it on the grill and I mean we would be spitting out the little.

Speaker 2

Pellets from the shotgun. Really, it was like pellet Yes, yes, girl, that's hardcore.

Speaker 4

That's true truly. So when did your family get.

Speaker 5

To detect, says, because I had a very different experience.

Speaker 4

Yeah, you and I had a very experienced spirit I yeah, experience.

Speaker 2

We moved to.

Speaker 3

We came to the Americas in sixteen o three and my my thirteenth great grandfather.

Speaker 2

My great great great great great great great grandfather, was.

Speaker 3

Eleven years old when he landed in Veracruz and they eventually migrated north because the King of Spain was giving land grants in the north of Novlo Espana.

Speaker 2

So this was New Spain.

Speaker 3

And to this day there's a map and it says Longoia Road because that's the parcels they gave all the brothers and sisters of the Longoia. So it was like bed Longoria Lorenzo Longoria, whoever Longodca, Longoia, and there was all they were all like side by side by side.

Speaker 2

And that was.

Speaker 3

Before the eighteen hundreds. It was probably like at the turn of the century of eighteen hundreds. Then the Mexican American War happened and they didn't cross the border, the bard across US, and so we were no longer New Spain. That we were no longer Mexico, and then we were Republic of Texas for a second, and then we were United States of America and we still you know, still have the land today, the same land grant from the

Spanish crown. And you had to prove there was a big land grab at the time in South Texas, you know, after the Mexican American War and after the Treaty of Invaluble, a lot of stuff wasn't honored in that treaty, and so there was a lot of land grabs that you know, people just ripped up their Spanish crown proof of their land. They're like, oh, too bad, and they would just move

the fences. And my grandfather tells me stories of like early nineteen hundreds of you know, having to have armed guards at the perimeter of the ranches because people would come and move your fence. Oh my god, it's crazy. Yeah, that's fascinating. Oh my gosh, that's so fascinating. So you must miss it that life.

Speaker 2

I do. I do.

Speaker 3

And like when we did when we did searching for Mexico and we didn't we a leon, Oh my.

Speaker 2

Girl, that's that was like I was Salsa.

Speaker 3

I was like I was, I was, I was a pig and ship right like I was just this is I mean, the smell of lenya to me is so comforting. And so I do miss it. And I wish Santi could grow up that way because he loves being outside. He loves animals, he loves you know, he'll grab a chicken, he'll grab so when we're in Mexico, I try to take him.

Speaker 2

We were in Monterrey and there was a ranch and I was like I told that. I was like, maybe we should buy a ranch. And he's like, are you crazy?

Speaker 3

Like he's such a city any boy, he's so Mexico city Chilabo bougie.

Speaker 2

He's like, what are we gonna do on a ranch? I was like, We're gonna have chicken cookout outside. It's going to be amazing. He's like, no, thank you, Oh my god.

Speaker 4

Completely different lifestyle.

Speaker 2

And there's so much history, so much history in South Texas. What was yours? What was your history? Your trajectory?

Speaker 4

Not Vancho.

Speaker 5

I mean my grandfather used to have a ranch in Tampico, outside of Tampico in northern Mexico, Tamaulipas. But they saw that ranch when I was little. But I remember going. Actually, it's one of my earliest memories. I was like three or four, and we were on a horse with my and with my cousin and it was amazing. And then my uncle and my grandfather they were hunting for ducks and then I pointed to one and they shot it

and boom, the duck fell down dead. Yeah, And I was like, oh my god, that doug just died because.

Speaker 4

I pointed to it. And I was this little girl.

Speaker 5

And then a few hours later, we're having lunch and it's the dead duck and I was just sitting there just crying.

Speaker 4

And to this day, I cannot dug. I cannot die. But that's part of life. On the right, it is if you hunt and you eat with you, and that's that's life. That's how it is.

Speaker 2

That's the thing is.

Speaker 3

It's different than like the big game hunters that go to Africa and kill elephants like that. Wasn't not like that's up. Like I said, it was like Thanksgiving, we gotta go get the turkey. And then it was like we're gonna have chicken tonight. Let's go get the chicken.

Speaker 2

Like we we we ate what we what we killed.

Speaker 3

And but I grew up the same way with Palomas with quail, and my dad didn't have hunting dogs. He had four daughters and he would shoot the quail and we'd have to see where it fell, and we'd run and we would go find it and we would pick up all the quail and we'd bring them back and I would have to de pluck them.

Speaker 2

Oh my god, yes girl.

Speaker 4

Yes that is cool. If you're like little house in the prayer.

Speaker 3

I was.

Speaker 2

And let me tell you, I thought everybody grew up this way.

Speaker 4

Apparently not cool. So did you hunt as well?

Speaker 2

Yeah? We hunt? I mean I wasn't.

Speaker 3

I was, you know, like I I shot a lot of guns and we would like go shoot cans and we'd shoot a watermelon and things like that.

Speaker 2

But I wasn't big on killing animals.

Speaker 3

No, no, but but we would go hunting with my dad and like if it was the malast season, you know, he would go and shoot a pavelina and if it was but they you know, they were big hunters, and my dad and and really South Texas in general, it's a big hunting totally community uh culture.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 3

But but but the eating on the ranch was like less than the hunting and the killing. It was the that we would pick our carrots from the ground and peel them. We would you know, it was watermelon season, we would have watermelon for three months. It was gala basta season. We would have galabasta for three months. Like we eating seasonally and from the ground. It was such a beautiful way to grow up. I have such an

appreciation for what the land can give you. If we were sick and we had a cough, my dad would go and tear off mint, and he would tear off some other leaf I can't I can't remember what it was called, and he they would boil it and that's what we would drink for cough medicine. We would like it was so beautiful living off the land. My dad would call it living off the land. We can live off the land. We don't need anything.

Speaker 4

That's amazing. Yeah, that's so cool that you were brought up there. I love that.

Speaker 5

I love hearing these stories because it feels like it's so you know that, Yeah, this appreciation for what the land can give you, and then you have such a respect for the land, right because yeah, you know, you have to take care of it so that it could you take care of each other.

Speaker 3

So cool. Yeah, we can't talk Rancho without talking Texas. And where the word Texas comes from. I didn't know where the word Texas comes from or the.

Speaker 5

Yeah, according to the Texas State Historical Association, there has the word is widely believe to derive from thaisha, which is a native Kdo word for friend. So the Texas state motto is friendship, right, the friendly state. It carries this original meaning. But there's a historian, jorgue Luis. I got to see how. He wrote a book called Texas The False Origin of the Name. He suggests that the

word is not as romantic. It comes from tjorja, which is a Spanish word for a tree, a ye tree, of which there is a similar tree growing in Texas.

Speaker 3

Interesting, but well, I will say, I don't know where the word comes from, but but I had always, I have and still to this day, identify as a Texan before anything else, do you.

Speaker 2

I'm always like, I'm a Texan.

Speaker 3

I'm a Tefana and that or and then I'll say American, and then I'll say Mexican American, and then I'll say, like all the things come after, but like first and foremost, I always feel Texan.

Speaker 4

Texan. Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 5

I usually I feel like I say Mexican because because my parents, like my dad from you got that, my mom from Mexico City, grew up speaking Spanish at home. So I'd say Mexican and then Texan, you know, because then I went to school in Austin and then I was really really got to know that Texas. And we spent summers in Corpus, which is also super Texas.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So it's also super different because growing up in Corporate Christy too is like beach town. Yeah, so it's like opposite of Rancho.

Speaker 4

Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3

It's like we would still do fires on the beach and cook, but like it's just it's so diverse, so so diverse. When we come back chef food writer and filmmaker Adan Medrano joins the show don't go anywhere.

Speaker 5

So let's go back to the land before the ranchos, before Texas was part of Mexico, before it was part of the US, and.

Speaker 4

Talk about the diet of the native people of Texas.

Speaker 3

People forget the history of Texas because Texas has such a strong identity that they they're like, yeah, yeah, it was Mexico and it was like yeah, but it was also Spain and then before that it was also indigenous land, So.

Speaker 4

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 5

I remember going when I was in when I was growing up, we would go to San Antonio a lot, and there was this restaurant called Los Patios in San Antonio that was a long.

Speaker 3

Eye likely is it still there did? You don't know if it's still there, But we used to like that was like vacation.

Speaker 5

Yeah, yeah, going for the weekend to San Antonio, and I remember my brothers and I would play along that creek and my brother found some arrowheads there.

Speaker 2

I used to We used to find arrowheads all the time on our ranch.

Speaker 5

Overly time, I find that that just blows my mind because you know, the earliest I mean, like you said, there were native people living in this land for thousands of years. I mean the earliest archaeological evidence of food in Texas dates back around twenty thousand years. There's a place called the Galt Site just north of Austin where they've found bones of bison and deer and turtles and ducks,

so frogs and quails. So there's archaeological evidence that there have been people eating there for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

Speaker 2

Twenty and twenty thousand years ago.

Speaker 3

Yes, So is there any evidence of cooking, like, because what we talked about was like more hunter gatherer stuff, Like how far back was the was like I guess evidence of cooking with fire?

Speaker 5

Yeah, so around eighty three hundred years ago, So eight thousand years ago is when we first start seeing these oven of you know, earth ovens with rocks like barbecue. So that's the first time that we see like evidence of cooking.

Speaker 3

Well, we talked about it in our barbecue episode, like you know, just the different ways like barbecue such a big thing in Texas, but like it was indigenous, like even I was I was saying, you know in the Yucatan where you're from, you know, the cocina and the bbu part, the cooking in the ground, like that's ancient.

Speaker 4

It is, it's ancient.

Speaker 5

And I love that that it's so ancient in Texas because barbecue is such a part of the culture and it has been for literally thousands and thousands of years. And the whole idea of making these earth ovens, so you have to do the pit and then put agave seeds in the fire, so it's a communal activity.

Speaker 4

Did you grow up eating nopalace?

Speaker 2

I did not, and I do not like them to this day.

Speaker 4

I didn't my dad, my dad.

Speaker 3

It's the sliminess, Like I don't like okra either. And my dad loved nopallece and he would make us clean them when we were little. So I hated them also because in preparing them, we we get spinas. We would get the thorns and our fingers and they were so fine, those spinas.

Speaker 4

The spinas are thorns.

Speaker 2

Thorns to me is like on a rose and they're very thick.

Speaker 3

These are so freaking tiny and and and they get in everything. You takes months to get them out of your fingers. It's like it's a different kind of spinat. Yeah, yeah, I had a thorn.

Speaker 5

It's a different Yeah, I I didn't grow up eating them, not because I don't like them. I do love them, but my mom hated them because of the exact same reasons that you're you're describing.

Speaker 4

But I do love them. I do love them. I usually make them. I like them grilled with gela. I love them.

Speaker 5

But they were eating, you know, nopalles in this area also for thousands of years. They were a principal food of the Chichi mekas in northern Mexico, and not just the paddles, but also the prickly pears.

Speaker 4

Do you like the prickly pears tunas?

Speaker 2

Yeah, the tunas, they're called tunas. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Well, when my dad, because he had four girls and he wanted a boyd he had, he only had us, so he would take us, uh you know, hunting and fishing, we did all the boy stuff, and he would take eat of us camping for like two three days, and we'd have to survive off the land and we could not take food with us, and we would have to find what we could eat. And so that's another reason why I don't like the ballets, because we would find a cactus.

Speaker 2

He's like, you can eat that, and I'm.

Speaker 3

Like, I'm not eating that, and then when you're hungry, you're like, fine, I'll eat it, and we would drink. There's water inside the tunas, and so if you were thirsty, you could open that up and you could drink the water.

Speaker 4

Oh yeah, different than the fruit itself.

Speaker 2

Differs like fruit. There's like water in there. Yeah.

Speaker 4

Oh I never realized that.

Speaker 5

I usually buy them and I and I muddle them and make margaritas out of them.

Speaker 4

Oh, I never thought too.

Speaker 2

But now does the tuna have uh, spinuts on it or no?

Speaker 3

No?

Speaker 5

Well I think that, yeah, the fruit itself does, so you also have to. But you know, I usually go to a Mexican market in LA and then just find them and they're already cleaned.

Speaker 3

You know the only time I did like eating no baalace was in Gueralacara. There's an amazing chef that was on searching for Mexico and he made nofalle sevice, so he was like a vegan sevice and he.

Speaker 2

And I loved it, and I said, why do I like this? But I don't normally like it? And he's what he does is he you know, dethorns them, cleans them and cubes them really tiny, and then he salts them and overnight the sliminess is gone. The salt.

Speaker 3

You salt it and let it sit in the fridge overnight, and then you rinse it in the morning. There's no, they're not slimy.

Speaker 2

It's actually crispy. It's like it's a good texture to it. Introducing our guest, Aan Medrano. He's a chef.

Speaker 3

He's a food writer filmmaker who focuses on the rich culinary history of Texas, Mine and Mita's homes date. He's the author of the cookbook Don't Count a Tortillas, The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking and Truly Texas Mexican and of culinary heritage and Recipes. He has numerous articles. He was the executive producer and writer of the documentary Truly Texas Mexican, which is streaming.

Speaker 2

On Amazon Prime. Like that, do you want to add anything to this amazing guest.

Speaker 5

Well, I just want to say I first came across Avan when we were researching our Chili Queens episode last season, and I watched the documentary and I was like, oh my god, I have to know this person. We have not met in person, but we have many conversations, and I love everything that Navan does. He's a wealth of knowledge, and I'm just thank you, thank you for joining us and for the work that you do.

Speaker 2

I'm so couch for joining.

Speaker 6

Well, thank you, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here, really mighty. I've followed your work and the teaching that you do in museums and with videos, and of course if I'm one of your biggest fans all the way from the television series too when you were doing Playing Coup in anyway, so it's an honor to.

Speaker 4

Be Oh yeah, to be here.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much, thank you. We're so excited.

Speaker 3

You know, Mike and I started this podcast because we are both Texicans as we call ourselves, uh, and we're both we both have very different journeys and history with Texas.

Speaker 2

She you know, I'm thirteenth generation, she's sec first or second.

Speaker 7

First, first, first generation, and so even I mean, we're both so similar and yet we are worlds apart, sometimes with cuisine.

Speaker 3

Just because she grew up in Laredo and I grew up in Corpus Christi, and so we thought like you would be the perfect person to have on as somebody who's you know, an expert in this? And this Texas Mexican food as people call text mex How did you how do you define text mex food?

Speaker 6

Oh? What a great?

Speaker 3

Wait?

Speaker 4

Oh wait not wait?

Speaker 2

And and and sorry you don't you don't like the word text mes.

Speaker 3

No, no I do, I do.

Speaker 6

I do like it. It's appropriate for Texan ex food. It's appropriate. So I have nothing against tex mex food. I just don't want it to be confused. The reason I make the difference is that Texas food is not my mother's comita cassera. I don't think it was your mother's Eva, nor was it Mita's mother comia coscera. The Texas Mexican food basically is the flavor profile of comita

cassera that you will find in every Mexican American home. Houston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, San Antonio, Ego pass and it's in Texas and northeastern Mexico. You have to include that region because before the border became an international boundary, our families lived on both sides. Both you and I have families north of the Rivrande and south of the Riverran. It just is an inescapable fact when the river became an international border, it did not sever the family connections, the

cultural connections, the flavor profile connections. So if you're in Brownsville, Texas, and you cross the river and you go to Matamoros, the taco you had with the flower tortilla will taste exactly the same as the flower taco that you have in Matamoros. And because text Mex has become so popular in the popular imagination, it has erased the traditions that you ever might have grown up in Corpus CHRISTI Lailo,

and for myself San Antonio. It has not erased it in its power because there are thousands of successful Texas Mexican restaurants and there are very few tex mex restaurants and I always have So that's one The history of the origin and the flavor profile. Those are the two different ways that text Mex differs from Texas Mexican. Texas Mexican is really comia casera of Native Mexican American families in South Texas and northeastern Mexico.

Speaker 5

Why was the native character of this food erased from public record? Why is it lumped into this one category?

Speaker 6

You know, when text mix begins as a word. It is invented by Anglo writers in the seventies who begin to look at our food and realize how important it is, and they don't know about it. They never introduced your mother. They never went to's grandmother and say tell us about it. They went to these Anglos who were running restaurants and they asked them because they spoke English. And so the entire worldview of what text mex is is an Anglo American invention. So I would say the reason it has

been erased is twofold. Our food narrates our identity, and it also shapes our memory of how we came here. So I would say when I grew up, this is to explain why we're not there. We're not there because we were erased and because the way that our education system happens in Texas took away our identity as Native Americans. In eighteen thirty seven, you have a report from the committee it's called the Texas Standing Committee on Indian Affairs.

This is eighteen thirty seven, just after the Element and they say to President Sam Houston of the Republic of Texas, your committee considers the Karankawa no longer on different people. They are now Mexicans and part of the Republic of Mexico. So with one stroke of a pen, the native roots and identity of our ancestors was erased from the public record. We then became Mexicans. We were no longer Tonkawa quawj deco.

This is simply by design. And I would say if you follow that in eighteen thirty seven, through the Edge Education Project of Texas, I grew up learning from school with two markers of my identity Mexico and Spain. That's it, and everything around mequa We think an identity Karanka of Corpus Christi, with their rich thousand year old history, totally arrest It doesn't exist except in the road science of Corpus Christie. You have Karankawa, You've got leeban Abache in

the road sience. So they point to something, but the narrative is not there because we weren't given in our mind too markers we belonging to Mexico and or to Spain. So that's all we think about. And so my work is about getting back to the interior spaces of our families. Because of the interior spaces where we really know our identity. It's strong because with some of the words that we use. For example, for a mother is not mama, which is Spanish,

it's ama, which is a Native American term. And for we don't say baba Spanish, we say a ba. In the interior of our being, we remember these very important identifying things and women remembered, remembered the flavor profile that makes us who we are. We're not Mexican from Maya in Azteca, Mexico City. That is not our defining characteristic.

So that's why that's why this has happened. But I would say, are our Mexican American mothers and women were so strong because they're the ones who do the cooking. They're in charge, and if cooking is member and identity,

they're the ones who in our homes that ah. I recall that those flavor profiles that my mother and grandmother invented in Larelo Corpus Christi, Houston, those untold stories that were erased by political men in Texas, the women kept alive and it is the most successful Mexican flavor profile in the United States. You know, when you go to Missouri or when you go to Chicago, they're not going to serve you iguana in Chilada's with white cheese and

black beans. They're gonna serve you, right, They're going to serve you nachos. They're going to serve you our cheese and chiladas. So the recipes that our grandmothers created have just simply become very, very influential. In Texas, there are thousands of Mexican restaurants and cafes, and there's very very few text mix If you look at the signs in San Antonio, I don't know that there are any text mix restaurants. Signs in Corpus Christi or in Lailo, they all say they all say Mexican.

Speaker 2

They say Mexican.

Speaker 3

No, no, But you know, in La there's a lot of text mex signs, which is and it's funny because you go in and it's not tex Mexicans.

Speaker 6

Yeah, yes, it's.

Speaker 2

It's Calmes, it's Calmex. But it does text mex Yeah. But it's so interesting you say that because you know, I mean, this is a.

Speaker 3

Bigger conversation about the erasure of of our history, right, And and I got my master's in Chicano studies, and I had never even known the other side, you know, it like opened my eyes, you know, really, you know, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2

I was just like, I didn't learn this in Texas history. What are you talking about?

Speaker 4

Yeah?

Speaker 3

And and to learn it later in life, and to learn it in a point where I wanted to know and absorb as opposed to like, you know, when you're young and you just want to pass the class, right, the the interesting thing. And I think a big reason why Mike then I wanted to do this food podcast because that at heart, we're both historians and we love history, and there's there's no better footprint or fingerprints of history

than following a following the culinary path of people. You want to really know the people of a culture, look at their food, right, And so Mike and I really have been fascinated by this journey of doing this podcast and have been fascinated by the response of people who love this podcast because they're learning about.

Speaker 2

Mexico and Latin America.

Speaker 3

Mostly we talk about you know, Spain and other cultures sometimes, but mostly we focus, you know, on what we know, and more than more than learning about cinnamon or vanilla, they're like, I never knew that about Mexico. I never knew that about Texas, and so I love I love that we get to like hide the history lesson in the culinary and the culinary journey.

Speaker 4

And then I wanted to ask you.

Speaker 5

You mentioned, and we've talked about this process of neistimialization so much in the podcast. It's such, we have mass in our bones. Were the people of corn? But then this is there's this idea of that mesquite right when we talk about an externalization, did that make its way to northern Mexico South Texas?

Speaker 4

Do we see that there? Because corn is not something that's.

Speaker 3

Popular really that you know, Yeah, let me tell you. And I know because because I married at Chilango. I married a Mexican. I remember when I when I started dating and I told my mom, Mom, I'm dating a Mexican. She goes from Mexico, Like you know, it was like a big deal. And he is a corn tortilla guy. He does not understand why I make flower tortillas every morning and you do every morning every morning I make

my flower tortillas. And doing searching, doing this podcast and also doing searching for Mexico, you know, understanding why the north is flower and why the rest of Mexico was corn.

Speaker 2

It was fascinating. But but my then, what was your question? Sorry?

Speaker 3

I just we have a big corn versus flower tortilla debate all the time.

Speaker 4

All the time.

Speaker 5

Because I grew up My mom is from Mexico City, my father was from Yucatan, so I grew up with corn in the house. But I grew up in Laredo, so also, you know, flour we had always, but I gravitated towards corn. But when did this process of nixtimialization make its way to our area?

Speaker 6

Yes, I think the process of Dixe neximalization is adding god calcium to corn when you're boiling it, and that makes the protein digestible. It adds nyosin B three and therefore becomes a much more life sustaining grain. I always think about that, and it makes me sad because it contributes to the fact that my ancestors, actually I should say our ancestors in Navaquouila, Lareedo in this area have

been erased. The reason I feel sad is that the cosmopolitan nature of the Quawi Tecan group that karankaas in Corpus Christie, was so rich, and yet we hear nothing of it. That's what makes me said. In sixteen twelve, Captain John Smith in Virginia actually writes in his diary about seeing how the Native Americans in Virginia are making tamales. This is sixteen twelve, and it's sad that it has all been erased because of the things we have been talking about. But not in the food. Not in the food.

The food has not been erased, thankfully.

Speaker 3

What to you is.

Speaker 4

Typical comita casseera.

Speaker 6

Okay, I would say Comiita cassera has a flavor profile that includes chile pekin, klitri, we say kalitre. Know if your family said keleter, well we did. You don't find that.

Speaker 2

You do not find that my dad uses chili peckins for everything. My dad only uses chili peckin.

Speaker 6

That's us to red emirate, which we call kelythri pecans cactus into beans of course, and the flower tortillas. I love to talk about flower totias, but that's another and that techniques are different. We use the techniques that were invented, as I said before, by women fifteen thousand years ago. Wow, oven roasting, you know the fire pits that you dig in the oven. They were the precursor to today's oven. So someone invented that how to cook food within an

enclased oven. So all of those technologies we still use today, boiling, saute, charring, stewing, not so much deep frying, which is a text nex thing. By the way, tex mex is a imitation of my mother's Comita Cassetta, and I don't think they did it very faithfully, but they did it in a way that is success and it's a big business. But tex Mex is an imitation of Texas Mexican food. And the last thing about Comita Cassetta is hospitality. You never have food

just as food, you have hospitality. You have community. By community, I mean connection to history, to this land and to families that have come before us. And lastly, you have memory. The strength of it is it is so delicious. That's why it has influenced all of the Mexican food in the United States, and Wahaka has not. Sure, you have Molee and you have some fancy restaurants, but by and large, the mass mass successful restaurants throughout the United States are our food.

Speaker 4

I'm curious, I keep saying Mesquite dot, Yes.

Speaker 6

Before I said we had these two markers, Myoztec and Spain. I want to reevaluate our real marker, which is the border of Texas, South Texas and northeastern Mexico. And in there mesquite is prominent because we are Lajite del Mesquite. Corn arrives here two thousand years ago, but eight thousand years ago, mesquite is what we ate. Mesquite was what we cooked with in our caves. We took the spines off and it was carpets in our caves, and we

had our entire culture based on mesquite. It was as symbolically important to us as corn is now in the imagination. So in my new book and with the few series, we are going to look at mesquite and see how chefs are beginning to reemploy it. We have mesquito malis, we have mosquito tillas that are coming in. I spoke to a chef in Austin and I said, what mesquite vinegar. So there is this resurgence. And the nice thing about it is that these are all young chefs. I think

it's wonderful. So thank you for asking that.

Speaker 4

Thank you, thank you so much, Adan, This is fascinating, I know.

Speaker 2

Thank you so much. I'm so excited for people.

Speaker 3

We're gonna link all of your books and your documentary on our podcast if you guys want to know more about Adan Medrano.

Speaker 2

He's truly fascinating and even.

Speaker 3

If you're not a Texican like us, I think you're going.

Speaker 2

To find it super interesting. Thanks for joining us, Adan, Thank you.

Speaker 3

Hungry for History is a hyphen Media production in partnership with Iheart'smichael Tura podcast network.

Speaker 5

For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts

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