Anglos in New Mexico roughly refers
to any person of Non-Hispanic or Native American
ancestry. The term "Anglo" refers to people
who came into New Mexico from the eastern or western
parts of the USA. English, not Spanish, was their
first or second language.
Here's an article about the "melting
pot" that has always been Santa Fe, but might
as well refer to "Anglos" across the entire
state.
A Footnote on "Anglos"
In much of the country,"Anglo" is the
short form for "WASP" -- white Anglo-Saxon
Protestant. In Santa Fe, however, "Anglo"
takes on a variety of shades, from African American
to Asian, Arab to Jew. As we've mentioned elsewhere
in this guide, the term as generally used in New
Mexico refers to anyone who's not Hispanic or Native
American, regardless of race or heritage. Because
that embraces so many cultures, it's difficult to
define. But it's fun exploring the stereotypes.
They include wealthy retirees or celebrities, perhaps
buying their second or third home; trust-fund babies
-- age is unimportant -- who come here to "find
themselves;" New Age adherents in search of
a mystical experience and hoping to find one by
sheer proximity to Native Americans; hippies who
arrived in the '60s and never left -- some of them
still hippies, others successful professionals or
entrepreneurs; artists and writers looking for their
muse; ski bums who work three seasons a year to
play on the slopes all winter. We're sure everyone
in Santa Fe could come up with a few stereotypes
of its own.
Outside the cultural cliches are the "Anglos"
who have lived here all their lives, some with roots
going back 150 years to the Santa Fe Trail. Others
are regular working stiffs who personally, or whose
parents, chose Santa Fe as their home because of
its physical beauty and fascinating blend of cultures.
In the mix are pockets of ethnic communities including
Tibetans, who have strong political support here
in their fight to reclaim their homeland from China;
Chinese, many of whom arrived here in the 19th century
with the railroad; African-Americans, who account
for 0.6 percent of the population; Ashkenazy Jews,
whose ancestors helped blaze the Santa Fe Trail;
scientists of all backgrounds who work at Los Alamos
National Laboratory; and people of literally dozens
of other ancestries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Santa Fe is its own melting pot and becoming more
so every year as people from one end of the country
to the other, one end of the world to the other,
discover all it has to offer. (source)
Clayton is a nifty small town, once
a place the museum’s enthusiastic director,
D.Ray Blakeley, as a teenager,“couldn’t
wait to get out of.” Today the town boasts
a thriving citizenry who banded together just a
few years ago to buy the historic Eklund
Hotel.
A major watering hole for generations,
the Eklund was crumbling, its dining room still
open but its hotel closed. ( Eklund has been serving
food continuously since the turn of the century,
which makes it an important community food heritage
site.)
We came aross a menu from the Eklund
at the Herzstein Museum, dating back to Thanksgiving
1917. This bit of paper ephemera tied in perfectly
with our food history theme. As you can see below,
oyster cocktail tops the list--in those days fresh
oysters were shipped by rail in barrels and the
oysters were "fed" with corn meal to keep
them alive on the long trek west. Celery hearts,
a food from the Eastern hemisphere, came after the
oysters, along with olives, another native of the
other side of the world. Then, tomato soup created
from one of the western hemisphere's most delectable
fruits. The main offering, of course, is turkey,
a favorite native game.
Now the Eklund is renovated and lively,
welcoming visitors who tend to make it a regular
stop on their way somewhere else.
Some "Anglos"
who have made a contribution to New Mexico food
Paul
Bosland professor of horticulture and director
of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State
University in Las Cruces, has a reputation as one
of the top chile breeders in the world. Paul, smiling
and soft spoken, continues his work of developing
new varieties of chile that overcome environmental
challenges from every quarter.
Concentration at NMSU is on five breeding programs:
green varieties, red varieties, paprika (used for
food coloring), cayenne, and different colored ornamental
varieties. The goal is to give New Mexico farmers
a three-year edge on the competition because the
seed will be ultimately made available to other
growers, even in other countries.
"And," as Paul explains,
"I am still a professor and I work closely
with my graduate students in their masters and doctorate
programs. I have had students from all over the
world; currently I have graduate students from Hungary,
Nepal, and Senegal. It is a good feeling to see
these students develop into scientists who will
help to solve some of the world’s food production
problems."
Paul recently won a distinguished Regents Professorship,
an award that recognizes faculty who have made outstanding
contributions to the university’s mission
as a land-grant university. The award carries an
annual $12,500 stipend. Paul, in addition to developing
numerous varieties of ‘NuMex’ chiles,
is the coauthor of The Pepper Garden and Peppers
of the World.
Dave
Dewitt is one of the foremost authorities in
the world on chile peppers and spicy foods. Dave
researched and wrote numerous magazine and newspaper
articles on chile peppers in the late 1970's. In
1984, St. Martin's Press published his first cookbook,
The Fiery Cuisines, co- authored with Nancy Gerlach.
That book is still in print more than seventeen
years later by Ten Speed Press. In 1987, Dave and
Nancy approached a local publisher, and the three
launched Chile Pepper magazine with a mere 212 subscribers.
By 1995, with Dave as the editor-in-chief, the magazine
had surpassed 50,000 subscribers with a total circulation
exceeding 80,000. The magazine was sold in1996 and
Dave launched Fiery Foods & Barbecue Business
Magazine, a trade publication. The earlier Chile
Pepper magazine project led to numerous books, including
The Whole Chile Pepper Book (Little, Brown, 1990),
which now has nearly 100,000 copies in print and
recently had its tenth printing. Dave has 31 published
books to his credit and continues to write books
at the rate of one or two a year. He is also producer
of the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show,
the trade show for the multi-billion dollar Fiery
Foods and Barbecue industries, now in its 13th year.
His book The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia (William
Morrow, 1999) won the award “Best Spice Book
in English” at the 1999 World Cookbook Awards
at Versailles. His latest book, again with Nancy
Gerlach, is Barbecue Inferno: Cooking with Chile
Peppers on the Grill (Ten Speed Press, 2001).Other
notable books by Dave and his co-authors include:
The Pepper Garden, Peppers of the World, Hot &
Spicy & Meatless, The Healing Powers of Peppers,
and The Hot Sauce Bible. In 1995, his book, A World
of Curries, was nominated for a James Beard Award.
Dave is co- producer, writer, and host of Heat Up
Your Life!, a three-part video documentary series
on chile peppers and spicy foods that will run on
PBS or a cable channel. He is also publisher of
the Fiery Foods & Barbecue Super Site, at www.fiery-foods.com.
Katherine Kagel
is the founder of Cafe Pasqual, named for the
folk saint of Mexican and New Mexican kitchens and
cooks, San Pasqual. The historic pueblo-style adobe
is located one block southwest of the plaza, in
the heart of downtown Santa Fe. The festive dining
room is lined with hand-painted Mexican tiles and
murals by the renowned Mexican painter Leovigildo
Martinez, depicting the moon reveling at her fiesta.
Pasqual's is a small cafe by any standards, seating
only fifty at a time, but each day the kitchen makes
enormous quantities of food. They bake dozens of
loaves of bread, churn gallons of ice cream, create
chile sauces by the potful, hand-chop the ingredients
for crocks of salsas, and perform countless other
operations.
Deborah
Madison founding chef of Greens Restaurant in
San Francisco, has garnered high praise from some
of the luminaries of the cookbook world. Marion
Cunningham has said, “If I could have only
one book on the subject of vegetables, Vegetarian
Cooking for Everyone would be it.” Alice Waters
says, “She writes the same way she cooks and
gardens: with passion and knowledge.” And
Martha Rose Shulman writes, “Her recipes bring
so much flavor, beauty, and excitement to the plate,
but with so little fuss.”
Willem
Malten owner of Cloud Cliff bakery, organic
food promoter and filmmaker was born in Amsterdam,
Netherlands in 1955. From 1981-1984 he lived, worked
and meditated as a Zen Monk at the Zen Center and
at the Tassajara Zen Monastery in California
In 1984 Willem Malten started the Cloud Cliff –bakery,
café, artspace -in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Cloud Cliff has grown into a thriving business with
about 40 employees. It specializes in organic produce.
As long term board member of the Santa Fe Farmers
Market and manager of Cloud Cliff, Willem Malten
was instrumental in setting up the Northern
New Mexico Organic Wheat Project, a rural revitalization
program for small family farmers aimed at preserving
genetic diversity and fertile farmlands. It started
in 1994 and is still very active. In 1998 Malten
was commissioned by the New Mexico Department of
Agriculture to make a movie about the Wheat Project
called ‘The Staff of Life’. It won immediate
statewide acclaim, and stimulated similar projects
in Northern California, Oregon and also Vermont.
Mark
Miller founder of Coyote Cafe and promoter of
Southwest/New Mexican cuisine world-wide.
Lynn
Walters initiated Cooking with Kids
in 1995, based on food acceptance research conducted
by Antonia Demas, Ph.D., and inspired by the work
of Cookshop and The Hartford Food System. Cooking
with Kids grew out of the efforts of a local student
nutrition advisory council to improve school food.
The program began as a volunteer effort in two public
elementary schools in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over
4,000 Kindergarten through sixth grade students
in eleven schools now participate in the program.
We are encouraged by the consistent support from
public and private sources, Santa Fe Public Schools,
and the generosity of the philanthropic community.
Groceries & Supermarkets
When the Love brothers moved to southeastern New
Mexico in 1900, they founded the City of Lovington.
Lovington is located on the land that Robert F.
Love homesteaded in 1903. The first business in
Lovington was the Jim B. Love Grocery Store, built
by Robert's brother in 1908, and the post office
was set up in the store.
In 1910, a successful attempt to draw new settlers
was made by offering free lots to families with
children. Lovington was appointed as the county
seat in 1917, which assured the community's future
prosperity. The city was incorporated in 1918.
It was the initiative of leaders of the community
that brought rail service to the area. Initially,
their efforts did not entice the railroads; but
the discovery of oil and gas did. The impact of
the oil industry was most prevalent during the 1940's
and 1950's with a 12,000 foot deep oil production
well, the "Sawyer Discovery."
Before the discovery of oil and gas, the community
was primarily involved in ranching and farming.
Lovington's lifestyles and labor force were shaped
by the new industry. The oil and gas industry eventually
declined, leaving a lasting impression. However,
many businesses survived and others provided gradual
but steady growth.
A
Global Food Heritage Project
