Report from the Road: New Mexico

Presenting A Program, Researching Food Heritage

Clayton | Ruidoso | Silver City | Las Cruces | Socorro | Chimayo

“Chocolate, Chiles, Corn and More:
Foods of the Americas”

Who can imagine Italian food without the tomato? Chinese food without hot chiles?

60% of what everyone in the world eats today came originally from the Americas.

The FOOD Museum’s lively, hands on program about the multicultural story of America’s native foods is traveling around New Mexico this year, visiting museums and schools, thanks to a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council. The program explores the foods that traveled New Mexico’s trails, traversed the world and changed the way everyone eats.

The funding also allows us to meet with and hear food stories from wonderful, smart people who comprise our audiences. In Clayton, New Mexico, way up in the far northwest corner of the state, we met a teacher who spent years in Reykivic, Iceland, and told us, yes, bananas were grown in geyser-heated greenhouses there. And a young couple who reported that former NBA basketball star and New Mexican Luke Longley was exporting Hatch green chiles to Australia, “making much more money than he did playing ball.” Another woman’s German ancestors were hired by Empress Catherine of Russia to teach farmers in Russo-Poland “modern” ways of growing red winter wheat.

Our first stop on the tour was Clayton's Herzstein Museum, a grandmother’s attic pot pourri of artifacts and memorabilia that nicely tell the cattle ranch driven-town’s story.

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.

Ruidoso

Recently The FOOD Museum appeared at Ruidoso’s Hubbard Museum. Among other food-related items, the Hubbard has one of the finest rebuilt chuckwagons we’ve seen.

This was the cowboy’s traveling kitchen, first conceived of by Charles Goodnight in 1866 when he took an old Army supplies wagon and added a wooden compartment with a leg. This unit served as a cooking platform and storage area. ( At the other end of the Hubbard display area take note of the perfect 1920’s English picnic basket, complete with teakettle and egg cups!)

We also visited Ruidoso's Dowlin's Old Mill

and learned about owner Delana Michaels' efforts to turn it into the town museum. (More on this will appear in our Global Food Heritage pages.)

Silver City

At the Silver City Museum we presented the progam outdoors in the museum’s garden.

Afterwards we learned of dandelion greens and “bag” pudding from an Upstate New York native, and met a Texas woman who had actually eaten that typically American food, armadillo. Another member of the audience was interested in what we knew of the processing of prickly pears. Susan Berry, the museum’s director, was delighted to discover that the odd woven item she had on display at her home, a bizarre gift from friends, was a device used by rain forest people of Brazil to extract cyanide from cassava, another American native, before preparing it. ( Cassava is a food we explore in the program. Does anyone know the accurate name of the woven tube? If so, please get in touch with us.)

We also met David Berry, Susan's husband, who had just returned from his annual six months living and working in Antarctica. He promised to provide us with first hand reporting on mealtimes at the South Pole next season. ( Obscure Fact: Silver City may have the highest per capita number of residents, five, who work annually in Antarctica.)

Foodies visiting Silver City should also see the extraordinary collection of Mimbres Pottery at the Western New Mexico University Museum. Try the food at Diane's Restaurant--the tomato soup was spectacular--as well as at the town's oldest eatery, Silver City Cafe, a favorite for "real" Mexican food.

In Las Cruces we presented at Alameda Elementary, at the invitation of Gale Wiley. The Las Cruces crowd was large, engaged, and into cheering for Western Hemisphere foods over those from the Eastern side of the globe.

While down south in New Mexico, in Las Cruces, home of New Mexico State University, a major center for chile pepper research, we stopped by Roberto's Restaurant.( Try both the red and the green here.) Roberto Estrada established the Whole Enchilada Festival there 24 years ago and holds a Guinness Book of Records title for creating the world's largest enchilada himself, a few years back. ( Lower left picture above is in Roberto's, the Guinness Record Corner.)

Socorro

At Cottonwood Valley Charter School in Socorro, students clamored to hold one end of Tom's "guts" at the close of the presentation--every educational program we do ends with a look at the digestive system. We appeared at Cottonwood School in support of the brand new El Camino Real International Heritage Center, a nearby project that gives visitors a look at the history that played out along the Royal Road that began in Mexico City, passed through Socorro and much of New Mexico,and had its major terminus in Santa Fe.( The Center opens in Fall 2005.)

We talked with students about the basic cart that carried people and food supplies along El Camino Real, the "carreta," and they reminded us of the copy of the cart that sits a couple blocks east of Socorro's Plaza. Nearby is the circular sculpture depicting the peaceful exchanges between natives and the Spanish. Don't miss the chance to eat at Martha's Black Dog Coffeehouse--excellent food, great coffee and desserts, an eclectic array of bizarre "museum" items not for sale, and numerous photos of dogs from all over, including the namesake black dog. Above, Lower Right, The Black Dog features a dandy soft sculptureon the wall--it's pasta entwined in a fork, by Holly Hughes.

There’s more to come in our tour and much more to record on what we learn as we go. Many thanks again to NMCH for making this museum outreach possible.

The FOOD Museum at Chimayo Museum

Visitors enter Chimayo Museum by first crossing a wooden bridge over
one of the oldest intact irrigation canals in the Southwest USA,
dating from the early 1700's.

Continuing our New Mexico Humanities Council-supported tour of New Mexico museums, we presented "Chocolate, Chiles, Corn and More: Foods of the Americas" at the Chimayo Museum recently. Chimayo was a Spanish colonial settlement that began in 1740 and its Plaza del Cerro is one of the last fortified plazas in New Mexico. (For a full exploration of this remarkable plaza please visit The FOOD Museum’s Global Food Heritage report.) Its church, the Santuario de Chimayo, is one of the state’s most famous and revered sites.

The Chimayo Museum is housed in the adobe family home of the Ortegas, Jose Ramon Ortega and Petra Mestas Ortega, progenitors of the famous weavers of the Rio Grande region. Fourteen children grew up in the building now dedicated to explaining and honoring the story of Chimayo. Museum director Lorraine Vigil and her colleagues are dedicated to exploring Chimayo history with the community’s young people. Trinirae Romero explained to us that this summer the Chimayo Youth Corps has planted local seeds, particularly those of the “Chimayo chile,” as well as corn and squash, in small plots near the museum. The Corps plans to sell the produce to raise money for its youth resource activities. Another benefit to the project encouraged by Chimayo Museum is to reconnect young people with their history.

The Plaza itself, of which the former Ortega home forms one portion of “wall,” was once filled with crops, watered by an old irrigation canal or acequia. The museum board is working to “revive” the Plaza, an effort filled with roadblocks, and differing opinions among the locals. Back in the late 1980’s Robert Redford offered to clean up the plaza, not totally restore it or change its look, for his film the Milagro Beanfield War. The majority of the town said no, the film crew shot instead in nearby Truchas, NM, and Truchas had its church restored.

A photo exhibition from the early 1900’s on display at the museum is filled with food and farm references—Encarnacion Rodriguez is shown sifting flour, the RM Martinez family poses with venison and red chiles, and in another photo red chile pods are split open and the seeds removed—this “process called despepitando would make the hands burn all night like fire.”

Cleaning chiles in the plaza, circa 1910.
Prudence Clark photographs, Menaul Historical Library Collections

Stewardship of this food heritage site is currently in the hands of the committed and knowledgeable Board of Chimayo Museum, (above,) its building, the old home of the Romero family, bordering right on the old Plaza. From left, Aida Gonzalez, Barbara Montoya, Lorraine Vigil, Dan Jaramillo, Brenda Romero and Andrew Ortega.

Barbara Montoya continues the traditions of her family—she grows blue corn, harvests and grinds it, and makes atole, a delicious grainy porridge-style drink often served warm, usually sweetened with sugar and thinned with milk. She served some at the museum after our presentation, along with chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Click here to visit our exhibit on Plaza del Cerro.

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