cooking, food storage, and preservation

When thinking of our endurance and sustained life stretched across time, there are quiet beings, elements, and vessels we owe our deepest gratitude to. Through intimate relationship, observation, and skillful innovation - our ancestors of Aridoamerica have sustained us today by developing an intricate array of cooking, processing, and preserving techniques. These crafts have carried us across time’s rhythmic pulse - through the land’s cycles and seasons. 

Our people’s skillful art in observing time, knowing when to alchemize our relationships and resources to channel them into other forms, was also essential to our sustained nourishment.

The Wind and Sun dried fruits, fermented and nixtamalized corn, cured and smoked fish, or even the very baskets and pots that allow us to harness these possibilities, are all forms of these sacred and ornate transformations. 

Dehydration comes from Wind and Sun - the first preservers. Our ancestors observed plump fruiting bodies of the spring turn shriveled by the end of summer. When a fruit manages to fully ripen, left hanging on the plant to withstand consistent sunshine and wind, what is left are perfectly dried and preserved fruits. The heat of the Sun evaporates the fruit's moisture or water, and the wind helps to wick it away. To dry is to transform, not diminish. Wind and Sun do not take, they offer and write new textures into the flesh of plants and animals alike. Our people knew of this, and thus, wove baskets to further generate these possibilities.

Baskets made from the various fibers of our surrounding plant relatives - kept our foods dry, safe, and organized. They are woven lungs of the land. Baskets breathe with a weave that is tight where food must be held and loose where air must pass, ensuring the fruits and herbs of the warmer seasons could be stored to last us through winter. 

The watchful study of nature’s own cycles in preservation using Wind and Sun drying is a practice worth much reverence, but the relationship grew more elaborate over time as people developed even more intriguing ways of sustaining nourishment. Our revered abuelito Fuego played a vital role in our foodways. Cooking together over an open fire or boiling in clay pots, made food delicious and safe to consume. The act of cooking itself, a communal and ceremonial act of communion with the sacred fire. 

Through this relationship people have been cooking, parching and transforming foods around us since time immemorial. Also forged from the flames are our beloved clay pots, which we use to cook over fire, store foods, and ferment. 

Fermentation processes are an example of how interconnected we are with the delicate, sometimes undetectable cycles around us - including the microbial systems that make fermentation possible. 

Our people’s fermentation processes filled our diets with good bacteria and complex flavors, unlocking nutritional benefits we wouldn’t otherwise get from the whole foods of the land. One use of fermentation was used especially around the tuna fruit. Colonche is a fermented tuna beverage associated with the Chichimecah.

Mezquitamal is another fermentation made from mesquite flour turned to a sort of bread - then fermented and preserved for long periods of time. 

The sacred drink of the Tarahumara, Tesgüino, is a fermented corn-beverage. Whereby maiz is malted, boiled, and then fermented in ollas with various herbs. Traditionally the fermenting-ollas are never washed - to retain the microorganisms that then ferment the maiz-mash. It is told that Onorúame gifted tesgüino to humans to promote harmony and joy. 

Peoples of Aridoamerica also utilized various forms of smoking and drying for preserving meat and fish. Smoke would slowly rise, wrapping itself around the flesh of our animals. The fire licks and breathes. Our ancestors built smokehouses and ovens where the embers of the fire and time move differently.

Our ancestors built racks that leaned into the wind’s song and lifted above abuelito Fuego for smoke to engulf our food. Rack smoking involves the curation of meats and fish over coals or a low-fire. Thinly sliced deer, bison, squirrel, or other meat and fish, are placed across a rack. Allowing it to cook over hardwood coals to dry and absorb smoke. Smoke acts as a natural preservation. 

The fish and meat darken firm, cured by smoke stories. The people learned this from our forerunners, who taught patience and observance of abuelito Fuego.

To dry, to ferment, to smoke - these are not just acts of preservation but serve as a shining example of how all these relationships are connected. The lesson in how to nurture these relationships, observe and step into the natural worlds’ cycles, and transform our surroundings to sustain life all around us, are still felt all around us today.