New menu details and some kitchen alchemy from warmer days.

Hello!

I wanted to send this out sooner but life with a toddler is full on! My intention is to send the newsletter before social media gets it so you have it 1st!

So yes! The 1st menu available to pre order is here! I'll go over how to order, pick up locations and times. This is the 1st of hopefully many gluten free menus I get to share with you!

I also want to share with you my experience of growing and nixtamalizing (what is that?) blue corn! It felt pretty special. You can find that story after the menu information.

Here is the menu and details. Pick up date will be Saturday November 29th. Please get your orders in by Wednesday November 26th. You can reply to this email with your order or email [email protected].

There you have it! I'll have a few new items for the December Menu. I'm thinking DONUTS and holiday boxes!! If there's something you'd like to see added to the menu, I'm always open to your suggestions and cravings.

If you'd like to share my menu or newsletter with friends, family, coworkers you can send them this link https://marcelas-kitchen.beehiiv.com

Well, winter seemed to just show up all of a sudden. One day we are outside planting garlic and the next day SNOW! All though im not a big fan of a long winter, I do enjoy the snow. It is incredible how the snow completely transforms the scenery. How it sparkles in the moonlight. How it remembers every footprint, pawprint. The colder and shorter days also make me reminisce about warmer, greener days. So today I want to share with you one of the cool things I got to create this summer.

This summer was the 1st time I grew corn. We just got this garden up and going and I had this magic packet of blue corn seeds. There was something about growing this crop that felt special. It felt like I was connecting to my ancestors. It reminds me of the 1st time I grew black beans. My dad's side of the family is from Guatemala, this is also where I spent most of my childhood. Guatemala is home of the Mayan people. There is still a strong presence of Indigenous people, cultural practices, and Mayan dialects. Did you know corn was 1st domesticated about 10,000 years ago by native peoples of what is now known as Guatemala and southern Mexico? Corn is so much part of the history of people and land that in the Mayan creation story of Popol Vuh the Gods formed humans by using corn. I guess it really runs through my DNA.

Even though I feel the connection to the plants that doesn’t mean I knew how to grow them perfectly. The corn didn't do that great and I wasn't sure if it would yeild any fruit. But it did! Just some small ears of corn but they felt special and beautiful nonetheless. Now..how do we eat them?

I did some research and found out how to properly process the corn to make tortillas. The process is called Nixtamalization. If you've ever had corn tortillas, tortilla chips, tamales, then you've had nixtamalized corn.

I won't get too much into the science of it but basically the corn has to be soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution. In the olden days wood ash would be used but now most people use lime (Calcium Hydroxide), not the fruit! This process is necessary as Nixtamalized corn has several benefits over unprocessed grain: It is more easily ground, its nutritional value is increased, flavor and aroma are improved, and mycotoxins are reduced by up to 97–100% . Basically without this process the human body can't absorb the necessary nutrients. This is especially important for the people who have a diet high in corn aka the people of corn. Its pretty amazing to me how humans went about figuring all this stuff out even so long ago. This goes to show the value of indigenous knowledge.