La Siembra del Nombre – An Aztec naming ceremony
I think it was my Marissa, her new godmother, who first heard about the Aztec naming ceremony called :La Siembra del Nombre (the planting of the name.) My son and daughter-in-law wanted to celebrate my grand daughter Violeta’s first birthday with a naming...Feast of St. Christopher – Fiesta de San Cristobal
The first fiesta de pueblo, town feast, I attended was in 1985 in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. I have come at the time of a major local festival, the feast of the city’s patron, St. Christopher. The celebration begins a week before St....“Bad girl turns good” or why Mary Magdalene is so popular.
This weekend my dear friend Antonia, choreographer, yoga master and healer is putting on a show based on Mary Magdalene, the fallen woman who mended he ways and was declared a saint. It was quite a performance with sacred chants, dance and very much unlike the...Semana Santa
During Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Mexico processions and passion plays take place all through the country, though different areas celebrate in different ways and certain communities have more elaborate celebrations. Those areas in Mexico where Holy Week is celebrated...Tamales by Zarela Martinez for the Slowfood Guide for New York
Tamales by Zarela Martinez It makes me inordinately happy to pick up the phone at Zarela and hear somebody ask, “What’s the tamale of the day?” It wouldn’t have happened when we opened fifteen years ago, because people thought all Mexican tamales were the same thing,...
The many lives of Zarela Martínez
Culinary legend Zarela Martínez introduced finely tuned, highly researched regional Mexican cuisine to a national stage, and has continued to blaze trails for more than three decades.