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 The
story begins in a pleasant little shoreline town near New Haven, Connecticut.
Bob and Margaret begat Mark Shepard in 1950,
Elizabeth Emerson in 1954, and Paul Stuart in 1961. Looking back, the
early years were about as sweet as they come; our suburban neighborhood
was filled with families with their own three kids, plenty of woods and
brooks and caves in which to play, and a school playground across the
street that put all three of us extremely high on the list of
"Desired Friends to Go Home With After School."
I always thought I'd become an actor, but a year at Emerson College, where everyone always thought they'd become an actor, made me realize I didn't have the chutzpah needed to make it in the industry. The food and hospitality world beckoned, and over the next fifteen years - aside from a brief stint in a bellhop outfit delivering singing telegrams in Santa Cruz - working as a waitress allowed me to work hard all summer and travel all winter. Determined to lose my preppy roots and become a hippie, I traversed the USA with friends in a VW bus, stopping along the way in towns that intrigued us - Key West, New Orleans, Santa Cruz…always Santa Cruz.
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In the early 80s I married and settled down in Connecticut, where I
managed a few restaurants (one of which received a swell review in the
New York Times food section,
a stellar moment in my restaurant career) before
my love of cooking drew me into the kitchen, where I found my true calling as a chef and caterer. This was 1982 and gal named Martha had just opened up shop
down the coast in Westport...it was an exciting time to be in the food
world.
Life does march on, however, and
after an amicable divorce and the deaths of two very dear friends all within a year, I needed a
change. In 1989, I moved back to Santa
Cruz and dove into the catering scene there. Great times, good friends, and wonderful food, but one day I found myself about to hit 40, tired of working
fourteen-hour days, and wondering, "What's next?" Little did I
know that saying that out loud would lead to an introduction to the amazing Joan
Summers, the owner and creator of La Casa de Espíritus Alegres Bed &
Breakfast in Guanajuato,
Mexico. I
was looking for an adventure, Joan was looking for help, and thanks
to a mutual friend with a brilliant idea (Thanks, Jane!), my life took a turn
south of the border.
My first-ever visit to Mexico was in December 1994. My
Spanish was limited to the days of the week, numbers from one to ten, and
phrases like "Please put the carrots in the large cold room." All
very useful in the catering kitchen, but a little out of place in a house
with seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and no big cold room in which to put carrots. I spent a week learning the ropes with Joan before she left
for India,
a training that more often than not meant laughing hysterically, eating a lot of great meals, and knowing
ripe papaya when I saw one. It wasn't until she was pulling out of the
driveway that I thought to ask, "How do you say
'guest' in Spanish?" Luckily, I have a knack for charades, I had a good Spanish dictionary, and
the staff was extremely patient.The six week inn-sitting job very quickly became a full time position and Mexico became my new home.
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 I realize now that the
seeds of My Mexico Tours were being sown way back then, as I began to see
Mexico through Joan's eyes. The B&B was filled with folk art from every
corner of the country, and her passion for the art and the artisans who
created it was contagious. Every year we'd take a road trip together to
some village or another in search of folk art. I will never forget
pulling into a dusty village of look-alike cinder block houses in search
of a potter she'd met years before, a town that anyone in
their right mind would have driven straight through as quickly as
possible. After knocking on a million doors and traipsing through
numerous homes and backyards filled with sleeping pigs and tethered goats
we came to an open-air workshop where the entire family was working away on
a colorful collection of ceramic chickens in various stages of
completion. There, in the midst of the menagerie, was the son of the
potter she knew.The father had passed away, but his son remembered Joan and
clearly was moved by the respect she held for his father's work. They
hugged, I teared up, and we ordered a gazillion of whatever they were
making. My life as a Mexican folk art addict had begun. That night back at the
B&B I wrote in my journal "You could come to Mexico for twenty years and never see what I saw today, thanks to
Joan."
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Working with Joan was a joy and by 1997 La Casa de Espíritus Alegres was flying high. We were featured in numerous magazine and newspaper articles and the B&B was named one of three "Best Inns of Mexico" in Fodor's and chosen by Frommer's as the "Most Unique Inn of Mexico." Wow. Luckily, Joan lived to see that happen before she succumbed to cancer in 1998 at the age of 64. Tragic. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of her and the great work we did together. And the laughs! Man, that woman was funny! I stayed on for another five years and in the fall of 2002, after eight exciting, challenging, and eminently educational years, I left the B&B.
That fall I went to work on a project with Bon Appétit for their annual travel issue; in 2003 the chosen country was Mexico. I traveled across Mexico for several weeks working on a feature article (18 photo shoots in 23 days in 20 different locations, yowzer!) based on Marilyn Tausend's cookbook Savoring Mexico. In the same issue, my recipes were featured in an Entertaining With Style article, Lunch at the Hacienda, shot at the home of my wonderful neighbors Rosendo & Carlene. A photo of their fabulous house and my delicious Pork Tenderloin with Orange Chipotle Sauce graced the cover of Bon Appétit's Soul of Mexico issue in May 2003.
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In 2003 I moved back to Santa Cruz and I began working with photographer Melba Levick, whom I'd met at the B&B during a shoot for her book Mexicasa, on a book about Mexican kitchens, the fourth of Chronicle Books' Mexico design series. In the fall of 2006 Mexicocina: The Spirit and Style of the Mexican Kitchen was released.
While working with Bon Appétit and on the book, l was traveling all across Mexico meeting cooks, artists, hotel owners, and warm, friendly people everywhere I went. After a particularly profound meeting with Diana Kennedy, then reading her book My Mexico from cover to cover, it became very clear that my next project would be a tour business in which I could share - as Joan had with me - the people, places, art, and flavors of Mexico I had come to love. Not all of Mexico, but my Mexico. |
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MY MEXICO TOURS has been growing since my first folk art trip to Pátzcuaro in the fall of 2003. Since then I've
introduced numerous intrepid travelers to the villages, ruins, and textiles of Chiapas; elegant colonial cities of Puebla and Tlaxcala; the folk art of and fabulous cuisine of Oaxaca and Pátzcuaro, crumbling Maya ruins and thriving Maya culture in Yucatán; regional specialties in humble huts and palatial homes; and, of course, my favorite haunts in my beloved Guanajuato.
We've hiked in jungles, boated through the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City, painted in the courtyards of convents and private estates, scaled ruins, spent the night in three-hundred-year old haciendas and cemeteries glowing with candlelight, and tasted the best blue-corn quesadillas in the world. Artisans, cooks, and characters. Out of the way places and undiscovered restaurants. Boat rides and mariachi music. Drag queens, chefs, and shamans. Wacky fiestas, otherworldy moments, and deeply moving ceremonies. It's a great job.
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 When
I'm not on the road with a tour or researching a new adventure, I'm in Santa Cruz. Home is a
big old farmhouse on an organic apple orchard in Happy Valley
that I share with a friend and her five-year old son. Living in the country
is sweet, and living with friends, especially a child, is a delight. I
still sometimes feel like a foreigner in the US after all those years in Mexico, but
I like it just fine. I do a radio show at the college station here in Santa
Cruz (log on to kzsc.org the first Sunday of the month, 9am to 12noon and
you might just find me spinning the tunes) which brings me great pleasure,
and I'm still catching up for lost time with friends and family all over
the country.
Life is
good, never boring, and it feels pretty darned good to say, "I live in Happy Valley."
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