Oregon ‘Latina Mamas’ cooking classes share food (and wisdom) made from scratch

Sylvia Poareo’s Ashland kitchen was filled with the aromas of roasting ancho and guajillo chiles Thursday night. Cozying around her stove were a handful of people watching Sabina Ramirez, known as one of the Latina Mamas, mix onions, garlic and cinnamon with the chiles to make mixiote chicken steamed in banana leaves.

Poareo translated questions asked in English for the Spanish-speaking Ramirez, but Ramirez’s hands-on teaching needed no words. Soon, everyone was happily busy, pureeing homegrown tomatillos for salsa verde, smashing seasoned and soft pinto beans for refried beans and tasting the developing flavors.

More than a cooking class, Poareo’s regular gatherings honor migrant hands that tend to Rogue Valley fields and the wisdom of sharing food made from scratch.

Community members donate $35-$65 to the cooks through a nonprofit to hear how the Mamas select ingredients and prepare meals in a traditional way. Guests see their teacher’s hands rolling limewater-cured maize into a dough that will be formed into thin patties and placed on a hot comal to make fresh corn tortillas. They take turns with the steel tortilla press or practice flattening the stone-ground flour balls made with masa harina by hand.

“The intention here is not to receive written recipes; food is medicine, and the medicine is in the coming together,” said Poareo, whose mother was a migrant worker from Mexico. “We are honoring and featuring the women who make food, and together we are sharing our humanity.”

Anthropologists say food is a way of communicating a culture without words, and cuisines, like ingredients and cooking methods that Mexico’s Indigenous people originated, are recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Making tortillas from maize using nixtamalization has been passed on over millennia and continues today.

Angel Medina, founder and co-owner of the Republica & Co. hospitality company based in Portland, wants his De Noche restaurant customers to be able to watch a tortilla puff up before their eyes.

“It’s not a show, it’s culture,” he said. “This cuisine isn’t meant to be easy. It takes hours, from start to finish after the corn is grown, to make a tortilla, and we present this as an art created in every house in every home in Mexico.”

The cooking classes in Ashland are fundraisers for victims of the 2020 Almeda fire that roared through the Rogue Valley cities of Talent and Phoenix, burning 2,400 structures, displacing families, and intensifying the state’s affordable housing shortage.

At the time Poareo found herself serving as a go-between, bringing supplies from Ashland residents to many migrant workers who relocated to trailers, spare rooms and hotels without kitchens.

And yet, in the midst of having lost everything and lingering in limbo, “Mamas found a way to make food for their children that provided a sense of stability, security and comfort in chaos,” said Poareo. “Care, love and devotion are communicated through nourishment, and I’d like people to remember that.”

Ramirez’s family lost their home in the fire and when Poareo met them at a hotel, she asked them to live in her house. The Ramirezes stayed for two months before finding permanent housing.

Each morning, around 5 a.m., Sabina Ramirez made tortillas from scratch and fed her family and the Poareo family breakfast. She then packed her children’s lunches and then put in a full day as a farmworker.

Poareo, who grew up in foster care in Southern California and has since made a life and healing practice out of reconnection and reclamation, feels she has a foot in two cultures: The Mexican community of Phoenix and Talent, and the majority white community of Ashland where she has lived since 2019.

“People wanted to help (fire victims), but they didn’t have the connection,” said Poareo, a trained social worker and spiritual teacher who uses Curanderismo healing practices in her work.

Her idea: Invite people to her home to learn the sacred arts of making real food from master cooks who do this as a daily practice.

The message: Food is more than nourishment to the body. It’s reassuring, grounding and keeps families together.

All donations go directly to the Latina Mamas through the nonprofit Association for the Integration of the Whole Person that aids ministries and theaters as well as alternative and traditional spiritual work, according to aiwp.org.

“These Mamas have a wisdom passed on by their mothers and grandmothers that they bring in the face of trauma,” said Poareo. “They make miracles with tomatoes, chili, spices and love. To learn with my dear amigas and be fed by them is a profound gift from their heart, joy and cultural pride.”

Ramirez grew up in Oaxaca, the southern Mexico city recognized by gastronomes as a culinary paradise. She learned to cook from her mother’s generation, using staples of corn and beans, tomato and avocado, and spices like vanilla and chili peppers that Indigenous people cultivated to season fish and turkey long before the Spanish introduced dairy to make quesillo as well as domesticated cows, sheep and chickens.

During the Feb. 22 class, Ramirez will teach the complex process Mexico’s Indigenous people developed that uses water, heat and limewater to turn maize into hominy for life-sustaining, nutritious tortillas and tamales. Participants will practice the process of nixtamalization, an Aztec word for “lime ashes” and “corn dough,” as corn kernels are made into stew, a Michoacán-style posole.

Despite the stress and fear facing migrant workers, the Mamas want to share their skills and have fun, and guests want to connect and learn. Throughout last Thursday’s three-hour class, Ramirez was smiling, encouraging participants to take part in food preparation techniques not included in most cookbooks.

Last Thursday’s session was the second class Lua Maia of Ashland has joined and she’s signed up for this week’s class on posole with fresh nixtamal.

“There are not many cooking classes offered in Ashland, and none led by someone born in Oaxaca who learned to cook as a child,” she said. Last week, “I saw how to soak a raw, organic chicken in vinegar and sea-salt to clean it and other meticulous details.”

The cooking classes are more like a dinner party with new friends. Strangers chat and make connections while learning. Donna Jones of Ashland signed up for the series of classes because she wanted to study Mexican cooking, but she’s discovered so much more.

“Growing up, my mom, like most moms, made dinner in the kitchen and I missed out,” said Jones last Thursday. “I want my children to know how meals are made, and now I have more to share.”

When the mixiote chicken, refried beans, salsa verde and tortillas were ready, participants sat at a long dining table and were asked to join in expressing gratitude. They each spoke from their heart, thanking Poareo for opening her home to them and Ramirez for teaching them.

One participant told Ramirez in English, “your food needs no translation.”

Ramirez quietly accepted the compliments, then it was her turn to speak. In Spanish, she thanked each participant for taking the time to see how much goes into making a meal, from planting seeds to serving.

She added: “Thank you for helping my family and may you be abundantly blessed with good health and finances.”

After a meal of vegetarian enchiladas in January, participants were asked to remember that every ingredient on the table — fruits, vegetables, grains — came to them through largely migrants’ hands. The husband of one of the Mamas pointed to the Mexican cheese and gently added that “it’s not just the milk that made the cheese, but people who milked the cow, fed the cow, grew
the corn or hay, and cleaned the stalls and so on.”

In the U.S, the majority of agricultural workers were foreign born, most often in Mexico, according to 2023 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic report. The USDA in 2021 found 28% of farmworkers are women. Some of these workers travel and work throughout the U.S., serving the trillion-dollar agricultural industry, reports the National Center for Farmworker Health.

Poareo said migrant people experience stigma and mixed messages between groups that welcome migrants and those that scapegoat them.

“They are living under the feeling of animosity so witnessing them being honored makes me so happy,” she said. “They deserve to be honored.”

In the U.S., financial success is celebrated, but there’s a lack of honoring essential earth-based and ancestral skills that are healing for people, Poareo said. She’s hoping to change that, one dinner at a time.

Poareo knows people can be relaxed together under one roof, sharing their cultures through music, art and food. Her hosted cooking class can be replicated, she said.

“Anyone who has relationships can find ways to bridge communities and make people feel honored,” she said.

— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman