Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eva Longoria and I am Ma Traon
and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores
our past and present through food.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
So make yourself at home, even hi, everybody. Disclaimer, I'm
doing my hair while we're recording this podcast, so you
may hear a little bit of noise and what are
you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, I'm at home, but I live on a very
busy intersection and it's rush hour traffic. Not doing my hair,
but I'm sitting in a very busy office on a
very busy corner in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I just want everybody to know we have real lives.
We don't just sit around talking about food all the time.
Some of the time, but not all of the time.
I'm excited for this episode because I feel like food
can be used for good in so many ways, from
like you're Abuela making you soapita if they ow when
(00:59):
you're in the weather.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
To starting a free breakfast program in your community. This
episode is all about food for good.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I love this topic and when you and I originally
spoke about like we should do an episode about it.
I just want to explain to our audience, like what
do we mean for food for good?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, it could be so many different things. So of
course it could be activism through food. And the first
person that comes into my mind when I think of
that as jose Andres Right. He is a famous chef
who decided to start an organization to feed people around
the world during emergencies.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Or crises anywhere in the world. And he always says food.
What I love about his model is like food should
not be weaponized, Like there should not be people starving
anywhere in the world because of war, because of a hurricane,
because of you know, like food should not be leveraged
as a weapon.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Exactly exactly. He's amazing. I mean what he does. He
puts himself in in the middle of these incredibly dangerous
and just situations and he does what governments don't do.
I mean, he's served over four hundred million meals. It's incredible.
This man deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Man For me, Holsandrez is the perfect example of someone
doing good with food on a global scale.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Talk about someone who's reshifted the course of his career
because he wanted to help people.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I mean, he's like a saint. I've always wanted to
go to one of the places and volunteer. I actually
did volunteer in Texas when the freeze happened in Texas,
and Holsandres was there with the World Central Kitchen providing
meals for everybody whose power was knocked out during this freeze.
And so the World Central Kitchen is usually the first
(02:47):
one on the front lines providing not only fresh meals,
but culturally sensitive meals in a response to like a
humanitarian crisis or a climate crisis or community crisis or
war zones. And remember when he started this, it was
in Haiti after the earthquake in twenty ten. And then
(03:07):
where really kind of where his concept and idea really
exploded was when he fed the people in Puerto Rico
after Hurricane Maria. And then from there it was kind
of it was more about these natural disasters, and then
it really shifted to these refugee humanitarian crisises, you know,
the war in the Ukraine, the war in Gaza. And
(03:29):
I mean, he really, this man is a saint.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
He really is. So do you remember what prompted him
to do this, Like how he said, you know what,
I'm just going to do this. The governments, their local
governments aren't doing enough or can't do enough, So I'm
just going to take it upon myself to go out
there and use food to create community. And what you mentioned,
you stressed the culturally sensitive meals that I think is
(03:56):
just so thoughtful. I mean, he's not flipping burgers, no.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Is, and he's not just you know, putting a ham
sandwich together and putting it in a box and sending
it to these people in need. He's I don't know
what gave him the idea, but in Haiti, you know,
he was cooking with Haitians who were living in the camp,
and the Haitians were teaching him how to prepare their
beings locally, and so he realized, Oh, in a time
(04:26):
of disaster, people are comforted by their by their regional food.
And I thought, oh, what are like an aha moment,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Wow wow, And that makes perfect sense. When you feel sick,
you want your mom's cooking. It's unbelievable the things that
he has done.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What's Central Kitchen, the no profit I found it more
than a decade ago, always specializes in feeding communities after
natural and man made disasters. We are unique in how
we work and the aid we provide. We worked with
the first three organs of now because when you are
hungry or thirsty, you are hungry or thirsty today, not tomorrow.
(05:08):
We believe in the power of food to rebuild lives, communities,
and jobs. A plate of food is a plate of hope.
Unlike other eight organizations, we buy local food and we
trust local people to feed local people with the real
time intelligence, passion, and expertise.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Don't go anywhere hungry for history will be right back.
I feel like women have always played an important role,
specifically like in wartimes like during the Civil War, the
American Civil War, how women wrote cookbooks to raise funds
(05:47):
for social causes. And you know this was at a
time where they couldn't even own property. You have a
bank account without a man, and so to know that
women were like, what skill do I have? Oh? I
know how to book? Oh I know recipes. Yeah, let's
do a charitable cookbook or a community cookbook and maybe
we can you know, raise some funds Like that, to me,
(06:08):
it's crazy. I also I do remember this, You're the
cookbook crazy person. I am, but I remember a woman
suffragette cookbook. I remember, I just remember this concept. I
don't know where I read it.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I mean it is this this sort of concept,
and this was happening all over the world. But these
American civil these community cookbooks that you're talking about, are
so fascinating. The first one is called a Poetical Cookbook
by a woman named Maria Moss, and it was published
in eighteen sixty four to subsidize medical costs for Union
(06:40):
soldiers during the Civil War. And this is where, you know,
like you said, women couldn't vote, women couldn't do so
many things, so they were using the kitchen for activism
to raise funds to organize because it was sort of innocuous,
which is so fascinating. In this poetical cookbook. We should
(07:00):
include that on the link to this episode because it
is available online. And it's really interesting because it literally
is a poetical it has poetry with you know, among
the recipes. Yeah, it's really beautiful. What a great idea,
I know, it really is. And then the suffrage at
COOPO In eighteen eighty six, a group of progressive women
(07:21):
in Massachusetts decided to write a cookbook to raise funds
for you know, to spread their agenda, to spread their
groups agendas. So and they sold these groups that you know,
these these books were sold at fairs and at festivals.
And I guess the modern equivalent would be like those
Junior League cookbooks you know that you might, Yes, sometime
(07:43):
when I go to librariy sales, like, I always pick
them up and they're they're so interesting and they also
these types of books give us a sense of history
that no other source, you know, really really does because
they are so personal.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Well yeah, and you know, I know, I mean in
Mexico there was a lot of activism with cookbooks and
specifically women because during the revolution there was a woman,
Anna Maria Hernandez know that she was writing cookbooks for
like the working class, and she dedicated one of them
to the president elect, Lazaro Cardenas, who she dedicated to
(08:26):
a great friend of revolutionary women. She encouraged education by
telling female leaders to read. She stressed the importance of
cleanliness and organization in the home and in the kitchen,
but she also encouraged readers to take advantage of Mexico's
rich farmland to grow their own fruits and vegetables. So
I thought like, oh my gosh, like this wasn't just
(08:47):
an American thing it was, it was also a Mexican thing.
And she also helped simplify rural women's lives by fighting
to increase the number of public mills for nixtamal, which
is that's the process of corn, right.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, It's amazing that women did this.
And she didn't write just this one cookbook. She wrote
a series of cookbooks, and she was just this is
nineteen thirty four, soon after the revolution. Women in Mexico were,
you know, asserting themselves in their role in the community
through books. She had a highly successful cooking school, the
(09:21):
first owned and operated by a Mexican woman in the country.
She published over one hundred and fifty cookbooks. But what
I find how she ties into this idea of activism
is that among the cookbooks that she published were things
like makingkilatinas you know, making cakes, making sausages, and these
(09:43):
gave women tools to make these products from home and
start their own businesses. So her motto was cooking is
the root of economics. So they gave them new tools
to start their own businesses from their homes and she
was based in Mexico City, but she also offered correspondence courses,
so if you lived anywhere in the world, and you
(10:05):
know anywhere in the country, are also in the Caribbean.
There's one diploma that I that I came across that
she gave to a woman in Puerto Rico who was
taking her class. So she really threw her cookbooks. Through
a magazine that she had, she was able to reach
women all over so that they could start businesses from
their own homes.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
The most famous form of activism I also remember was
the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for school children program. I mean,
of course I don't I wasn't born. I wasn't born then,
but I remember reading about this because you know, I
think people think of Black Panthers as you know, one thing,
but you know, every big it's message about ending police brutality,
(10:48):
and they really, you know, encouraging black people's survival, like
that's what they were known for. But I remember the
Black Panther Free Breakfast program's amazing and they've had tens
of thousands of hungry kids. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
They did. They and at its peak they fed tens
of thousands of kids, and the FBI had at the time.
J Edgar Hoover, he hated the Black Panthers, called the
program potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to
neutralize the Black Panther Party and destroy what it stands for.
And the Chicago police even broke into a church where
(11:25):
they were feeding kids and urinated on the food. Like
there was just all of this stuff to stop them
from doing from doing good. They were feeding hungry kids.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And I remember the USDA tried to pilot the free
breakfast program in the nineteen sixties, but it never took
off until the Black Panther breakfast programs, yeah exactly dismantled. Yeah,
isn't that crazy? Like they were like that, you know,
kids need to.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Eat, exactly, and they did it. But then the government said, Okay,
well now we're gonna now we're gonna we're gonna take
credit for it.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, why don't we do it? We're at this Yeah,
but yeah, I think it if it wasn't for the
actions of the Black Panthers breakfast program, I don't think
we would have our current form of that today.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Now.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I mean, it's amazing, you know, they piloted. They began
something that is so necessary that is still happening today.
After the break, we'll hear from Meymna Hussein Katan, the
founder of Flavors from Afar, a restaurant and social enterprise
helping former refugees and asylum seekers preserve recipes from their
(12:30):
home countries.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
She's also helping them learn valuable skills to help them
flourish as entrepreneurs. You don't want to miss it. Stay
with us.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
There are so many people doing good all over the world.
I remember watching Searching for Mexico and the first episode
you visit it Casato Chan Refugee Center in Mexico City.
Talk to us about that. Such an experience. It's the
first shelter for immigrants in Mexico City, so most of
the immigrants from Central America and Lura s Guatemala, Cube,
(13:13):
there's Cubans, there's Haitians. It's really the first shelter for
immigrants in the city. And on the show we got
to interview a lot of the residents there, and the
residents cooked dishes from their homeland and they share with
their housemates, so they When I was there, there was
a Cuban guy and he made like a form of
(13:33):
pro babika. I forget exactly what it was called, but
and he'll make it for you know, for the whole house.
And somebody from yeah, from Africa, will you know, cook
something from their house.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And I thought, God, that's such a great idea. Like,
like we said, you know, a lot of times, food
is the only thing that travels with you. You've left
your belongings, you've left your families, you've left every single memory, possession, photo, like,
you can't take things with you when you're migrating, and
the only thing you have is like memories tied with food.
(14:06):
And so I just thought it was a beautiful program
that she ran down there.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
It's incredible. I love that you included that in the
show too. And here in La there is an incredible
woman helping former refugees and asylum seekers through this restaurant
called Flavors from Afar. It started with this idea that
making and sharing food is a universal gesture. It's basically
just what you said and what you experienced at Gasatochan
(14:33):
in Mexico, but this universal gesture that transcends cultural boundaries
and speaks a language of love that is understood by all.
You might not have been able to take the photograph
of you know, your mom or whatever, but you have
these memories of you know, a food, because food is
about so much more than you know, eating right and flavors.
(14:56):
This restaurant is a testament to the power of community
and compassion. So there are chefs from Ukraine, from Haiti,
from Iran, from Guatemala, from Congo. It's affiliated with the
Tia Foundation, which is also run by Maymuna, and it's
a nonprofit committed to supporting refugees and asylum seekers.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And it also has that designation from the Michelin bib Gourmand.
So it's not like a Mission Star, but it is
listed among the top Los Angeles restaurants two years in
a row, so that's.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yes, it's amazing. And Maymuna herself has been honored as
a CNN hero. I mean, and this place is extraordinary.
We had conversation visited Flavors from Afar. I actually met
her before the pandemic. She popped up on my social
media and I was like, I have to make friends
with this person, and so I reached out to her
and she was opening the original location of Flavors from
(15:53):
Afar in Little Ethiopia and we met there. The restaurant
was opened the week of the lockdowns in twenty twenty.
She has since closed this location and she's opening a
new location in the heart of Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard.
And here's my conversation with Mee Mona Enjoy. So we
(16:14):
are at Flavors from Afar on Hollywood Boulevard in East Hollywood,
the most incredible place with Maymuna, Who's going to tell
us all about this amazing space and give us a tour.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So Hi, Moenah, and she's.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
A welcome to the space here. I'm so lucky. It
includes the two rooms, which one side looks and feels
like an art gallery, and on the other side we
have this beautiful patio space that faces Hollywood Boulevard. There's
a warmth, and I really want it to feel like
you know, you're at home, you're visiting a friend, but
(16:46):
a little RESORTI vibe.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
It's very sophisticated.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Right now, we are available for catering, venue rental, private dining,
and I want to add something unique because a lot
of the rep chefs we work with have kids, so
it'd be nice to incorporate like an art station for
children or a little bit of childcare.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
What is Flavors from Afar.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Flavors from Afar is a social enterprise where we partner
with former refugees and asylum seekers that preserve their recipes
and we do the labor for them. But our main
focus is to really celebrate the chefs and their cuisines
and to let Los Angeles know that this person wants
to create their own catering company and we help make
(17:32):
it happen. I love this location. We're in the heart
of Hollywood, right off of Hollywood Boulevard, next to the
one on one freeway.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Cross streets are.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Hollywood Boulevard and Wilton. Right now, you could hear buses
and cars and engines and pedestrians and all the life
of the city. It's just so amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
It is wonderful being in the heart of Los Angeles,
the heart of Hollywood, which is so multicultural.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
I think over the year, there's what I've learned with
working with refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented families from all over
the world is we have more in common than we
do differences, and once people arrive, there is this desire
to really look out for their children and guarantee safety
(18:20):
and security, and no matter what country they're from, there's
just absolute love for their families, but also this grief
that surrounds them. And I think the experience overall feels daunting.
(18:43):
It's scary, it's traumatic, highly emotional, brings up bad memories,
there's PTSD. All of that is true, and there is
this beauty of preservation of culture, preservation of food, language, recipes, music,
And that's what I really want to emphasize at Tia, And.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I love what you're saying about the mission of Flavors
or one of the missions of flavorsus keeping these flavors
alive or keeping these recipes alive and focusing on community,
on home, on the positive aspects of life in a
new place, of starting life in a new place. So
what are some of the recipes that the refugee chefs
(19:26):
here at Flavors from Afar are keeping alive.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Well, we are really creative in our partnership with the
chefs that we work with, and our priority are dishes
that they would make at home for their children. So
we would constantly ask them like what would you make
for your family? That's not easy to find at a
local restaurant. An example would be Chefs Sonya from Guatemala.
(19:51):
Many of our customers actually have no idea that there
was a connection to Chinese immigration in Guatemala, and a
few of our customers when she's highlighted that month and
they see on the menu that there's chowmen, they get
really emotional. And there was this one man in particular
(20:11):
that had to pause and cry for a moment because
he said he hasn't had that dish since he was
a child back home.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
So that's the intentionality.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It's not only fun food, cool food percentage back to refuge,
it's also what did you preserve, what reminds you of
back home? What do you make for your kids now?
And not everyone has access to the same recipes and
spices from their home countries, so there's always this Los
(20:40):
Angeles twist.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 4 (20:42):
It's really beautiful to witness.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
There were so many folks we wanted to talk to
for our Food for Good episode, and there are so
many people doing so much good out there. You know,
what I loved about doing this episode is like really
stressing the importance as to food. You know, it's not
in our constitution in the United States. It's not a
promise to us, but it is a human right that
(21:08):
we would have access to food or you know, the
right to like an adequate standard of living. And I
think food should not be weaponized, food should not be withheld.
Having adequate food is a right, that a human right
that we should all have. And I think it's it's
beautiful that all of these these people that we talked about,
and so many more that we didn't talk about, are doing,
(21:28):
you know, food for good.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So many people around the world. And yes, I agree,
and I also love the idea that this food is
culturally sensitive. You know that these traditions are are being
preserved and are carried forward and are changing in some ways.
So that's another really amazing part of it. Yes, food
(21:50):
should never be a weapon, but also the fact that
food always connects to home and community, I think is
something that's very valuable preserved traditions.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, I don't think people know this, but the world
actually produces enough food to feed everyone on the planet.
It does. The problem is access and availability, and you know,
both of those things are always disrupted by many things,
weather and food, waste and conflict, and so you know,
(22:21):
ending Hunger is one of the greatest challenges of our time,
and it's frustrating knowing that the world produces enough food
to feed everyone on the planet. It's just access and availability.
Once again, you guys. I'm at home and so my
son is a little loud, so I apologize for this podcast.
If you can hear him in the background.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Hmmm, Sandi, He's so sweet.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Thank you everyone, Thanks for listening to Hungry for History.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Hungry for History is a Hyphene media production in partnership
with Iheart's Michael Fura podcast network.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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