Brewing Memories: A Medicinal Herbs Workshop with La Morada Chef Carolina Saavedra
Sat, Nov 5, 2022
12:00 PM–2:00 PM
Bruckner Mott Haven Garden (678 E 136th St., Bronx, NY, 10454)
The Brewing Memories/La memoria de las hierbas workshops are back!
Join us for BREWING (FEMINIST) MEMORIESSaturday, November 5th from 12 to 2:00 PM at Bruckner Mott Haven Garden (678 E 136th St., Bronx, NY, 10454) facilitated by educator and chef Carolina Saavedra continuing this series of workshops centered on food traditions, food justice, and urban farming as part of the Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory project.
The book launch party forLas hermanas de la milpa: comienza con la calabaza / The sisters of the milpa: it begins with the squash, a bilingual and indigenous (Mixteco) cookbook by chef Natalia Mendez of La Morada restaurant will be at Bruckner Mott Haven garden, right after the fall iteration of #brewingmemories workshop, facilitated by chef Carolina Saavedra
To register, send an email to [email protected].
*The garden is wheel-chair accessible.
*The workshop will be facilitated in English and Spanish.
The Brewing Memories/La memoria de las hierbas workshops are back! This time as part of expanding feminisms / feminismos en expansión which brings together a series of activities inside and outside the brick walls of New York City’s public university, CUNY, for a week. The different events center distinct aspects of the activist, archival, and artist practices of three inspiring Chilean feminists, Lucía Egaña,Javiera Manzi, and Sibila Sotomayor (LASTESIS).
Join us for BREWING (FEMINIST) Memories Sunday, October 23rd 12 to 2:00 PM at Bruckner Mott Haven Garden (678 E 136th St., Bronx, NY, 10454) with participation of feminist artists/archivists/activists Lucía Egaña,Javiera Manzi, and Sibila Sotomayor facilitated by educator and chef Carolina Saavedra continuing this series of workshops centered on food traditions, food justice, and urban farming as part of the Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory project.
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The last workshop, facilitated by chef Carolina Saavedra will took place on Sunday, October 17, at 11:30 am, at the Bruckner-Mott Haven Community Garden.
Chef Carolina Saavedra and Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya are super excited about the next iteration of the workshop, because all the herbs they will be using are herbs that they have been growing in the Brewing Memories bed at the Bruckner-Mott Haven Garden. Check out the pictures below!
The workshop is in-person, free, and open to all publics, but priority will be given to South-Bronx residents.
To register, send an email to [email protected].
*The garden is wheel-chair accessible.
*The workshop will be facilitated in English and Spanish.
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On May 5, 2021, chef Carolina Saavedra facilitated the first Brewing Memories workshop of the 2021 season at the recently rehabilitated Bruckner Mott Haven Garden.
Workshop participants were excited to learn about plants, create art, share memories, and herbal teas, surrounded by beautiful flowers, growing vegetables, and trees.
Photos by Ángeles Donoso Macaya
Alt text by Pedro Cabello
During the month of April, 2021, Carolina and her family, along with community members and volunteers, have been working in the rehabilitation and re-opening of Bruckner Mott Haven Garden. And this is where the third installment of Brewing Memories will take place! Just a few weeks ago, Carolina, and Faculty Leader of the Archives in Common project Ángeles Donoso Macaya, and another volunteer prepared the soil and planted seeds of spearmint, oregano, basil, and other herbs in a bed that will be used in the workshops. Watch the video here:
Brewing Memories workshop detailed info:
Date & Time: Sat, May 5th, 11:00 AM (EDT)
Location: Bruckner Mott Haven Garden (677 E 136th St., Bronx, NY, 10454).
This is an outdoors, in-person activity.
Capacity: 25 participants, to comply with social distancing due to COVID-19.
How to join: People interested in participating should send an email to [email protected] to register.
**Prioritywill be given to Mott Haven residents and neighbors of Bruckner Mott Haven Garden.
More About the BREWING MEMORIES Workshop Series
As part of the Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory project, chef Carolina Saavedra will facilitate a series of workshops centered on food traditions, food justice, and urban farming.
This series will continue with a second outdoor workshop “Brewing Memories” on medicinal herbs at Brooke Park, a community garden in the South Bronx where Carolina grows many of the delicious chiles and herbs she and her mom, Natalia Mendez, use in their traditional recipes at La Morada restaurant. The workshop is called “Brewing memories” because Carolina will invite us to “draw” a memory using herbs and honey, which we will then brew into our own tea! In this hands-on workshop, we will not only learn about different herbs we can easily grow at home (and perhaps use to brew more tea), but also about different knowledges and traditions linked to medicinal herbs.
The workshops will be documented in the Archives in Common page here.
The workshop will be led by Carolina Saavedra, an educator at Stone Barns Center, a nonprofit organization working to bring about a healthy and sustainable food system. She is also the sous chef at La Morada restaurant, where the Saavedra family fights to ensure equality and social justice and to preserve their indigenous roots within the community of the South Bronx.
She once considered a career in medicine but left her pre-med studies to pursue her calling and passion for feeding people and preserving food traditions. She moved to San Miguel Ahuehuetitlan, municipality of Oaxaca, Mexico to immerse herself in her indigenous roots and learn her ancestors’ recipes. Upon her arrival back in the U.S., Carolina continued to build her culinary career, competing on Food Network’s Chopped, graduating from the International Culinary Center with honors, and securing a competitive culinary internship at Martha and Marley Spoon.
Chef Carolina has represented the U.S. at multiple gastronomy events in Mexico, and she is a sought-after chef who has taught at leading cultural institutions including The Bronx Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
View photos from the Brewing Memories workshops held on Saturday,
October 3rd, and Saturday, October 24th at Brooke Park, facilitated by La Morada chef Carolina
Saavedra. Photos by Cinthya Santoa-Briones.
In October, La Morada chef and educator Carolina Saavedra facilitated two workshops centered on medicinal plants and indigenous practices. Both workshops were held at Brooke Park, a community garden in the South Bronx, where Carolina also grows some of the vegetables and plants, she and her mom use in their recipes at La Morada.
25 people, most of them neighbors of the South Bronx, attended the first workshop held on October 3. That day, Carolina talked about the healing properties of different plants, including Eucalyptus, Lemongrass, Spearmint, Thyme, and Sage.
On October 24, 20 people attended, many of them for the second time. It was great to see so many familiar faces, because one of the goals of this activity is to foster the sense of community, of togetherness. That day, we began by asking participants to choose three words out of a list prepared by Angeles, and write up feelings, ideas or memories they related to these words. Then, Carolina taught us about the healing properties of Lavender, Eucalyptus, Mint and Marigold. She also explained and traced the routes of these plants in the context of colonialism (who were the peoples who first discovered the plants, how then the plants were transported from one side of the Atlantic to the other).
We also got to taste two types of Mint: Chocolate Mint and Pineapple Mint. Then, participants used the words they had written to sketch a drawing on a piece of paper, and then use the sketch to draw a memory over a piece of cheese cloth. They drew this memory using honey and pieces of dry plants. A few participants shared their drawings and the memories these drawing represented. Afterwards, each made a tea bag containing their sweet memory; we all drank and shared tea together.
On both workshops, Carolina emphasized how useful these plants are in the current context: we might feel anxious because of the news we read, because we are facing eviction or are jobless. The pandemic is stressful, and it is completely understandable that we might feel anxious, desperate, fearful. She reminded us that both Lavender and Eucalyptus are good for anxiety, and that Lavender is also good to calm down children. But Carolina highlighted that these plants are not only good for our bodies, minds and souls, but also for the soil where they grow, and for the air we breathe. Plants like Lavender and Marigold are good pollinizers, they attract bees and butterflies, and at the same time repel pests, animals and insects you don’t want in your garden. Meanwhile, Eucalyptus is a natural air purifier—we can simply hang a branch from our showers at home to purify the air we breathe inside our tiny NY apartments.
Besides learning about these different plants, we all had the opportunity to smell, touch, taste, and even make art using the plants we were learning about.
The second workshop was also very meaningful because Yajaira, Carolina’s
sister, shared memories of her childhood in Oaxaca, and connected these
memories to the ongoing struggles neighbors in the South Bronx are
facing. She talked about gentrification, which is growing exponentially in Mott Heaven, and also about how many times indigenous practices, worlds, and ways of life, are appropriated and emptied of meaning. She mentioned all of this because she framed the Brewing Memories workshops within this larger process: getting together to drink tea, talk about past memories and share food (on this occasion, traditional “pan de muerto”) is also a form of
community resistance, a form of mutual aid.
“Brewing memories, sustaining life in common”
Read Archives in Common project leader Ángeles Donoso Macaya‘s essay “Brewing memories, sustaining life in common“, reflecting on the Brewing Memories workshops and it’s origins and the significance and impact of this collaborative and generative process of creating and learning together.
This workshop and series is co-sponsored by La Morada restaurant and the Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory project as part of the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY.
