What an Ear of Corn Can Teach You About America
Chef Mica Chavez on the Columbian Exchange, mechanized agriculture, and why your garden tomatoes taste better than the grocery's
We’ve spent all year leading up to America’s 250th anniversary, so choosing the next episode topic seemed important and tricky. I wanted something that would feel both fresh and connected, so I decided to call in a special guest.
Chef Mica Chavez taught me and 45 other Pantsuit Politics listeners to make a southwestern feast while we were on retreat in New Mexico. The food was amazing, but her storytelling was even better. I literally leaned forward in my chair as she talked about birds spreading chili from Bolivia to New Mexico. In this conversation, she takes us through 500 years of food history--from the three sisters to precision farming.
I loved this conversation because I think it shows how food is life. Food is violence and colonization and interdependence and love and belonging. It is all of it, and all of it has shaped modern America and the world. Chef Chavez delivers warnings and inspiration, and I think, going into year 251, we need both.
Topics Discussed
The Columbian Exchange: how corn, chili, potatoes, and tomatoes reshaped diets on both sides of the Atlantic
The science of nixtamalization — why New World corn didn’t wreck teeth the way Old World wheat did
How chili peppers spread across the globe via birds
The Irish potato famine’s surprising link to New Mexico settlement history
Indigenous and Spanish foodways merging in the Southwest: acequias, sheep, and companion planting
How mechanization and post-WWII food policy created the mass-produced, processed food system
Precision farming, AI, and the tension between efficiency and sustainability
What to cook this summer (hint: it’s pie)
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Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.
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My parents kept a fairly large garden for many years. We grew just about everything - corn, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, watermelon, zucchini, cucumbers… My mom did a lot of canning, and since it was just the three of us, we gave a lot away. Now living in FL, we can’t grow anything! We’ve tried peppers (they die), squash (they rot), and tomatoes. I thought we were going to be successful with a tomato plant this year. It’s growing like crazy and blooming. But we got 2 tomatoes that grew pretty large but never turned red, then both cracked. What’s the secret to Florida growing?
Great show today Beth! It seems I’m always inspired to comment on the outside of politics segment - check out The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. I did not grow up in a family of bakers. This cookbook taught me almost everything I know about pie and gave me some serious pie baking confidence. My biggest tips - a food processor is the game changer in keeping ingredients cold and not over processed, swap part of the water for vinegar or go wild and replace the water with vodka, and all butter all the time!