6 minute read
DID YOU KNOW?
CORONADO’S GOLD SAND is caused by mica, a shiny silicate mineral found in granite and other rocks. It washes down rivers from the mountains of Mexico, ending up in the Tijuana River and running into the Pacific at the Tijuana River Estuary. Micafilled silt is picked up by the Silver Strand Littoral Cell, a circular current that flows from south to north along the coastline, traveling several miles south of the Mexican border to Point Loma and back out to sea. The current picks up the sediment from the river mouth and carries it up the coast, depositing it on Coronado Beach. ■
HAIKU Gold glittery sand Shiny and beautiful On Coronado beaches - Leslie Crawford
LESLIE CRAWFORD
Heated topic
Docuseries explores effects of climate change on Mexico’s sustainable food industry
By CATHERINE GAUGH
Award-winning filmmaker Jill Bond Sawhney is in Baja California, wrapping up “Ingrediente: Mexico,” a six-episode docuseries on the rich culture of Mexico, its people, history and food traditions, as well as how these communities are confronting chronic water shortages and hotter days caused by climate change.
Baja’s Guadalupe Valley, known for its expanse of wineries, is the last tour stop in this more than two-year journey. It has been a hectic time for the filmmaker, as her production team prepares the first episodes for broadcast by the end of this year on PBS and Amazon Prime.
Q: Tell us about the inspiration for this series, which turns the “farm to table” concept around to “table to farm.”
A: My husband, Ajay Sawhney, and I have a second home in Ensenada, and we got to know chef Drew Deckman and fell in love with his restaurant in the Guadalupe Valley. It’s on rural and remote ranchland, completely outdoors; the cooking is done over a wood fire, and all the food is locally grown or caught. He is dedicated to using local, sustainable ingredients.
We could learn a lot from what community leaders in Mexico are doing to support small local farms and fisheries. They
« Chef Drew Deckman cooks traditional food at Kinich Restaurant in Izamal, Yucatán.
COURTESY OF JILL BOND SAWHNEY
JILL BOND SAWHNEY
have created co-ops to help their farmers and fishermen to market and package local goods for sale.
People need to understand how hard these farmers and fisherman work; they break their backs to subsist and to serve their community.
Q: That isn’t what farming seems like here, at least for people in the highly populated areas of the country.
A: Agribusiness in the U.S. has crushed small farms. Our food comes long distances. This is where the celebrity restaurant chefs can use their popularity and their strong voices to educate people on local sustainability. They can say, ‘I am sorry, you want salmon, but salmon is not on the menu. Salmon does not live in the gulf. We serve only what swims in our ocean or grows in our fields.’
Once we had the idea to explore the sustainability of different regions of Mexico, we asked Drew to be the host of a series about it.
Q: Where did you go and what did you find?
A: Most people know that Mexico’s crops are coffee, cocoa, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. But there are many climates and many more food traditions among the indigenous communities, and so much beauty and history everywhere — in Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco, the Yucatan, and settlements in the state of Mexico, which is where Mexico City is.
For example, a lot of Africans were brought over as slaves during the Spanish occupation to work in the sugar cane fields, so there is a huge African population in Veracruz. After a two-hour drive south of the city, we met with the indigenous cooks in the area. Besides sugar cane, they tend to fields of different varieties of squash.
Q: How is the drought affecting the small farmers?
A: It effects every farmer every day. And climate change is making it so much hotter. In Mezcal, the agave plants were flowering four months early, instead of the end of April. It has a grave effect on the pollination process of harvesting the pineapple – that’s what they call it – from the agave by a certain time to make mezcal.
COURTESY OF JILL BOND SAWHNEY
The film crew searches for octopus maya in Progreso, Yucatán.
COURTESY OF JILL BOND SAWHNEY
Jill Bond Sawhney with famed potter Maestro Joe Garcia Antonio in Oaxaca.
Q: I understand that the March 2020 COVID-19 outbreak happened while you were filming at Deckman’s restaurant in Baja, but rather than head home to Coronado, you stayed and witnessed how the shutdown affected this specific place in time. That must have been an extraordinary experience, because no one knew how long the pandemic would last.
A: We had no idea what to expect. We had done some of the filming when the border closed. Our film crew members went home to Mexico City or Puebla, so it was just my husband and me with the camera. We filmed as Drew packed up the restaurant, and how he and his wife, Pauline, reorganized it into a community kitchen. They fed 200 people, their staff, local fisherman and their families every single day, and paid the staff as long as they could.
There was no takeout, no tourists, no customers at all. We saw his stress, the anxiety; it was incredibly personal. Then, in July (2020) everything started to reopen, but slowly. There were very few Americans.
Q: COVID-19 seems to be lingering on, now in the third year. Have you encoun-
tered any issues with it recently?
A: We had to be careful. Our team is made up of eight or nine people; if one got sick and went down, we all would. But not one person got sick. We took all the precautions, regular testing and masks.
Q: That documentation of real-time history during COVID led to “Ingrediente: A Restaurant Uprooted,” which was featured in the 2021 Culinary Cinema presentations at the Coronado Film Festival. Where can people watch it?
A: It still is shown on PBS and is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
Q: After “A Restaurant Uprooted,” you were able to return to the six-episode series concept you planned before COVID came along.
A: We returned to it in the fall of 2021. We have been working hard on a hyper schedule because we’ve already decided we are going to do a Season Two. We want to keep going forward.
We left Coronado just recently, after eight years there. We are full time in Ensenada and just about always on the road in Mexico.
Q: You said you drove from place to place for eight, and sometimes 12 hours at a time. Did you have any concern about your safety?
A: I felt 100 percent safe all the time. Now, just like in Chicago or Philadelphia, or other big cities, I would not go out by myself at night, and there are some areas just to avoid.
We were treated with respect, love and care everywhere we went. The Mexican people we have met are wonderful. ■
Catherine Gaugh is a freelance writer.
