What's Up?
SalviSoul is a cookbook! But, it's also more than that...
SalviSoul documents the foodways of Salvadoran cuisine and also documents the stories of women who migrated from El Salvador to the United States.
These women are mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and hermanas who have nurtured the second generation of Salvadoran people in the United States with food and who have also, perhaps without realizing, taken the role of preserving culture for the future U.S. born "Salvis". Along with food, the traditions of storytelling have been passed down at the dinner table. Their stories of perseverance, struggle, sacrifice, love and victory have also been our nourishment.
Life & Work
Bio:
Karla T. Vasquez is the creator of SalviSoul, a food justice advocate, a food historian and a proponent for healthy food accessibility in low-income communities. Karla holds a degree in Journalism and completed her culinary training at The New School of Cooking. She specializes in community building, nutrition education, and food history. Karla has worked with Hunger Action Los Angeles, Los Angeles Food Policy Council, VELA, The Edible Apartment, Champions for Change, With Love Market and Cafe and other social justice organizations where she has used her skills to organize outreach efforts, manage projects and lead community health initiatives.
Karla has contributed to Eater L.A., L.A. Taco, We Are Cocina, and other publications. She's been interviewed by KCRW Good Food, Vice Munchies, ABC & and has been featured in Fierce by Mitu, and Zocalo Public Square. Most recently she was the LA Food Bowl Festival Event Coordinator at the Los Angeles Times.
Her initial inspiration for SalviSoul was to honor the lives of the women in her family.
Lessons/Workshops:
Learn Salvadoran recipes, food history and food storytelling with SalviSoul founder, chef, food writer, and recipe developer Karla T. Vasquez!
What you’ll receive:
Attendees will receive a shopping list of the equipment and ingredients as soon as tickets are purchased. On the day of the class students will also receive a Zoom link with the recipe one hour before class to join our virtual classroom. A link to download the class video will be available to students up to 5 days after the class.
How the classes work:
I will be cooking side-by-side with you as we go through each step of the recipe. You want to be relaxed and ready to cook (or watch) when the class starts. Class attendees are encouraged to ask questions often as well as have the opportunity to ask me to troubleshoot any cooking issues that may come up. I want you to feel confident before we move on to the next step! If you would prefer to just sit-in and watch me cook, that is totally fine as well!
All purchases final. Class size is limited to 50 students or households.
Interested in a private class?
Please email me at [email protected].
SalviSoul looking to interview Salvadoran women for cookbook project.
Please email the following information:
- Name of Interviewee
- Relationship to you
- Signature dish
- Contact info (Phone number, email)
- Best time to reach you or them
- Brief...
The canopy rises from Bahia to encircle the planet, but but the roots of the Matrix go back decades to Kingston, Jamaica...
I'm Sparrow. I used the contract above, Bob Marley's first (co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21, and this is a copy I made of Clement Dodd's original) to retrieve unpaid royalties from CBS Records. I retrieved money for Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil, Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria and many others. But what if Bob hadn't got out of Kingston, or Aretha out of Chicago? They would have been just as great but there would have been no way for the wider world to know. The world brims with brilliant artists without reach, including writers, filmmakers, painters... So in the Matrix, everybody can potentially be experienced from everywhere in the world. And the famous? Very few people (Bob and Michael Jackson aside) are famous everywhere, plus the famous like to recommend (connect to) too. The pathways are open. As they say in Bahia, "Laroyê!"
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (Susan was personal recording engineer for Prince; she recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times" and she is now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (Julian is the most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; he is brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (Clarice is a pianist and composer, with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers below) evolved...
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
SPARROW/PARDAL ROBERTS
SUSAN ROGERS
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER
CLARICE ASSAD
ALICIA SVIGALS
KAMASI WASHINGTON