[Sca-cooks] mayan

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Marian Walke <marian at buttery.org>
>Have you seen Sophie Coe's book?
>--Old Marian
>
>America's First Cuisines, by Sophie D. Coe

Yeah, i already recommended it. I'm reading the part on Mayan cuisine 
and writing up a little, if Aoghann can't find it.

Here's part of a message from the original requester:
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From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" <ldh at ece.gatech.edu>
>>An relatively easy desert and an easy main dish that would work well for
>>a covered dish kind of thing. My daughter's class is studying the Mayan
>>and Inca cultures and they are having a food day this coming Friday.
>>
>>Aoghann
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>Description [from Amazon.com]
>After long weeks of boring, perhaps spoiled sea rations, one of
>the first things Spaniards sought in the New World was
>undoubtedly fresh food. Probably they found the local cuisine
>strange at first, but soon they were sending American plants and
>animals around the world, eventually enriching the cuisine of
>many cultures. Drawing on original accounts by Europeans and
>native Americans, this pioneering work offers the first detailed
>description of the cuisines of the Aztecs, the Maya, and the
>Inca. Sophie Coe begins with the basic foodstuffs, including
>maize, potatoes, beans, peanuts, squash, avocados, tomatoes,
>chocolate, and chiles, and explores their early history and
>domestication. She then describes how these foods were prepared,
>served, and preserved, giving many insights into the cultural and
>ritual practices that surrounded eating in these cultures. Coe
>also points out the similarities and differences among the three
>cuisines and compares them to Spanish cooking of the period,
>which, as she usefully reminds us, would seem as foreign to our
>tastes as the American foods seemed to theirs. Written in easily
>digested prose, America's First Cuisines will appeal to food
>enthusiasts as well as scholars.