Rachel Laudan

How Long did Traditional Mexican Grinding Take?

By Rachel Laudan December 14, 2011 Adventures, Mainly Culinary, Grinding, Mexican Food 5 Comments

Heike Vibrans asks a number of good questions about my earlier post on the human energy required to grind maize the traditional Mexican way before the appearance of mills beginning…

Read more

More on nixtamalization

By Rachel Laudan March 16, 2011 Adventures, Mainly Culinary, Grinding, Mexican Food 2 Comments

A very nice post by David Arnold of the French Culinary Institute on nixtamalization. I think he is not right about the kind of metates and molcajetes needed.  Pores are…

Read more

Who ground the chocolate? Not a trivial question

By Rachel Laudan February 13, 2011 Drink, Food History, Globalization Then and Now, Grinding, Mexican Food 12 Comments

Of all the difficult things to turn into food (and most plants and animals are difficult to turn into food), cacao beans and their processing rank way up there. Let’s…

Read more