Hi there, I'm Lale Aricoglu, and welcome to a new episode of Women Who Travel,

where we're taking a deep dive into the many ways to experience and eat Latin American food,

from markets and indigenous recipes to family cooking.

Thank you. from markets and indigenous recipes to family cooking. The way I perceive Latin American food ways as a whole is like a quilt,

and each country represents a very colorful patch.

And the ingredients are the thread that connect them all together. And they

together make the quilt. I didn't want to talk to chefs. I didn't want to talk to people who

just cooked for entertainment. I wanted people to tell me exactly what they made for dinner when

they got home. That's Sandra Gutierrez, a food historian who's

written four books mastering the art of Latin American cuisine. I grew up in Guatemala. I was born

in Philadelphia. My parents were both Guatemala and my dad as surgeon, my mother and economist,

and they decided to go back to Guatemala to, you know, go back home. So I was five when I moved to Guatemala.

My home food was extremely international. My mother had been raised in Europe throughout different

countries in Europe, my father, Guatemalan. And my grandmother was a socialite in Guatemala.

I say she was the Martha Stewart of the 40s, 50s and 60s in Guatemala. I mean,

she was amazing. What a fabulous description. I can't tell you anything different. She would set

the most majestic tables with flowers that she picked in her estate, you know, and she grew fruits,

and she had a vegetable garden, and raised chickens and it was just amazing,

but she was a socialite. So people would always come to her house on Sundays. We were always there

on the weekends and I was a very shy child and I would have to, as any Latin American child normally

is taught to do, I would have to go into the living room where all the

guests were. There could be eight people. There could be 48 people. You never knew. And so I would say

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