Karla Vasquez Author Talk • The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them

Karla Tatiana Vasquez is a food writer, recipe developer, and food stylist based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, Eater LA, and KCET, among others. Her recipe development work can be seen in Food & Wine, Serious Eats, BuzzFeed Tasty, and Tastemade. She is also a food justice advocate and an active member in her community to increase healthy food accessibility in low-income communities, previously working with Hunger Action Los Angeles and Los Angeles Food Policy Council. She founded SalviSoul in an effort to preserve her family’s recipes, and since then it’s expanded to focus on cultural memory and intergenerational healing for the Salvadoran diaspora.

The SalviSoul Cookbook — A beautifully photographed cookbook that celebrates the vibrant culture and community of El Salvador through 80 recipes and stories from twenty-five Salvadoran women. In search of the recipes and traditions that made her feel at home, food historian and Salvadoran Karla Tatiana Vasquez took to the internet to find the dishes her mom made throughout her childhood. But when she couldn't find any, she decided to take matters into her own hands. What started as a desire to document recipes turned into sharing the joys, histories, and tribulations of the women in her life.

In this collection of eighty recipes, Karla shares her conversations with moms, aunts, grandmothers, and friends to preserve their histories so that they do not go unheard. Here are recipes for Rellenos de Papa from Patricia, who remembers the Los Angeles earthquakes of the 1980s for more reasons than just fear; Flor de Izote con Huevos Revueltos, a favorite of Karla's father; as well as variations on the beloved Salvadoran Pupusa, a thick masa tortilla stuffed with different combinations of pork, cheese, and beans. Though their stories vary, the women have a shared experience of what it was like in El Salvador before the war, and what life was like as Salvadoran women surviving in their new home in the United States.