MSU Extension 4-H Global & Cultural Education

If you like to eat, you are engaging with cultures from around the world. What do we know about the foods we grow and eat? Where did they come from? Have you ever thought about a food's history or how food traveled around the world to your garden or dinner plate? Explore more in this Michigan State University Extension series about cultures in gardening and cooking!

Gardening is a great way to introduce kids to a variety of fruits and vegetables. Exploring the origins of the foods we love, and where the ingredients grow, is a fun way to incorporate the exploration of world cultures into your garden. Kids can research new recipes or create their own recipes, learning new ways to prepare their harvest into tasty dishes. Eating new foods is a great way to learn to appreciate people from all backgrounds, from across town to across the world.

An easy food to create with garden goodies is salsa. Salsa is the number one condiment in the U.S. – even bigger than ketchup. With endless combinations of fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices, salsa can be made to suit anyone’s taste. Kids can make salsa as a group and learn more about its history and its importance in cuisines around the world. They can even make their own “signature” salsa recipes.

Let’s take a closer look at salsa:

• In Spanish, the word salsa simply means sauce.
• Salsa sauce is a combination of chilies, tomatoes and other spices and can be traced to the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas.
• The Spaniards first encountered tomatoes after their conquest of Mexico in 1519-1521, which marked the beginning of the history of salsa.
• Aztec lords combined tomatoes with chili peppers and ground squash seeds and consumed them mainly as a condiment served on turkey, venison, lobster and fish. In 1571, this combination was called salsa by Alonso de Molina, a Spanish missionary.
• Salsa crossed the border into the United States in the 1800s but was not popular at that time, as Americans did not generally like spicy foods.
• In the early 1900s, salsa started to become more popular as a condiment. 
• The popularity of salsa in the U.S. took off in the 1980s and in 1992, salsa outsold ketchup and has remained America’s favorite condiment. 
• Salsa is generally considered a healthy snack as it uses fruits and vegetables as its main ingredients. 
• Chips and salsa is not a thing in Mexico. Mexican chefs still consider salsa as a cooking sauce. It was in the 1940s when Rebecca Webb Carranza, president of the El Zarpape Tortilla Factory in Los Angeles, started to fry unusable misshapen tortillas and serve them at a family dinner as the first tortilla chips.

A simple blend of tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, cilantro and lime juice will create a great salsa kids can make themselves. They can experiment with the amounts of the ingredients or add other ingredients like corn and black beans to make their own special blend.

What are your favorite salsa ingredients you can grow in your garden? Host a family salsa-making contest with categories such as:

• No tomatoes
• Fruit only, examples: mango, peaches, watermelon
• Spiciest
• Most original

Think of other theme gardens that could be possible topics for exploring world cultures: perhaps pizza gardens, salsa gardens, roots for roasting, etc. Like salsa, gardening themes are only limited by your imagination.

If you want to preserve your salsa, Michigan State University Extension has tips for Salsa 101 - Food Preservation.