These Utah farms are bringing new international foods and flavors to your table

Early on in his professional life, Jean Mendieta was a project manager helping farms in Nicaragua start and sustain their own tourism programs. He then came to the United States to live with his now-wife and be closer to her family. He took a restaurant job because it was the only work he could find.

Now, he is a private chef, cooking mostly at pop-up events and for small groups using ancient and Indigenous Mesoamerican methods along with ingredients he has grown on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley. Through the project, called Proyecto Xilonen, he wants to educate Utahns about the diversity of precolonial food in North America.

“I want people to learn more about the importance of this culture — squash, beans and corn and what other things we can do with that,” Mendieta said. “Nowadays, people don’t know much about these ingredients and how they can utilize them, and how they can eat [them]. But they’ve been using [them] for thousands of years, so the variety that you can make with [them], it’s huge.”

Mendieta grows many of his ingredients on small plots in West Valley City and in west Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood.

Proyecto Xilonen, along with nine other small groups, is a part of a Salt Lake City Hall microgrant program that aims to boost residents’ access to fresh, healthy, local food. A handful of other west-side projects also received small grants, including two others with international roots: ‘Aikona and the New American Goat Club.

Like Proyecto Xilonen, ‘Aikona and the New American Goat Club were founded with a focus on connecting Utahns to international food traditions, farming techniques and ingredients.

At Mendieta’s West Valley City house, he grows everything from tomatoes to edible flowers, but the stars of his garden are maize, squash and beans. He plants those according to the ancient Three Sisters Method, which calls for the seeds of the three crops to be intermixed on a plot, thereby helping each species fully grow.

On a Glendale plot, Mendieta nurtures three varieties of maize, one from Costa Rica, another from Arizona’s Hopi Tribe and one that originated in the Beehive State. When Mendieta harvests the maize later this month, the kernels will be a mix of colors, not just the pale yellow corn you buy at the supermarket.

The next generation

Mendieta’s wife, Evelyn Cervantes, comes from a line of Mexican corn growers, but the family members gave it up once it became too costly and left farming behind when they came to the United States. Cervantes said that she wants to share that familial history and knowledge with the couple’s daughter.

“Part of this is being able to pass it down to our daughter,” Cervantes said, “but also being able to reconnect with our ancestors and our roots.”

Proyecto Xilonen received $4,000 through the microgrant program. Mendieta said he plans to use the money to run workshops for the public and students during which he would show Salt Lakers how he grows his crops and what food he makes with them — all while weaving in Mesoamerican history.

Also in Glendale, where much of the city’s agricultural innovation is happening, another small group grows traditional Pacific Islander foods. ‘Aikona, run by ‘Amelia Leafaitulagi ‘Aikona, right now exists as a small, temporary garden in the dirt parking lot of a Tongan men’s kava club.

There, Leafaitulagi ‘Aikona and her family are growing three plants with historical roots on Pacific islands: taro, ti leaf and plumeria. The crops can be used for celebration. Plumeria flowers, for instance, are used in leis, medicine or food.

Leafaitulagi ‘Aikona said she started the project as a way to teach Pacific Islanders in the Salt Lake Valley about the historical food and cultures. She also invites anyone who is interested to help garden and learn.

“We want to have our kids put their hands in the soil,” she said. “We want to heal our communities. It takes all of us to do that.”

She said she will share the harvest with people across the west side and hopes to help feed unsheltered people who live nearby, too. Eventually, Leafaitulagi ‘Aikona wants to grow the project into a collective with gardens dotting the west side.

Getting your goat

Not every program that won a grant from Salt Lake City grows plants. The New American Goat Club preserves historical food practices in a different way: by giving kids ages 8 to 18 a goat to raise and eventually sell over the summer.

The program, a part of the national 4-H youth development network, is made up mostly of students from Somali, Burundian and Sudanese families — although it is open to any new Americans. For many in East Africa, raising goats is a cultural staple.

“There was this expressed interest from parents and grandparents in wanting their kids to have some connection to goat husbandry,” program leader Kate Wright said, “because that was really culturally important.”

The program doesn’t just serve an educational purpose. It also is a way for families to get goat meat for traditional meals.

Program leaders said the club, which is hosted at Roots Charter High School in West Valley City, is a space for kids to make friends and relax away from home and school.

This summer 17 kids are participating. They learn about goat anatomy, how to train the animals and how to prepare them for a final show. They even get to pocket the cash they make from selling the goat.

Project leaders said Salt Lake City’s microgrant was integral in buying the goats for the club. The price of a young goat, also known as a kid, has increased since the program started as Utah’s goat supply has dwindled.

City microgrant program manager Maria Schwarz said she keeps the rules around how organizations can spend the money flexible, so the grantees can use the dollars to support their critical operations as they see fit.

That’s not least because the program funds all kinds of food projects as a way to boost the availability of diverse, local food in Utah’s capital.

“People have different food needs,” Schwarz said. “We need a lot of different projects of different sizes and different types to meet people where they are with their needs and their wants and their interests.”