Not long after the Bonita Historical Society was established in 1987, the Bonita Museum & Cultural Center (BMCC) held its grand opening.
Today, it is home to a treasure trove of artifacts, posters, and scholarly information about the South Bay region, its inhabitants, cultures, and traditions.
This month, the BMCC will celebrate the food, customs, and traditions of some of our region’s earliest settlers with a new exhibit, Nuestra Frontera: Our South Bay Families at the Border. The exhibit will feature fifty oral interviews, and 2,000 archival photographs, including census and genealogical records that were collected by Bonita Museum curator, Barbara Zaragoza (Read her story about the birth of Baja-San Diego cuisine.)
Her research tells diverse stories of some of South Bay’s original residents, like Jesus Beltran Castro, who immigrated with her husband from Baja after her father was killed by Federales in the 1920s.
The Castros bought land in what is now Otay Mesa, established a ranch and business, and started a family. Today her children, Cesar Castro and Christine Martin, still remember how their grandparents lived and ate when they arrived.
Their grandfather started off growing tomatoes and lettuce as a truck farmer, keeping most of the produce for the family, and selling whatever was left to neighbors.
Their meals revolved around ingredients that could be easily found in their new home, like rabbit, chicken, and foraged produce like cactus apples (nopales) and verdulagas (purslane). There were no dairies in Otay, so they made humperato, a corn flour beverage.
Another descendant of early residents, Marisa Martin, tells her family’s story through the recipes that were handed down from her grandmother, Jesus, and mother, Christine.
They demonstrate a diet of recipes designed around locally foraged ingredients, like fig jam and verdolagas (purslane) salad.
She writes that, “Grandfather loved his verdolagas. Prized in Latin America, the plant called verdolaga is known for its medicinal properties, such as positive effects on migraines, depression, digestive orders and ear aches, and used as a poultice to treat burns.”
She now grows her own purslane in her garden, but says that it can still be found growing wild throughout South Bay.
Her family also ate rabbit as a special occasion dish. She offers a recipe for her family’s simple rabbit stew made with flour, carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, butter, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and the rabbit, all simmered in water and red wine.
Celebrate 250 years of South Bay culinary history with cooking demonstrations, dinner, and stories from other descendants of the original Californios who arrived from Baja after 1821 at the museum’s Gala Fundraiser event on June 29th .
Reservations can be made at the Museum or online.
Visit the Bonita Museum & Cultural Center
4355 Bonita Road, Bonita
Wednesday to Saturday, 10am- 4pm
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