The world around her is moving fast, but Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack knows how to slow down.
She uses food as a conduit to connection.
Two days each year, she whips up her favorites for one person in particular: her late grandmother, Jesusita Soza, who lived to be 98.
“For me, it’s more about the person who you’re honoring and the food that reminds you of them,” she said. “And so in teaching my kids, it was the perfect holiday to be like, ‘OK, this is my grandma. This is your grandma. And these were her favorite foods.’”
On Día de los Muertos, Marquez-Sharpnack has been able to connect three generations of her family in a single bite of food.
We’ve included two of her Día de los Muertos recipes for decorative Mexican sugar skulls and mini lemon sugar skull cakes here, as well as a recipe for pan de muerto.
Her cookbook, “Muy Bueno: Fiestas,” along with “Dining With the Dead: A Feast for the Souls on Day of the Dead ,” by Mariana Nuño Ruiz and Ian McEnroe, share family recipes they use to honor their late loved ones with food and ofrendas on Dia de los Muertos, celebrated Nov. 1 and 2.
Marquez-Sharpnack’s journey to sharing her recipes started in 2010 with a question from her then-8-year-old daughter, Maya, who wanted to learn more about her mom’s cooking: “Do you have these recipes written down?”
Of course not. Like so many family recipes, Marquez-Sharpnack’s were stored in memory only. If she needed guidance, she’d call her mom to steer her back on track. But the thought of writing down the recipes made sense. Then she took it one step further: What if she stored them online so she could share them with the world?
Her blog, Muy Bueno, was born.
“I had no idea it could turn into a career,” she said. “It started as a journal for a cookbook, and now it’s my livelihood.”
Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack, left, with daughter Maya Sharpnack, right, and mom, Vangie Soza, middle. (Photo by Jenna Sparks)
Two years later, her blog was a popular corner of the internet for Mexican cooking, and she put a handful of her favorite recipes into her first cookbook, “Muy Bueno,” which she published in 2012 as an ode to her grandmother.
“I grew up next door to her,” she said. “And so my grandma was my second mom. I was always at grandma’s house. And I have all these beautiful memories, because my grandma would make homemade flour tortillas every single day and homemade salsa.
“That’s why I named the blog Muy Bueno, because she would say, ‘Siéntate a comer. Está muy bueno,’ which means, ‘Sit down and eat. It’s very good.’”
She thinks of her grandmother often, especially in October, when she prepares grandma’s favorite foods and drinks, makes an altar (an “ofrenda”) and decorates it with her children to celebrate Día de los Muertos.
“We had pomegranate trees in the backyard and apple trees, so we made a little fruit basket and put her sweet bread and her coffee,” Marquez-Sharpnack said. “It was so cute because my kids would go running downstairs after Day of the Dead to see if she came and visited us and drank some coffee. I said, ‘She’s not literally going to drink it, but she’ll be here in spirit.’”
Decorating the ofrenda brings the kids some joy, and Marquez-Sharpnack likes to include more than just food. Her grandmother’s rolling pin and rosary make the cut, as well as a plate of her favorite dishes like chicken mole or tamales.
“They always say to add a glass of water, because you’re spiritually wanting your ancestors to visit you, and they say they come thirsty,” she said. “Candles light their way to come visit you. So you always add candles. You can also burn sage; they say the aromas also bring them in. And marigolds, the most popular flower, are the ones you should add to your altar.
“As the years have gone by, my altar gets bigger and bigger every year. It looks beautiful.”
Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack, author of “Fiestas,” honors her late family members with a Día de los Muertos altar. (Photo by Jenna Sparks)
In the kitchen, her daughter, Maya, and mom, Vangie Soza, will help prepare the food. Pan de muerto is among their favorites, while the kids especially enjoy making the sugar skulls (not to eat, of course).
“They’re not edible,” Marquez-Sharpnack said. “A lot of people think, ‘Oh, it’s a delicious thing.’ But it’s literally like a sugar cube. You just decorate them with royal icing. You can also write the name of the person that you’re honoring on their forehead.
“I have sugar skulls I made 10 years ago, and they’re still intact. One of my kids helped me decorate them. It was cute because they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to make it look like my grandma and put little glasses on her.’”
While the sugar skulls aren’t edible, she decided to use the skull molds to create delicious treats that they actually could eat. Her skull-shaped snacks became a regular part of her celebrations and she has a collection of them available online, as well as in her most recent book, “Muy Bueno: Fiestas.”
Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack, the author of the Muy Bueno blog and the cookbook, “Fiestas,” shares her recipe for decorative sugar skulls also known as calaveras de azúcar. (Photo by Jenna Sparks)
The skull-shaped treats are usually cakes or desserts for the kids. But they shouldn’t be scary skulls, Marquez-Sharpnack said.
“I think a lot of people confuse Day of the Dead with Halloween,” she said. “They see people dressed up and don’t understand what it means. It’s definitely not Mexico’s Halloween.”
The two holidays are almost complete opposites.
The most important thing to remember on Día de los Muertos is that “we’re celebrating our departed through the foods that they enjoyed most in life,” said Mariana Nuño Ruiz, who co-authored “Dining With the Dead: A Feast for the Souls on Day of the Dead” with her husband, Ian McEnroe.
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On the ofrendas Ruiz makes for her departed loves ones, she leaves many of the traditional items, but she also makes one dish of food per person. Ruiz changes the dish each year based on which late loved one she’s deciding to honor (she’s included all her favorites in her cookbook).
“For example, last year, I think it was my grandma Margarita’s turn, and we made mole,” Ruiz said. “And then the year prior, it was Ian’s mom’s turn, and her favorite dish was a fish with butter and caper sauce, which isn’t a Mexican dish, but our altar is multicultural.”
She likes to add some tequila or mezcal, a basket of mandarins, arroz con leche (Mexican rice pudding) for dessert and, of course, pan de muerto.
“Basically, we are preparing the dishes that they enjoyed most in life,” Ruiz said. “They only come once a year to visit us, so we’re going to pamper them.”
Details: “Dining With the Dead: A Feast for the Souls on Day of the Dead — A Mexican Cookbook,” by Mariana Nuño Ruiz and Ian McEnroe (Rio Nuevo Publishers, $40). “Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor,” by Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack (Hippocrene Books, $20).