Andy Smith
I’m not a vegetarian, much less a vegan, so talking about food in those terms is a bit like learning a new language.
For example, vegans don’t eat cheese from milk, so vegan restaurant menus refer to cheese-like substitutes as “cheeze” – a shorthand customers understand to mean a plant-based food product.
I learned this from Albuquerque restaurateur Tina Archuleta, an Indigenous vegan whose experiences living in a “food desert” shaped her future. Archuleta makes her own “cheeze” from pumpkins, but calls it “chi” sauce – a double entendre that sounds like “cheese” but also refers to the traditional Chinese term for the vital life force or energy that runs through all living things.
Archuleta has an entire philosophy about food and nutrition built around her own experiences as a Jemez Pueblo native, but colored by other world cultures that strive to live in harmony with…
