PHILADELPHIA — Photographer Cielito Mercado Vivas is preserving cultural traditions through the power of food, culminating in an upcoming cookbook that celebrates immigrant stories and the recipes that define them.
“Everyone has something favorite of their mom or dad, I know I did too,” she said.
A Taste of Home: Preserving Family Recipes
“Family Preserves: Home Cooked Stories From Immigrant Kitchens” will feature recipes and personal narratives from 13 families across the United States, offering a poignant look at how food connects generations and cultures.
- Vivas, born to Filipino immigrant parents and raised in Andorra, shifted her photographic focus from portraits to plates.
- The cookbook highlights the importance of food in maintaining cultural identity and creating a sense of comfort for immigrant communities.
- “Family Preserves” includes meticulously measured recipes, often derived from traditions passed down through feel and experience.
- The project features stories from diverse communities, including a large Laotian population in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
- The cookbook is slated for release in October 2026, with a foreword by James Beard Award-winning chef Phila Lorn.
Vivas’ journey began with a desire to document the stories of her own family, leading her to explore the kitchens of other immigrant communities. She discovered a universal thread: food as a powerful symbol of home, heritage, and love.
Among the dishes featured is a Hong Kong-inspired chicken wing recipe, a delightful combination of ketchup, honey, and soy sauce that Vivas describes as “this kind of crispy, sticky, sweet taste.” The recipe, like many others in the book, represents a fusion of cultures and a longing for familiar flavors.
“Finding flavor that’s similar to what they know and love, it makes them feel comfort and happiness,” Vivas explained. She noted that many traditional recipes are passed down without precise measurements, relying on intuition and experience. “The funny thing is, a lot of parents don’t measure, so this was a way for us to calculate in order to document it,” she said.
The cookbook, scheduled for publication in October 2026, boasts a foreword by Phila Lorn, the James Beard Award-winning chef behind Mawn and Sow, further solidifying its place as a significant contribution to culinary literature.
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