Why I wrote The SalviSoul Cookbook?

It's a book about food, but death and grief made me do it.

I’m often asked how and why I started SalviSoul. My answers vary.

“I grew up surrounded by women cooking and storytelling.”
“There wasn’t a single Salvadoran cookbook published by a Big Five publisher in this country, and that’s absurd.”
“I wanted to stay rooted in my culture’s foodways.”

All of these are true. But the answer I rarely get to share is this: death, dying, and grief made me do it.

Death Was Always Around

I was raised evangelical—though I no longer practice. Death was always present, woven into conversation, albeit wrapped in religious mystery. It was holy. John 3:16, anyone?

I remember learning about King David pleading with God for a certain kind of death. We can ask for that? I was shocked. It seemed extravagant. I was busy praying for smaller things: Please don’t separate me from my family. Please let me stay in school. I just want to go to school.

At the dinner table, I listened to stories about dead relatives or the misfortunes of some fulano or fulana who had lost their life in the war. I heard about dead dreams—my father had wanted to be a journalist, my mother a psychologist. (It’s not lost on me how their unrealized ambitions shaped my own.) We ate, we talked, we grieved. We had survived for each other, which meant something had been sacrificed. Something had died.

Death Keeps Showing Up

At nearly every book talk, someone hands me a copy of my cookbook to sign and shares a story about their loved one. A mother, a sister, a grandfather, a friend—someone who was the family cook, now gone. Their Salvadoran dishes vanished with them. And yet, here is this book, trying to fill an immeasurable void.

For many, that person was the last tangible connection to the homeland—a living, breathing tie to El Salvador. I hold their hand as they share their grief. I know the feeling.

When my grandmother died, I felt like I lost my country. She was my compass, my map, my pinpoint on earth that told me: You are here. Writing the cookbook became my way of unpacking my grief, my questions about death and dying.

My grandmother, Mama Lucy and I in her kitchen.

In speaking with the women I interviewed for the book, I found that we all carry our muertos with us. We cook a certain way because that’s how so-and-so did it. We eat certain dishes at certain times because that’s what we were taught by this person who is now gone. There is power in eating like your grandmother once did.

A Bridge Between Grief and Living

It may seem strange, but writing my cookbook built a bridge—a way to navigate death, dying, and grief. It has made me more intentional, more present. It reminds me to reach for the life I want, to live softly, knowing how fragile and small we are, yet how deeply we leave our mark.

Time and again, when I gather with other Salvadorans and Central Americans, I find that stories of our dead, our grief, our losses linger just beneath the surface. We carry them with us, eager to share, just as our elders once did. I hope we keep talking about them—at the dinner table, over simmering pots of frijoles, between bites of something familiar like tortillas and aguacates. It has given me a profound respect for life, shaping the way I approach food, history, and the ways we continue on.

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Relajo Recommends

• Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this post! Then come back and tell me your thoughts.

• Did you know that SalviSoul launched an original series? Watch it on YouTube! It’s called SalviLos Angeles. It was made to highlight Salvadorans in the food world in Los Angeles. I wasn’t going to wait for Netflix or Hulu to wise up and make the art I want to see in the world so I made it.

• If you’ve purchased The SalviSoul Cookbook, mis agradecimientos nunca seran suficientes, but if you haven’t yet, here’s a link!

See you in the next one!

Con amor y SalviSoul,

Karla