The HL senior class of Steve Gehrenbeck-Miller, or as students call him, Señor Esteban, recently went on a field trip to Lake Street to interview local business owners and recreate traditional Mexican dishes.

Taking from the book Como Agua Para Chocolat, the students split up into various groups of four to five and interviewed local business owners using Spanish. One group of students went to a tortilla factory/restaurant. Talking to the owner’s son, they learned about the history of the operation and the ins and outs of running a factory.

“We just kind of talked to him about how COVID has affected his business and part of his day to day work, like his favorite part about his job. Kind of like family heritage because they emigrated down here. And then he gifted our class tortilla chips and tortillas, so that was kind of fun,” Izzy Doering (‘24) said.

After the interviews, the students did a little more exploration throughout Lake Street Plaza, tried the local food, and continued shopping. Afterward, they continued on to the second part of the field trip: recreating recipes from the book with the groceries they bought.

“In the book, there’s a chapter for each month. And there are 12 chapters, so they make 12 recipes. And they’re all about different Mexican constants, I think, in traditions, and we chose one. Most of them were like party food and stuff. So this was like one of their party dishes, and I think we just didn’t make it as good,” Andres Ramos (‘24) said.

“We made a lemon wedding cake,” Doering said.

“It was a field trip to Lake Street to get some ingredients to make a dish, a Spanish dish. It’s a combination of Cerrito tomatoes and some other stuff, and then you fry it or put it in a pan, and then you end up putting it in a bun. Some lettuce on top. It was good,” Ben Batalden (‘24) said.

“We tried a traditional Mexican soup that was really good. And just kind of wandering around Lake Street, and [I appreciated] just how kind everyone was and open to, like, taking time out of their day to answer questions,” Doering said.

“It was pretty fun just to be able to walk around Lake Street. It was cool,” Batalden said. “I mean, it was pretty empty at the time, but I just talked to some people in the store, and it was fun.”

“[There was] some homeless dude talking nice to me. He said I looked big, so I was pretty happy. And then some other dudes started singing at me. I was pretty nicely serenaded,” Ramos said.

After buying groceries, students took them back to the school kitchen and made their recipes from the book. Some turned out better than others.

“It was pretty seamless. I guess we just went to a big market, and then we got our fruits and vegetables, and then we went to the butcher shop, and we got our meat, so it wasn’t too hard,” Ramos said. “I did enjoy the field trip. We had a good time. We got to eat some food. I got to buy some food. I mean, we have to talk to some people. I didn’t like the food. Well, at least the food that we made. We made some shitty food. I’m not gonna lie.”