Meet Molé Mama 

Diana Silva is a San Diego-based home chef, author, YouTuber and podcaster. Her Molé Mama Recipes YouTube channel celebrates family recipes, cooking delicious meals at home and adding love to every recipe. Diving into her Latina roots, she uses her magical molcajete, and other tools and techniques that make her food taste like grandma used to make back in Mexico. Along with her guest chefs, Molé Mama explores recipes and traditions from all over the world and the stories that keep them alive.

Diana's new book, Molé Mama; A Memoir of Love, Cooking and Loss, shares the intimate journey of her mother's final thirteen months. She cooks her mother's heirloom Mexican recipes every weekend while Rose presides from her nearby hospice bed and completes taste tests to ensure that Diana has perfected her favorite dishes. Rose also uses this precious time to help Diana understand the secrets to a good life: forgiveness, love, faith, and gratitude for every moment. Diana hopes that her story will inspire you to be courageous, present, authentic and vulnerable during your farewell journeys. The book includes some of Rose's most cherished recipes, Chicken mole, Spanish rice, chili beans, enchiladas, guacamole and others. Diana was just nine years old and when her culinary training began. Rose was making her legendary flour tortillas, and Diana's big job was to mix the masa. Rose expertly poured water, flour, salt and a little baking powder in the bowl and Diana eagerly put her small hands in the bowl and tried to follow her mother's patient instructions on how to mix it. Diana loved the way the sticky dough felt in her little fingers. She was so very proud and excited to help her mama. Diana didn't understand the road she had embarked on that afternoon and the joy she'd experience cooking with her mother for more than 20 years. But none of these multi-generational recipes had been written down, nor could Diana make them without help from her mother. And thus the urgency for this final training from her master chef, Rose. Her recipes needed to be perfected for future generations to enjoy.

Diana is calling everyone to return to their kitchens and to preserve their living and passed ancestor’s favorite recipes and stories for future generations. “We need to try to preserve our cultures and not just let those favorite recipes disappear forever. The common thread of every cherished family recipe is that they were homemade with love, and that’s the real secret ingredient,” says Diana. For many home chefs, cooking is their preferred love language, and that’s why we cherish their recipes. Their love has the power to transcend an ordinary recipe into magic!

Diana encourages everyone to preserve those precious recipes and the stories that make them special. She invites those whose recipes have been lost or have faded over time to subscribe to her YouTube channel, there are plenty of recipes and traditions to share, and you just might be inspired to create your own because, “Every Recipe Tells a Story.” 

Watch her new book trailer video - Molé Mama; A Memoir of Love, Cooking and Loss.

Contact:
Diana Silva
diana@molemama.com
 

Molé Mama sitting in a chair smiling wearing a black sweater.

Molé Mama