Welcome to the Making Things Newsletter.

Fab24 and Great Mexican Food and Drink

If you like to eat, and especially if you cook like I do, you enjoy the opportunity to explore foods from different parts of the world, especially foods that you don’t get to experience that often. On first night of my trip in August to Puebla, Mexico, I went to dinner with folks from the Fab Foundation and while I enjoyed meeting and talking to everyone at the table, I really appreciated the recommendation that I try a Tamarindo Margarita, which has a smoky flavor and a bit of spice.

Later, I was told that I had to try a seasonal dish called Chiles de Nogada. It’s a poblano chile pepper stuffed with fruits, nuts, and meat and then covered with a white sauce made from walnuts (nogada) and with pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top. It’s considered a national dish whose colors reflect the red, green and white of the Mexican flag. The one surprise in that the sauce is served at room temperature, not hot.

There were several projects that were part of the of the Fab City Challenge that had to do with improving agricultural processes. I talked to a group with FabLab Anáhuac located in Cholula who said that the ingredients for Chiles de Nogada were grown at different elevations on the slopes of Popocatépetl, a volcanic mountain outside Puebla. To be honest, I can’t remember what is grown at which elevation but I do recall that the problem that this team wanted to address was reducing the amount of field labor required to grow these ingredients.

The other project was developed by Nancy Wu from Fablab Shanghai. She was looking at integrating new technology with the existing knowledge that farmers have developed over generations but often not documented. She saw that the knowledge existed but not in a form that was easily accessed. This could be local knowledge about planting schedules, for instance. Her project involved collecting existing documents and then using ChatGPT to create a chatbot interface that could accessed by a mobile phone.

One of the projects was to make it easier to plant a lot of seeds that can later be transplanted into a garden. It was a set of trays that stack on top of each other.

Another project was a solar dryer for fruits, nuts and herbs.

It’s one thing to enjoy the food; it’s another to explore the whole farm-to-table process behind how all the foods are grown, harvested and preserved. It might be true for appreciating any aspect of culture. It’s not just examining cultural artifacts or products, but getting to know more about the processes and people that generate them.

Makers of Mexico

This week, I held a Fireside Chat that featured three makers from Mexico.

Antonio Quirarte is the founder of Hacedores.com, which he started in Jun 2013 in Mexico City.  He is also the organizer of Maker Faire CDMX, which will take place October 12 & 13.  Hacedores is a rough translation of makers in Spanish (the verb “hacer” means to make or do something). He works on setting up makerspaces in schools around Mexico.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Antonio in Puebla, Mexico in early August, as both of us were speaking at the Fab24 conference. He also took me to a very nice restaurant and among the dishes, one was enchiladas with two kinds of sauces made from pumpkin seeds (pepitas).

We were joined by bioartist Judith Covarrubias Saucedo who makes biopolymetric sculptures. She is experimenting making different materials from which she makes her art.

• https://www.instagram.com/j.covasau.bioart

• https://www.facebook.com/judithcovasaubioartist

One of the interesting questions Judith got was how long her sculptures lasted.

Felipe Echeverria Bennett is a wood carver and whittler from Mexico City. His project is "Maderama"  and he carves adorable trolls from wood blocks, among other things.

Felipe talked about how he designed his small workshop at home with all the tools he uses. Here are some clever carved figures from Felipe’s Facebook page.

• https://www.instagram.com/maderama.mx

• https://www.facebook.com/Maderama.mx/

You can find the recorded video of the Fireside Chat linked here.

Moon Makers

I just published an interview I did in Puebla with Camila and Diego Luna from Moon Makers. This sister-brother team are enthusiastic makers who are spreading the word about the maker movement and maker education in Mexico.

Camila and Diego interviewed me and then we turned things around and I interviewed them.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].