The field came first.
What a milpa is.
A milpa is not a recipe. It is a way of planting. Corn goes in first and grows tall. Beans climb the corn and put nitrogen back into the soil. Squash spreads low and wide, shading the ground so it holds moisture and weeds struggle. Three crops in one plot, each one making the others work better. It has been planted across Mesoamerica for thousands of years and it is still planted today.
We are not going to tell you this is our heritage. It is not. It is a system we studied, and it changed how we thought about what a seasoning could be built from.
Most seasoning is a rearrangement.
Open ten seasoning blends and you will find the same handful of ingredients in different proportions — salt, garlic, onion, paprika, pepper, a little sugar. The competition happens at the flavor label. Barbecue. Taco. Ranch. Everything Bagel. The architecture underneath does not change.
We wanted to change the architecture instead. So we started with the crops and asked what flavor you could build on top of a food base rather than a salt base.
What that means in the jar.
Blue corn masa gives a toasted, grounded body. Black bean powder brings earthiness and weight. Freeze-dried butternut squash adds a natural sweetness that keeps the blend from turning harsh. In the current formula those three together outweigh the smoked salt.
On top of that base we build the rest of the flavor the way you would build it in a pan. Cedar-smoked salt for smoke. Fermented chickpea miso for savory depth. Chiltepin for a quick warm heat. Sumac and lime for acidity. Maple for balance. Garlic, onion, Mexican oregano and epazote for aroma. Sixteen ingredients in total, and every one of them is doing a job.
On borrowing carefully.
Corn, beans and squash are not ours. They belong to the people and places that have grown them together for generations, and the ideas behind the milpa — that a system works because its parts are in relationship, that a gift carries a responsibility — belong to those traditions too.
The honest version of this is that we owe something back. Right now that means naming where the idea came from instead of dressing it up as our own, refusing to use words like sacred to sell a jar, and building sourcing relationships with Indigenous and regional producers as volume allows. That work is early. We would rather say that plainly than imply it is finished.
How I got here.
I grew up in Waconia, Minnesota. At twelve my family moved to East Africa, and food stopped being the thing that showed up on the table — it became the thing that explained where you were and who you were sitting with. Later I worked alongside smallholder farmers in Tanzania, spent a stretch on a regenerative farm in Maui, and cooked in fine dining kitchens where a quarter gram of something changes the whole plate. Then I went back for a Culinology degree, which is where the food science caught up with the cooking.
Who is actually making this.
Trimilpa is the first product from Vitu Foods, a one-person company in Hopkins, Minnesota. Every batch is mixed, filled and labeled by hand in a licensed facility. On Thursdays you will find me at the Waconia farmers market, holding out a basket of popcorn.
