Diana Silva aka Molé Mama with her Mama Rose.

Diana Silva comes from a line of brave, resilient women. Her grandmother, a Mexican immigrant, and Diana's mother built lives for themselves and the people they loved by working on California farms. This was long before the days of Caesar Chavez. Conditions in the fields were brutal, particularly for women. Workers' rights, per se, did not exist. They worked and lived under the long shadow of racist oppression. Nevertheless, these women celebrated the joy of work that kept their families fed, the joy of keeping loved ones close, and the joy of cooking as the gravitational center of their community.

Sometimes cows need help to calve.

Diana grew up helping her father manage a dairy farm in Central California. Through the lessons she learned doing hard farm chores as a little girl, she came to understand milk as a gift from cows. And grass-munching cows as gifts from the land.

At her mother's bidding, Diana would lug from the barn to the kitchen cream-rich buckets of raw milk. Her mother would skim some cream and make butter and cheese. Diana learned what real, whole food tastes like. She learned to cook at her mother's side, feeding a community of immigrant workers. And, from her immigrant roots, she learned to seize opportunity while staying connected to community through food.

One delightful upshot is Diana's podcast Mole Mama, Cooking with Love, which brings great Mexican cooking within reach to those of us who don't have a treasure of family recipes like Diana's. And Mole Mama also showcases inspiring entrepreneurs who, like Diana, have found niches in America's capitalist economy and are bringing amazing food and cultural treasures to market for the rest of us.

12Radio.com Thursday nights at 6 pm, PT.

Molé Mama: A Memoir of Love, Cooking, and Loss

Molé Mama Blog

Molé Mama

Terry Hanson Mead Piloting Your Life Podcast: More (fascinating) info about Diana's career in Tech

Insta: Mole_Mama 

Alicia's Delicias on Molé Mama

Here is a little round-up of opinions Pro and Con the consumption of cow's milk by humans: Is Drinking Milk Healthy for Humans?