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Betsy

The story begins in a pleasant little shoreline town near New Haven, Connecticut. Bob and Margaret begat Mark Shepard in 1950, Elizabeth Emerson in 1954, and Paul Stuart in 1961. Looking back, the early years were about as sweet as they come; our suburban neighborhood was filled with families with their own three kids, plenty of woods and brooks and caves in which to play, and a school playground across the street that put all three of us extremely high on the list of "Desired Friends to Go Home With After School."
I always thought I'd become an actor, but a year at Emerson College, where everyone always thought they'd become an actor, made me realize I didn't have the chutzpah needed to make it in the industry. The food and hospitality world beckoned, and over the next fifteen years - aside from a brief stint in a bellhop outfit delivering singing telegrams in Santa Cruz - working as a waitress allowed me to work hard all summer and travel all winter. Determined to lose my preppy roots and become a hippie, I traversed the USA with friends in a VW bus, stopping along the way in towns that intrigued us - Key West, New Orleans, Santa Cruz…always Santa Cruz.


In the early 80s I married and settled down in Connecticut, where I managed a few restaurants (one of which received a swell review in the New York Times food section,a stellar moment in my restaurant career) before my love of cooking drew me into the kitchen, where I found my true calling as a chef and caterer.

Life does march on, however, and after an amicable divorce and the deaths of two very dear friends all within a year, I needed a change. In 1989, I moved back to Santa Cruz and dove into the catering scene there. Great times, good friends, and wonderful food, but one day I found myself about to hit 40, tired of working fourteen-hour days, and wondering, "What's next?" Little did I know that saying that out loud would lead to an introduction to the amazing Joan Summers, the owner and creator of La Casa de Espíritus Alegres Bed & Breakfast in Guanajuato, Mexico. I was looking for an adventure, Joan was looking for help, and thanks to a mutual friend with a brilliant idea (Thanks, Jane!), my life took a turn south of the border.

My first-ever visit to Mexico was in December 1994. My Spanish was limited to the days of the week, numbers from one to ten, and phrases like "Please put the carrots in the large cold room." All very useful in the catering kitchen, but a little out of place in a house with seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and no big cold room in which to put carrots. I spent a week learning the ropes with Joan before she left for India, a training that more often than not meant laughing hysterically, eating a lot of great meals, and knowing ripe papaya when I saw one. It wasn't until she was pulling out of the driveway that I thought to ask, "How do you say 'guest' in Spanish?" Luckily, I have a knack for charades, I had a good Spanish dictionary, and the staff was extremely patient.The six week inn-sitting job very quickly became a full time position and Mexico became my new home.

I realize now that the seeds of My Mexico Tours were being sown way back then, as I began to see Mexico through Joan's eyes. The B&B was filled with folk art from every corner of the country, and her passion for the art and the artisans who created it was contagious. Whenever possible we'd take a road trip together to some village or another in search of folk art. I will never forget pulling into a dusty village of look-alike cinder block houses in search of a potter she'd met years before, a town that anyone in their right mind would have driven straight through as quickly as possible. After knocking on a million doors and traipsing through numerous homes and backyards filled with sleeping pigs and tethered goats we came to an open-air workshop where the entire family was working away on a colorful collection of ceramic chickens in various stages of completion. There, in the midst of the menagerie, was the son of the potter she knew.The father had passed away, but his son remembered Joan and clearly was moved by the respect she held for his father's work. They hugged, I teared up, and we ordered a gazillion of whatever they were making. My life as a Mexican folk art addict had begun. That night back at the B&B I wrote in my journal "You could come to Mexico for twenty years and never see what I saw today, thanks to Joan." My mission with MY MEXICO TOURS has always been clear: To open the door for you as Joan did for me.

Working with Joan was a joy and by 1997 La Casa de Espíritus Alegres was flying high. We were featured in numerous magazine and newspaper articles and the B&B was named one of three "Best Inns of Mexico" in Fodor's and chosen by Frommer's as the "Most Unique Inn of Mexico." Wow. Luckily, Joan lived to see that happen before she succumbed to cancer in 1998 at the age of 64. Tragic. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of her and the great work we did together. And the laughs! Man, that woman was funny! I stayed on for another five years and in the fall of 2002, after eight exciting, challenging, and eminently educational years, I left the B&B.

That fall I went to work on a project with Bon Appétit for their annual travel issue; in 2003 the chosen country was Mexico. I traveled across Mexico for several weeks working on a feature article (18 photo shoots in 23 days in 20 different locations, yowzer!) based on Marilyn Tausend's cookbook Savoring Mexico. In the same issue, my recipes were featured in an Entertaining With Style article, Lunch at the Hacienda, shot at the home of my wonderful neighbors Rosendo & Carlene. A photo of their fabulous house and my delicious Pork Tenderloin with Orange Chipotle Sauce graced the cover of Bon Appétit's Soul of Mexico issue in May 2003. Proud? You Betcha.

In 2003 I moved back to Santa Cruz and I began working with photographer Melba Levick, whom I'd met at the B&B during a shoot for her book Mexicasa, on a book about Mexican kitchens, the fourth of Chronicle Books' Mexico design series. In the fall of 2006 Mexicocina: The Spirit and Style of the Mexican Kitchen was released.

While working with Bon Appétit and on the book, l was traveling all across Mexico meeting cooks, artists, hotel owners, and warm, friendly people everywhere I went. After a particularly profound meeting with Diana Kennedy, then reading her book My Mexico from cover to cover, it became very clear that my next project would be a tour business in which I could share - as Joan had with me - the people, places, art, and flavors of Mexico I had come to love. Not all of Mexico, but my Mexico.

MY MEXICO TOURS began with a folk art trip to Pátzcuaro in the fall of 2003. Since then I've introduced hundreds of intrepid travelers to the villages, ruins, and textiles of Chiapas; the elegant colonial cities of Puebla, Tlaxcala, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, and more; the folk art and fabulous cuisines of Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Yucatán; regional culinary experiences in humble huts and palatial homes; crumbling Maya ruins and thriving Maya culture in Chiapas and the Yucatán peninsula; as well as all the people who fill my Mexico world: the artisans, bakers. butchers, cooks, experts, and everyday people who have given me so much of themselves over the years.

We've hiked in jungles, boated through the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City, painted in the courtyards of convents and private estates, scaled ruins, spent the night in three-hundred-year old haciendas and cemeteries glowing with candlelight, and tasted the most ethereal quesadillas in the world. Artisans, cooks, and characters. Out of the way places and undiscovered restaurants. Boat rides and mariachi music. Drag queens, chefs, and shamans. Wacky fiestas, otherworldy moments, and deeply moving ceremonies. It's a great job. I think the thing I like the most about Mexico is the fact that after seventeen years of extensive travel all over the country, I still feel just as delighted as I did when I first arrived, because on every visit I still discover new people, places, tastes, and sights, all of which I am excited to share with you.

These days, when I'm not on the road with a tour or researching a new adventure, I'm at home in Santa Cruzin a cozy little cottage two blocks from the ocean. I live alone again, but I still see Jesse the Wonder Boy (now seven years-old!) and his mom (my housemates in Happy Valley for over five years) as often as possible and I share a big part of my life these days with a swell guy named John. I cater some, do my tours as well as quite a bit of private "concierge" travel planning, and try to remember to write blog posts about all the cool and exciting things in my life that I want to share with y'all. For fun, I cook, entertain, spend way too much time on Facebook connecting with friends all over the world, visit Mexico as often as I can, and do a radio show once a month at the university station here in Santa Cruz, which is great fun. If you're near a computer on the first Sunday of the month, tune in online (KZSC.ORG) and you will likely find me ruling the airwaves and having a blast.

Life is good and never boring. Hope you feel the same.