Read the following testimony from school cook Tamires Mendes Alves, from the Quilombola Community of São Lourenço do Sul (RS), who had the typical Honduran bean soup, selected by guest judge Alexandra Bigit, a nutritionist from the Honduran School Feeding Program:
“For me, winning the contest with a dish from Honduras was like confirming that I was made to face the unknown. Winning this contest was very important to me because my people crossed the ocean to be enslaved. Just like these dishes, I put into this challenge the courage that my people had to face the unknown and stand firm in the face of a future of uncertainty, oppression, slavery, and cultural erasure. Today I broke another link in the chain that imprisoned my people. I saw my culture and ancestry represented in the African school cook. I touched my ancestry and was touched by it.”