Kellee Matsushita-Tseng. Alex Roth-Dunn. Pam McLeod. Dave Stimpson. Ned Conwell. The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) laid off these five staff members as part of
Last year when Esther Dominguez Salinas was released from the hospital after she d recovered enough from COVID-19, a friend brought her an aluminum container of enchiladas from El Norteño, a no-frills Mexican restaurant in central Phoenix.
While this time they weren t homemade, enchiladas are the food that most remind Dominguez Salinas of her mother.
Her mom, also named Esther, died on Mexican Mother s Day in 2005, just shy of celebrating her 40th birthday. Dominguez Salinas was 18 and attending Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Scottsdale at the time.
Dominguez Salinas said when she expressed interest in attending Le Cordon Bleu, her father Miguel Dominguez Garcia, a baker, encouraged her to apply for a pâtisserie program. But learning to cook from her mom pulled her toward a cuisine program instead.
“People eat with their eyes first.”
That’s what 34-year-old Esther Dominguez Salinas reminds herself as she pours berry coulis over a slice of angel food cake. She thinks of what a hospital patient, tired and hungry, might see when the plate goes upstairs to their room, and takes care to package the cake so it won’t get smushed.
Since February 2020 Dominguez Salinas has worked different stations in the cafeteria at Banner Health s University Medical Center in Phoenix, a hospital located at 12th Street and McDowell Road. She takes pride in her role, working on a team of more than 150 people who prepare more than 4,000 meals a day for patients and hospital staff during the coronavirus pandemic.