Mano y Metate

When Amy Valdés Schwemm unearthed a stone pestle in her great-aunt’s kitchen drawer years ago, she had no idea she was uncovering the foundation of her future business. That smooth volcanic rock, once part of her great-grandmother’s metate, had been used for grinding corn, chiles and spices into the dense, rich sauces known as mole.

For Valdés Schwemm (pictured), the find sparked both a personal connection to her heritage and an entrepreneurial idea. “I didn’t get a family recipe, because by the time I came around, no one was making mole from scratch,” she says. “But I knew my mother remembered what it tasted like. I started experimenting, and eventually, [family members] told me, ‘Yes, this is really good. This is what we remember.’ ”

From there, Valdés Schwemm built Tucson-based Mano y Metate, a small-batch mole business that, since 2007, has been making the complex Mexican sauces accessible to today’s home cooks.

The name itself carries the weight of tradition: The mano and metate are stone grinding tools at the center of Mesoamerican cooking. Valdés Schwemm also wanted to honor her maternal lineage — women who balanced cultural traditions with practical survival. Those women included her grandmother and great-aunt, who prioritized education over passing on labor-intensive recipes. “They told their daughters, ‘Go to college; don’t learn how to make mole,’ ” she says with a laugh. “But I wanted to bring back that flavor for my family.”

Rather than grinding chiles on stone for hours, though, Valdés Schwemm has modernized her methods, using industrial grinders to produce more batches at a time. Each resulting tin of mole contains carefully balanced powders of toasted nuts, seeds and spices, allowing home cooks to make mole in minutes instead of over an afternoon.

Mano y Metate now offers six varieties of mole, each with its own cultural backstory and culinary personality. They include the Mole Dulce — a smooth, chocolatey nod to Valdés Schwemm’s grandmother’s sweet tooth — and the Mole Negro, which incorporates dark, hot and smoky chiles with a hint of cacao nibs. “It’s fun to mix the Dulce and the Negro to help someone find the balance they like best,” Valdés Schwemm says. “My mom, though … she’s all about the sweet mole.”

For many Mexican-Americans, she adds, mole is a dish tied to memory, holidays and grandmothers’ kitchens. But it’s also intimidating, given that recipes often call for 30 ingredients and five hours of preparation. Valdés Schwemm sees Mano y Metate as a bridge between tradition and accessibility: “I absolutely tell people, ‘Just pass this off as your own. I won’t be offended. I’ll be honored.’ ”

Her powders, though, are more than convenience foods; they’re also designed to invite experimentation. Toasting the blend in oil before adding broth activates the spices and thickens the sauce naturally, letting cooks control the richness and heat. “Instead of a jar with soybean oil and preservatives, you choose what goes into your mole,” Valdés Schwemm says. “It makes the cooking feel vibrant and alive, even if it only takes five minutes.”

Although Valdés Schwemm is the founder and owner, Mano y Metate remains a family operation. Her mother, Estrellita Elizabeth, and sister, Laura, often help with packaging, labeling and selling at events. Extended relatives pitch in, too. “It’s definitely a family affair,” she says. “I couldn’t do it without them.”

Valdés Schwemm’s path to entrepreneurship began in the fields. At Native Seeds/SEARCH, a Tucson-based seed conservation organization, she worked with heirloom chiles and squash, feeding volunteers with her early mole experiments. When the seed bank stopped importing mole powder from Mexico, people kept asking her to re-create it. “That’s when I realized there was a real need,” she says. “It wasn’t just about my family anymore. People wanted this.”

She launched her business on September 16 — Mexican Independence Day — without fully realizing the symbolism. “I wasn’t thinking about tradition at first,” she says. “I was just excited about food. But now, I see how it connects me to a long line of entrepreneurs in my family.”

In every tin of Mano y Metate mole powder, there’s more than spices and chocolate. There’s a story of heritage recovered, of family traditions adapted for modern life, and of an entrepreneur who insists that food is best when it’s shared. “I’m not a salesperson,” Valdés Schwemm says. “I’m a gardener and a cook. The business part came later. But it’s been really natural to share my passion for food.”

You can order Mano y Metate products online or find them at select Arizona events, such as Día de los Muertos at the Tucson Botanical Gardens.