“I never thought it would be so personal,” she says, opening her arms toward the four-burner hearth the museum built for the exhibit.

“The kitchen is the heart – and the hearth – of any home,” says Salazar. “It’s the love and the feminine power. You are supposed to have fire going at all times in your kitchen.”

The peach-colored replica of her grandmother’s stove, with its blue-and-white Talavera tiles, is designed for practicality, and to keep the fire stoked. On one end, the molcajete for crushing spices sits on a counter for chopping chiles and patting out tortillas. Underneath, a cubbyhole holds wood for the stove. On the other end, a tall jug of water sits at the ready for the beans and the coffee simmering on the grates over the wood fire.

“If you boiled beans, you boiled them in a bean pot. If you cooked, chicken, you used the chicken pot,” says Salazar, recalling how each item had its use, and its place hanging over her grandmother’s hearth. “Peltre (enamelware) – that was the pot. When she got that out, you knew there was going to be a wedding, a funeral or a baptism.”

While the exhibit might elicit nostalgia, Salazar wants to reach beyond warm memories of grandma and get visitors thinking about contemporary issues.

“There is a serious intention to connect. Places like the kitchen are places where we can come together,” regardless of differences in our politics, our upbringing, even the language we speak, she says.

“I hope the visitors see some element that makes a connection with themselves. Look at that pot, created by artisans in Mexico. See the Talavera tiles, with their European influence. Look at the beauty of these utilitarian objects.”

Many of the dishes, pots, baskets and other household items come from the Irving and Ele Tragen collection, amassed over the couple’s diplomatic career in Latin America.

Next to the big stove, the dining table is set with blue dishes, frosty glassware and Salazar’s own family silver, heavy oversized spoons and forks, and bone-handled knives.

In the adjacent room, the show moves from the traditional setting to a display of pottery from the Herencia Milenaria artists cooperative in Tonalá, Jalisco, and mixed-media paintings by Guadalarajan artist Oliverio Balcells. The paintings provide a glossary of Mexican foods – calabaza, maiz, chile – in Spanish, Nahuatl and 10 other languages.

In Spanish, the word “cocina,” has multiple meanings. It refers to the room, to the stove and to the cuisine.

“Food – it is a joy,” says Salazar, who, with her brother Francisco Gonzalez, gives family recipes as gifts every Christmas. “If you have a mother, a grandmother, an aunt who’s a good cook, you should celebrate that person.”