Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert is a beloved and almost legendary cultural heroine who roamed the mountains, valleys, and plains of her native New Mexico, collecting folklore, teaching in country schools, and working as an agricultural extension agent during the Great Depression and into the late 1950s. She wrote the first definitive description of the Indian-Hispanic cooking of the upper Rio Grande area, earning the title of "first lady" of New Mexican cuisine. Her biographical and fictionalized accounts of ranch life on the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain, of eastern New Mexico are considered prime resource material for folklorists and historians.

Born on 16 May 1898 into a distinguished Hispanic ranching family of the rico (rich) class at La Liendre, headquarters of her family's large northeastern New Mexico ranch, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca was raised by her paternal grandmother. Fabiola was four years old when her mother died. Fabiola attended...