A Family Affair: A Few Favorite Recipes of Mrs. Griggs, 1968

What this book is

Most regional NM cookbooks are anonymous compilations — church groups, civic associations, ladies’ auxiliaries. A Family Affair is the opposite: it is one specific family’s recipes, gathered by one mother, written down by one of her daughters, and circulated as the working kitchen reference for the family’s actual restaurants.

The colophon page tells the story directly. Josephine Chavez and Gustavo Griggs married, joining "two well-known pioneer families of Mesilla." They had four children — Katherine, Edgar, Mary, and Consuelo — all four of whom went on to open or operate restaurants serving New Mexican food. Mrs. Griggs was the cook, her daughter Elaine N. Smith was the co-author, and the book is the recipe catalog her children worked from.

This particular copy is the Fourth Edition, printed 1975 by Bronson Printing of Las Cruces — meaning the book was reprinted at least four times in seven years, an unusual print history for a private family cookbook. The reprint demand came from the restaurants themselves, where copies were sold to customers, and from word-of-mouth across NM.

Why it matters

The colophon page is the part that makes this book regionally significant. It lists three distribution points: the Griggs Restaurant on Montana Ave in El Paso, the La Posta Restaurant in Rancho Cordova, California, and — this is the part Albuquerqueans recognize — El Pinto Restaurant at 10500 4th St NW, Albuquerque, NM 87114.

El Pinto is one of the most-visited restaurants in New Mexico — a multi-decade Albuquerque institution, family-run, with one of the largest red-and-green-chile production operations in the state. The book in your hand is older than the restaurant’s current building, and it is the family-recipe document the operation traces back to. For Albuquerque residents, food historians, and writers covering NM cuisine, this is a rare primary source.

The Mesilla angle adds a second layer. Mesilla was the territorial capital and a Confederate-era county seat in the 1860s, and pioneer Mesilla families occupy a specific position in NM regional historiography — the Spanish-Mexican-American transition era, the Gadsden Purchase, the railroad arrival in the 1880s. A pioneer-family cookbook from Mesilla, even an undated one, is documentary evidence of that lineage in a way few other objects are.

Multi-part bibliographic record

How it came in

Donated in May 2026 through NMLP. Donor scenario anonymized per archive policy. Book in clean condition with the original purple yarn binding intact.

Where it’s going

This one routes to a NM food-history collector or to El Pinto Restaurant itself, where the family may want a copy for their own archive. I’ll reach out to El Pinto’s management directly — they’re the natural next-home if they don’t already have a copy of this Fourth Edition. Failing that, the Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park, NM Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum (Las Cruces), or a private NM food-history collector are all credible destinations.