[1] Her cookbooks are based on her fifty years of travelling in Mexico, interviewing and learning from several types of cooks from virtually every region of the nation.

[7] She did not go on to university because of World War II and instead, at age 19, joined the Women's Timber Corps:[8] a civilian organisation that took over forestry duties from men who had gone off to fight.

[6] In 1953, Kennedy emigrated to Canada, where she lived for three years while doing a number of jobs, including running a film library and selling Wedgewood china.

[citation needed] In Mexico, Kennedy fell in love with the food, and spent the rest of her career working for its preservation and promotion.

[5][1] She visited every state in Mexico, and used diverse forms of transportation, from buses, to donkeys to her Nissan pickup truck with no power steering (and a shovel to dig it out of the mud).

[8] Kennedy's focus became the food that was not documented, such as that found in villages, markets and homes, eventually to preserve native ingredients and traditional recipes being lost as Mexicans move from rural areas to urban centers.

[4][8] In 1969, Kennedy began to teach classes in Mexican cooking in her apartment in the Upper West Side, with the encouragement of Craig Claiborne.

[4][8] Kennedy did not consider herself a writer, but rather as someone who documented what she saw in about fifty years of travelling Mexico, including remote areas, to talk to cooks of all kinds.

[6] She registered a wide variety of edible plants,[3][4] and included more exotic recipes such as those using brains, iguanas, insects and even whole animals such as oxen.

[3] "As far as I can see," said Kennedy, "I write oral history that is disappearing with climate change, agribusiness, and loss of cultivated lands.

"[16] In the introduction of Oaxaca al Gusto, Kennedy wrote ... "Trying to record the ethnic foods as well as the more sophisticated recipes of the urban centers presented an enormous challenge and responsibility … I am sure that if I had known what it would entail to travel almost constantly through the year, and often uncomfortably, to research, record, photograph and then cook and eat over three hundred recipes, I might never have had the courage to start the project in the first place..."[1] In addition to travelling in Mexico, Kennedy's work required frequent travel abroad, especially to the United States, where she gave classes and spoke about Mexican cuisine.

[18] However, Kennedy dismissed most chefs doing Mexican food during her time because they had not done the travelling and research that she had and innovated rather than preserved original methods.

[6] She criticized chefs who waste food and who encourage the unnecessary use of plastic, foil, and other items that only get thrown in the trash.

[16] Some of her conflicts received significant press: she threw chef Rick Bayless out of her car for being "brash"; her criticisms of Maricel Presilla were pungent.

[6][1] She was careful to credit the people who have shared their understanding of Mexican regional foods with her, including, for example, anthropologist and restaurateur Raquel Torres Cerdán.

The National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) has digitized her research including a vast collection of recipes, drawings and notes both on cooking and native edible plants, resulting in a section of their website dedicated to her.

Kennedy stated in My Mexico (1998) that she wanted a house built of local materials and a lifestyle similar to that of her neighbors.

[17] It was built by local architect, Armando Cuevas, and is centered on a large boulder, almost the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, which Kennedy decided not to remove from the site.

[4][10] The gardens include grapefruit, apricot and fig trees, chayote vines from Veracruz, and a section dedicated to the corn she used for masa.

The Foundation is also geared toward preservation, not only of Mexico's food heritage, but of Quinta Diana, with its immense collection of Mexican cookbooks, other publications and pottery, along with the gardens.

[17] Kennedy was called the "grand dame of Mexican cooking", with comparisons to Julia Child in the United States and Elizabeth David in the UK, and a "dogged, obsessive pop anthropologist.

[4][18] She was a common name among foodies in the United States for decades, but did not receive notice in her native England until Prince Charles came to Quinta Diana in 2002, to eat and to appoint her a Member of the Order of the British Empire.