edible Baja Arizona - July/August 2014

edible

July/August 2014 • Issue No. 7 • GRATIS

edible BAJA ARIZONA

BAJA A RIZONA

Celebrating the foodways of Tucson and the borderlands.

REVISITING A DRY RIVER No. 7 July/August 2014

A FLIGHT ALONG THE SANTA CRUZ RIVER · VEGETARIAN AL FRESCO HOME BREWING IN TUCSON · WAFFLES FOR ALL Member of Edible Communities

4 July - August 2014

Contents July - August 2014 6 GRIST FOR THE MILL 8 VOICES Farmers’ market customers talk with their favorite vendors.

12 GLEANINGS Fed by Threads opens new doors; Super cookies at the market; Rincon Market re-opens.

28 PLATE That one thing they should never take off the menu.

31 KIDS’ MENU Shrimp-Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers & Basil Lemonade.

33 EDIBLE HOMESTEAD The not-so-tame summer garden and harvesting the bean trees.

43 IN SEASON 46 MEET YOUR FARMER At Harris Heritage Growers, three sisters are growing a cornucopia of produce that’s yours for the picking.

52 TABLE After more than 40 years in the business, La Roca el Balcon continues to capture the elusive spirit of Ambos Nogales.

Above: Photograph by Bill Steen. Ingredients for Ensalada de Verdolagas (Purslane Salad); story p. 110, recipe p. 113.

On the cover: Photograph by Steven Meckler. Hand-cranked sweet corn ice cream is mixed and ready to go for the Vegetarian al Fresco meal. Story on p. 102, recipe on p. 108.

64 PURVEYORS Tucked in a small spot off Speedway, the jam-packed Babylon Market offers unexpected delights 70 DRINK Exploring Tucson’s kombucha scene, home-brewed and restaurant-made.

74 FOOD TRUCKS With new owners, new waffles, and a renewed farm-to-food truck focus, Foodie Fleet is doubling down on local sourcing.

82 POLICY From the Stone Age to the USDA—how food safety regulations impact what we’re eating.

Features

112 SABORES DE SONORA Befriending the wild greens of summer.

90 REVISITING A DRY RIVER Following the aftermath of water, by plane— a flight along the Santa Cruz River.

118 BUZZ With so many stellar microbreweries sprouting up around town, why bother to brew your own brew?

104 VEGETARIAN AL FRESCO A vegetarian feast cooked on a cool mountaintop is the perfect antidote to summer’s swelter

130 INK Book reviews: Extra Virginity; Whole-Grain Mornings; One Good Dish 146 LAST BITE Petey Mesquitey on real estate, farmers’ markets, and dreams.

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A CLOUD IS COMING TOWARD ME, SHAKING.

GRIST FOR THE MILL

edible BAJA ARIZONA

“There are certain things you must learn on your own. The desert is unpredictable, enigmatic.

One minute you will be smelling dust. The next, the desert can smell just like rain.”

—Gary Paul Nabhan

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER

A

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

with this seventh issue, we’re expectant about more than just the start of our second year of publishing. By the time the magazine hits the streets in early July, we’re hopeful the unrelenting heat will begin to give way with the coming of the summer rains, bringing the desert to life.

And we are excited indeed about starting our second year. The humbling success of Edible Baja Arizona during our first year is—we firmly believe—a reflection of the amazing vibrancy of what’s going on here in the local food movement, in many ways. Although we know we have a long way to go toward our goal of “re-localizing our foodshed,” we see hopeful and exciting signs of change everywhere. I offer our never-ending gratitude to our nearly 250 advertisers, whose patronage of Edible Baja Arizona makes this magazine a reality. Please make it a point to patronize them and thank them for their support.

And special thanks to our core staff, all of whom work like dogs to bring you the magazine: Jared McKinley, associate publisher, pedals around town with a tenacious passion, connecting local businesses with the magazine as advertising partners, helping plan editorial content, doing distribution, and taking care of many details that make the business work. Megan Kimble, managing editor, has been a rock solid foundation of organization, exceptional reporting and writing talent, and is a deft hand at editing our stories, working with our writers and photographers, and handling the many logistical challenges of putting out a magazine. Steve McMackin, art director, has brought a level of enthusiasm, mastery, and creativity to our design and production that is truly awesome in its breadth. His work builds on the great foundation laid by Serena Tang, who was instrumental in making the magazine a joy to read during our first several issues. And, as always, Gary Nabhan has been a constant source of ideas, connections, critique, humor, and an invaluable perspective that helps to inform everything we do here. My sincere thanks to all—and to the many, many collaborators who help us create this celebration of Baja Arizona every eight weeks. There’s much more to come!

Summer is synonymous with a lot of things, perhaps, but getting outside for a picnic—and out of the heat—is a must. Amy Valdés Schwemm and friends take a movable feast to the cool heights of Mount Lemmon, documented by Steven Meckler’s wonderful photographs.

Ken Lamberton, who wrote the book Dry River: Stories of Life, Death, and Redemption on the Santa Cruz, goes up in a plane with photographer Jeff Smith to trace the route of the Santa Cruz River from its headwaters north to the Gila River. The trip, he says, provided the perspective of continuity—free of the distractions of going overland—and of the connection we all have with water in the desert. The Santa Cruz has sustained people for 13,000 years and enabled agriculture in this valley for more than 4,000 years.

Foodie Fleet is an innovative food truck owned by Kylie Rogers and Adam Dick, who are fiercely committed to locally sourcing everything they possibly can—a huge task for any food operation, but especially precarious for a food truck given the unpredictability of sales. Moses Thompson goes across the border to capture the elusive spirit of Ambos Nogales at La Roca el Balcon, a restaurant nestled into cliffs in downtown Nogales, Sonora.

And as always, there’s much, much more to discover. We’ll see you around the table. Thank you for being a reader. Onward into Year 2!

S WE GO TO PR ESS

—Douglas Biggers, editor and publisher 6 July - August 2014

Douglas Biggers Jared R. McKinley MANAGING EDITOR

Megan Kimble ART DIRECTOR

Steve McMackin CHAIR, EDITORIAL BOARD

Gary Paul Nabhan COPY EDITOR

Ford Burkhart INTERN

Jennifer Hijazi ACCOUNT MANAGER

Katy Gierlach ADVERTISING CONSULTANTS

Becky Reyes, Stephanie Chace, Kenny Stewart CONTRIBUTORS

Lee Allen, Haile Thomas, Barbara Rose, Molly Kincaid, Moses Thompson, Eric Van Meter, Merrill Eisenberg, Ken Lamberton, Amy Valdés Schwemm, Bill Steen, Ander Monson, Petey Mesquitey PHOTOGRAPHERS & ARTISTS

Steven Meckler, Jeff Smith, Liora K, Bill Steen, Danny Martin, Catherine Eyde, James Martin, Hector Acuna WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. 307 South Convent Avenue, Barrio Viejo Tucson, Arizona 85701 520.373.5196 info@edibleBajaArizona.com EdibleBajaArizona.com Volume 2, Issue 1. Edible Baja Arizona is published six times annually by Coyote Talking, LLC. Subscriptions are available for $36 annually at EdibleBajaArizona. com or by phone. Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without the express written permission of the publisher. Research and community outreach for Edible Baja Arizona is cosponsored and funded by the W.K. Kellogg program in Borderlands Food and Water Security at the University of Arizona.

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VOICES

Who’s at the market?

Farmers’ market customers talk with their favorite vendors.

Photography by Steven Meckler

(from left) David Mercadoand and Sue Wyckoff, of Grammy’s Garden

(from left) YaFang Kuo and Willow Spicewood, of Spice of the Desert

“I

“S

LOVE THE FR ESHNESS of their produce, especially the vegetables. I’ve been buying food from Sue and George for five years. I’ve gotten to know the family. Today, I bought bell peppers, tomato, broccoli, and carrots. It’s really enjoyable to come here. I try to come every Sunday,” says David.

“David’s been a customer for many years” says Sue. “He consistently buys the same produce. He cooks so he’s knowledgeable about what he wants.”

8 July - August 2014

I MOVED HER E three years ago, I always get my eggs here, every week. They’re the best eggs. The egg yolk is really orange. I sometimes get tomatoes, too. And when he has them, when they’re in season, I buy jujubes,” says YaFang.

INCE

(Above, from left) Amy Feldman and Lucy Mitchell, Small Planet Bakery

“I

’ VE BEEN BU YING HER BR EAD for decades,” says Amy. “I’ll go to the store, or at St. Philip’s farmers’ market.

My husband takes a sandwich to work every day made on her bread.”

“Your daughter even worked for me,” says Lucy. “We’ve known each other since 1980.”

“I usually buy two loaves of bread. Something sweet for the morning,” says Amy. “Right,” says Lucy. “The orange date bread, usually. Or cinnamon rolls for a treat in the morning—And then I’ll buy a whole wheat or a sunseed.”

(Below, from left) Nicole Draper & Stanley Ryder of Whole Balance and Anne and Craig Howerton

“W

of their very first customers. We live in Oro Valley, but we make the trek down here because we love this market. You begin to form relationships with people, with vendors, and it makes you want to keep coming back. It’s not just the food; it’s the camaraderie,” says Craig.

E WER E SOME

Sara Rickard and John Rueb, of Forever Yong Farm

“I

’ VE BEEN COMING to this market for five or six years. John has been at the markets as long as I have.

He sold his surplus produce to the Food Bank consignment program. He’s always been a supporter of the Food Bank.

Today, I bought beets, broccoli, carrots. He’s farther south, so he still has cooler weather crops when everyone is out,” says Sarah.

Audra Christophel, of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and Bethany Stocker

“I

LIK E TO SUPPORT the Community Food Bank.

They have a lot of variety. They always have different things. Today, I bought nopales, oranges, some kale for a salad, green onions. I’ve met a lot of the volunteers [at the stand] and started building relationships.

[Audra and I] met at the market, started chatting here, and now we see each other everywhere,” says Bethany.

10 July - August 2014

Adela Durazo, of Durazo’s Poco Loco Salsa amd Rebecca Crocker

“I

’ VE BEEN BU YING SALSA for five years. I think she started here at the market 13 years ago. The ranchera salsa is one of my favorites. If I had the money, I’d have them stocked in my fridge all the time. Even so, I buy salsa every other week,” says Rebecca.

“I’ve seen all of her kids grow up,” says Adela. “They’re always at the farmers’ market. It’s nice to see my customers and their children grow and change. Also, once I’ve sold a salsa, I want to know what my customers are doing with it.”

“She puts a lot of intention into nutrients and health,” says Rebecca. “She uses prime, fresh ingredients, but maintains a lot of the traditional flavors.”

Paul Schwennesen, of Double Check Ranch and Ruth Feldman

“I

’ VE BEEN BU YING MEAT from Paul for eight years. I come every week.

Four or five years ago, he had everyone out to the house, so a bunch of my friends came down. When I travel, I can’t live without his beef crisps. I love all their beef—the tenderloin, the New York strip steak. I like knowing where it comes from.

And I know Paul and trust him,” says Ruth.

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Fed By Threads co-owners Alok Appadurai and Jade Beall work the cash register at their new store on Congress.

Fashion with Purpose

Fed By Threads sells sustainable wares and supports hunger relief.

By Jennifer Hijazi

C

HANCES AR E , before you see the beautifully cut dresses, the vibrant GMO-free cotton tees, or pencil skirts in every shade, you’ll notice the red-and-white message that hovers above the shop floor of the new Fed By Threads flagship store on Congress.

It reads: “Each garment feeds 12 emergency meals.”

Right below, you’ve probably just spotted the long, white Ishwari dress and thought about how great it will look at your next dinner party. You’ll also know that when you walk out of the store with dress in hand, Fed By Threads will have donated $1 to both the Community Food Bank and Feeding America.

With each dollar, the Community Food Bank can provide four meals and Feeding America can provide eight. One organic maxi-dress becomes 12 meals.

Fed By Threads, co-founded by Alok Appadurai and partner Jade Beall, began as a small T-shirt business operating out of

12 July - August 2014

The Movement Shala, their dance and yoga studio located at Third Avenue and Ninth Street.

Two years later, Fed By Threads now occupies a newer, more visible space on Congress Street. Fed By Threads also shares the block with new pizza joint Fired!, Gio Taco, HiFi Kitchen and Cocktails, and Planet Smoothie.

In addition to their commitment to hunger relief, all the pieces at Fed By Threads are made entirely out of GMO-free materials, ranging from organic hemp to cotton. Production of each garment, right down to the design, is U.S.-made. Prices range from $20 to $90 per piece.

“I know the farmers who grew the organic cotton. And I know that’s from the 2012 cotton crop, and I know where it was spun, knit, dyed,” said Appadurai of the Indi Tank, which he describes as the first of their items to be completely grown, designed, and made within the continental United States.

Photo by Steve McMackin

gleanings

g “The people that walk through that door, sure, they’re coming for hopefully a cute dress or a cute piece,” said Appadurai, “but they’re really coming because I believe people are good and want to be part of something that turns a corner [for change].”

Because of Fed By Threads’ all-natural garments and numerous humanitarian missions, a loyal client base from Tucson and across the United States continues to frequent the new boutique.

“I think it’s great that when you purchase a product, you know it’s not only made here in America, we’re not outsourcing it to other countries, but a percentage of the profits go to feeding people that are hungry,” said Gina Rooney, a frequenter of Fed By Threads from Illinois.

“I just like their philosophy,” she added as she folded the Locally Grown, Fresh from the Farm onesie she had just purchased for an expecting friend. “We’re not in this alone.

We’re in this together.”

Appadurai, in the spirit of community and dressing room self-esteem, also prefers to “experience pieces together” with just about every customer who walks through the door. “Part of what we are doing here is about positive body image,” said Appadurai. I don’t let people tear themselves apart in dressing rooms.”

Loyal fans Kate Lemke and Kay Wolferstetter have been coming to Fed By Threads for their T-shirts for over a year.

The day after marriage equality had been made legal in their home state of Wisconsin, they came to Appadurai to discuss the statuesque couple’s impending courthouse ceremony, dress, and suit designs.

The pair not only wanted to celebrate their wedding in style, but was also looking for a way they could give back, themselves.

“We love it,” said Wolferstetter. “It’s super important to us that we keep it local and we keep it in the U.S. as far as keeping jobs here and not polluting our world.”

If you’re ever out on Congress with a little bit of extra cash to spend, Fed By Threads offers some good conversation and fashion with a purpose.

Fed By Threads. 345 E. Congress St. 520.396.4304.

FedByThreads.com.

One Super Cookie

By Jennifer Hijazi

W

ITH JUST ONE hundred dollars, a borrowed table, and a tray full of Super Cookies, Nicole Draper and Stanley Ryder weren’t sure what to expect at their first farmers’ market venture. The pair—now with a table of their own—are the founders of Whole Balance, a company that produces minimally processed foods and products made from nutrient-rich grain mixes.

The inspiration for their ancient grain revolution came

14 July - August 2014

tomorrow exchange buy * sell*trade

Eastside: 6212 E. Speedway • 885-8392 Near UA: 2001 E. Speedway • 795-0508 Buffalo Outlet in Nogales, AZ: 441 N. Grand Av. • 520-287-9241 BuffaloExchange.com

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A World of Flavor…

Locally Owned

Explore the World’s Freshest Flavors Pair just the right Olive Oil with just the right Balsamic Vinegar.

Taste First…buy when the excitement becomes overwhelming.

alfon o’

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520 441 9081 St. Philip’s Plaza 4320 N. Campbell Ave, Ste 40 NEW - 520 638 5000 Plaza Escondida 7854 N.Oracle Rd info@alfonsooliveoil.com

alfonsooliveoil.com

Made with millet, flax, peanuts, and organic cane sugar, these Super Cookies provide a kick of energy.

when Draper fell ill with a serious kidney infection and found Western medicine an unhelpful solution. The couple started searching for natural treatments and soon discovered that the answers they were looking for really came from within.

Literally.

They started eating gluten-free and anti-inflammatory foods, and found that their bodies rebounded when purged of wheat, synthetic chemicals, and preservatives. As soon as the Pop-Tarts and ramen they had been eating were replaced with raw, living foods, the couple found Draper’s health steadily improved.

Ancient grains, like amaranth quinoa, millet, and buckwheat, are the primary ingredients in most of Whole Balance’s products. Each grain contains a number of proteins and amino acids, which, when combined and synthesized in the body, form protein structures that can help stabilize the mind, increase immunity, and help the body heal itself, says Ryder.

One of the couple’s signature items, the Super Cookie, is the perfect specimen of ancient grain fusion. When Ryder’s mother created a gluten-free treat for her co-worker’s going-away party, she bequeathed to Ryder a recipe for peanut butter-based chocolate cookies. He tried out the recipe, made a few adjustments, and the cookie dubbed “Super” was born.

“I loved them and Nicole loved them and we gave some to some friends and they were like ‘Wow! That is a damn good cookie.’”

The recipe has evolved a bit since then. “First we soak 16 July - August 2014

Photo by Megan Kimble

g

John Adkisson Iron John’s Brewing Co.

COnS

pIRA

beer brewed

CY

in tucs

on, az

i brew for the co-op The Food Conspiracy Co-op is proud to introduce our newest product, Conspiracy Beer, which is available in 1/2 gallon glass growlers. Here are the details: • Conspiracy Beer is brewed by Tucson microbreweries.

• The style of beer will change every two months.

• Profits from the sale of Conspiracy Beer will benefit a local nonprofit.

The Food Conspiracy began selling growlers of Conspiracy Beer in June.

The first batch was an English Pale Ale brewed by Iron John’s Brewing Co. Our next batch, an India Pale Ale brewed by 1702, will be available starting August 1. All year long, sales of Conspiracy Beer will benefit El Grupo Youth Cycling Club.

facebook.com/foodconspiracy

voted best organic food store by tucson weekly readers 2012 & 2013

@foodconspiracy

www.foodconspiracy.coop • 412 n fourth ave • 520-624-4821

Get to know our desert watershed Our watershed is bound by the Santa Catalina, Rincon, Santa Rita and Tucson Mountains and it flows ultimately to a common waterway, the Santa Cruz River.

We are all connected by the watershed in which we live.

The stormwater that flows from your yard into nearby storm drains during the monsoon continues from there into our washes. While you may be most familiar with the wash in your neighborhood, it is only one part of a vast and complex system of waterways that make up our regional watershed.

For thousands of years, the Tucson regional watershed has continually supported large agrarian cultures and a renowned diversity of wildlife, centered around desert waters. Over time, urbanization has changed how our desert watershed functions. Paved areas decrease the ability of the land to absorb and use water, leading to increased flooding and erosion.

Additional stress on our waterways occurs when stormwater picks up urban pollutants, such as motor oil leaked from vehicles onto streets. Since the majority of stormwater pollutants are generated from commonplace activities, we all have to help keep the watershed clean.

Otherwise, contaminants can accumulate from across the watershed as they are deposited into our wildlife corridors along washes. The majority of our wildlife relies on desert riparian habitat – the unique environment supported by perennial or seasonal water flows.

Stewardship efforts are helping to restore our watershed and keep desert washes clean. Some solutions, such as rainwater harvesting, can additionally help to green a neighborhood. Stormwater absorbed into your landscape can be used to nourish trees that provide natural benefits, such as enhanced habitat, contaminant treatment and reduced flooding in your neighborhood. These efforts place our community on the map as leaders in sustainability and preserving our rich heritage for future generations.

As you visit treasured desert water corridors, notice the unique characteristics - from neighbors gathering at sunset to view bats take flight from bridges to the lively sound of cicadas singing in the monsoon.

PAGstorm.com

Pima Association of Governments’ Clean Water Starts With Me! watershed map and poster (see insert at right) tells the story about how water flows in eastern Pima County.

It shares tips to prevent stormwater pollution, so that it doesn’t end

up in our desert washes. Learn how you can create a landscape that welcomes precious desert rains onto your property and keeps the stormwater clean. Consider natural alternatives and safe practices when using chemicals in your garden, and remember that pet waste should be

removed; it is not good fertilizer. Discover the importance of your individual role in sustaining the quality of our fragile desert watershed and water resources. We encourage you to tear out the insert and share it with others.

Tucson Photo by John Sartin

Clean water starts with me!

raw Spanish peanuts, then roast them, and grind them into flour,” says Draper. “Then we grind millet and flax into flour, which helps stabilize blood-sugar levels. Last we add a pinch of organic cane sugar, baking soda, and water.”

Other products include a versatile Ancient Grain MultiMix, on-the-go packets of Nutrabuild Cereal, GMO-free specialty popcorn, and coming soon, all natural toothpaste.

Draper says that their goal is to not only bring delicious recipes to a wide variety of markets all over town but to also educate their customers about the benefits of healthful living. “We are dedicated to promoting health and wellness by connecting with the people we meet every day, educating and learning about healthy living,” she says.

Eventually, the couple hopes to bring their ancient grain mixture to local schools, restaurants, and resorts. They are also in contact with the Community Food Bank in hopes of donating their blend to Caridad Community Kitchen. “Everyone deserves a healthy option,” said Draper. “Even people who can’t afford it.”

Visit WholeBalance.net for a list of farmers’ markets where you can pick up some Whole Balance goodness of your own.

Jennifer Hijazi is a culture enthusiast and Tucson native who moonlights as a UA graduate student in journalism and Middle Eastern studies.

Rincon Market Returns

By Lee Allen

F

ANS OF R INCON M AR K ET have had to wait a year for the popular market to be back in business, but their patience was to be rewarded with a grand reopening set for June 30. Closed since July 2, 2013, when an electrical fire filled the eatery and gathering spot with toxic smoke, it’s been a labor of love by the Abbott family to tear down the UNSAFE TO OCCUPY sign and get back on-line.

Originally built in 1926, the entire facility had to be gutted before restoration could get underway, which led to delays by the dozen. Smoke-damaged products had to be inventoried before they could be disposed of. Standing water left by firefighters had to be extracted and the building dried out. Roof repairs were halted until insurance questions could be cleared up. The electrical system in the building’s interior was upgraded and a new ceiling installed and flooring replaced. Because numerous unpermitted modifications had been done over the years, an estimated three quarters of the market had to be redone in one form or another Followers of their Facebook page can chart the initial optimism, then the growing frustrations of owner Ron Abbott, who first hoped “we can open in a couple of months.” One month after the fire, Abbott posted, “It’s a slow process, [but] we’re almost positive we’ll be back in business by the first of the year.” Not so, and patience wore thin. “Argggggg! This

JUICES, SMOOTHIES, BREAKFAST AND LUNCH TO-GO

On Campbell, next to Cartel Coffee

www.goodnesstucson.com 2502 NORTH CAMPBELL AVENUE • 520.777.4465 FACEBOOK.COM/GOODNESS2502

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Photo by Steve McMackin

Rincon Market, a longtime favorite of the Sam Hughes neighborhood, will finally be able to hang up their open sign on July 1.

is worse than watching paint dry,” he wrote last September.

By Christmas of last year, he requested of long-time patrons, “Don’t forget us,” quickly followed by the January 2014 news that, “We’re starting to plan the grand re-opening. Can’t wait to be the Sam Hughes community center again.”

With the completion of the $750,000 restoration, they could finally hope to turn on that “Open” sign. “This is a family business, mom, pop, brother, and sister,” says Amy Abbott. “This place is like home to us, and we love it. It’s been a blessing that so many people have cared and called us asking for the opening date. Statistics aren’t very good for a comeback from a fire like this, so we feel it’s a feat that we’ve been able to pull it off.”

Much of the floor plan remains as it did pre-fire, with some aesthetic updates. “We’re well known for our salad bar and our grill, and we’ve added a Class 7 liquor license for wine and beer, locally produced whenever possible. The major change to the physical layout is we moved our produce section into the grocery store and added a bar so you can now get a beer with your burger.”

And while there have been some changes in menu offerings, including half a dozen new sandwiches, many of the 60 employees who made the place hum a year ago are back at their stations, waiting for old friends to check out the newly revamped Rincon Market. ✜ Rincon Market. 2513 E. Sixth St. 520.327.6653. RinconMarket.com Lee Allen likes to see what’s growing in other people’s gardens.

22 July - August 2014

the Mo ’s C ard ubb rH afÊ

Le R e n d e z

-Vous

SUMMER $20.14 go to: tucsonoriginals.com/2014 The Best food deals from your favorite local restaurants all for $20.14! Only this summer and only from Tucson Originals Restaurants.

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by Tucson Foodie

BAKERY & CAFÉ

New ways to fill your belly in the Old Pueblo

A

Tucson is traditionally a time when people and businesses slow down, many new business owners view this season as an opportunity to test out new ideas and dial in their operations before the fall rush. It’s also a great time for creative local chefs to run specials and features to lure people in from their air-conditioned homes.

Reforma Cocina Y Cantina is a new concept from the guys that brought us Union Public House. Opening in October in the former Vivace location at St. Philip’s Plaza (and across from Union Public House), Reforma will focus on authentic dishes and flavors of central Mexico. Look for a madefrom-scratch kitchen, house ground masa for fresh tortillas, and an expansive selection of tequilas, mezcals, and bacanoras.

Specialty olive oil stores are trending, cropping up in new locations all over the country. Tucson Olive Central recently opened next door to the former downtown Buffalo Exchange.

An outpost of Tubac Olive Oil, they carry “cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oils from olive varieties such as Picual, Arbequina, Arbosana, Frantoio, Coratina, Koroneiki, and Moresca.” Just remember—the better the oil, the less you should actually cook with it. 222 E. Congress St. 520.887.3339.

US Fries plans to launch their new chain on Aug. 15 right here in Tucson. While the jury is out on if a French fry based concept will work, this Canada-based company is giving it a go. Opening in a former tattoo shop on Fourth Avenue, US Fries will serve a number of poutine varieties that consist of a French fry base topped with a variety of different meat, cheese, and sauce options. Think: Eegee’s chili cheese fries in 22 different ways. Visit usfries.com.

The owners of Choice Greens will open Graze: Premium Burgers & Handcut Fries in early August. Slated to open in their recently closed BTO Yogurt on Speedway, Graze will feature Niman Ranch beef, grass fed beef options, fresh, hand cut, Belgian style Kennenec fries, and organic soft serve.

Cakelab Bakery and Food In Root have partnered to bring the first ever food park. Starting June 13, Friday Night Food Fest will take place every Friday from 4 – 8 p.m. at Fourth Avenue and Fourth Street. The weekly event will feature fresh produce, food vendors, music, and art. For more information LTHOUGH SUMMER IN

Northwest 461-1111 SE Corner of Ina & Oracle

Central

322-9965 between Glenn and Ft. Lowell

East

747-7477

in Monterey Village

at Wilmot

For a full menu and list of specials visit

beyondbread.com

24 July - August 2014

and schedules, visit foodinroot.com.

Maynards Kitchen’s new chef, Jared Scott, is rolling out a new summer menu. Updating favorite fall features with seasonal summer bounty, Chef Scott is also adding an array of new menu items. Standouts include Confit Duck Leg Salad, with baby kale, arugula with a wedge of grilled radicchio, caramalized cipollini onion, fava bean, confit heirloom tomato, dressed in a warm smoky duck-cherry vinaigrette, and the Summer Vegetable Scrapple, with farro polenta, asparagus and summer squash “scrapple” with wild mushroom ragu, grilled asparagus, charred heirloom tomato vinaigrette with lemon confiture. 400 N. Toole Ave. 520.545.0577. MaynardsTucson.com.

Kingfisher kicked off the first leg of their 2014 Summer Road Trip menu series on June 5 by featuring the cuisine of California and Hawaii. As they snake around the country, Chefs Fred Harris, Jim Murphy, and Jeff Azersky will feature the Pacific Northwest and Great Plains/Midwest for two weeks each in June, Down South and Back East in July, and return home to feature the Southwest from August 15 - 31.

2564 E. Grant Rd. 520.323.7739. KingfisherTucson.com.

If the most recent new Whole Foods at River and Craycroft is any indication of what you can expect at the new Whole Foods at Ina and Oracle, there’s much to be excited about. Opening Aug. 27, this Whole Foods will be twice the size of the original. The River location has a sit-down beer bar (with food menu), a killer cheese selection, deli, fresh pizza made to order (and pizza by the slice, too), gelato, and a full cafe. WholeFoods.com. ✜ Since 2009, Adam Lehrman as Tucson Foodie has provided opinions and information on a wide variety of topics pertaining to food in Tucson. Find him on the web at TucsonFoodie.com.

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1

2

The Plate Plate the

4

3

That one thing they should never take off the menu.

1234 Photography by Michael Falconer

Chilean Sea Bass Nox Kitchen & Cocktails

A bed of dark forbidden rice, wrapped in bok choy, seasoned with miso, and topped in soy butter. It’s a bowl of umami, yours for the taking. $25.

6370 N. Campbell Ave. 520.529.5849.

28 July - August 2014

Crab Tower Epazote Kitchen & Cocktails

It seems so simple—a stack of crab, avocado, and pico de gallo, with tortilla chips for the taking—but once you dig in, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t considered the craft of the stack before.

10000 N. Oracle Road 520.544.1705

Shrimp Chile Relleno Crossroads Restaurant

It’s the southwestern surf n’ turf—succulent shrimp, stuffed in a green chile, wrapped in bacon (and bound by melted cheese).

And no, it’s not a dream. $11.99.

2602 S. Fourth Ave. 520.624.0395

Pierogi Polish Cottage

Traditional homemade dumplings filled with beef, potatoes and cheese, sauerkraut and mushrooms, or sweet farmer’s cheese.

Classic comfort, wrapped to order. Six for $7.55.

4520 E. Broadway Blvd.

520.777.5407

Mouthwatering Conservation!

Native Seeds/SEARCH is proud to offer Hayden Flour Mills grains and mixes!

Hayden Flour Mills is a founding member of the southern Arizona heritage grains collaborative, spearheaded by Native Seeds/SEARCH, which featured varieties conserved in the NS/S Seed Bank.

Available online at

nativeseeds.org

and our Retail Store: 3061 N. Campbell, south of Fort Lowell edible

Baja Arizona 29

FoOD CoNsPIrACY

co-op

we shop at the co-op Daniela Diamente & Ignacio Rivera de Rosales El Grupo Youth Cycling

(520) 624-4821 • www.foodconspiracy.coop • 412 n fourth ave.

30 July - August 2014

KIDS’ MENU

Mixing It Up

Photo by Steven Meckler

with Haile Thomas

S

UMMER IS HER E ! It’s time to make a splash, not only in your pool but in the kitchen, too. Here in Arizona, the best way to enjoy the summer is relaxing poolside after a refreshing swim and enjoying a favorite snack. That’s why my shrimp-stuffed, bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers are the perfect treat! Shrimp (which is one of my favorite ingredients) is a great source of protein and super versatile. So when mixed with just a little cream cheese, herbs, and spices,

Basil Lemonade 4 ½ 5 2

cups water cup sugar basil leaves lemons’ juice

Add all ingredients to food processor or blender. Blend until mixture turns light green. Strain mixture into pitcher and refrigerate.

Serve and enjoy.

stuffed in jalapeños, and wrapped in bacon, you can satisfy your craving for something full of flavor, slightly spicy, creamy, and crunchy.

Now, this is definitely not one of my healthier recipes, but, hey, it’s summer, and these poppers are baked, not deep-fried! To wash it down, my favorite go-to-beverage is refreshing basil lemonade, which not only hydrates, but is also rich in antioxidants. So make a splash, and mix it up this summer.

Haile Thomas is a seventh grader at St. Gregory College Preparatory School, a motivational speaker, and a young chef recently featured on the Food Network’s Rachael vs. Guy: Kids Cook-Off. Haile is the founder of the HAPPY Organization, which partners with the YWCA to offer kids cooking classes, fun physical activities, and nutrition education.

Shrimp-Stuffed Jalapeño Poppers Ingredients: 8 oz 1 ½ 10

10

fresh shrimp, diced tablespoon extra virgin olive oil cup cream cheese jalapeño peppers, cut halfway through down the middle & seeds removed half to whole bacon slices (depending on the peppers’ size)

Seasoning blend: 1

¼ ⅛ ½ 1

Season shrimp with seasoning blend and mix in bowl. Add olive oil to teaspoon dried pan over medium heat, add shrimp, thyme and cook until all of the shrimp turn teaspoon black pink, about 3-5 minutes. Remove pepper from pan and let shrimp cool for teaspoon salt teaspoon of your 5 minutes. Add cream cheese to favorite hot sauce shrimp and stir until cheese and shrimp are incorporated. Fill teaspoon garlic jalapeños with a spoonful of shrimp and herb Old Bay seasoning mixture. Wrap poppers in bacon.

Preheat oven to 400° and bake poppers for 20–25 minutes. Remove Serves 5 from oven, let cool, and enjoy!

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Baja Arizona 31

[E DIBLE H OMESTEAD ]

The Not-So-Tame Summer Garden

By Jared R. McKinley | Illustrations by Danny Martin

N

ot all gardens are well kempt and

closely managed—even if they started off that way. This is especially true of the summer garden. Warm season crops are not tidy and neat. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant sprawl and meander. Squashes and sweet potatoes vine and twine around their neighbors. Sunflowers, corn, and okra tower and lean, sometimes collapsing on their sides (especially in the wind). Crops that stay compact and predictable are the exception right now. And even if these crops behaved, it’s hot outside—it’s easy to let the garden develop into its own anarchic structure rather than fight it under the hot sun. In the summer, gardening often becomes something closer to gathering. You are still watering, and hopefully feeding with an organic fertilizer. But the garden is ruling itself; at least, until the weather starts to encourage a gardener that wishes to curate and direct.

While you are waiting, enjoy the wild garden. One of its benefits is surprises. The roster of members in the summer garden is sometimes populated by seeds we forgot we planted—sometimes the jungle matrix conceals them until an identifying fruit suddenly appears out of nowhere. Other members might be the volunteering kind—seeds from the compost, from a previous year’s garden, or a straight-up volunteer that wandered in with the wind. Other surprises come from how fast a large fruit like a watermelon or Armenian cucumber can one day just appear from underneath the garden canopy.

Especially for those of us surrounded by concrete and asphalt, these surprises are part of what makes gardening so worthwhile, a tiny wild world where events constantly unfold on their own.

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Baja Arizona 33

[E.H.] T RANSITIONS

T

he coming of the Monsoon is one of the things that define our region. May and June are periods of relative dormancy, but when the rains arrive—or even just the threat of rain—plants, animals, insects, and microorganisms animate. May and June can be more like a winter of sorts. July and August, the desert is very alive.

During this time you have many planting options; often space is your only limitation. You can plant another flush of warm season crops that will provide until the frost arrives.

Perhaps you didn’t get enough of one variety or you just want to try another. Clear out any spent plants that aren’t giving back as much and replace them with fresh starts.

Down in the low desert many of those plants probably gave up fruiting in late May when the temperatures went into triple digits.

You can also get an early start on the cool season crops (especially some of those that need a long period to mature). Keeping track of how long any particular crop takes from seed to harvest is one of the secrets that make a gardener successful. Use timelines to plan out when you should get these crops in the ground.

Tahitian squash, for example, takes about 110 days to mature. If you are looking to get a last-minute winter squash in, try out some of the bushy, 55-day acorn squashes instead (and remember to plant that delicious Tahitian squash early next year). It’s odd to be thinking of frost when one is roasting in the summer heat, but good gardeners always do.

If you live in Tucson, that first frost date can be as late as November or December; in much of the rest of the Baja Arizona region, you can expect frost much sooner. Also, if you live down close to a low-lying wash, you can expect much cooler temperatures than can your neighbors up on a ridge or foothill.

R EPLANT W ARM S EASON C ROPS

C

varieties of the following crops: tomato, tomatillo, pepper, eggplant, squash, cucumber, bean, okra, basil, burdock, corn, cowpea, horseradish, Jerusalem artichokes, Malabar spinach, potato, sunflower.

ONSIDER SHORTER - SEASON

34 July - August 2014

S TART C OOL S EASON C ROPS

L

OOK FOR VAR IETIES that are heat-resistant or slow-bolting: lettuce, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, chicory (includes endive, frisée, radicchio, escarole), spinach, chervil, parsley, cilantro, fennel, dill, sweet peas, bok choy and other Asian greens, collards, sorrel, mustard greens, carrot, beet, radish, salsify, scorzonera, turnip, Swiss chard.

August is a good time to plant onion sets, garlic cloves, and starts of artichoke and cardoon. It is also not a bad time to start perennial herbs like thyme, oregano, marjoram, mint, French tarragon, and others.

FEEDING THE S OIL

A

F TER ALL of that watering all summer long, the soil can be worn out. What does that mean?

Basically there is an imbalance between plant life and the proper microorganisms. In nature, there often isn’t such a dense grouping of plants, and there hasn’t been enough decomposition of plant debris to replace those nutrients.

Your soil needs organisms and food for those organisms. Find yourself some nice compost.

Making your own is preferred, but you can purchase compost at any nursery (we prefer the local ones) or at places that specialize in making compost (Tank’s Green Stuff delivers it by the truckload. Visit TanksGreenStuff.com). Good compost should be relatively moist and the color of bittersweet chocholate. Compost reinvigorates the soil by innoculating it with organisms and providing some immediately available nutrients.

Next you need to feed those organisms. There are many organic foods on the market like kelp, fish emulsion, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal, bone, and blood meal. Stay away from synthetic foods that are sometimes mixed in with organic foods. Synthetic fertilizers kill microorganisms ans, working against the very thing you are trying to do: Promote healthy soil biology.

[E.H.] H EIRLOOM H IGHLIGHT: TOHONO O’ ODHAM 60-D AY C ORN

T

for planting with the summer monsoon. Quick to develop, it also can produce with very little water (historically it was sometimes only grown on rainwater). Although this Baja Arizona native variety has stood the test of time and climate, corn is generally a fairly needy crop. Amending the soil well with aged manure and compost will help you have a more successful corn crop. Corn is a shallow-rooted plant relative to other crops. Dramatic soil moisture fluctuations stress plants out. Use a layer of straw to mulch the base of the corn stalks to slow down water evaporation (all garden plants appreciate this, but corn does especially). Corn is a heavier feeder, especially of nitrogen. Feed with organic plant foods higher in nutrients like fish emulsion, alfalfa meal, blood meal, or bat guano.

Traditionally this flour corn has been used for roasting in the milk stage—about 18 to 22 days after silking, the kernels contain a “milky” white fluid. Pick the ears then and grill. Once fully matured and dried, Tohono O’odham 60-Day Corn is also used for making freshground masa (dough) for tortillas, but the corn must first be nixtamalized. Nixtamalization is a process that renders corn more digestible, flavorful, and able to be formed into masa.

HIS VAR IETY IS PER FECT

AT H OME N IXTAMALIZATION 1 quart of clean, dried flour-corn kernels 1/4 cup pickling lime 3 quarts water

I

N A STAINLESS STEEL POT , dissolve the lime into the water. Making sure the corn kernels are clean of debris, add them to the solution, and discard any floating kernels. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Turn off the burner and let stand until cool and put into the refrigerator. Corn kernels should soak for about five hours. After soaking, rinse the kernels and rub away the softened, now gelatinous hulls.

This rinsing process should be extremely thorough. Once thoroughly rinsed, you can grind the grain in a food mill to make the masa for tortillas, or you can use whole for recipes like posole.

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Baja Arizona 35

[E.H.] MANAGING Y OUR B OUNTY

D

UR ING HARVEST TIME , plants will inevitably produce more than you can eat at one time. Indeed, many of our culinary traditions emerged as we tried to preserve food, suspending its descent into decay until we are ready to eat it. (It is easy to forget the time the grocery store wasn’t there to

give us our steady supply of edibles.) If you have too much of one item, trade with your fellow gardeners. There are many books that can help you manage your bounty. One of my favorites is Keeping the Harvest by Nancy Chioffi.

S UN-DRIED T OMATOES

T

HER E AR E M AN Y THINGS you can do to preserve tomatoes—one of my favorites is to sun dry them, which takes advantage of a resource we have a lot of (sun) and gives us the opportunity to store them for a long time. They also make many dishes more delicious.

There are methods for drying tomatoes in the oven, but when you live in a place like Baja Arizona, why waste the energy? You can use a window screen (the frame helps), or you can use wire drying racks. You can also purchase a dehydrator online. Roma tomatoes are traditionally used for sundried tomatoes, but any tomato will work. Cut small tomato varieties in half, larger tomatoes in thirds or quarters. The more flesh a tomato has, the better they sun dry. Varieties that have lots of water and seeds lend themselves less to this process. Some

36 July - August 2014

people sprinkle a little salt and sometimes herbs like thyme or oregano over the top.

Put the rack out into the sun and let nature do the rest. I used to worry about bugs and flies getting onto the tomatoes, but honestly they don’t want to be out in the sun any more than you do. If you are still concerned, cover the tomatoes with a cloth suspended over (not touching) the tomatoes. It takes only a few days to dry in most parts of our region but could take longer in higher elevations.

Store sun-dried tomatoes in a cool dry place; they’ll last for up to a year. You can also put them in olive oil. When you do this, you get another product: tomato-flavored olive oil. ✜ Jared McKinley is the associate publisher of Edible Baja Arizona.

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Baja Arizona 37

[E.H.]

Summer Classes

C LASSES WITH S ANTA C RUZ R IVER FARMERS’ M ARKET Mercado San Agustín. 100 S. Avenida del Convento.

Thursdays 4-7 p.m. (May-October) The Desert Harvest is a series of workshops, cooking demonstrations, and informational activities about native foods and plants of our area and how to make better use of them. All workshops are free and open to the public. Workshops are ongoing during the farmers’ market. No need to make reservations; just show up and learn. For more information, call Nadia at 882-3304 or visit CommunityFoodBank.org/farmersmarket.

C LASSES WITH W ATERSHED M ANAGEMENT G ROUP Tucson Water Rainwater Rebate Educational Session July 31, 2-5 p.m.

Aug. 21, 5:30-8:30 p.m.

City of Tucson Ward 3 Council Office, 1510 E. Grant Road You can qualify for Tucson Water’s rainwater harvesting rebate by taking this free class. WMG’s expert instructors and design professionals will share their knowledge and help you with a rainwater harvesting design for your home.

Water Harvesting Class Verdolagas with Sara Jones from the Tucson CSA Thursday, July 17, 4-7 p.m.

Learn how to identify, harvest, and cook with this delicious desert green.

Prickly Pear Fruit with Amy Valdés Schwemm from Desert Harvesters Thursday, Aug. 14, 4-7pm Learn easy ways to harvest and process prickly pear fruit (tunas) to make your own prickly pear juice and lemonade.

Aug. 23, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Metro Water District, 6265 N. La Cañada Drive You can learn about rain gardens, graywater systems, and rain tanks all in one class. Optional home tour starts at 8 a.m. This free class is for Metro Water customers and will include time to create a design for your home.

WMG Laundry Rainwater DIY Workshops Session 1: Saturday, July 12; Session 2: Saturday, July 26 WMG’s Living Lab & Learning Center.

1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Join WMG’s two-part training and gain the skills and parts you need to design and install a laundry-to-landscape graywater system at your home. The registration fee of $125 includes a basic laundry-to-landscape kit.

C LASSES WITH B EAN T REE F ARM Prickly Pear Harvest and Cooking Workshop August 16, 6:30-9:30 a.m., $30-45 sliding scale Learn to harvest and process ripe prickly pear fruits into delicious drinks, soups, sauces and ferments. This workshop will encourage sun-loving, low-energy methods to prepare the desert’s nutritious treats, and wise rainwater-harvesting examples to regenerate your desert food landscape. Workshop includes desert drinks, snacks, a tour of the farm, and examples of foods available from Bean Tree Farmstand.

38 July - August 2014

Desert Farm Retreat August 11-15 Bean Tree Farm offers week-long retreats at the farm for those who want to deepen their experience of native plants, desert foods, integrated design, natural building technologies, and more. The workshops are held in a farm community dedicated to local food production, hands-on water and energy conservation, passive solar design, and appropriate technology in the Sonoran Desert. The retreat is held Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; stay at the farm or commute from town. Visit BeanTreeFarm.com for more information and pricing.

Silverbell Nursery

Family owned and operated Organic vegetables, fertilizers, soil & amendments Plants, shrubs, trees, cacti Premium dog & cat food, animal health products Mesquite firewood Landscape istallation & maintenance

2730 N Silverbell Rd.

520.622.3894

Arid Lands Greenhouses 3560 W. Bilby Road Tucson, AZ 85746

Conservation through Cultivation Mention this ad, get 10% off any purchase at our nursery

We offer one of the largest selections of succulent plants and cacti in the world, including Adenium, Euphorbia, Pachypodium, Haworthia, Aloe, mesembs, Agave, Hoodia, pachycaul trees, geophytes, and bulbs.

www.aridlands.com 520-883-9404, 520-883-8874 fax edible

Baja Arizona 39

[E.H.]

Harvesting the Bean Trees Welcome heat and harvest ironwood seeds

By Barbara Rose

W

hat can live for a thousand years , holds the So-

noran Desert together, and has sweet, nectar-filled blossoms and delicious, protein-rich seeds? Ironwood trees, found on warm southern slopes and the low desert lands of Baja Arizona and in the Sonoran bioregion. When in bloom, gorgeous lavender or pink pea-style blossoms blanket leafless gray branches, often as the foothill palo verdes are flowering.

Dry summer is the time to harvest bean-tree pods—ironwood, palo verde, and mesquite—and to welcome the heat, signifying that more harvests are near—specifically, saguaro fruit with the summer rains.

Ironwood seeds are a nutritious desert delectable, with a flavor reminiscent of peanuts. They can be prepared as edamame, sprouted or dry-roasted. All seeds have antinutrients which protect them from predators, so soaking, fermenting, sprouting, and cooking can make them more digestible.

When harvesting desert foods, remember to leave plenty for the other animals, and consider adding ironwood or beantree habitat in your neighborhood. Sadly, developers have been known to blade entire ironwood forests and name the streets for them. We can “re-wild” our urban spaces to include

40 July - August 2014

ironwoods, so that this keystone species will be around for future generations. In urban neighborhoods, ironwoods and their friends, planted along mulched, rain-welcoming, sculpted basins, create diversity, enduring shade and beauty.

Keep in mind that desert legumes are best harvested before the rainy season to guard against potential unhealthy organisms that grow in more humid conditions.

As you become more connected to this amazing place, give thanks for those who came before us, and share your growing knowledge about desert foods and traditions.

POPPABLE S EEDS Harvest tightly filled ironwood pods (they should look like over-ripe garden peas). The outer pods will feel somewhat sticky. Simmer whole pods in water for 15 to 20 minutes, or until you see them begin to split open. Drain, sprinkle with a little salt, lime juice, and chile. To eat, pop the seeds into your mouth, warm or cool. They’re especially good with a local mesquite beer or whiskey.

Harvest the Rain

Grow Shade & Food!

Conserve Water, Save Money.

Green Fields Country Day School

s lo ve re ki d Whe rn! to lea

Come visit us!

Call today to schedule a tour of our 22-acre campus and see the big difference a small school can make: Small class sizes Experiential, project based learning t K-12 Arts, Athletics, & Foreign Languages t AP courses t College counselor t t

For 80 years Green Fields’ core classes have been enhanced with critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity to prepare students for success in college, work and life.

Green Fields is now accepting applications for Grades K -12.

WMG’s Design Consultation Service will help you harvest every last drop of rain for your benefit.

Only $150

Don’t let the monsoon rains wash away!

Schedule a site visit with our design professionals today.

For more information call: (520)297-2288

Scholarships available.

watershedmg.org 520-396-3266

or visit: greenfields.org

First day of school 8/20/14.

WMG is a non-profit organization working for the prosperity of people and health of the environment

edible

Baja Arizona 41

I RONWOOD ‘PEANUTS’ Harvest when pods are dry, before they burst open and fall to the ground. Remove seeds from pods. Soak the dry seeds in water with a little vinegar for a day (to begin the sprouting process and leach out antinutrients). Then drain and sprinkle seeds with chile, garlic, herbs, a little oil if you like, and roast until crunchy in your solar oven.

What? No solar oven? In Baja Arizona, with 350 days of sun? What are you waiting for?

S PROUTS Soak dry ironwood seeds for a day, or until you see little points (the sprout) begin to protrude. Rinse and keep damp, repeating several times a day, just as you would any bean sprouts, until the sprouts are about a half-inch long. Remove the tough seed coats, which loosen during sprouting, and use in a stir-fry or another quick-cook dish to preserve their yummy taste and crunch.

I RONWOOD S PROUTS S TIR-FRY 1

cup sprouted ironwood seeds, no skins 4 medium precooked potatoes, chopped 1 medium onion or cup chopped I-Itoi onion 1–4 cups wild or seasonal greens, chopped 1 tablespoon garlic Chile and salt, to taste 2 tablespoons oil or animal fat Heat fat and fry potatoes and onions. As they brown, add spices. When close to done, add greens and cook to taste. Just before serving add sprouts, gently toss, and cook a minute more. Serve with grated cheese or an egg on top, if desired. ✜ Visit DesertHarvesters.com for more information about harvesting, classes, and events.

Barbara Rose lives in a small solar rammed-earth home at Bean Tree Farm in Tucson. Bean Tree Farm supplies local desert foods and education to the community. Visit BeanTreeFarm.com.

42 July - August 2014

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Sweet corn Basil Eggplant Bell pepper Green bean Cantaloupe Okra Watermelon Tomatillo Tomato Cucumber

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Baja Arizona 43

MEET YOUR FARMER

A Family Affair At Harris Heritage Growers, three sisters are growing a cornucopia of produce that’s yours for the picking.

by Molly Kincaid | Photography by Jeff Smith

S

OME

SIBLINGS

AR E

Others can scarcely make it through a dinner together without renewing old rivalries. Some move across country from each other and simply grow apart. But very few start farms together.

In 2012, that’s precisely what sisters Denise Purvis, Mary McKay, and Susan Quiroga (all neé Harris) decided to do.

To get to the farm, located just north of Sonoita, you take a scenic and winding drive down Sonoita Highway, keeping your eyes peeled for a green and white sign that says “Harris Heritage Growers: Growing Roots in Arizona Since 1872. Pick It Yourself Family Farm.”

The sign doesn’t lie. This farm is the epitome of a family affair. After planting tomato seedlings all morning, the family—which on this particular day included the three sisters, two CLOSE .

46 July - August 2014

of their husbands, and three teenagers—relaxed under the awning of Purvis’s rouge adobe ranch house. Purvis’s husband, Gordon, said, “Welcome to our dream.”

Indeed, it was pretty dreamy.

Robust rose bushes covered in pink and orange blossoms wrapped around the house’s edge. Horses whinnied in the distance. Two cows stood stoically in their pen, chickens and ducks clucked, a throng of goats cavorted around, and two chubby sheep peered out behind thick blankets The family that farms together, stays together. Front row, from left: Zach Farley, Cassina Farley, Susan Quiroga, Denise Purvis, Mary McKay, Sydney McKay, Elizabeth McKay. Back row, from left: Josh Purvis, Levi Purvis, Gordon Purvis, Danny Quiroga.

edible

Baja Arizona 47

of dreadlocked white wool. The whole farm lies in a little valley with a ring of mountains nearly surrounding it.

The farm spans 20 acres, with about 1.5 acres dedicated to growing vegetables—an area that’s expanding by the year. In late May, it was planting time, but a few crops were already thriving. Epic bushes of artichokes grew lush and green and brimming with beautiful globes. Apple trees had begun to sprout tiny fruits. And this was only the beginning of the season.

In July, the farm will brim with heirloom tomatoes, squash, okra, eggplant, zucchini, chiles, corn, rhubarb, Tohono O’odham melons, and more. “We like variety,” Purvis says. “If it can be grown, we’ll grow it.”

In addition to vegetables, the sisters tend a young orchard of apple, pear, peach, plum, and pomegranate trees. They have blackberries and blueberries that will be ready to pick in July, as well as table grapes like Concord, Thompson Seedless, and Red Flame.

“We’re in wine country—grapes love this climate,” says Quiroga.

McKay, the youngest sister, starts the seeds in her greenhouse in nearby Patagonia. A recent graduate from the University of Arizona with a degree in sustainable plant systems, McKay is pursuing a master’s degree in landscape architecture. Quiroga, the eldest, works full-time as a nurse but finds time to help out around the farm. “We hope to promote healthy eating,” she says. “Because this is a rural area and a food desert, we want to offer people fresh foods as an alternative to processed junk. Mini-markets are all that’s out here.”

Purvis is the full-time farmer—she and her husband already owned the land before they started the farm—although she also paints murals in her spare time.

“My dream is to become a certified raw-milk purveyor,” she says.

“It’s legal in Arizona but you’ve got to have a cooking tank and a labeler. I’d like to make butter, cheese, cream, and ice cream.”

The Harris sisters had spent their childhood growing vegetables and tending orchards in Baja Arizona. When they got older, they loved taking their own families to U-Picks,

like Apple Annie’s in Willcox. Then one day in 2012, McKay called up Purvis and said, “You’ve got the land and water, and you’re right off the highway. We should start a U-Pick.” Though they don’t intend to reach the scale of Apple Annie’s, which spans 125 acres, the Harris sisters follow roughly the same model: People come out and pick whatever they like, then take it to a scale, weigh it, and pay for it. Poundage fees vary by item, but in general, their prices are lower than a supermarket’s because there’s no middleman.

Though some people might be daunted by the prospect of starting a farm from scratch, the Harris girls grew up with gardening as their daily chore and dirt underneath their fingernails as a fact of life. “Our daddy always had a big garden,” Purvis says. For a time, their father worked for UA Cooperative Extension in Santa Cruz County. Later, the family lived on the White Mountain Apache reservation where their father worked planting orchards and building greenhouses. The sisters are fifth generation Arizona farmers, and now their kids are a sixth generation.

“The whole family helps out, the 19 of us all together,” Purvis says. It takes a village to run the farm, particularly during the annual fall festivals that have now become a tradition. The main event is a smoked brisket dinner with “all the fixin’s”—made from farm-fresh vegetables, naturally. They have hay rides, local food and wine vendors, a squash catapult, pumpkin painting and carving contests, live music, homemade pies, and of course, U-Pick.

This idyllic scene is enviable, but does this all work out financially? The Harris sisters report that starting their farm was a trial-and-error process. Their first summer, they grew far too much produce, and ended up with more than they could sell. The second year, as restaurants, locals, and Tucsonans started to learn about them, they experienced much more demand than they could fulfill. This year, they hope to grow just the right amount, but they are flexible about making changes along the way. Purvis says that customers can even request to have a certain crop grown especially for them.

The sisters are fifth generation Arizona farmers, and now their kids are a sixth generation.

48 July - August 2014

Animals are as much a part of the farm as produce. Elizabeth McKay is known as the family “cow whisperer.”

To round out their offerings, Harris Farm also sells eggs, white and whole-wheat sandwich breads, pies, and whole chickens. They are certified food vendors, and raise and slaughter their chickens humanely. Purvis says they sell out of chickens faster than she can produce them, so they’ve started a waiting list. They also sell quite a bit of produce, as well as eggs and poultry, to local restaurants. Overland Trout, the acclaimed gourmet eatery in Sonoita, serves their chicken, duck, and vegetables. Pizzeria Mimosa in Hereford buys chickens as well.

Aided by McKay’s knowledge of sustainable agriculture, the Harris sisters also seek to be good land stewards. They don’t use any pesticides, although the farm is not certified organic because of the high costs required to get the label. They use their own manure and compost to fertilize. They rotate crops and plant nitrogen-rich cover crops like clover to keep the soil nutrient-rich. Slow drip irrigation with rain sensors ensures the most efficient application of water.

For the most part, Harris Farm uses heirloom and GMOfree seeds. They say some people are surprised when they go to pick corn and the cobs are much daintier than what you might find in a supermarket. But they are also tastier and healthier,

the sisters say.

Before I left, McKay’s teenage daughter, Elizabeth, and her young daughter, Sydney, took me over to show off their beloved animals. Elizabeth, whom the family calls “the cow whisperer,” ducked through a gap in the fence to pet the gigantic animals—Canela, a beef cow that McKay and her children bottle-fed from birth, and Lexi, a Jersey dairy cow that “doesn’t know she’s a cow—she likes to cuddle and lick,” said Purvis.

Over in the spacious chicken and duck pens, Sydney and Elizabeth each picked up a squirmy bird to show me. Sydney asked her aunt if she could have one to show at 4-H competition. “Of course you can, pick one out,” Purvis replied. Sydney ran off and began studiously perusing the animals to make her choice. ✜

“We like variety,” Purvis says. “If it can be grown, we’ll grow it.”

50 July - August 2014

Harris Heritage Growers. 27811 S. Sonoita Highway. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., June through October. Facebook.com/HarrisHeritageGrowers.

Molly Kincaid is a Tucsonan who is obsessed with tinkering in the kitchen and reading cookbooks. Her favorite foods are, paradoxically, kale and pork belly.

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A Tucson staple with yummy traditional Mexican pastries and pan dulce you won’t find anywhere else in town.

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TABLE

Diamond in the Rock After more than 40 years in the business, La Roca el Balcon continues to capture the elusive spirit of Ambos Nogales.

by Moses Thompson | Photography by James Martin

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south from Tucson, walk five minutes past the international border, and you’ll find an experience you just can’t recreate stateside.

La Roca el Balcon Restaurant and Bar sits in the 1890s hacienda Casa Margot, nestled into the northwest facing cliffs of downtown Nogales, Sonora. The main dining room extends seamlessly into the hillside’s natural caves, giving the restaurant its name: The Rock. In front of the restaurant, 25-foot magnolia trees extend from root-buckled cobblestone sidewalks; a gurgling fountain welcomes guests into the central courtyard. The 115-year-old cut-stone walls, multiple fireplaces, and massive wooden beams of Casa Margot ooze history. Many nights the halls and stairwells echo with 52 July - August 2014

the sounds of wandering trovadores. Classically trained waiters clad in white suits and black bowties present hand-painted menu boards tableside, serving up some of the region’s best seafood and Sonoran style cuisine.

La Roca Restaurant— family-run and owned for 42 years—sources seasonal vegetable produce from the fertile Sinaloa Valley, fresh seafood from Guaymas and Los Mochis, and select beef

(Above) Enrique Ramirez, who has worked at La Roca for 38 years, lights a candle in the natural caves that extend from the main dining room. (Right) From left: David Rodriguez, who’s been with La Roca since December of 1971; owner, Alicia Bon Martin; right, Enrique Ramirez.

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The mural “Casa Margot,� by the late artist Lepe, hangs in La Roca, depicting images of the historic Nogales gathering spot.

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MESQUITE-SMOKED SINGLE MALT - UNSMOKED SINGLE MALT - MESQUITE-SMOKED CLEAR

The rush on Whiskey Del Bac is surprising and flattering.

In response we are building a new, large-scale craft system that will be up and running in September. Until then we are working our little distillery as hard as we can to supply your local bars and restaurants. Thank you for lifting our spirits. hamiltondistillers.com

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from the foothills of the Sierra Madre. But outstanding eats aside, La Roca el Balcon captures the elusive spirit of Ambos Nogales (Both Nogales).

The twin cities of Nogales have aspired to be thought of as one since the railroad depot for Nogales popped up at the border in 1882. However, the cruel social, political, and economic divide that spans the political boundary leaves Nogales far from unified. And it’s been that way for a hundred years. In July of 1918, the Nogales Herald naïvely proclaimed Nogales united and the border imaginary. A month later, the Battle of Ambos Nogales proved it terribly wrong. Started by an inadvertent customs dispute, the battle left many dead, mostly Mexicans. As a direct result of the battle, the United States and Mexico agreed to divide the community with a chain-link fence, the first permanent fence along the border.

Casa Margot, built in 1899, survived the Battle of Ambos Nogales. In 1972, it was transformed from a boarding house into the vibrant La Roca Bar and Restaurant by the late, visionary Jimmy Wilson. In the 1960s, Wilson started Wilson Produce, a Nogales-based produce distribution company

“The tragedy of the passport requirement is that it prevents a lot of people from crossing the border.

We lose something as a nation when so many people can’t experience another country.” handling marketing and sales for the family farm in Estación Bamoa, Sinaloa. Today, Wilson Produce provides distribution for a handful of farms in northern Mexico.

La Roca thrived for almost 30 years until Sept. 11, 2001, touched off a 21st century incarnation of the Battle of Ambos Nogales. “It was like someone flipped a switch. The people stopped coming. A paralysis fell upon the community,” says Alicia Bon Martin, Wilson’s niece and La Roca’s current owner. For the next decade, fears of terrorism, perceptions of drug violence, and intense border security devastated La Roca. The year 2008 was particularly brutal—the U.S. economy plunged into recession, and new passport requirements for travel to Mexico and Canada took effect. “The tragedy of the passport requirement is that it prevents a lot of people

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Clockwise, from top: Mochomos and house margarita; Salmon Oaxaca; Torritos featuring Wilson mini-sweet peppers.

from crossing the border. We lose something as a nation when so many people can’t experience another country,” says Chris Martin, Alicia’s husband and co-owner of La Roca.

Pouring salt into the wound, from late 2008 to 2009, Mexico devalued the peso by almost 25 percent.

Standing at an economic crossroads there were two things Alicia wasn’t willing to do: relocate to the United States or sacrifice quality. “We’re sticking to linens. We’re sticking to high quality ingredients. And we’re not moving to Tubac,” says Alicia defiantly. “When people suggest we move La Roca from

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Mexico to the U.S. it’s like a knife in my heart. How can I take my employees to Tubac. We’ve been together for so long, how could I leave them behind?” Elvira’s Restaurant, in business in Nogales, Sonora, since 1927, closed under the same economic pressures in 2008 and successfully reopened in Tubac in 2009.

“Our saving grace was we owned the building and Wilson Produce was profitable. If La Roca was our only source of income we would have folded,” says Alicia.

La Roca survived to see its 40th anniversary in 2012 and chose a counterintuitive way to celebrate. It offered free food,

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Border woes aside, the main dining room at La Roca is often packed for Saturday brunch.

sending out free breakfast coupons good for the entire year.

“Those times were incredibly humbling, and for us it was a way to give thanks to those who stood by us,” says Alicia. “Sending out the free breakfast coupons felt good. It was fun.”

Alicia Bon Martin, like La Roca, embodies the spirit of Ambos Nogales. The descendant of farmers from Bamoa, Sinaloa, Alicia was born in Nogales, Ariz. For her entire life she’s been enmeshed in the lives and economies of both sides of the political line that divides the city—not to mention in La Roca itself.

La Roca “is not a restaurant—it’s something else,” says Alicia.

“La Roca is an emotional connection to my family and my past.

And to my Uncle Jimmy.”

The Wilson family’s food heritage in the region spans four generations and, through La Roca, links farm to fork. Within three days, produce from the Wilson family farm in Bamoa finds its way into an entrée at La Roca. Mini sweet peppers make their way into dishes such as Brochettes (shish kebabs), Camarones Escabeche, Pollo en Salsa Coco, and Filete Meditariana. Staff recommendations include the Tampequeña, a plate-sized cut of Sonoran beef that comes with chile relleno, rice, beans, and 60 July - August 2014

rajas; Mochomos, crispy shredded beef that’s been flash-fried and is served with tortillas and lime; and Salmon Oaxaca, grilled salmon served with a mild roasted green chili sauce. Quench your thirst with a fresh-squeezed lime and Cazadores tequila margarita or the milder Roca Rica, a sangria margarita, a beautiful pink cocktail less acidic than its pure citrus cousin. Top off the experience with a seasonal, house-made sorbet or ice cream.

The political and economic battle of Ambos Nogales churns on, yet La Roca finds itself on the mend. “We’ve not only turned the corner but we have some momentum,” says Alicia.

“Our focus is no longer survival but on strengthening the foundation for the next generation, for my children.” Through tough times, La Roca has been forced to reinvent itself, but the history, ambiance, and classic flavor endure. After 42 years La Roca el Balcon remains the place to get swept away by the romanticism of Old Mexico, where the one-hour drive south of Tucson and the five-minute walk into Sonora are a part of the magic. ✜ Moses Thompson coordinates the gardening program at Manzo Elementary and has his sights set on growing school gardening programs across Tucson.

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If You Go

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L A R OCA from the U.S. side of the border, park at one of the reputable pay lots across the street from Burger King for $4 or curbside on Morley Avenue. When crossing between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., use the Morley Gate Port of Entry (the only pedestrian-only international crossing in the United States)—and don’t forget your passport. Morley Gate is one block east of the DeConcini Port of Entry and spits you out on Plutarco Elías Calles, the street that passes La Roca.

When crossing at DeConcini, go through the turnstile and follow the covered walkway away from the border until you reach the street—directly ahead is the pedestrian crossing over the railroad tracks. Heading up the ramp, look left (east) and through the cottonwood trees you’ll see the large neon La Roca sign extending from the rooftop, set against the cliffs. Menu prices are in U.S. dollars, and La Roca accepts cash and major credit cards. For those interested in extending a visit, consider the recently remodeled Fray Marcos Hotel, a five-minute walk west of La Roca.

O GET TO

La Roca Restaurant. Plutarco Elías Calles. Nogales, Sonora. 520.313.6313 LaRocaRestaurant.com.

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Food and art lovers since 1981.

Kate Breakey: Still Life with Bread and Garlic, 2003, hand-colored gelatin silver print, 28 x 33 in.

Kate Breakey: Still Life with Cantaloupe, 2003, hand-colored gelatin silver print, 28 x 33 in.

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PURVEYORS

A Flavor Oasis Tucked in a small spot off Speedway, the jam-packed Babylon Market offers unexpected delights.

by Eric Van Meter | Photography by Steven Meckler

I

NDIA HAS ITS VADA .

Buñelos across Latin America might be sweet or savory. In Louisiana, they’re hushpuppies. Almost every culture in the world has some variation on the fritter, and in the Middle East, it’s falafel, believed to have originated in Egypt as ta’amiya thousands of years ago, then migrated north to the Levantine countries at the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

If you’ve had falafel, you know it’s a humble food—ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both, spiced and deep fried. I’ve ingested many times my weight in falafel, and because of its simplicity, I see it as a kind of litmus test for Middle Eastern restaurants. It’s easy to get falafel wrong, and many places do: Biting into it can be like crunching into a droughty sodium briquette.

But this day at Babylon (Babylon Market and take-out in Tucson, not the metropolis that was the world’s largest city in 1,700 B.C.), the word “falafel” means something altogether new. The entire category shifts in my brain as I realize I’ve never really had falafel. Because the unassuming little fritter I’ve just bit into is nothing like that other stuff: soft without being mushy, a moist, grainy tenderness hiding in a perfectly crisped shell, salty but not over-salted, and with a refreshing flavor my mind keeps wanting to call “green.” One bite and I know I’m in for something very special in this place where the meat is halal, the rices manifold, and the falafel enough to make a writer wax on for some 260 words.

It’s a clear spring day when I sit down with business partners Feras Rashid and Hussein Haki to talk about Babylon Market

& Restaurant, which they opened together in 2009. We’re at one of the picnic benches in front of the store (they hope to open patio dining later this year), and though it’s not yet noon, it’s 93 degrees and what feels like negative 20 percent humidity.

Rashid comments that the weather is like that of his home country, Iraq, and explains how he left there in 1991 to come to the University of Arizona, completing a degree in mechanical engineering in 1995. Over the years, he worked a variety of jobs—notably, in real estate and car sales, neither of which was booming in the late 2000s, when he met Haki.

Haki is also from Iraq but had moved his family to escape political unrest, settling in Jordan and Syria, and finally coming to the United States in 2008 with help from the International Rescue Committee. He had been an architect in Iraq, and had a business selling auto parts with his father. He met Rashid when he bought two cars from him in Tucson and saw in him a potential business partner, and the two cast about for a venture to pursue.

I share these beside-the-point details precisely because they have nothing to do with Babylon. Neither Rashid nor Haki had any history with food beyond eating it. “I never thought, ‘One day I’m going to have a market and a restaurant,’” Rashid tells me, but “unexpected” is the throughline to this story. Babylon Market doesn’t look extraordinary. Its small sign is easy to miss (I missed it twice) on a stretch of Speedway where McDonald’s, Jiffy Lube, and Lucky Strike bowling jump out at you. You’d never expect an oasis of delights in that small, reddish-brown building.

When they opened the market, owners Rashid and Haki stocked 20 percent of what they have now. Their customers, heralding from across the world, requested new spices, products, and ingredients. “We would write it down and order it,” says Haki.

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Born in Iraq, Feras Rashid earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona and worked in real estate and car sales before he found his way to the food business.

I

NSIDE B ABYLON —a word that’s become synonymous with bustling diversity—the name suddenly makes sense. I hear five languages in the space of about 10 minutes from customers who exchange easy hellos with Rashid and Haki, from regulars who talk with their wives, Raghad Ismail and Zainab Dhia, who also work at Babylon, as if they’re old friends arriving at a backyard barbeque.

Just as diverse are the myriad items packing Babylon’s shelves.

I count 20 kinds of halvah on one. The aisles offer up dried lemons, green coffee beans, barley pearls, and endless varieties of rice, as well as teapots and hookah pipes. The fresh produce selection is small, holding, among other things, green almonds, fava beans still in their pods, and tart, crisp janarek, also known as green plums. The meat case holds beef, chicken, lamb, and goat, and all of it is halal, which means the animals are killed in accordance with Islamic law and which many believe makes the meat taste different.

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“Different” is an understatement for the lamb shank Rashid serves me. Perhaps because it’s halal, or perhaps because the restaurant uses nothing that’s powdered or canned and makes every last molecule of food in house. Whatever the cause, the effect is incredible. As I chomped my way through the kabsa, Haki tells me it’s his favorite dish and it’s not hard to taste why.

The meat is almost silky and its stronger flavor is balanced by sweet golden raisins cooked into long-grain basmati rice, yellow with the delicate flavor of saffron.

Saffron is, not surprisingly, one of many, many spices stocked at Babylon. There’s an entire wall of spices, in fact, including many in whole forms—whole cardamom, whole anise—that you don’t see at chain grocers. It’s said that good cooks can get eight distinct flavors from a spice—one flavor when ground raw, for example, or one when toasted in oil—which means a good cook could get more than 5.5 million flavor profiles from Babylon’s spice wall using not more than three selections at a time.

Hussein Haki says Babylon Market is a market for “everyday people.” He came to the U.S. from Iraq to escape political unrest; after buying two cars from Rashid, the two decided to go into business together.

A

LL THAT POSSIBILITY abounding here—perhaps true to the ancient city itself—can feel a little overwhelming at times (what does one do with pomegranate molasses?), but unlike the Babylon of old, this one has friendly guides. “We treat our customers like family,” Rashid tells me. “If they need help with marinating or want to know how to cook with a certain item, they can ask me or my wife or anyone here.”

Haki says, “I’m so happy when I see smiles on our customers’ faces. When my customer is happy, that means we succeeded, and that makes us proud.” Babylon, they explain, is a market for everyday people.

“When we opened this market,” Haki tells me, “We had maybe 20 to 30 percent of what we have today. Our customers—Pakistani, Persian, Turkish, North African, Argentinian, Brazilian, Spanish, Bosnian, Greek—people from all these communities, they are the most important source of information for us. They would tell us, ‘I would like this spice,’ or ‘I would like this item,’ and we would write it down and order it.”

Through that process, meeting with distributors and importers, along with patience and trial and error, gradually they came to the thousands of items they carry today. In gratitude to those customers, “We try to keep our prices as low as we can,” Rashid says. “We always have sales, and on special occasions, like for the month of Ramadan, we’ll choose 30 or 40 different items and

sell them at the wholesale price.”

When I politely reference the laws of supply and demand— that they could actually ask more for special items in times of need—Rashid laughs it off. “We do it the other way,” he says. “That’s what makes our business successful. With this tough economy, people always check coupons, try to get the best deal. They know our prices are very reasonable and very fair. We think if you give good service and good prices to customers, you gain more than you would by charging a lot.”

He’s right, of course. It’s one of the beauties of Tucson’s diversity—that two families from Iraq have much to teach us about what was a guiding American value. I do feel a twinge of guilt as I realize how glad I am that Rashid’s work in cars and real estate didn’t hold him or pull Haki in. But did I mention the, thick, cool hummus that can only be called velvety? The shawarma for which Iron Man himself would fly from Manhattan if he only he knew of it? So unexpected. And so worth the trip. ✜ Babylon Market. 3954 E. Speedway Blvd. 520.232.3700.

BabylonMarketTucson.com.

Eric Van Meter loves good food, good people and a good, hard rain. He’s called Tucson home all his 43 years.

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DRINK

Culture, On Tap Exploring Tucson’s kombucha scene, home-brewed and restaurant-made.

by Emily Gindlesparger | Photography by Liora K

T

that makes kombucha tea is not an appetizing one: It’s alternately been called a scoby, a mushroom, or a “mother” by the ultra-polite.

And the first time I had one sitting in my kitchen, floating atop a massive jar of brine-colored tea, it looked about as appetizing as it sounds.

“Scoby” is actually an acronym for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast,” and mine looked like a pale, flabby pancake.

The amber brew it created underneath, though, was the real reason I kept it around. This kombucha tea, with its sweetsour-tart flavor, has always been a better pick-me-up than that afternoon cup of coffee. It retains just a small portion of the caffeine from the tea it’s brewed in, and packs in a lot more goodies from fermentation: B vitamins, organic acids, and gut-friendly enzymes.

The use of kombucha as a tonic and medicine goes back at least 2,000 years to ancient Russia and China. “It’s known as a cure-all,” explains Rani Olson, the chef at Food for Ascension Café, where she keeps house-brewed kombucha on tap—the first restaurant in Arizona to legally do so. “Obviously in Western medicine the idea of a cure-all has problems,” she adds, laughing. “It will not cure all of your problems. But for the people who have been introduced to it, it’s nice to be able to have that as part of their meal.”

That’s partly why Food for Ascension has made it the house drink. Sitting in the sunlit courtyard with a glass of their slightly fizzy refreshment, it’s easy to substitute this lovely drink for the beer or soda that would typically be in its place. “It creates a ceremony in the dining experience to have something that’s a little bit special,” says Olson.

The kombucha at Food for Ascension Café certainly is that.

With a soft lemony tartness and a light carbonation, I was surprised to hear that Olson’s brew is unflavored. She attributes its complexity to the high quality tea it’s brewed with. She uses a strong black tea called dian hong gong fu that she procures from Tucson’s own Seven Cups. It’s a tea she admits she doesn’t like by itself, but its strong bitterness adds a sophisticated balance to the acidic tartness of traditional kombucha.

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Even for the high volume at the cafe, the process to make the tea is simple. She steeps the Seven Cups tea in a giant stainless steel vat, sweetening it with vegan sugar. After the mixture cools overnight, she transfers it to food-grade plastic buckets, each with a scoby floating on top, and covers them with a light cloth.

After a couple of weeks, the naturally carbonated brew is ready for the torpedo keg where it will become the headliner on tap.

Fervent kombucha drinkers like Dave Woodruff imbibe the benefits daily. Woodruff is an endurance athlete, and after hard training—which sometimes includes two workouts a day—he puts a high priority on recovery. To bolster a clean diet, he started drinking store-bought kombucha for its probiotics and professed cleansing properties. After acquiring a scoby, he now brews it at home, where he and his wife and daughter drink it every day. “I have more energy,” he says simply. “The cleaner your body, the faster you recover.” And after a few months of drinking kombucha, he says, “It seems like I can hold a higher heart rate and maintain a higher lactic threshold. I attribute that to having a clear body.”

As adventurous as Woodruff is in the sports arena, he’s proven equally creative in the kitchen, elaborating on the simple process of making kombucha to experiment with new flavors.

After the initial fermentation, which is the same as Olson’s on a smaller scale, he adds fruit juices before bottling to flavor the brew and add more natural carbonation. His favorites: black cherry and what he calls “passion tea lemonade.”

Scientific studies are yet to be done to see if the drink’s benefits stack up to its claims, which range from improving digestion to curing cancer. But there’s one thing all kombucha devotees will agree on, it’s that you’ll have to try the tea for yourself to see why history has kept this weird little brew around. ✜

(Clockwise, from top left) Chef Olson holds up the giant brewing pot, where the Seven Cups tea will steep; after it’s fermented with a scoby, the naturally carbonated tea eventually makes its way to the tap—and to a glass on your table.

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Recipe: Basic Kombucha

T

to procure a scoby for home brewing. The first is to get a piece from someone already making kombucha; the culture constantly multiplies and layers can easily be peeled off to share. The second is to create one, using raw unflavored store-bought kombucha.

Pour out a bottle into a wide-mouth jar, cover with a cloth, and leave at room temperature for a week until a white film forms on top; this is a baby scoby. If that fails, you can order kombucha starter cultures at CulturesForHealth.com.

To make your own home-brewed kombucha, start by heating 1 gallon of water in a large pot. Dissolve 1 cup of sugar into the water and steep tea when hot—use 2 teaspoons of high quality loose tea or 8 tea bags. Avoid teas with added oils, like Earl Grey, which can cause the scoby to wilt. Allow tea to brew strong, 25 minutes or more.

Cool overnight. Transfer into a large glass jar and float the scoby on top. Cover the brew with a light cloth secured with a rubber band and let sit in “a nice bakery-warm temperature,” as Olson recommends, for about one week until the brew tastes to your liking. When you’re ready to bottle, transfer the scoby to another container with some of the liquid as you ready another batch of tea. The reserved liquid helps to acidify the new brew, protecting the scoby from mold.

A note on scoby health: It’s easy to tell how your scoby is doing. If it’s floating and consistently colored, all is well. If your scoby starts to sink, it’s not well nourished and needs more HER E AR E A FEW WAYS

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sugar. Though a tea-tinted coloring is normal as the culture ages, spots and uneven coloring are signs of mold and the scoby should be thrown out.

Bottle and chill the fermented tea to drink plain, or create a second fermentation by placing a little sugar and juice in the bottom of each bottle before capping. Leave at room temperature for 4 days or so before chilling.

Passion Tea Lemonade Variation Use 10 passion tea bags to make the mother brew. When bottling, add 1 ounce lemon juice, 1 ounce strong ginger tea from fresh root, and 1 tablespoon sugar to each 16-ounce bottle.

Black Cherry Variation Use a strong black tea to brew, and add 1 ounce cherry juice and 1 tablespoon sugar to each 16-ounce bottle.

Food for Ascension. 330 E. Seventh St. 520.882.4736. FoodForAscension.org.

Seven Cups. 2516 E. Sixth St. 520.881.4072. SevenCups.com.

Emily Gindlesparger traded the forested Southern Illinois hills for the mountains of Tucson, where she teaches yoga and writes about adventures on bicycles, cliff sides, and wine trails.

FOOD TRUCKS

Everything Goes with Waffles With new owners, new waffles, and a renewed farm-to-food truck focus, Foodie Fleet is doubling down on local sourcing.

by Megan Kimble | Photography by Liora K

A

T SUNSET on the Sunday before Memorial Day, Adam Dick jumps out the open back doors of the Foodie Fleet food truck, parked outside Tap & Bottle, and sprints toward the Food Conspiracy Co-op. Still inside the truck, Kylie Rogers— Dick’s wife and Foodie Fleet’s co-owner—says, “We ran out of Granny Smith apples but didn’t realize and just sold two Granny’s Goat.” The Granny’s Goat is a Foodie Fleet signature sandwich, made with Granny Smith apples, Chiva Risa goat cheese, raspberry jalapeño jam from We B’Jamin Farm and seasonal greens from Sleeping Frog Farms.

“It’s the busiest we’ve been since our launch in March,” says Rogers as she hustles around the small space. As if it’s one movement, she turns the waffle iron, fills a compostable bowl full of sweet potato crisps, and spreads slow-stewed Sonoran chicken over a half-moon of mesquite waffle. In March, in this same parking spot in front of Tap & Bottle, Foodie Fleet, a locally focused and sustainably sourced food truck, re-opened its doors after an eight month hiatus, a change in ownership, and a reimagined—and relocalized—menu.

Dick returns to the truck with a bagful of Willcox apples from the Co-op, and the pair resume their regular stations—

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Dick on the grill, Rogers assembling sandwiches. One of their two employees, Caitlin Alexander, takes orders at the front window and runs trays full of food to those waiting outside Tap & Bottle. The inside of the food truck smells like a bakery—like sweet mesquite, like dough and yeast, like a long Sunday brunch. When you can share smells on Facebook, they will need no more marketing.

“How many more waffles do we need?” Rogers calls to Dick.

He looks at a line of tickets.

“Five,” he says. “Shoot,” she replies. “I’m running really low on batter.” Once they run out of waffle batter—a vegan, gluten-free, slow-rise batter—they just can’t go run and grab more, as the dough requires an overnight chill in a refrigerator at the commercial kitchen at the Mercado San Agustín. They can still sell sandwiches and sweet potato crisps, but most of the patrons queued at the window don’t want just a sandwich—they want a sandwich bookended by a crunchy mesquite waffle.

(Left) Kylie Rogers and Adam Dick bring their three-year-old son, Cullen, to help pick out produce at the St. Philip’s Farmers’ Market.

(Right) Perfect on its own—a mesquite waffle, coated in prickly pear syrup and garnished with a fresh lime.

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F

OUNDED IN 2011, Foodie Fleet began as a venture of four friends who wanted better—gourmet, even—late night offerings. “Tucson has a deeply ingrained mobile food or food truck culture, but it was then still focused mostly around Sonoran hot dogs and taco carts,” says Matt McDonnell, one of the founders. “We didn’t see many offerings that were healthful or, more importantly, local.”

He didn’t have much culinary experience, nor did his partners, Jeremiah Mosij, Rick Thompson, and Michael O’Connell.

“But that helped us keep it simple and healthy,” McDonnell says. After running the business for two years, “life began to intervene,” he says. The various side projects they’d been pursuing while they built up Foodie Fleet—law school, teaching English, installing solar panels—became full-time jobs.

just monstrous,” she says. “I just fell in love with this truck called Lulu’s. It’s a vegan truck, with a rooftop garden. I thought I was eating vegetarian food, so I was baffled when I found out it was vegan and that all of their vegetables were sourced locally. The taste was so superior to anything else. It tasted so much better, so much healthier than food-truck food.”

They talked about starting a locally sourced food truck in St. Louis, but knew Rogers would eventually be re-located. When they visited Tucson in the summer of 2013, they found their former home transformed. “There was so much going on, especially in local food,” says Rogers. “We started talking about what we could do to be a part of that here.”

With Foodie Fleet still up and running, they’d decided the market was already filled. That is, until one night, they found a

Foodie Fleet re-launched in March in this very parking spot outside of Tap & Bottle, on Sixth Ave. and Seventh St.; now, it’s one of their regular stops.

So they posted an ad on Craigslist: Food Truck for Sale.

“The pictures were kind of obscure, so you didn’t know what truck it was,” says Kylie Rogers, who had clicked on the ad from a computer in St. Louis. She met Adam Dick in Tucson, where he’s from—his parents still live in town—but the couple ended up moving to St. Louis via New York for her job. At the time, Rogers was working as the director of global leadership for Anheuser-Busch, but she and Dick were becoming increasingly interested in food—especially, food sourced locally and sold on a truck.

“In St. Louis, the locavore scene and the food truck scene was 76 July - August 2014

food truck for sale on Craigslist. Rogers dug up old articles online to try to match Foodie Fleet’s interior with the one pictured in the Craigslist ad. “When we realized it actually was Foodie Fleet, we got on the phone.” And they stayed on the phone for almost three hours. “We found out that we shared a lot of the same values and purpose,” says Rogers. “Adam and I decided that we wanted to buy the truck and business the minute we hung up the phone.”

As they considered how to re-launch the food truck, they decided to keep three of the core items that the original team had developed: the Granny’s Goat sandwich, the Kino Veggie

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Sliders, a quinoa, tepary bean, and local veggies burger—and waffles.

But they wanted their waffles to reflect their values. “The two guiding principles for our menu were accessibility to the menu, and zero waste,” says Rogers. “For accessibility, we want everyone who walks up to the food truck to be able to find something to eat, even if they’re dairy-free or gluten-free or vegan.” So they got to work.

“Literally, over two months, we had waffles every day for breakfast and dinner,” Dick says. “Our family had waffles. Everybody had waffles.”

Today, their waffles are vegan, gluten-free, made from mes-

we wanted to do on our menu got nixed, because we couldn’t find it.”

They still go to the Santa Cruz and St. Philip’s Plaza farmers’ markets every week to pick up orders they’ve placed with local growers, and as they hone their menu and their market, they’ve become better able to predict sales. Even so, the very nature of a food truck is that sales will be unpredictable—and that no week is the same as the other. “You can’t have a standing order for a certain amount of vegetables a week, because we may or may not be going through them,” Dick says.

Which means they’re often running to a farmers’ market—or to the Food Conspiracy Co-op—to grab a missing ingredient.

Rogers and Dick navigate the small space while hustling to get orders out of the door.

quite flour, with Queen Creek Olive Oil, coconut oil, rice flour, homemade pecan milk (made with Arizona pecans), and chia seeds sourced from Native Seeds/SEARCH. Planning the produce they would incorporate into their menu was more challenging. “We literally took a notebook and went to every farmers’ market in town. We’d ask vendors, where are these from? How often do you have them? In what quantity?”

Rogers says. “It was so complex. First we had to make a list of everything that was available in December, locally.” Then they turned to the Internet. “Well, we’d like to do red peppers. Can they not grow here? Or is it just that none of these places happen to be growing them? It was exhaustive research. Sometimes food 78 July - August 2014

“If a few days before Viva la Local, we don’t have goat cheese from Lissa [Lissa Howe at Chiva Risa] because we sold more last week than we thought we would, we have to drive down there,” says Rogers.

Because they have to maintain orders with individual producers, “there’s such a lack of efficiency in local sourcing,” says Rogers. Combine that with the lack of efficiency inherent in running a food truck, and they’re working 60- or 70-hour weeks.

“You’d think, because it’s mobile, it’s efficient. But really, every day, you set up your kitchen, and you break down your kitchen.”

She estimates that less than 20 percent of their time is spent actually running the truck for customers (compared to closer to

After their weekly visit to the St. Philip’s Farmers’ Market, the couple leaves with a cooler full of fresh produce and local goat cheese.

“We had to get comfortable with the idea that our food costs would be higher than most other trucks.

We wanted to keep our prices low, which was part of the accessibility.”

50 percent for a conventional food truck). The time they aren’t in the food truck is spent ordering food, picking it up, and then prepping it in the Mercado San Agustín kitchen—stewing the Sonoran chicken, fire-roasting the green chiles, shaping goat-cheese-balls, assembling quinoa burgers. “If you don’t do local sourcing, then you buy pre-cut cabbage,” Rogers says.

And if you don’t source locally, your food costs are lower. “We had to get comfortable with the idea that our food costs would be higher than most other trucks,” says Dick. “We wanted to keep our prices low, which was part of the accessibility. That’s why we only have one meat feature at a time—it’s a higher cost item. We want to show that local food is affordable,” he says.

“Even thought it’s not,” Rogers responds. “That’s part of the challenge.” She estimates their food costs are about 35 percent of retail price, while traditional food trucks run closer to 25 percent.

The challenge ahead of them is building the right traffic and finding the right market. “Every time we get a new customer, we get a new repeat customer,” Rogers says. A regular location, 80 July - August 2014

where they can capture new foot traffic and retain those repeating customers, is key to their growth.

“But how long will that take? Right this second, it’s not a sustainable family income,” Rogers says.

But they’re working on it.

Starting in late July, all of their sandwiches will be offered on waffles only. “That’s what people come back for,” says Rogers. Without fresh bread to pick up every week, becoming a waffle-only truck has the added bonus of reducing one stop on the locally sourced runaround. “Adam and I, and a lot of our regular customers, have been eating sandwiches on waffles for awhile now anyways.”

Dick agrees. “I mean, if you can get a waffle with pulled pork on top of it, why wouldn’t you?”

Especially if the pork is local and the waffles taste like sweet mesquite. ✜ Visit FoodieFleet.com for an updated schedule, or to book Foodie Fleet for private event catering.

Megan Kimble is the managing editor of Edible Baja Arizona.

Follow her on Twitter @megankimble.

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POLICY

Navigating the Food Safety Maze From the Stone Age to the USDA— how food safety regulations impact what we’re eating.

By Merrill Eisenberg | Illustration by Hector Acuna

B

ACK IN THE S TONE A GE , people were more worried about being harmed by their food while it was still alive than after it was on their plate. They hunted and foraged on a daily basis, ate what they found, and avoided eating things that were known to make people sick. Living in small groups, virtually all members of the community participated in daily food procurement and preparation—everyone knew exactly where their food came from and how it was prepared.

Today, in the United States, despite all of our modern knowledge and food safety regulations at the federal, state, and local levels, 48 million people get sick from the food they eat every year, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die.

With the advent of agriculture came the ability to produce more food than was immediately needed, and that meant surplus food had to be stored somewhere—an opportunity for infestation and spoilage. Agriculture also made it possible for human groups to quit roaming around the countryside and settle down, which resulted in an increase in population density. Mix in animal domestication, and it is easy to see

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how food safety concerns became a challenge for early human populations.

The first food safety policies were not governmental edicts, but religious proscriptions and food customs. Religious laws, taboos, and cultural traditions emphasized the importance of cleanliness and purity and prohibited foods that we know today were prone to carrying disease-producing organisms. For most common folk, food storage and preparation customs, like salting, smoking, drying, curing, using spices, and fermentation, provided some protection from foodborne pathogens.

When the Industrial Revolution drove people from the countryside into crowded cities, most folks had to purchase food that was imported from farther and farther away. The journey of food from the field to the fork now included many new opportunities for spoilage, infestation with bugs and animal droppings, and adulteration with chemicals and dyes.

Federal interest in food safety from a health perspective was sparked by the pure food movement of the late 19th century. Alarmed by the many food additives

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USDA AMS

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Environmental Health

Sanitation

being used in an increasingly industrialized food system, a grassroots coalition started what has been described as a “crusade” for food purity. A federal food purity bill was introduced in Congress in 1879, but it was defeated.

In the early 20th century, the federal government conducted the infamous “poison squad” experiments, where healthy volunteers were fed commonly used food additives (like borax and benzoic acid) to see if it made them sick (it did). Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a muckraking novel that exposed conditions in the meat packing industry, and pressure grew to pass federal food safety legislation. Finally in 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which gave the federal government the authority to regulate the food industry.

Many changes and refinements were made to these federal laws throughout the 20th century, and today our food safety

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Locally produced food has fewer opportunities to become contaminated or spoil on its journey from farm to fork than do products that are commercially grown, packaged, and transported over long distances.

system is a mysterious maze of agencies at various levels and departments of federal, state, and local government that play different and sometimes overlapping roles to ensure the safety of our food supply. Most recently, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 shifted the focus of the federal food safety system from detecting and responding to contamination to ensuring the implementation of preventative measures.

The federal system has been described as “fragmented” and over the years, calls for re-structuring have been made by numerous organizations—to no avail. It is very difficult for producers to fully understand all of the ins and outs, the rules and exceptions that are currently in place, let alone everyday consumers. Even professionals who work within the system were unable to speak with me about how their responsibilities articulate with other parts of the system, even within their own agency!

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Generally, the federal government is responsible for ensuring that food that is imported or marketed across state lines is safe, nutritious, and wholesome. Food produced and marketed within state borders is regulated by state Departments of Agriculture and local health departments. Within the federal government, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has several agencies that each have different food safety responsibilities. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe and correctly labeled and packaged. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) works at the farm level to keep agriculture free from pests and diseases. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) creates quality standards for grading meat, chicken, dairy, eggs, and more than 312 fruit, vegetable and specialty products, and offers voluntary independent audits of produce suppliers. They also set standards for organic foods and certify farms as part of the National Organic Program.

Seem complicated? That’s because it is. When I started digging deeper, I realized that folks who are familiar with FSIS have no idea what APHIS does, and neither of these agencies have a good handle on the AMS, and yet all three of these agencies are within the USDA. And the USDA knows nothing about the FDA’s programs. So when talking to “experts” one needs to not take their word for it.

Moving on. The FDA sets standards for the production of most fruits and vegetables, grain and dairy products, bottled water, seafood, wild game, and eggs in the shell, as well as dietary supplements; they also conduct periodic inspections of farms and food production and warehouse facilities. The FDA has the authority to oversee food labeling, ensuring that weights and measures as well as ingredients are accurately reported, and sets standards for the display of nutritional information.

With regard to food imports, both the FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have food inspection responsibilities at the border. Federal funding for inspection of imported foods is woefully inadequate. For example, while 17 percent of the food we eat is imported, the FDA has the resources to inspect less than 2 percent of it. When contaminated food slips by the required inspections and people start to get sick, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks and responds to outbreaks of foodborne illness.

Got that? Now here’s more: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticides and other chemicals and substances in food, and sets standards for clean drinking water. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) oversees the integrity of food advertising. Other federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and the Department of Transportation also perform some food safety functions.

But wait! There’s more. States and tribes are responsible for the safety of foods that are produced and sold within their boundaries. The State Department of Agriculture conducts inspections and certifies agricultural operations for these foods. The federal government may also contract with the Arizona Department of Agriculture to conduct the federally required inspections. Arizona regulations stipulate that agricultural operations are required to adhere to only one set of regulations, so no operations are inspected by both federal and state authorities.

Budgetary constraints limit the number of inspections the Arizona Department of Agriculture can conduct and priority is given to large-scale producers. Small producers may request a federal inspection if the state is unable to provide one.

Local growers can request a federal inspection. They might want to be inspected if customers, such as grocery stores or restaurants, require it, but there are no laws that require grocery stores or restaurants to sell only foods that have been inspected. Local manufacturers are required to follow sanitary rules—which brings us to the local level.

At the local level, tribal and county public health agencies oversee sanitation in retail “food establishments”—grocery stores, restaurants, and other places where food is offered to the public. When we eat at a restaurant, grab a snack from a food truck, or graze at the food booths at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, we give little thought to how or where the food was prepared or whether it will make us violently ill by some infectious pathogen. This luxury is brought to us by the Food Code, which includes sanitation rules that are developed at the FDA, adopted and amended by the state, further adopted and amended by the county government, and enforced by the local health department through licensing and inspection of food preparation techniques and facilities. Everything from the equipment and utensils used to specifications of the water, plumbing, and sewage systems is regulated by the Food Code and inspected by the local health department.

The Food Code does not apply to whole, unprepared fruit, vegetables, and eggs, produced and distributed locally on a small scale. These products are not inspected by any governmental agency unless the grower requests and pays for an inspection. But these products are not likely to be harmful because small-scale growers have a personal relationship with their customers and in a small-scale operation, safety and sanitary issues are less likely and easier to spot. Once locally produced foods are prepared in any way—made into salsa or sauces, or used in recipes—the Food Code kicks in. The local health department will require producers to be trained and their kitchen and preparation methods must meet Food Code standards.

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The final layer of food safety policy takes place in your kitchen, and like our early ancestors, is governed by custom. The difference is that today’s customs are informed by science, not Scripture. Do you always wash food, counters, cooking tools, and your hands before you prepare a meal?

Do you keep raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs away from other foods and use a special cutting board for raw foods only? Do you always refrigerate or freeze foods within two hours of cooking it? The policies we set for our own households go a long way to preventing foodborne illnesses.

So how do you know if the food you are eating is safe from pathogens, contaminants, and other forms of adulteration?

Even with all the oversight at the federal, state, and local levels, foodborne illness is relatively common in the United States, the chances are one in six that you will get sick from the food you eat in the coming year. While we have an elaborate food safety system, it is fragmented and poorly funded, and only a portion of our food is ever inspected at all. What’s

more, the long trajectory from farm to fork provides many opportunities for spoilage and adulteration.

One way to reduce your chances of getting sick from your food is to revert to the practices of our ancestors in the Stone Age. I don’t mean adopting the cave man diet that is currently in vogue. I mean eating food that is fresh and produced locally—grow it yourself or get your food from someone you trust. Locally produced food has fewer opportunities to become contaminated or spoil on its journey from farm to fork than do products that are commercially grown, packaged, and transported over long distances. If a problem does occur, it impacts a small number of people and is easy to track.

Home food preparation is the final frontier of food safety policy—careful food preparation techniques go a long way to protecting you and your family from foodborne diseases. And watch out for those deviled eggs that have been sitting in the sun at your church picnic. ✜

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For information about specific food safety practices, recalls and alerts, and other food safety topics, go to FoodSafety. gov or CDC.gov/FoodSafety. The FDA offers an overview of requirements for a food business at FDA.gov.

Merrill Eisenberg is an applied anthropologist who retired from the University of Arizona Zuckerman College of Public Health. Her interest in food policy comes from her commitment to community empowerment and participation in policy development.

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“In the desert, one finds the way by tracing the aftermath of water�

- Alison Deming

1

Revisiting the Dry River Ken Lamberton Photography by Jeff Smith

Words by

2 Above: Just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, the town of Santa Cruz, the river’s namesake, still depends on the struggling river to feed its fields.

Previous page: To find the water, follow the cottonwoods. The headwaters of the Santa Cruz river reveal themselves in a meandering pattern of trees.

Right: Just south of Santa Cruz, the river makes its iconic swoop west; after San LĂĄzaro, it turns back north, back across the border.

92 July - August 2014

T UESDAY that happens to be Earth Day, the world falls away as the Cessna lifts into a fat blue sky. Megan Kimble of Edible Baja Arizona and Seth Cothrun of the Sonoran Institute sit in back, offering me the copilot seat. We’re flying today with LightHawk, a nonprofit environmental organization that uses volunteer pilots and their aircraft for conservation—today, our goal is to trace the length of the Santa Cruz River. Our pilot, Will Worthington, is a former chief civil engineer for the Central Arizona Project. He knows water. And he knows history. Today, he’s our guide at the controls as we fly the river of the Holy Cross, 200 miles from its headwaters in the San Rafael Valley to the Gila River, in two hours. The last time I made this trip, it took eight years.

This will be a celebration. When I traveled the Santa Cruz for my book Dry River, I did it by car, by foot, and by horseback.

This will be a perspective without the inconsistency of roads, without climbing barbed wire fences and steel-walled borders, without navigating the political boundaries of three separate nations the river runs through. It will be from the perspective of continuity, of the connection we all have with water in a desert land.

From Canelo Pass, the San Rafael Valley drops away to the south. Ropes of green, where oak and juniper mark every wrinkled drainage, crisscross a broad rolling plain. Mountains shoulder the valley—the Huachucas on the east, Patagonias on the west—their peaks blue-gray above a brown world. Seventy-five miles from Tucson, we fly over the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River. Like the veins of a giant cottonwood leaf, these tributaries gather a river that spills into Mexico.

Between one and two million years ago, shallow runoff poured into these intermountain basins, charging aquifers and depositing gravel and sand from the eroded aprons of the mountains. This was the time of the great inland seas, like Lake Cochise. In this valley, as sediments moved among previously isolated basins, a “proto” Santa Cruz River formed, flowing only south. Over time, the river continued to join basin after basin, raising terraces in one place, only to redistribute them elsewhere. Eventually, the river took its present shape, surging across this land, connecting basins like threading beads on

O

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a string until finally the beads slipped the necklace to join a young Gila River on its way to the Colorado River and the Sea of Cortez. Ebb and flow, the recurrent pattern of life, gave birth to the Santa Cruz River.

“Looks like a scene from the Pleistocene,” I say into my headset over the roar of the engine.

“They’ve found mammoth kill sites on the San Pedro River in the next valley,” Seth adds.

I imagine the first people who trickled into the San Rafael Valley between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians following the trails of mammoth and bison. As the Ice Age drew to a close and the land relaxed under warmer skies, this valley may have helped nomadic people settle into communities and become hunter-gatherers.

At the Lone Mountain Ranch, 10 miles east of us in the Huachuca Mountains, archaeologists have uncovered human occupations spanning more than 11,000 years. Today, a gerrymander of oak woodlands and grasslands drapes hills cut by riparian drainages, ephemeral streams reduced in the dry season to chains of pools.

Lone Mountain is littered with prehistory: boulders etched with human figures; fire-cracked rocks circling roasting pits; grinding stones resting among flakes of obsidian, pottery shards, and small, triangular projectile points.

The San Rafael Valley holds a long, nearly continuous presence of humans. Ten thousand years ago, people of the Cochise culture shared the grasslands with fantastic animals like lions and camels, and long-fanged dire wolves. They camped here to harvest wild grains and parch them in hearths of incandescent coals. Three thousand years ago, the area was home to people who roasted agaves and feasted on the dark, sweet, molasses-like cores.

For thousands of years, this place has drawn people, the latest being 19th century homesteads and cattle ranches. What they all have in common is their connection to the valley, to the resources it provides, and to the river that sustains them. The entire Santa Cruz River, from the headwaters in this valley to the Tucson basin and beyond, braids together the footpaths of humans dating from prehistory forward. The river has made it possible for people to find their way in the world.

3

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4 A watershed knows no border: The ragged floodplain of the Santa Cruz sweeps across the straight line of the fence that separates the U.S. and Mexico.

“There’s the border,” says Will. “Comes up quickly—we’re in Mexico. Can you see water in the river?”

“Yes,” Seth says. “There’s water. And fields—what are they growing? Alfalfa?”

At the bottom of the San Rafael Valley, we trace an undivided ribbon of trees. Cottonwoods rise out of the riverbanks like dark smudges among polygons of bright green. A river in the service of agriculture. Orchards and alfalfa fields signal the region’s principal economies: cattle ranching and apples.

“And here’s the town of Santa Cruz,” I say, pointing ahead.

“The town that gave the river its name.”

The bell tower of a church with its eggshell dome and simple cross rises out of a crowd of metal rooftops. This is where Father Eusebio Francisco Kino founded a Jesuit mission in 1693. Kino named it “Santa María de Suamca,” combining in his usual way both the Spanish and native tongues (suamca is an O’odham word meaning “immaculate”). The river and the town were named for a wandering Spanish fort, Santa Cruz de Terrenate, which began on the San Pedro River but moved and remained here until the end of Spanish rule. Eventually, Santa María de Suamca became the town of Santa Cruz, and the Rio de Santa María became known only as the Santa Cruz River.

Soon, we fly above the town named for a man raised from the grave, San Lázaro. Here, the Santa Cruz River renews itself, beginning its trademark U-turn to loop around the 94 July - August 2014

south-pointing finger of the Sierra San Antonio before flowing northwest back toward Arizona.

San Lázaro, like the village of Santa Cruz, is a ranching and agricultural community, whose 900 residents depend on the perennial flow of the river. One way that the river’s importance to the community has manifested itself is in a conservation program called Los Halcones, the Falcons.

A decade ago, Los Halcones rose out of the inspiration of Joaquin Murrieta, who was then the culture and conservation director of the Sonoran Institute’s Sonoran Desert Ecoregion Program. The Tucson-based Sonoran Institute works to help communities make decisions and policies that respect both the land and its people. Joaquin, who grew up in northern Sonora and received his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, believes that the way to help preserve the Santa Cruz is to engage people on both sides of the border. In San Lázaro, Joaquin began meeting with local ranchers and farmers, but soon realized that better progress could be made by involving the town’s youth.

Los Halcones was born when the Sonoran Institute rehabilitated an old clinic building, giving the teenagers a place to meet and organize cleanup campaigns and fieldtrips for restoration work and surveying bird life.

One of the goals of Los Halcones is to work with ranchers around San Lázaro to find alternative sources of water for cattle, excluding them from the riparian area where they trample

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5 The town of San Lázaro is surrounded by fields and ranches and depends on the perennial flow of the river for its survival. With only 900 people, it has also become an epicenter for conservation work on the river through a program called Los Halcones.

banks and graze on young cottonwoods and willows that would otherwise provide food and shelter for wildlife.

Today, Los Halcones continues with the help of the regional, cross-border conservation organization, Sky Island Alliance, also based in Tucson. “Last year,” says SIA’s Christopher Morris, “we installed just over five kilometers of fencing [to keep cattle out of the river] with the goal of being able to revegetate the riparian gallery. We also installed about 575 willow pole plantings with help from the residents.”

“The environment doesn’t have borders,” says Sergio Avila, SIA’s program manager. “People from both the U.S. and Mexico share a closeness to it.”

As we turn toward Arizona again, I look toward the Sierra de Pinitos whose upwelling flanks bend the river from south to north, and the distant Sierra Azul, land of ocelots and jaguars.

The people of San Lázaro, following after the town’s namesake, are resurrecting a river.

“I’ve heard that the river never flowed its entire length,” says Will.

“Only in flood,” I say. “Historically, the Santa Cruz only came to the surface in about five or six reaches, or stretches of the river, one of them right here near Kino Springs. These are the places where people lived, where Padre Kino established his missions and visitas: Guevavi, Calabasas, Tumacácori, and San Xavier. The water was life.”

I search the mesquite-smudged banks of the dry riverbed near Rio Rico for the mud walls of Guevavi, Kino’s first mission in what is now Arizona. Megan taps my shoulder and points to a sudden bloom of green in the channel. “Outflow from the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant,” I say. “The 96 July - August 2014

cottonwoods start here and the gallery stretches north all the way beyond Tubac. A river reborn from flushing toilets.”

Seth reminds us of the cottonwood die-off from 2005, how scientists learned that inadequately treated effluent from the facility was growing algae that choked off the trees’ water and nutrients. “Caught us completely unawares,” he says. “So the Sonoran Institute began tracking the health of the river and publishing a ‘Living River Report.’”

The facility, which has served both sides of the border since the 1940s was due for an upgrade, especially since between 1990 and 2000 the population on the Mexican side grew to more than 200,000 people. A $60 million expansion came online in 2009, and the difference in water quality was astounding. In just three years, the Institute’s sample survey from Rio Rico to Tubac showed the population of native longfin dace and nonnative mosquitofish increase from two to nearly 2,000.

North of Tubac, the river channel begins to change, broadening and deepening into high-walled chocolate banks. “See where the cottonwoods disappear? We’re over the Tohono O’odham Reservation. I say. The river retreats underground where it flows into these deep intermountain regions with thousands of feet of valley fill. It always has. In 1852, despite a wet summer monsoon season, U.S. Boundary Commissioner John Russell Bartlett noted that about nine miles north of Tubac, the Santa Cruz River went dry.

Seth mentions the former mesquite bosque that once blanketed the desert south of Martinez Hill where the Santa Cruz once resurfaced. “It’s all gone,” he says, “with the river.”

“The O’odham have created a restoration site at Martinez Hill,” I say. “Using Colorado River water, the tribe has a forest

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6 Behind the Mission San Xavier del Bac, the Tohono O’odham grow corn, squash, beans, and peas (as well as the cash crop alfalfa) with CAP water; for centuries before the water table dropped, they had subsisted on the annual floods of the Santa Cruz river.

of cottonwoods and willows on the dry banks of the Santa Cruz.

Temperature drops 15 degrees when you walk into it.”

I point out the gleaming San Xavier del Bac Mission off to the left. “The river originally flowed closer to the mission. Sam Hughes, one of Tucson’s pioneers, caused the big ditch we now call the Santa Cruz River after his irrigation works went awry in the 1890s. All this was farmland before then.”

“By the 1980s,” Will adds, “the farms in the San Xavier district were largely fallow, primarily due to lack of water.”

Will explains that the O’odham sued Tucson and others for taking water for which they had prior rights. The case resulted in the Water Rights Settlement Act, which stipulated the tribe would get 27,000 acre-feet of CAP water within 10 years. “The Bureau of Reclamation completed the aqueduct and had water delivery as promised, though the O’odham were not ready to take delivery immediately. Looks like the San Xavier farms are doing well.”

I chew on the irony and it’s like biting on aluminum foil.

We have our own river, yet we must import another one—the Colorado—from 300 miles away and lift it 2,400 feet through pumping plants, inverted siphons, canals, and pipelines for the spigots of Phoenix and Tucson. Nature undone. Gravity overcome by coal.

98 July - August 2014

As Seth points out, the Santa Cruz has sustained people for 13,000 years, sustained agriculture for over 4,000 years. It is why Tucson is here after all. “We must reconnect with the river,” he says. “It’s not simply a flash flood basin running through our town that is empty 10 months a year. If we want to build a movement that focuses on growing appropriate crops, that supports local farmers and ranchers, and restaurants that support those farmers and ranchers, then we can’t ignore the river that runs right through our heart.”

The peak called A Mountain comes into view and beneath it, the dry swath of river that is the birthplace of Tucson. Adobe walls, made from the dirt beneath them, enclose an orchard: Mission Gardens. The four-acre plot is where friars once tended fruit trees and vegetables. I recall a recent visit to the 200-year-old Franciscan church at Tumacácori, where work has begun to re-establish historical fruit trees at the mission’s original orchards and gardens. As part of the Kino Heritage Fruit Trees Project, researchers combed Father Kino’s journals and other early accounts. They searched mission communities, ranches, and abandoned farms in Sonora as well as ghost towns and the backyards of 19th century homes in southern Arizona.

After locating colonial period trees, they collected seeds and cuttings and grew them at nurseries like Tucson’s Desert Sur-

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7 fly over a straight line of green. “That’s the CAP aqueduct,” vivors.

Will says. “It goes underground as a siphon to get beneath the Park Ranger Vicki Wolfe had given me a tour of the Turailroad, I-10, and the Santa Cruz River before reappearing as macácori orchard. “We are planting fruit trees from stocks an open canal again.” introduced in the region by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th and Tucson, Will explains, had been the largest city in North early 18th centuries,” she explained. “Apple, pomegranate, fig, America entirely dependent on groundwater. “With alarming quince, pear, and others, as identified by the project.” The trees rates of groundwater overdraft, Tucson was destined for trauwere small, but I pictured in a few years walking along shaded matic changes in lifestyle. The CAP was basically their salvapaths beneath spreading branches of ripening fruit. I imagined tion.” tasting the sweet flavor of Spanish history.

I think about how a thousand years ago, the Hohokam built As part of the Tucson Origins Heritage Park, the newly their canals in this same place to irrigate their fields of corn and reconstructed Mission Gardens under A Mountain has become squash. I imagine circular pit houses of brush and mud among another home of the Kino fruit trees. But the gardens will do the irregular geometry of green, crowding a river of cottonmore than represent some monk’s quiet retreat. This is becomwoods. The Santa Cruz River, more the dry aftermath of water ing a one-of-a-kind living museum. From the Hohokam and than a flowing desert river, connects more than a landscape. It Tohono O’odham to the Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, and terriconnects the past with the present. torial Anglo-Americans, Tucson’s first farmers will be honored We can’t go back, even a hundred years, in terms of the way by interpretation of the longest known history of cultivation in we use the river. But we can get better. I grew up with Beat the United States. the Peak, Tucson Water’s public education effort to address Will asks permission from the tower at Tucson International summer shortfalls before the arrival of the Colorado Airport to fly into their airspace. “We’re on a reconnaisRiver. The program has led to an awareness of the sance mission of the Santa Cruz River,” he says. importance of saving water all year. Today, “We’ll try to keep traffic away from you,” says a voice on the radio.

Picacho Peak lifts its dark head in the 500 km distance. Near Avra Valley Road, we

Phoen ix

500 mi

Photo: The lifeline of southern Arizona: The Central Arizona Project canal pumps water up 2,400 feet across 300 miles.

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Tucson Water focuses on being water-smart with programs like Conserve to Enhance (C2E), which links individual water conservation directly to restoration of urban washes and riparian areas. By tracking how much water they save at home, participants can donate their savings to environmental restoration projects. In southern Arizona, participants have already banked more than 3.2 million gallons of water for the environment.

The Sonoran Institute’s vision for the Santa Cruz River includes enhancing water infiltration, securing river flows, and protecting and raising groundwater levels. The Institute’s annual Living River Report and water quality monitoring at Rio Rico are just two examples of their ongoing work. “What’s exciting to us,” says Emily Brott, SI’s project manager, “is that it’s about engaging the community.”

She sees a future where communities work for land and water policies that support the conservation of our natural and cultural resources, where people look for a return of the river.

Tucson From a distance, all things look small. Like

7

Sonoran Institute. 44 E. Broadway Blvd., Suite 350.

520.290.0828. SonoranInstitute.com.

Visit LightHawk.com to learn about how volunteer pilots donate flights to elevate conservation.

Ken Lamberton’s latest book is Dry River: Stories of Life, Death, and Redemption on the Santa Cruz (University of Arizona Press, 2011).

His next book, Chasing Arizona: One Man’s Yearlong Obsession with the Grand Canyon State, is forthcoming from UA Press.

1

2 Ar i zo na Me xic o

N

6

the planet looks small from the distance of the moon. Small, as in NASA’s image of Earth, known as “the blue marble,” from Apollo 17 that has adorned Earth Day flags since the 1970s.

From this perspective, you see how connected we all are, and how this place that connects us is all we have in the black emptiness of space. It doesn’t take much imagination to unwind our long history here in this very valley—hunter, forager, farmer, consumer—and see how we all have relied on one pale blue thread in a vast desert place. The Santa Cruz River, our home. ✜

Green Valley

Tubac

4

3

San Lázaro

5

Nogales

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Baja Arizona 101

Historic Santa Cruz Photos courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society

I

70 YEARS since the Santa Cruz River regularly flowed through Tucson—it’s hard to image our dusty desert town as a town with a river. A town that contended with seasonal floods, which knocked down bridges and eroded banks. We were once a town that enjoyed summer swims and the cooling shade that came with a lush riparian corridor.

The Arizona Historical Society has folders full of photos from this era. Many document the powerful flood of 1915 that pulled down the bridge over Congress Street, while some simply show the day to day of life near a river. “Glenton Sykes at the oars on Santa Cruz River,” reads the back of one photo depicting a duo of dapper men canoeing down the river in the summer of 1951. “When asked what he was doing, Mr. Sykes T ’ S BEEN

102 July - August 2014

responded, ‘Looking for a dam site.’”

Below, a view of the river from the Tucson mountains, taken in 1904, shows how foliage filled its meandering banks once were. Top right: In the 1890s, when this photo was taken, the Santa Cruz river still served as a gathering spot and source of sustenance for travelers and locals alike. Bottom right: This photo was likely taken at the 1915 flood that overwhelmed the Santa Cruz. This collapsed bridge is at Congress Street—note Sentinel Peal hovering in the background.

Visit the Arizona Historical Society to view more historic photos of the Santa Cruz River.

949 E. 2nd St. ArizonaHistoricalSociety.org.

Vegetarian S

UMMER IS SYNON YMOUS with colorful heirloom tomatoes, the three sisters—corn, squash, and beans— chiles, and gatherings with friends and family. When your friends are generous and love to cook, every gathering is a potluck. The dishes work together as a satisfying meal, but are unmistakably from different kitchens. We are fortunate to live in a climate that makes outdoor grilling a year-round sport, but summer produce makes this season especially exciting. Picnics are the perfect way to celebrate this bounty. With so much good produce filling our larders—and dried native beans to fill our bellies—we decided to make our picnic vegetarian, but you could always throw a

locally sourced steak or sausage onto the grill.

Outdoor cooking is a great way to avoid heating up the house in the summer. And, if you’re firing up the grill, you might as well make a lot. Leftover grilled veggies are great chopped up into potato, grain, or pasta salads. Also, grilled squash and eggplant make awesome babaganoush and caponata type dishes.

Leftover nopales would be great in a morning omelet or lunchtime sandwich. You bring out the natural sweetness and add a smoky depth to whatever you decide to toss on the grill.

Our cooking is primarily influenced by what our farmer friends are harvesting. Sometimes, we’re inspired by the first zucchini, with the blossom still attached. This is when we really

A VEGETARIAN FEAST COOKED ON A COOL MOUNTAINTOP IS THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE TO SUMMER’S SWELTER. 104 July - August 2014

al Fresco want to cook the food as simply as possible, if not just tear the tomato into pieces and enjoy it with a salt shaker. Verdolagas and sunflower sprouts grow so lush, we forget about lettuce all summer. Later in the season, we start dreaming up more creative ways to use produce. Late or early, gazpacho is a quick meal that blends together much of summer’s bounty.

Who doesn’t love ice cream? The sweet corn ice cream topped with popcorn, dulce de leche, and peanuts in handmade

waffle cones is a rich treat after a light summer meal. The ice cream’s buttery color comes from pasture-raised eggs, and the creamy corn flavor comes from infusing milk with corncobs. Sweet corn often comes in feast or famine waves. We often cut kernels from the cob and freeze for later—for when the summer sunshine does not pour so bountifully.

We decided to bring our summer picnic up to the cool breezes of Mount Lemmon. When it hits triple digits in Tucson,

there’s a magical quality about driving up Catalina Highway and passing through different climate zones and biomes. Those blue-dotted ridges in the distance have towering ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees, which are just as much a part of our home as cacti. Saguaros, as distinctive as they are, benefit from the contrast of our ranges—and so do people, as we leave the sweltering desert floor in search of fresh air and good food.

BY AMY VALDÉS SCHWEMM, LAURA SCHWEMM, PHILIPPE WATERINCKX, SARA JONES, LORI ADKISON, & MAC HUDSON. PHOTOS BY STEVEN MECKLER edible

Baja Arizona 105

Mole Aioli

By Laura Schwemm 1 cup homemade mayonnaise or good quality store bought ½ cup plain yogurt 1 large garlic clove, minced 1 teaspoon Pipian Picante mole powder from Mano y Metate 1 teaspoon chopped parsley Salt and pepper, to taste

Blend all ingredients together, and place in the fridge 30 minutes to an hour before serving to enhance the flavor and color of the sauce. The sweet spice of the sauce is great on grilled vegetables or used as a sandwich spread. Visit ManoYMetate.com to find outlets for Pipian Picante mole powder.

Southwest Chimichuri Salsa

Grilled Summer Vegetables

By Laura Schwemm

By Laura Schwemm

¾ ½ ½ 2-3

There’s nothing that says summer like grill marks on colorful vegetables. Make a grilled veggie sandwich by spreading a couple of grilled mesquite flatbreads with mole aioli or southwestern Chimichiri salsa.

2-3 1 1

1½ ½

cup mint cup parsley cup cilantro onions of small bunching variety, or 1 regular shallot garlic cloves lemon, juice & zest tablespoon capers, drained or rinsed (if salt brined) cups extra virgin olive oil teaspoon agave or honey Crushed red pepper flakes, to taste Salt and pepper, to taste

Finely mince the herbs and mix with oil to prevent herbs from oxidizing. Mince onion, garlic, and capers, and add to mixture. Add remaining ingredients, and season to taste with red pepper flakes, agave, salt and pepper. Can be made prior to meal, but herbs will oxidize once lemon juice is added.

Substitute pickled nasturtiums in place of capers. Use on grilled vegetables and meats, or as a salad dressing.

(Photos, clockwise, from top left) Grab a chair, settle in with a glass of melon seed horchata, and enjoy the view. For a portable, easy gazpacho, serve in small, wide-rimmed mason jars, and garnish with cucumber and tomato.

The sweetness of Mayocoba beans pairs perfectly with the pungency of native I’Itoi onions. For a hearty and native take on salsa, mix grilled & chopped nopal pads with pureed tomatillos and spices.

106 July - August 2014

Eggplant Bell peppers Okra Summer squash Green beans Extra virgin olive oil Salt and pepper, to taste Vinegar (optional)

Slice vegetables in pieces wide enough to prevent falling through grill grates, or, if small enough, grill whole. Lightly coat all vegetables with oil, and season with salt and pepper. Place directly on the grill, and minimize turning the vegetables to prevent breakage.

Vegetables continue to cook slightly once removed from the grill, so monitor closely and remove promptly.

A light sprinkle of vinegar or lemon juice adds a bright flavor. Combine both grilled and raw vegetables for an assortment in color, texture, and flavor. Serve with grilled mesquite flatbread and green chile relish.

Horchata de Melón

By Amy Valdés Schwemm Many people make horchata with white rice and milk, but I like a version made with locally grown ingredients for taste and nutrition. I always have more ripe winter squash seeds than I need to save for next year’s garden, so I rinse and dry them for this drink all year. During melon season, the sweetness from cantaloupe, honeydew, muskmelon, Crenshaw, or casaba makes this homemade horchata a real treat.

2 cups melon seeds and endocarp (everything in the melon seed cavity) 8 cups water Honey, to taste 1 cinnamon stick Ice

Scoop out the insides of a melon, including seeds, strings, and liquid.

Add water (or the equivalent in melon flesh) and liquefy in the blender.

Adding melon flesh will make the drink less like horchata and more like a fresh fruit liquado, but it’s still delicious. Transfer to a jar and add the cinnamon stick. Add honey to a little warm water to dissolve, and sweeten horchata to taste. Refrigerate overnight, if possible. Strain though a fine mesh strainer. Stir and pour into glasses over ice, garnished with a little shredded cinnamon. Serves 8.

Mesquite Flatbread

By Amy Valdés Schwemm No need to turn on the oven. No bread baking experience required.

This recipe is so forgiving that if you have made bread before, you probably don’t even have to measure the ingredients.

1 tablespoon dry yeast (or use your own sourdough starter) 1 cup warm water 1¼ cup all-purpose flour (or double whole-wheat flour) 1¼ cup whole-wheat flour ¾ cup mesquite meal ½ teaspoon salt

Dissolve yeast in water. Mix in flours and salt until smooth, adding more flour as needed. Cover and let rest for an hour. Knead for 15 minutes, more or less. Pat a ball of dough or roll with a rolling pin until very thin. Dust with mesquite flour and put directly on preheated barbecue grill. Cover grill. After two minutes, check bread quickly (to avoid letting the heat escape). Cooking time will vary wildly based on the grill, but when puffed or browned on the bottom, flip the flatbread. Cook very briefly on the other side, remove from the grill and wrap in a tea towel. Steam from the inside will soften the crispy exterior to a flexible crust.

To cook in the oven, place an inverted cookie sheet or pizza stone on the bottom of the oven or the lowest rack and preheat to 450°. Toss bread directly on the preheated sheet and cook as above. Makes 16 small flatbreads. Serves 8.

Mayocoba Bean Salad

By Philippe Waterinckx The Mayocoba bean is a classic Mexican bean, named after the village of Mayocoba, Sinaloa. It has a delicate pale yellow-green skin and, when cooked, tastes sweet and has a firm yet creamy texture. It also goes by the name of Peruano bean because its color is typical of yellow Peruvian beans.

Its sweetness pairs beautifully with the pungency of our native I’Itoi onions to make a refreshing cold bean salad.

It grows well in our climate and it is one of the beans that “Farmer Frank” Martin grows at Crooked Sky Farms, along with pinto, black turtle, and tepary.

1 cup dry Mayocoba beans ½ cup chopped parsley 5–6 chopped I’Itoi onions ½ cup extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup red wine vinegar ½ tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped 1 small onion, quartered 1 teaspoon red chile flakes ½ teaspoon salt

Wash and rinse dry beans, then soak overnight in plenty of water. Drain and rinse. Boil beans in a quart of water for one hour. Drain and let cool.

Gently mix together beans, parsley, and I’Itoi onions. Meanwhile, make the dressing by placing remaining ingredients in an electric blender or chopper and blend for one minute or until fully emulsified. Gently mix dressing with beans. Refrigerate for one hour before serving. Serves 4.

Sweet Corn Ice Cream

Summer Garden Gazpacho

Grilled Nopal & Tomatillo Salsa

By Lori Adkison

By Megan Kimble

By Sara Jones

The best part of this recipe is that it uses the corncob, something normally thought of as waste. Corncobs will hold in an airtight bag in the freezer until you are ready to use them. This ice cream tastes best with corn at the peak of the season. For a “cornier” flavor, you can also add corn kernels. This ice cream is delicious served with caramel or dulce de leche and a salty topping such as peanuts, pretzels, or popcorn.

3–5 corncobs, broken into 3 sections, kernels removed 2 cups whole milk 1 cup heavy cream 3 egg yolks ¾ cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla

Bring the milk and cream to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Remove from heat and add the corncobs, cover and steep for 1 hour. In a mixing bowl, beat the sugar and eggs together until thickened and pale yellow.

Remove corncobs and bring the milk and cream mixture back to a simmer.

Slowly beat the hot milk into the eggs and sugar. Pour the entire mixture back into the saucepan and stir over low heat until mixture thickens, being careful not to let the eggs scramble.

Strain the entire mixture into a clean bowl and add vanilla. Cover and chill completely (at least 4 hours or overnight). Freeze in your ice cream machine according the manufacturer’s instructions. Makes 1 quart.

I call gazpacho “salad in a blender”—healthy and fresh, but with almost no chopping required. Like a summer salad, you can add almost any summer vegetable to gazpacho—blending it up with tomatoes and a generous pour of good olive oil will highlight and brighten its fresh flavors.

I start with a base of ripe tomatoes, cucumber, yellow onions, olive oil, and garlic, and build from there. Fresh herbs, like basil or cilantro, are a nice addition, but not necessary. Some recipes call for skinned and cored tomatoes, but I leave the skins on—I think it makes the soup heartier and more flavorful, with the added bonus that I don’t have to stand in my hot kitchen peeling tomatoes.

6 tomatoes, skins on, roughly chopped 2 cucumbers, peeled 1 red bell pepper ½ onion, roughly chopped 3 cloves garlic ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon white vinegar (apple cider vinegar works too) 1 teaspoon chile powder ½ teaspoon cumin Salt and pepper, to taste

Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor. Blend for one to three minutes, depending on your preferred consistency. Chill in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Serves 4-6.

(Previous page) The grill is the centerpiece of this meal. Okra, mushrooms, green chiles, and yellow and red bell peppers make for a colorful spread on the grill—and tasty one at the table. (Right) While horchata is traditionally made with white rice and milk, squash seeds make for a sweet, nutritious summer treat.

110 July - August 2014

This recipe is best prepared on the grill, but the veggies could also be roasted under the broiler. Nopales can be purchased at farmers’ markets and grocery stores, but they grow abundantly in most neighborhoods. I use newspaper to hold the pads, when I am both harvesting and trimming. It is a sufficient barrier for the glochids on the spineless varieties of nopales.

3 nopal paddles, about the size of a hand, edges trimmed and spines removed 3–4 tomatillos, husks removed & washed 1 jalapeño, seeds removed & minced 1 medium onion, roughly chopped 3 cloves garlic 1 bunch cilantro Juice of 1 lime 1 tablespoon oil Drizzle of red wine vinegar Salt and pepper, to taste Red chile powder Ground oregano

Mix a pinch of chile powder, ground oregano, and salt and pepper with oil and vinegar. Rub mixture onto trimmed and cleaned nopales. Place tomatillos and nopales over medium-hot area of grill. Cook, turning once or twice until they begin to brown and blister in spots. Remove from grill and let cool. Cut cactus pads into small pieces. Place tomatillos into a blender or food processor, along with onion, jalapeño, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice (or finely chop by hand). Stir cactus into mixture and taste for salt and lime juice. Adjust seasoning if needed. Serve with tortilla chips or alongside roasted meat. Serves 4-6.

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SABORES DE SONORA

Season of Quelites Befriending the wild greens of summer.

Text and Photography by Bill Steen

T

of spring and summer, in combination with the monsoon rains or the supplemental irrigation of gardens and fields, bring with them a profusion of delightfully edible wild greens. For many, this is nothing new. However, knowing what to do with them can be a little confusing, perhaps even challenging. But follow a few basic guidelines and you’ll be friends for life. You will look forward to their annual arrival like the return of a great friend that you haven’t seen for some time—and with a few recipes in your back pocket, you’ll be able to invite them to dinner.

In this part of the world, there are three common greens available for the harvesting: Portulaca oleracea, commonly known as purslane; Amaranthus palmeri, known as amaranth; and the Chenopodium species, known as lambsquarters. In Mexico, where these plants are still used domestically, both amaranth and lambsquarters are broadly classified as quelites, pronounced kay-LEE-tays, a term that can also include some cultivated plants like acelgas (Swiss chard) or quelites blancos (Napa cabbage). Amaranth greens are known as bledos, lambsquarters, and choales, and purslane as verdolagas.

Years ago, my early attempts to prepare these wild plants as food were not particularly encouraging. I loved the idea of eating wild local plants, but my enthusiasm was short-lived when my results were less than spectacular—and when no one in my family was interested in eating them.

As has often been the case, it was just across the border in Sonora where I found my answers. When two Sonorans from the town of San Felipe came north to stay with us in Canelo— ostensibly to teach us the art of Sonoran mescal—we got an inadvertent lesson in how to prepare local greens. Angelita and Dimas Lopez weren’t overly enthusiastic about food north of the border, so Angelita started cooking. She gave new meaning HE WAR MER TEMPER ATUR ES

112 July - August 2014

and life to the world of wild amaranth. Although she prepared them in much the same manner one might cook spinach, she brought these greens to life. Their taste was simple, but perhaps more important, they were soothing and energizing. She taught me that quelites were most often eaten cooked rather than raw, although in trendy urban restaurants and homes the tender young leaves are finding their way into salads.

It is amazing to me that these wild plants have not assumed a more prominent place in modern food culture, given how effortless they are to gather and cook in comparison to most other greens. Besides growing easily in arid environments, wild greens have an impeccable sense of timing—they appear soon after most greens and salad crops have gone to seed. They are virtually immune to damage by insects and do not require soil improvement. They can make gardening fun and empowering.

And you can’t beat the price—they cost only a little bit of your time to harvest.

When and where to find these plants? The combination of warmer temperatures and water causes them to grow. At our home in Canelo at 5,000 feet elevation, wild greens start appearing in our garden sometime in May. I’ve encouraged a mix to grow in the garden, including purslane and wild and domesticated amaranth as well as lambsquarter. Seeds for all are commonly available—check at Native Seeds/SEARCH, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, or Seeds of Change.

And of course, you can also harvest wild greens. Once you know what to look for, you will find them just about everywhere, popping up where you would least expect. In Sonora, I know I can find them on the edges of irrigated fields or roadsides and in places where excess water collects, especially during the monsoon rains. And increasingly, they can be found at farmers’ markets and in CSA shares.

Purslane Recipes

A

(Previous page) A purslane salad is a refreshing and surprisingly filling summer meal.

(Above) After harvesting, clean purslane throughly; a metal colander works well.

round the world, purslane is a highly respected and sought-after edible. Purslane has been consumed since ancient times, and because it grows easily in hot and dry climates, it is represented in many cuisines of the world, from Greece to Mexico and Turkey to India, by way of South Africa.

The Korean name is jang-meoung-chae, which means longevity.

The Greeks considered it an important medicinal herb.

It is a succulent plant whose edible, delicious leaves are crunchy and slightly mucilaginous, with a tangy lemony and peppery flavor. It has a somewhat gooey, okra-like texture.

When harvested in the early morning or late afternoon, the leaves have a more tangy taste. The stems, leaves, and flower buds are all edible. Purslane may be used fresh as a salad, stirfried, blanched, or boiled.

The trick with harvesting is to remove the thinner stems and leaves that are attached to the thicker central stem. Harvest before the plant goes to seed. And since the plant tends to hug the ground, wash leaves thoroughly to remove any dirt and grit.

Purslane contains high amounts of alpha-linolenic acid, one of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids typically found in fish. It contains vitamins A, B, C, and E, and seven times more beta carotene than carrots as well as magnesium, calcium, potassium, folate, lithium, and iron. In essence, it’s a super plant that is good for you in just about every way.

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Verdolagas, Sonoran Style Several similar variations of the basic recipe can be found in Sonora. In the north of Sonora, wheat flour is used, but in the southern part of the state, corn is more commonly preferred.

4 ½ 2–3 1 1 ¼–½ 1–2 2-3

cups verdolagas (purslane) without thick stems onion, finely chopped cloves garlic, finely chopped medium tomato, chopped tablespoon flour (wheat or maseca) cup milk tablespoons queso fresco or fresh cheese (Optional) dried red chiles Salt to taste

Toast flour until it achieves a golden color and set aside.

Cut verdolagas into pieces, two to three inches long discarding any large, thick stems. The smaller stems are fine. If you’re including chiles, lightly sauté them and set aside. Saute onion for about 4 to 5 minutes. When transparent, add garlic. After a minute, add tomato, continue cooking for about a minute, and then add the verdolagas. If using chiles, add. Cover and cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes until soft. Add water in small amounts if necessary. Dissolve the flour into the milk, add the cheese, and then add the mixture to the verdolagas. Reduce the heat and continue cooking several minutes over low heat. Salt to taste. Serves 5 to 6.

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Open Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm 18585 S. Sonoita Hwy, Vail, AZ · (520) 762-8585 · CharronVineyards.com

Happy Hour

4p-6p daily

$2

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Celebrating 10 Years of organic & pure foods Lunch & Dinner - Dine-in & Take-out Catering Available! Reservations Recommended.

www.reneesorganicoven.com 520-886-0484

7065 E Tanque Verde

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Baja Arizona 115

Ensalada de Verdolagas (Purslane Salad) We would frequent Elvira’s Restaurant when it was still located in Nogales, Sonora. One day when I entered carrying a bag of verdolagas, one of the waiters grabbed the bag from my hands and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with this marvelous salad that he said he ate daily at his home whenever it was in season. It has become one of our summer staples.

2

¼ 1 1 or 2 ½ 2–3

cups, loosely packed, washed verdolagas, large stems removed red onion, finely sliced or chopped medium tomatoes, diced Mexican limes’ juice teaspoon powdered Mexican oregano crushed chiltepins Salt and pepper, to taste Olive oil, drizzled over salad

Chop the verdolagas into bite-size pieces.

Combine with the chopped tomatoes, onions, and lime juice. Serves 2.

(Left) Verdolagas, Sonoran style (recipe previous page) (Right) Verdolagas and pork in tomatillo sauce

116 July - August 2014

Verdolagas and pork in tomatillo sauce The combination of verdolagas, green tomatillo sauce, and pork can be found throughout central and southern Mexico.

Tofu is a good option for those who don’t want to eat pork.

You can also omit the pork and tofu and just do the verdolagas and tomatillo sauce. Just reduce the amount of water.

4 1 1 3–4 3–4 2½ 1½ ¾

cups water pound tomatillos medium white onion garlic cloves chile serrano or 1 jalapeño tablespoon oil or lard pound pork, cut into 1-inch cubes pound purslane, cleaned and chopped coarsely Salt to taste Masa harina (flour for tortillas and tamales) for thickening, if desired

Place tomatillos and chiles in 4 cups of water and cook until tomatillos are soft. (You can also place tomatillos and chiles under a broiler until partially black and blistered.) When ingredients are cooled, combine in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Sauté onion for about 5 minutes, add garlic, and continue for another minute.

Add blended tomatillos and chiles and cook for approximately 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest. In a large pot or Dutch oven, brown pork or tofu over medium heat in a tablespoon of oil or lard. Add water to cover and simmer until pork is tender. Once meat is tender, add green sauce and a sprig of epazote. Serves 4.

F

Quelites Recipes

or all practical purposes, recipes and harvesting methods are identical for both amaranth greens and lambsquarters—feel free to substitute. There are many species of amaranth that can be found around the globe. In Baja Arizona, the most common and abundant is Amaranthus palmeri. Like purslane, it appears just about every place imaginable, especially in and around agricultural fields, irrigation ditches, and vegetable gardens. It can be harvested by collecting the entire young plant, typically less than a foot tall, or by picking the upper and smaller leaves from the more mature plants.

Amaranth greens are prepared in a variety of ways. Many preparations are comparable to usages of spinach. In fact, in parts of Mexico, amaranth is called espinaca. The smallest leaves, when blanched, are good in salads. In Sonora, amaranth is cooked with onions, garlic, and tomatoes, or red chile. I have also eaten it with eggs and machaca (dried shredded beef). In India, it finds its way into soups, curries, and stuffed parathas.

They are popular in stir-fry Chinese dishes when sautéed with chicken or pork. The Greeks make a marvelous dish called vleeta, a combination of the boiled greens with lemon and olive oil.

Amaranth greens are loaded with carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins B, A, C and K. They also are a great source for manganese, iron, copper, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorous, as well as dietary fiber. Keep in mind that amaranth greens, like many other wild greens, contain high amounts of oxalic acid. Excessive consumption can cause some irritation, particularly for anyone with gout, kidney problems, or rheumatoid arthritis. For cooking, use something other than aluminum.

Quelites with eggs 4 2 2 1 4 1½

cups of cleaned, boiled, and drained amaranth greens tablespoons finely chopped onion Serrano or jalapeño chiles, finely chopped medium tomato, finely chopped medium sized eggs tablespoons of oil or lard Chopped cilantro, to taste

Cook greens in boiling water until tender. Sauté onions and chiles for a couple of minutes, then add tomato. If there is excess liquid, cook long enough to evaporate.

Add greens, cook another 5 minutes, until all are well blended. Add eggs, turn down heat, and scramble until they are set. Top with chopped cilantro. Serves 4.

Quelitos with tomatoes

Quelites with tomatoes Probably the most common way of preparing quelites in Sonora is with tomato. Another common variation substitutes red chile for tomato. Frijoles de la olla (boiled beans) are sometimes added.

6–8

cups of of quelites, such as amaranth or lambsquarters, washed & chopped to approximately 1-inch pieces ½ onion finely chopped or 5 green onions, chopped 1 tomato, chopped 2–4 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1 tablespoon oil or lard Salt, to taste 2 or 3 dried red chiles (optional) ½ cup of cooked beans, without juice

The quelites can be parboiled for a minute and set aside before beginning. Sauté garlic until golden and set aside. If chiles are being used, lightly sauté and set aside, being careful not to burn as they become bitter. Sauté flour until golden, add onion, and continue cooking until transparent. If using tomato, add to pan. Add quelites, garlic, and chiles. Add water as needed to maintain sufficient moisture. If using beans, add to the pan.

Cook for about 20 minutes. When quelites are soft, they can be either mashed or lightly blended to a smooth texture. If a very smooth texture is desired, they can be blended. Add salt and chiltepin, to taste. Top with any type of fresh cheese, such as queso fresco, requeson, or queso panela. Serves 4.✜

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Baja Arizona 117

Brew On It With so many stellar microbreweries sprouting up around town, why bother to brew your own brew?

B Y A NDER M ONSON | I LLUSTRATION

T

not dissimilar to gunfire from a distance—seemed to come from the guest room.

Running in, I found my cat, Toulouse, the normally unflappable one, the tank, the beast, stunned, huddled in a ball on the floor, covered in chunks of brown glass and blinking furiously at me. I knew immediately that my batch of homebrew beer had exploded.

After following a recipe successfully on the first go-round, this time I had decided to see what would happen when I doubled the sugar in some of the bottles. Would it be sweeter and richer, double the deliciousness? No. Now I knew. As the yeast converted the sugars into carbonation, these oversugared bottles overcarbonated and then blew, leading to this mess of glass and half-brewed beer and matted cat. My wife looked at me skeptically. Helpfully I reminded her that she got me started on this hobby.

I reassured, then cleaned, the cat as best I could, the glass having penetrated deep into his carapace of fur. I stripped the bed, Shop-Vac-ed up the beer and the debris, wiped the walls, mopped the floor, lit a candle, put the remaining bottles in a big rubber tub with a lid to contain the results of my poor judgment, and cracked open a beer, one of my own from the previous batch, just to remind myself that sometimes I am not an idiot.

If you’ve brewed your own beer before, this scene HE R EPORT — A LOUD POP ,

BY

C ATHERINE E YDE

may be familiar. The dismayed spouse. The stunned pet. The popping sound of an exploding bottle. It is the sound of failure and of knowledge.

Before I brewed, I didn’t think about the beer I drank as a living thing. Sure, theoretically I knew, but only when I began to brew my own did its life become obvious and unavoidable.

When the yeasty wort—which seemed before to be inert— began to warm and bubble up and come alive, I knew I had brought a thing to life. This was living beer. And this was how beer blew up my guest room—soon to be the baby’s room, my wife reminded me, the exploding beer room no longer. Why exactly was I doing this again?

There are a lot of us who homebrew in town, and there are many reasons why we are doing this again and again. For Jeremiah Johnson, who works at Brewers Connection, one of two Tucson homebrew supply stores, it’s about the art of it, how you can create something lovely and individual—not mass-produced, not even produced on the microbrew scale—and then drink it or share it with friends.

He’s been brewing for 12 years and gets visibly excited talking about technologies: how to modify your refrigerator with a thermostat to control the temperature of the fermentation, for instance, or how to control the acidity of a batch of prickly pear wine.

For Kenny, clean-cut and slightly geeky, looking to be in his early 30s, and if I had to guess, an engineer, homebrew-

If you’ve brewed your own beer before, this scene may be familiar. The dismayed spouse. The stunned pet.

The popping sound of an exploding bottle. It is the sound of failure and of knowledge.

118 July - August 2014

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Baja Arizona 119

ing is the second most rewarding thing he’s ever done, the first being playing online role-playing games. Though both are time-consuming and primarily solo hobbies, he’s attracted to the tinkering aspect in both, the challenge of figuring out how the system works and how to work it. He’s only been doing this for a year, but he thinks his beer is good, and so he wanted to meet others who did this too.

As with online role-playing games, the social aspect of homebrewing is one of its major appeals. I met Kenny at a recent meeting of the Tucson Homebrew Club, which meets at Dragoon Brewing Co. on the first Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. Everyone’s welcome: no experience required. Here you can meet other enthusiasts and homebrewers, share recipes and bottles of whatever you’ve made, get feedback on your brew, drink homebrews or whatever’s on tap at Dragoon. You can learn about various styles of beers (this night we try a homebrew, Michael’s Maibock, and the microbrew Magic Hat No. 9 and discuss their flavor profiles and sensory qualities). You can find out about future homebrew competitions (competition is a big part of the experience for many homebrewers), learn how to identify and correct for off-flavors in your beers, and discuss techniques and tips.

Each meeting begins with a brief craft lecture. This one focuses on controlling the temperature of your fermentation.

Most ales prefer to ferment between 68 and 73 degrees, which is tricky in the Tucson summer unless you like your electricity bill high. Lager yeasts need to ferment at a lower temperature, in the 30s and 40s, which is even more difficult to maintain without specialized equipment. Gavin Quigley, who directs the “education arm” of the homebrew club, clicks through a slideshow of increasingly complicated and expensive solutions.

You could try, for instance, something as simple, if imprecise, as a tub filled with water. Or you could upgrade to a slightly more complicated evaporative cooling option (wet towels applied to the exterior of your fermenter, with which you can effectively cool 30 degrees below room temperature, at least until the monsoon). For the serious and technical, Quigley talks about several increasingly elaborate ways to hack a refrigerator or deep freeze to maintain whatever temperature you need. Most of the serious homebrewers I know go this route in one way or another, though I can’t justify (yet) adding a third refrigerator on top of my main fridge and beer fridge/Walking J Farms grass-fed beef quarter-share freezer.

A discussion arises about how to control for humidity and mold in your modified refrigerator and where to get cheap refrigerators, and the merits of the deep freeze versus the fridge (a 6-gallon jug filled with fermenting beer is a heavy thing). As Quigley explains, which choice you make depends in part on the tolerance of your spouse, partner, or roommate.

I’m not a particularly serious home120 July - August 2014

brewer, but I do have a tolerant spouse. Like many brewers, I started with a gift of a Mr. Beer, a cheapie kit that makes a gallon and a half of (pretty bad) beer. I learned quickly that if you just buy better ingredients than the stale stuff the kit comes with, you can do OK, but it still doesn’t make much beer and it looks spectacularly lame. For my third batch, I upgraded to a bigger system featuring a couple of carboys (five or six gallon glass jugs) to use as primary and secondary fermenters. For about $200 you can get this system, with a bottling bucket, all the tubing and funnels, cleaning supplies, and a starter set of extract and hops to brew from, and make a batch of what your spouse can charitably recognize as beer.

If you brew primarily from malt extracts, which is what I do, you can brew a couple of cases of beer in three or four hours for $40 or so. It takes a few weeks to ferment and condition in the bottle, or more if you’re making more complicated beers like a Belgian Tripel. Most of the home brewers I met at the Tucson Homebrewers Club fall into the More Serious Than Me category, meaning that they brew with all grain and mash it themselves, giving them a great deal more control over the final product. Quigley tells me that it takes twice as long but costs about half as much, once you invest in the gear. This way you can experiment with every step of the process if you want to.

And trust me, you will want to.

Both my father and father-in-law homebrewed in the 70s and 80s, mainly out of necessity, since it was likely the only way to find beer then that didn’t taste like stale and fizzy yellow water. Unless you lived close to a specialty market, attended a Renaissance Faire (weirdly the Faire was where many Americans were first exposed to English or other imported beers or cask-conditioned ales), or traveled to Canada or Europe, you might not even have known that good beers existed.

Fast-forward to now. We live in a world where we can buy hundreds of craft beers and imports in nearly every state. Just last month my favorite brewery, Founders, from Grand Rapids, Mich., began distributing in Arizona. So now I can get most of the beers I’ve long loved the best in bottles at Plaza Liquors or on tap at 1702.

So why homebrew?

One reason is to try ideas out and experiment with the process. What would it taste like to brew with the grapefruits from your neighbor’s yard? Or what might it be like to brew a hefeweizen with white Sonora wheat? Or using Dr. Pepper instead of corn sugar? Let’s find out. The Tucson Homebrew Club is populated with people trying things out and eager to tell you all about it, and to let you taste the results.

Sitting with Kenny and a couple of other guys (it is unsurprisingly a predominantly—though not exclusively—male crowd), another homebrewer named Dane sidles up to my table with a growler in hand and asks if we’d like to try his Rosemary IPA. He tells me it’s called Rosemary Falcon. Of

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course we would, and so we do. It’s made, he tells us, using rosemary from his yard and featuring Falconer’s Flight hops.

Falconer’s Flight is a proprietary hop mix named for Glen Hay Falconer, an Oregon brewing legend who died in 2002 when his Volkswagen accidentally started and crushed him while he was repairing it. One is reminded that there can be risks to doing some things yourself.

Dane doesn’t know the backstory of his chosen hop, and doesn’t seem fazed by the lesson, but his beer is good. He’s from Bend, Ore., (the home of the Deschutes Brewery and “one brewery for every 4,500 people,” as the Bend website chirps; another Bend brewery also offers “Dawg Grog, beer brewed especially for your dog.”). When he moved to Tucson seven years ago he says he couldn’t get good beer here, so he started making his own.

This is a story I hear frequently from homebrewers in Tucson. Our adopted state has a relatively young craft beer scene, though it has increased exponentially in the last few years. Possibly this youth is on account of the climate—unhospitable to growing hops (at least until last year, when Arizona Hops & Vines became the first to grow hops in the state)—and the water, which is hard and requires filtering and then the addition of salts and minerals on top of that to make good beer. Water has been the problem with a couple of my batches. You brew a batch. You taste it. You learn, adjust, and make another.

There’s a ton to learn, and a long history to draw from.

After all, homebrewing on this continent predates America, and homebrewing in Arizona predates Arizona as a state. I ask Shelby Meyer, a member of the now-defunct Old Pueblo Homebrewers Club, the first of its kind in Arizona, established in 1982, about the history of homebrewing in Arizona.

Meyer started brewing in 1972, and he knows his state’s brewing history. According to Meyer, ”the native peoples of the Southwest were brewing a variety of alcoholic beverages long before the Pilgrims arrived.” They included corn beer known as tiswin among Apaches and tesguino among the Tarahumaras in Mexico, who brewed pulque from agave.

The Tohono O’odham brewed wine from saguaro fruit that was consumed ceremonially in summer to bring on monsoon rains. It’s no surprise that where we find human agriculture, we find brewing and distilling and making merry, and this is the tradition that you join with when you start to homebrew.

In the age of the Internet, you’ll find no end of sources on homebrewing. But the best way to get involved is to talk to someone who does it. Stop in to Brewers Connection or Brew Your Own Brew, or attend a meeting of the Tucson Homebrew Club. Or just buy a Mr. Beer for your partner, and let her try it out and fall in love with it and how it changes her understanding of and appreciation for what she drinks. Soon she’ll want a bigger kit and you can benefit from her obsession. She’ll be brewing with stuff in your yard and bringing yeast back to life like a necromancer. Just don’t double-sugar your bottles. And apologize to your cat in advance. ✜ Ander Monson is the author of six books, most recently Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir, and an enthusiastic if not particularly competent homebrewer.

122 July - August 2014

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Baja Arizona 123

Booze News

by Dave Mondy

All the news that’s fit to drink

M

SPROUT abundantly about Tucson, and the vineyards of Sonoita and Willcox continue their upward ascent in acclaim and volume—but hey, enough about the soft stuff. Could the next big thing in the desert Southwest’s booze scene be the production of hard liquor?

Yes, distilling and distilleries are coming to our region, and really, what could be more Wild West than that? The word through the (yes) grapevine is that Dos Cabezas Wineworks is now working on creating hard liquor. Bigger still, Flying Leap Vineyards is now being rebranded as Flying Leap Vineyards and Distillery, as it prepares to break ground on a new 5,000-squarefoot distillery in Elgin. The distillery will produce vodka and whiskey using local grains from Cochise and Pinal counties, while also crafting brandy (using their own grape harvest).

But perhaps most intriguing—especially for fans of green fairies and/or Italia—is that Flying Leap will be creating special distillations including, it’s rumored, a version of absinthe, as well as grappa. For the uninitiated: Absinthe is the beguiling green spirit noted for its hallucinogenic potency (no word yet on the availability of local wormword, the semipoisonous ingredient that contributed to absinthe’s banning in the United States until the 1990s). But grappa is the real spirit here to cheer for. Grappa is a hard liquor fermented from the products normally discarded in the wine-making process—leftover grape skins, seeds, and stems—and, depending on whom you ask, it tastes like an especially developed brandy or an especially flammable rocket fuel.

Back to those microbreweries sprouting up around Tucson. An especially compelling trend is that of home-brewing circles—like those mentioned in this issue—spawning professional breweries.

For example, Black Rock Brewing is bringing its vision and kick-starter campaign to the East side. Its name is based upon the etymology of the word Tucson, as well as the texting acronym BRB. Also, Flux Brewing, yet another new brewery, is now online.

All this talk of breweries is making me thirsty for a beer … BRB. An existential question: Are you good at drinking? And by “drinking,” I mean the drinking of spirits. And by spirits, I mean liquor. By which I mean: Are you good at drinking liquor? If not, there’s a class for that. Specifically, there’s a class offered by Salud, at the Starr Pass Marriott, on the second Saturday of every month from 3:30 to 5 p.m. A different spirit is featured every month, and for a mere $35, a student will study four different samples of the month’s liquor (along with accompanying appetizers, er, study aids). And yes, there’s a final: A specialty cocktail.

That’s a final that even the most addled student could pass (and I’ve taught a few addled students).

ICROBR EWER IES

124 July - August 2014

And speaking of the intersection of academia and liquor, there’s the Grape to Glass Symposium at Lawrence Dunham Vineyards. If one must go to a symposium, then “grape to glass” sounds like the ideal choice. From 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. on Aug. 2 ($65 to preregister), there will guest speakers, a barrel tasting panel, in-depth tours of the vineyard and winery, and a lunch specially paired with Dunham Vineyards wines.

And in other viticultural happenings: Kief-Joshua Vineyards is putting on its Third Annual Magdalena Bash on Aug. 23 from 1 to 5 p.m., when they’re be releasing new wines during a special day of vino, food, and music. And Sonoita Vineyards is holding its annual Harvest Fest on Aug. 2 and 3 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

There will be wine tastings with food pairings, winery and vineyard tours, and a grape stomping at 1:30 p.m.

Should you desire to sample brews in beautiful surroundings but you don’t wish to leave the bounds of Tucson, then there’s more good news: The beautiful milieu of La Cocina and Old Town Artisans is getting even more great, with the opening of The Dusty Monk Pub. Tucked into the southwest corner of the Old Town Artisan complex, the pub will be serving up Trappist and Abbey ales on 12 taps, with 50 brews in the bottle for more variety, as well as an expanded selection of whiskey, bourbon, and scotch. Even better news? The pub has air-conditioning—which, if you know and love the open-air courtyard at La Cocina, will be a welcome novelty in the summer months. 201 N. Court Ave. TheDustyMonkPub.com.

Master mixologists throughout Baja Arizona will be testing their tequila talents and more than 50 chefs will be showing off their salsa skills at the 2014 Southern Arizona Salsa and Tequila Challenge on Aug. 16 at 6 p.m. Held at La Encantada, this festival brings together food and liquor competitions, along with an abundance of cultural offerings (for example, dancing will fill the courtyard, with performances by Ballet Folklorico La Paloma and local mariachi and flamenco musicians). The $40 per person ticket includes a salsa-and-chips sampling from more than 40 participating competitors and tequila-based mixed drinks; proceeds go to the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance, and the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation. ✜

TE

Dave Mondy is a freelance writer/imbiber, as well as a college instructor.

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Baja Arizona 125

SONOITA/ELGIN & TOMBSTONE WINE MAP To Tuc s

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1 2

CHARRON VINEYARDS

18585 S. Sonoita Hwy, Vail 520-762-8585 CharronVineyards.com Fri–Sun: 10-6

AZ HOPS & VINES

3450 Hwy 82, Sonoita 520-955-4249 AZHopsAndVines.com Thurs: 11-4, Fri-Sun: 10-6

WILHELM FAMILY VINEYARDS

21 Mtn. Ranch Dr., Elgin 520-455-9291 WilhelmFamilyVineyards.com Oct–April: Daily 11-5 May–Sept: Fri – Sun 11-5 Mon-Thurs by Appointment

DOS CABEZAS WINEWORKS 3248 Hwy 82, Sonoita 520-455-5141 DosCabezasWinery.com Thurs–Sun: 10:30-4:30

3

4

5

6 7

RANCHO ROSSA VINEYARDS 32 Cattle Ranch Ln., Elgin 520-455-0700 RanchoRossa.com Fri–Sun: 10:30-3:30

8

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CALLAGHAN VINEYARDS 336 Elgin Road, Elgin 520-455-5322 CallaghanVineyards.com Thurs–Sun: 11-4

FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS 342 Elgin Road, Elgin 520-954-2935 FlyingLeapVineyards.com Wed-Sun: 11-4 Mon-Tues: By Appointment

KIEF-JOSHUA VINEYARDS 370 Elgin Road, Elgin 520-455-5582 KiefJoshuaVineyards.com Daily: 11-5

9

VILLAGE

OF

To Ft. Huachuca (50 min.)

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ELGIN

471 Elgin Road, Elgin 520-455-9309 ElginWines.com Daily: 11-5

W W 12 T15 N 4th St, Tombstone OMBSTONE

V 10 S290 Elgin Canelo Rd., Elgin ONOITA

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520-455-5893 SonoitaVineyards.com Daily: 10-4

11 L2368 Hwy 83,RElgin IGHTNING

IDGE

CELLARS

520-455-5383 LightningRidgeCellars.com Fri-Sun: 11-4

INE

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520-261-1674 TombstoneWinery.com Daily: 12-6

W 13 S334 E AllenS St., Tombstone ILVER

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520-678-8200 SilverStrikeWinery.com Daily: 12-6

14 H3989 State’HwyH 82, Elgin ANNAH S

ILL

(520) 456-9000 HannahsHill.com

By Appointment Only

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Baja Arizona 127

WILLCOX AREA & BISBEE WINE MAP Fort G ra nt Rd .

From Exit #331 1 Hour to Tucson 1 hour to Sonoita 3 Hours to Phoenix

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SAND-RECKONER 130 S. Haskell Avenue 303.931.8472 Sand-Reckoner.com

By Appointment Only FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS: WILLCOX TASTING ROOM 100 N. Railroad Avenue 520.384.6030 FlyingLeapVineyards.com Wed-Sun: 12-6 KEELING SCHAEFER TASTING ROOM 154 N. Railroad Avenue 520.766.0600 KeelingSchaeferVineyards.com Wed-Sun: 11-5 CARLSON CREEK 115 Railroad Avenue 520.766.3000 CarlsonCreek.com Daily 11-5 ARIDUS TASTING ROOM 145 N Railview Ave 520.766.9463 AridusWineCo.com Sat-Sun: 11-5, Mon-Fri: Appt. Only

11 12 13 14 15

RUSH

ACILITY

520.766.2926 Mon-Fri: 11-5, Sat-Sun: By Appt.

PASSION CELLARS AT SALVATORE VINEYARDS 3052 N. Fort Grant Road 602.750.7771 PassionCellars.com

By Appointment Only CORONADO VINEYARDS 2909 E. Country Club Drive 520.384.2993 Mon-Sat: 9:30-5:30, Sun: 10-4 BODEGA PIERCE TASTING ROOM 4511 E. Robbs Road 602.320.1722 Sunday 11a-5p or by appt.

PILLSBURY VINEYARD 6450 S. Bennett Place 520.384.3964 Pillsburywine.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5, Mon-Wed: By Appointment Only ZARPARA VINEYARDS 6777 S. Zarpara Lane 602.885.8903 Zarpara.com Fri-Sun: 11-5, Mon-Thurs: By Appt.

KEELING SCHAEFER VINEYARD 10277 E. Rock Creek Lane 520.824.2500 Wine Club Events Only LAWRENCE DUNHAM VINEYARDS 13922 S. Kuykendall Cutoff Rd. 602.320.1485 LawrenceDunhamVineyards.com

By Appointment Only GOLDEN RULE VINEYARDS 3649 N. Golden Rule Road 520.507.2400 GoldenRuleVineyards.com

By Appointment Only FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS: BISBEE TASTING ROOM 67 Main St. Bisbee Wed, Thur & Sun, Noon to 6pm Friday & Saturday, Noon to 8pm 520.384.6030

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Book reviews by Molly Kincaid Mueller can only guess as to why the same regions that produce fine wines—a highly regulated delicacy—are so lackadaisical about tolerating blatant and endemic fraud in the realm of oil. But he artfully explores the divergent ways in which wine and olive oil have evolved over time. Grapes give juices readily, and their wine makes us feel woozy and exhilarated, he explains, but olives must be coaxed of their oil, and their effects on our bodies are far more subtle. “Wine is how we would like life to be, but oil is how life is: fruity, pungent, with a hint of complex bitterness—extra virginity’s elusive triad.”

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil By Tom Mueller (Norton, 2013)

W

hen a food item has only one ingredient listed on its bottle, you might assume that’s exactly what’s inside.

Read Extra Virginity and that assumption will go straight out the window. Tom Mueller’s extensive investigations reveal that olive oil, even if labeled “extra virgin,” is very often cut with cheaper, less healthful seed oils and nut oils (primarily hazelnut oil) and passed off as the real thing. Other times, low-quality olive oil—dubbed “lampante,” or lamp oil, in Italy—is improved by a stomach-turning process called “deodorization,” supposedly cleansing the cheapo oil of its unpleasant, bland, fatty flavors.

Because these adulterations often escape chemical testing, and because European authorities often acquiesce to oil fraud, the problem has become extremely widespread. The result is that 69 percent of supermarket extra virgins surveyed “had taste flaws such as rancid, fusty, and musty, which meant that they weren’t extra virgin at all, and had been mislabeled,” writes Mueller. He chronicles a small-scale oil-maker in Italy who subjected 31 bottles of store-bought olive oil to rigorous taste testing, and came up with only one that he deemed pure. The others, including bottles from large producers like Bertolli and Carapelli, were deemed unfit for human consumption. It makes you wonder if you’ve ever even tasted real olive oil like that Mueller describes sampling in the rocky hills of Italy—the bright, intensely green flavors in a gulp of freshly pressed oil.

In addition to his thorough investigation of the olive oil industry, Mueller narrates the illustrious history of olive oil. For ancient Greeks, olive oil was an integral part of athletics and hygiene—athletes slathered their bodies with oil to perform, while men and women anointed themselves with oil perfumed with herbs. Monastic holy men used oil to cure anything from violent impulses and sexual urges to kidney stones, leprosy, blindness, and seizures.

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Whole Grain Mornings: New Breakfast Recipes to Span the Seasons By Megan Gordon (Ten Speed Press, 2013)

A

sweet morning treat doesn’t have to be a stack of pancakes smothered in syrup or a hulking cinnamon bun that will send you straight back to bed for a nap—no, a whole grain porridge studded with nuts and dried fruits might satisfy that same craving. If you are a sweets-for-breakfast kind of person, Whole-Grain Mornings will set you on a path to righteousness— and deliciousness.

Megan Gordon, a writer for the food blog The Kitchn and her own blog, A Sweet Spoonful, knows how to strike the perfect balance between salty and sweet. And she manages to be healthy without being militant or cutting anything out completely. “I don’t fear fat. I eat eggs, drink whole milk, and eat full-fat yogurt,” she writes. “I do, however, really limit sugar, which leaves me feeling tired and down.”

Gordon also embraces whole grains. If you think breakfast grains are limited to oats and whole wheat, get ready to expand your horizons and your cupboard. Her Triple-Coconut Porridge features quinoa; her Warm Farro Breakfast bowl is a riot of fruity sweetness and nutty crunch. Her Spiced Bulgur Porridge with Dates, Almonds, and Golden Raisins will sustain you all day long—the only sweetener is the dates, which melt satisfyingly into the bulgur. Bonus: Most of her recipes can be made in big batches

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on the weekend and reheated for quick weekday breakfasts.

In short, if you’re in a breakfast rut, this cookbook has you covered. And, it is by no means limited to sweet. The savory recipes are as delicious and creative as they are dead simple. Come summer, Gordon’s Zucchini Farro Cakes with Herbed Goat Cheese and Roasted Tomatoes will be on heavy rotation in my kitchen.

The Greens and Grains Scramble is a delicious way to use up CSA scraps in any season, while Bacon and Kale Polenta Squares are perfect to serve up to brunch guests—perhaps with a freshly poached egg.

One Good Dish By David Tanis (Artisan, 2013)

I

have a feeling David Tanis had trouble coming up with a name for this book, eventually settling on this somewhat bland one, belying the über-imaginative recipes therein. Though to be fair, I couldn’t come up with anything better myself—only “food I desperately want to cook,” or “Oh my God, yum.”

The collection of recipes is somewhat random, and yet perfect.

Because you don’t want to eat food in the same vein every night, and Tanis knows this. He sets no limits on the “type” of cuisine or origin of influence, mixing styles among and even within many recipes. Wok-Fried Lamb with Cumin weaves Middle Eastern flavors into a traditionally Chinese dish, which Tanis writes was inspired by a Chinese neighborhood in Flushing, Queens. Speckled Sushi Rice with Nori makes an unexpected and refreshing cocktail snack, with freshly pickled ginger alongside. With another spin around the globe, the Swiss Chard al Forno is distinctly Italian, and its outrageous creaminess makes you wonder whether you’ll ever cook chard any other way. Mexican Corn and Squash Blossom soup is an Oaxacan-inspired greenmarket treasure for summertime.

As an experienced chef who writes for the New York Times dining section and author of several cookbooks, Tanis doesn’t shy away from expressing his true feelings about food trends.

“Not to sound cranky, but to say that I am baffled by the current craze for eating raw kale is an understatement. And kale chips?

Barbecue-flavored kale? Do enlighten me,” he writes. But then, it’s hard to rebut his argument against raw kale when confronted with the deep, smoky broth that envelops his Long-Cooked Kale, a flavor base built around Spanish chorizo or slab bacon, onions, and sherry vinegar.

Molly Kincaid is a Tucsonan who is obsessed with tinkering in the kitchen and reading cookbooks. Her favorite foods are, paradoxically, kale and pork belly.

132 July - August 2014

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134 July - August 2014

This SOURCE GUIDE is an annotated directory of our advertisers. Many of our advertisers are also distribution outlets where you can find a complimentary copy of the magazine. Our incredible advertisers are the reason we can provide this publication at no cost. Please make it a point to patronize them often and let them know how much you appreciate their support of Edible Baja Arizona and the local food and drink economy. Baja Arizona towns and cities are noted if the business is not located in Tucson.

let your love for nourishing, local, and sustainable ingredients grow to include your entire home . . .

X consulting X project management X offering Tucson a full menu X design

ARTISAN PURVEYORS & DEALERS ALFONSO OLIVE OIL A world of flavor, locally owned.

We invite you to a unique tasting experience of the freshest, first cold pressed, extra virgin olive oils and flavored olive oils from around the world, and all natural traditional aged balsamic vinegars from Modena, Italy! “Taste first…buy when the excitement becomes overwhelming.” Central location: 4320 N Campbell Avenue, Oro Valley location: 7854 N. Oracle Road 520.441.9081 AlfonsoOliveOil.com BISBEE OLIVE OIL Come visit us in Bisbee and experience everything the town has to offer.

We are located in a 111-year-old renovated building and carry 180 different items for sale. With 45 different olive oils and balsamics there is a flavor for everyone.

We also offer free tastings! 8 Brewery Avenue, Bisbee 520.432.4645 BLU—A WINE & CHEESE SHOP There’s a new cheesemonger in town! Tana Fryer of Blu has been crowned “cheesemonger in chief” by Tucson foodies.

Also sold in Alfonso Olive Oil locations. 100 S. Avenida Del Convento 520.314.8262 BluArizona.com CHILTTEPICA SALSA Fresh, artisanal Chiltepin Salsa RED or VERDE, fresh and local ingredients, find it at Santa Cruz Farmers Market at Mercado San Agustin, Food Conspiracy Co-op on 4th Avenue. Inquiries at info@ chilttepica.com 520.977.3043 Chilttepica.com GRAMMY’S JAMS Grammy offers artisan jams, jellies, chutneys, mustards, and pickles. Habanero Dills, Dilly Beans, Rolling Thunder and Habanero Jams are favorites. Backyards, our trees, local farms and orchards provide fruits for Grammy’s special products! Find Grammy’s at Heirloom Farmers’ Markets. 520.559.1698 Facebook.com/Grammys.AZ HAYDEN FLOUR MILLS A family business working to revive heritage and ancient grains in the desert. We have revived the tradition that started in Tempe, Arizona more than 125 years ago by Charles Hayden and his Hayden Flour Mills. While not milled at the iconic Hayden Flour Mills’ building, our fresh flour harkens back to a time when flour still was full of nutrients and flavor. 4404 N Central Ave., Phoenix. 480.557.0031 HaydenFlourMills.com QUEEN CREEK OLIVE OIL MILL Oils & olives. A familyowned local business that produces Arizona’s only extra virgin olive oil. Their olives are Arizona grown and pressed at their mill in Queen Creek, Arizona with four stores and tasting rooms in the state. At La Encantada 2905 East Skyline, Suite 167, 520.395.0563 QueenCreekOliveMill.com

SANTA CRUZ CHILI & SPICE CO. Both manufacturer and retailer of fine chili products. At our Spice Center in Tumacacori we sell, along with Santa Cruz Products, a wide variety of gourmet southwestern foods, cookbooks and more. 1868 E Frontage Road, Tumacacori 520.398.2591 SantaCruzChili.com SKYE ISLAND OLIVE AND GRAPES We carry’s over 30 different flavors of olive oils and balsamics! Come in and sample in our tasting room! Browse our gift shop for locally made items! Open Wednesday through Sunday 10am to 5pm. 3244 Hwy 82 Sonoita 520.455.4627 SkyeIslandOliveAndGrapes.com

of ingredients for a healthy, beautiful home for 10 years

520.792.4207 www.originateNBM.com 526 north 9th avenue

AUTOMOTIVE BLUE + WHITE SPECIALISTS We’re dedicated to offering the best for you and your baby – the most accommodating BMW service in Tucson, thorough expert maintenance and the most precise and knowledgeable repair. We are also gifted in meticulous detailing to protect and indulge your vehicle. 5728 E. 22nd Street, Tucson 520.300.4220 BlueAndWhiteBMW.com BAKERIES BARRIO BREAD Tucson’s first Community Supported Baker. Don Guerra’s artisan breads, prepared with wild yeast cultures, long fermentation and hearth baking create a truly inspired loaf. Crafting top quality bread and supporting local foods in Tucson since 2009.

BarrioBread.com BAVIER’S BAKERY Tucson’s premier provider of locally sourced, artisan, organic wedding cakes. Our pastries, cakes, and breads are enjoyed by thousands of Tucsonans every year. Trust us to create the perfect, unique cake for your wedding. 520.220.0791 LA ESTRELLA BAKERY At the Mercado: A Tucson staple with yummy traditional Mexican pastries and pan dulce you won’t find anywhere else in town. Monday-Saturday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m., Sunday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m., 100 S. Avenida del Convento 520.393.3320 LaEstrellaBakeryIncAZ.com SMALL PLANET BAKERY We started baking bread in February of 1975. At that point, we were a collective of six, only one of whom had any baking experience. We now service many stores and do custom baking for eight restaurants and participate in many farmers’ markets.

411 N. 7th Avenue 520.884.9313 SmallPlanetBakery.com

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SOURCE GUIDE

Source Guide

SOURCE GUIDE

BEER, WINE, & DISTILLED LIBATIONS ARIDUS WINE COMPANY Family-owned Aridus Wine Company opened custom crush cellar doors in August 2012. Tasting Room open 11-5 daily. 145 N Railview Avenue, Willcox 520.766.9463 AridusWineCo.com ARIZONA HOPS & VINES We’re a small winery that’s awesome! One of many great Sonoita-area wineries in Southern Arizona, our family farm is a fun, warm place for families and wine aficionados alike. Come in and enjoy our patio, tell some stories, and explore the wonders of a winery that has free Cheetos. 888.569.1642 AZHopsAndVines.com BEAST BREWING COMPANY Arizona’s first and wildest craft beer. Our mission is to inspire a renewed passion for flavor, one pint at a time. 1326 W. Highway 92 #8, Bisbee 520.284.5251 BeastBrewingCompany.com CALLAGHAN VINEYARDS Located in the rolling, oakdotted hills of southeastern Arizona, at an elevation of 4800 feet, we produce rich, complex red and white wines from a 25 acre vineyard. Mediterranean and Spanish varietals—Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Petite Syrah and Grenache—are the basic building blocks for our red blends, while Viognier and Riesling are blended for our estate white wine. 520.455.5322 CallaghanVineyards.com CARLSON CREEK VINEYARDS A cozy, comfortable tasting experience, with plush seating and charming staff.

Carlson Creek’s cottage tasting room allows you to relax and enjoy our wines in a stress free atmosphere. 115 Railview Avenue, Willcox 520.766.3000 CarlsonCreek.com CHARRON VINEYARDS & WINERY Less than 30 minutes from downtown Tucson is a small vineyard producing quality hand crafted Arizona wines. Visit one of the oldest wineries in Arizona where you can sample an array of award-winning wines in the glass enclosed tasting room or on the wine deck surrounded by mature vineyards and breathtaking mountain views. 520.762.8585 CharronVineyards.com DOS CABEZAS WINEWORKS Planted, harvested and fermented in Arizona! Come try a glass! Our winery tasting room is open Friday-Sunday 10:30-4:30. Tasting fee of $15 includes a souvenir glass. 3248 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.5141 DosCabezasWineWorks.com FLYING LEAP VINEYARD With developed acreage in both Sonoita AVA and Cochise County, Flying Leap offers a diverse portfolio of ultra-premium, carefully crafted wines. Visit the tasting rooms at estate vineyards in Willcox and Sonoita, and tasting rooms in Bisbee and Tucson. 520.954.2935 FlyingLeapVineyards.com

LIGHTNING RIDGE CELLARS A small family winery proud to offer wines based on our Italian heritage. Our estate wines are made from classic Italian varietals: Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Montepulciano, Primitivo, Malvasia and Muscat Canelli. Clay soils, long warm summers, cool nights and an Old World style of winemaking provide the perfect combination to produce rich, full-bodied wines.

520.455.5383 LightningRidgeCellars.com OLD BISBEE BREWING COMPANY Come and visit lively, historical Bisbee and taste the premium beer at Old Bisbee Brewing Company in the heart of Brewery Gulch! 200 Review Alley, Bisbee 520.432.2739 OldBisbeeBrewingCompany.com PILLSBURY WINE CO. Winemaker Sam Pillsbury is dedicated to crafting fine wines that celebrate Arizona’s high desert terroir. His sustainable Rhone vineyard in Willcox’s Kansas Settlement produces award-winning wines that are crisp, clean, and dry— created to complement the foods you love. 928.639.0646 PillsburyWine.com PLAZA LIQUORS A family-owned and independent store, Plaza has been around under the ownership of Mark Thomson for 35 years now. Plaza specializes in familyowned wineries, breweries and distilleries from around the world. The service and selection speaks for itself.

2642 N. Campbell Ave. 520.327.0542 SAND-RECKONER VINEYARDS Located on the Willcox Bench at 4,300 feet in elevation, Rob and Sarah Hammelman tend to the vineyards. Our name, SandReckoner, means ‘sand-calculator,’ and references Archimedes’ revolutionary and thought provoking third century B.C. writing. In this text, Archimedes calculates the size of the universe by figuring the number of grains of sand that will fill it. The name alludes to our sandy loam soils, our connection to the cosmos, and the infinite calculations required to create a wine that expresses the very sand into which our vines’ roots grow deep.

303.931.8472 Sand-Reckoner.com TAP & BOTTLE A craft beer and wine tasting room in Downtown Tucson featuring hundreds of beverage options to enjoy on site or carry out. Look forward to beer flights, events and merchandise. 403 N. 6th Avenue 520.344.8999 TheTapAndBottle.com UNPLUGGED We’ve sourced the wine world to find a unique blend of varietals at prices that are right for all occasions. Come downtown for this exceptional experience. We also regularly feature live jazz. 118 E. Congress St 520.884.1800 UnpluggedTucson.com

VILLAGE OF ELGIN WINERY The largest producer of wine in the Sonoita AVA. This family-owned winery still produces wines in the traditional manner. Classically styled and aged in fine European wood, the wines reflect the subtle grace of Arizona terroir. The winery produces a HAMILTON DISTILLERS Whiskey del Bac is handmade by wide range of wines to please all of its customers’ tastes.

Hamilton Distillers in small batches using a copper pot520.455.9309 ElginWines.com still and house-malted, mesquite-smoked barley. Three desert single-malt whiskeys made in Tucson. Contact: Stephen Paul: info@hamiltondistillers.com COFFEE & TEA IRON JOHN’S BREWING COMPANY A rotating selection of small batch craft beers all bottled by hand. We produce all our beer at our brewery and have a small retail bottle shop on site. We invite you to stop by and purchase some of the beer you like. 245 S Plumer Avenue 205.737.4766 IronJohnsBrewing.com

BISBEE COFFEE CO. Hot Beans! Bisbee’s original and best coffee roasters and coffee shop in downtown Old Bisbee. Award-winning favorites include: Miner’s Blend, Bisbee Blues Blend, Copper Queen, and Bisbee Breakfast Blend. Café open daily. 2 Copper Queen Plaza, Bisbee.

520.432.7879. BisbeeCoffee.com

KIEF JOSHUA VINEYARDS A small family business with 20 acres in beautiful Elgin and 40 acres in Willcox Wine Country. Our Elgin tasting room is open daily and is situated right in the middle of what is know as “winery row.” The Sonoita Arizona Wine Tour boasts ten different tasting rooms and was selected by USA Today as one of the top ten wine trails in the United States. 520.455.5582 KiefJoshuaVineyards.com

EXO ROAST COMPANY Exo seeks out the world’s finest coffees, craft roasts them in small batches, and distributes them in limited quantities to ensure unequaled quality.

Roastery and café open Monday-Saturday, 7am to 7pm, Sunday 7-3. Come by for free twice-weekly tastings.

Custom wholesaling for area cafes and restaurants. 403 N. Sixth Ave. 520.777.4709 ExoCoffee.com

136 July - August 2014

SAVAYA COFFEE Our goal is to offer superior quality coffees available around the corner from where you brew at home, so the fresh flavors of the Americas, Africa and Asia are right here for you to enjoy. Three locations in Baja Arizona: 5350 E. Broadway, 2905 E. Skyline and 12120 N. Dove Mountain Boulevard, Marana SavayaCoffee.com SEVEN CUPS An American tea company based in Tucson. We source traditional, handmade Chinese teas directly from the growers and tea masters who make them, and we bring those teas back from China to share with people everywhere. Seven Cups is the only American tea company with our own Chinese trading license, so we are in complete control of our supply chain from tea maker to consumer. 2516 E. Sixth Street 520.628.2952 SevenCups.com SPARKROOT A cornerstone of a burgeoning downtown, Sparkroot serves up Blue Bottle Coffee & vegetarian fare with flare, in a striking atmosphere. Vibrant community flavor, morning through evening. Great meeting spot; you can even reserve our loft! Beer, wine & killer Irish coffee. 245 E. Congress at Fifth Avenue 520.623.4477 Sparkroot.com STELLA JAVA Enjoy delicious espresso drinks made from locally roasted coffee beans at this unique family-owned Tucson café. Mon-Sun 8am-2pm 100 S Avenida del Convento 520.777.1496 StellaJava.com DESIGNERS & BUILDING SUPPLIES ARIZONA DESIGNS KITCHENS & BATHS, LLC Your home should be an extension of things in life you enjoy and value. Our designers have more than 100 years total experience designing kitchens and baths in homes throughout Southern Arizona. Come see us! 2425 E. Fort Lowell Rd. 520.325.6050 ArizonaDesigns.ne CARLY QUINN DESIGNS Custom and one-of-a-kind hand glazed tile murals, trivets, coasters, house numbers and more. We hand glaze all of our tiles right in our showroom in downtown Tucson. Great for indoor and outdoor use. Located in The Old Market Inn Tile Shop.

403 N. 6th ave. #119, 520.624.4117 CarlyQuinnDesigns.com ORIGINATE NATURAL BUILDING MATERIALS SHOWROOM Specializing in environmentally-friendly building materials made from natural, renewable & recycled resources. We offer innovative and unique materials that rival the aesthetics and performance of more traditional interior finishes. Flooring, countertops, cabinetry, paints, plasters, alternative plywoods, fireplaces, and architectural salvage. 526 N. Ninth Avenue 520.792.4207 OriginateNBM.com RED BARK DESIGN, LLC Landscape Design + Consultation. RedBark Design offers regionally and ecologically appropriate landscape design services for residential, commercial and consulting projects.

P.O. Box 44128 Tucson, Arizona 85733, 520.247.2456 RedBarkDesign.com FARMS, RANCHES, PRODUCE COMPANIES APPLE ANNIE’S U-PICK FARM A fruit and vegetable U-Pick farm for the whole family. Go to website for information on seasons for various crops.

AppleAnnies.com AVALON ORGANIC GARDENS & ECOVILLAGE Avalon Gardens practices traditional permaculture principles and time-honored techniques of organic gardening, as well as new sustainable technologies; they also promote seed-saving and the cultivation of heritage varieties of produce provided to our local area through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Tours available by appointment. 2074 Pendleton Dr., Tumacácori 520.603.9932, AvalonGardens.org

CHIVA RISA We make artisanal, all natural, Europeanstyle cheese on an off-grid, sustainable site situated in the upper San Pedro Valley near the Mexican Border.

We treat our animals, land, and cheese with the utmost care and respect. Sharing nature’s bounty with our community through finely-crafted cheese is Chiva Risa’s primary goal. 520.901.0429 ChivaRisa.com DOUBLE CHECK RANCH We are a family business that raises, processes (on-farm), and directly sells hearty, wholesome pasture-raised meats in ways that would be familiar to our grandfathers. For eighteen years we have been reinventing local, small-scale agriculture in a way that respects land, animals, and people. St. Philip’s Plaza (Sat/Sun), Santz Cruz Market (Thurs), Phoenix/Gilbert (Sat). 520.357.6515 DoubleCheckRanch.com FIORE DI CAPRA Raw Goat Milk, Yogurt, Kefir, Artisanal Farmstead Goat Cheese and Confections. Healthy, happy goats fed grass, alfalfa and local browse. Awardwinning products can be sampled and purchased at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market, Sunday at St. Philip’s Plaza.

520.586.2081 GoatMilkAndCheese.com HARRIS HERITAGE GROWERS Pick it your self veggies right out of the field. Also a small shop filled with paintings, handcrafted wood items, crafts, handmade jewelry and much more. 27811 S. Sonoita Highway (Highway 83), Sonoita 520.455.9272

FOOD TRUCKS, CATERING & PERSONAL CHEFS BUDDHA’S BOWL PERSONAL CHEF SERVICE. Offering customized ready to serve meals to compliment your healthy lifestyle. Specializing in Vegan, Paleo, Low Carb, Gluten Free and Omnivore diets, Affordable, convenient, and delicious. Free consultation. 520.668.9010 BudBwl.com BURGERRITO Born in Colorado.....Raised in Tucson..........

Home of the Original Mexican Hamburger in Arizona ..what a hamburger would be if it were Mexican!

Introducing the Cheeseburger And Burrito together at last! 520.991.2199 Email: BurgerRito@hotmail.com CHEESY RIDER Serving both savory and sweet gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Available for catering and special events. HAVE CHEESE WILL TRAVEL (520) 4711859 CheesyRider.com

REZONATION FARMS A family-scale farm serving two restaurants, the Food Conspiracy Coop, farmer’s markets, and others. We produce eggs, honey, and vegetables and hold natural beekeeping workshops twice a year.

4526 N Anway Rd, Marana ReZoNationFarm.com

HAWAIIN SHAVE ICE A family owned, Tucson based, mobile business. We bring your temperature down when you need it most. (520) 576-8421 Email: shaveicetucson@gmail.com

SLEEPING FROG FARMS Sleeping Frog Farms is an intensive 75-acre farm nestled in the Cascabel corridor of the San Pedro River Valley in Southern Arizona. Our mission is to improve the health of our land and community by growing high quality fruits and vegetables without the use of chemicals. 520.212.3764 SleepingFrogFarm.com SUNIZONA We are a family-owned, certified organic farm in Willcox, Arizona growing fruits and vegetables with sustainable, veganic practices and greenhouse technology. CSAs available all over Baja Arizona. 5655 E Gaskill Rd. Willcox 520.824.3160 SunizonaFamilyFarms.com WALKING J FARM A polyculture farm specializing in grass fed, pasture-raised beef, poultry and pork, and organically grown vegetables. At Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market on Thurs, Nogales Farmers’ Market on Fridays, and Heirloom Farmers’ Market on Sun (St. Philip’s Plaza). 520.398.9050 WalkingJFarm.com

shopOrganicTucson.com

CHILL SHACK Authentic Hawaiin shave ice with over 80 flavors on the menu. Try it with ice cream with one of our toppings. Like us on facebook to see our locations.

520.909.1040 ChillShack@aol.com

PATAGONIA ORCHARDS An organic grower, packer and shipper based in Rio Rico, Arizona. We ship premium organic fruits grown in Arizona and Mexico to wholesalers and retailers throughout the U.S. and Canada. We partner with more than 15 organic growers.

520.761.8970 PatagoniaOrchardsLLC.com

SKY ISLAND BRAND BEEF From conception to consumption, you’ve got a friend on the land, Sky Island Brand! We are located between Tombstone, Bisbee, and McNeal, Arizona. Find us at the Bisbee Farmers Market and in Tucson, at the Food Conspiracy COOP. 520.642.9368

Organic, Non-GMO, Fair Trade and Eco-Friendly products delivered to your door or available for local pickup.

CHEF’S KITCHEN & CATERING A family affair, owned, operated by husband and wife, Chris and Mary Cryderman and son Ivor. Chris and Ivor have a combined 50+ years experience as chefs involving a wide spectrum of upscale cuisines. They use this knowledge and love of making fresh, healthy food from scratch to provide excellent, flavorful mobile dining and catering like one could expect in a high quality restaurant. 520.903.7004 ChefsKitchenCatering@yahoo.com

FOODIE FLEET A high class, high quality, low price mobile eatery in the Tucson area. We feature pressed sandwiches and waffles. We also offer tantalizing sides, and our special homemade sauce, that will keep you coming back for more! We make a concerted effort to source all of our products locally and organically. It is an experience that you’ve never had before. Catering Available. 520.329.3663 FoodieFleet.com

SAN XAVIER CO-OP FARM The San Xavier Cooperative Association envisions a farm committed to sustainable farming practices that support economic development in the community. Visit our farm store. 8100 S. Oidak Wog 520.449.3154 SanXavierCoOp.org

shop local. shop online. shopOrganic.

JOZARELLI’S FOOD TRUCK Mobile Gourmet Food Truck serving authentic Italian street fare on the streets of Tucson - follow us on Twitter (@jozarellis) to see where we’ll be serving.

KADOOKS FOOD TRUCK Inspired by the simplicity and freshness inherent in the cuisine of Caribe Sur of Costa Rica, we blend the concepts together with the flavors of the southwest USA in an effort to bring the best of very different worlds together on your fork. 520.404.7777 Kadooks.com PIN-UP PASTRIES Tucson’s Premiere Dessert Truck serving Southern Arizona. We put a contemporary spin on classics such as our Maple Bacon Cupcake & Salted Caramel Whoopie Pies. We create awesome desserts to keep you coming back for more! 520.954.6124 PinupPastries.com

At the Tucson Botanical Gardens 2150 N. Alvernon Way GalleryofFood.com

Grow With Us,

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Your Local Source From Seed to Table Since 1979.

• Beneficial Insects & Organisms • Seed Care & Propagation • Fertilizers & Amendments • Easy-To-Use Tools • Weed, Disease & Critter Control

PLANET OF THE CREPES Bringing southern Arizona a modern twist to the French classic, PotC’s award winning crepes range from savory duck breast with fig jam to the decadent fresh strawberry and French custard. Daily specials and rotating locations make this food truck a destination. 520.271.6083 PlanetOfTheCrepes.com ST. ANDREW’S CATERING Led by Deacon Jefferson Baily, this is a food program to assist those in the community who find themselves unavle to prepare food for themselves. 545 S. 5th Avenue 520.622.8318 TWISTED TANDOOR A full service food truck serving tasty authentic Indian food.We do private & corporate caterings along with weddings or any events that you may have. 520.551.0368 email us: TheTwistedTandoor@gmail.com

Visit Our Store Today!

10831 N. Mavinee Dr. Suite185 Oro Valley, AZ 85737

520-825-9785 • 1-800-827-2857 • www.arbico-organics.com

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CHIRICAHUA PASTURE RAISED MEATS Home of “Josh’s Foraging Fowls” pasture raised poultry (chicken, eggs, and holiday turkeys). Also high quality grass-finished beef and lamb. All of our livestock are raised on our irrigated pastures near Willlcox, AZ. Visit us online or call to order. 520.507.3436 CPRMeats.com

BAMBOO RANCH

TUCSON FOOD TRUCK RALLY Formed of Tucson’s finest gourmet food trucks with a common cause to raise money for rescue animals. For information on our locations go to our website and follow us on facebook.

520.982.2645 TucsonFoodTruckRally.com GROCERS, FARMERS’ MARKETS & CSAS

Desert Grown Bamboo Plants for Shade & Screen Non-Invasive Clumping & Cold Hardy Types Expert Advice

APPLE ANNIE’S COUNTRY STORE Open year-round offering our famous pies, apple bread, fudge, jarred good, gifts and other Apple Annie’s goodies that you love! Visit our U-Pick farm in season. 1510 N Circle I Rd, Willcox 520.766.2084 AppleAnnies.com BISBEE FARMERS’ MARKET Vibrant village market appears magically at Vista Park in the Warren district in Bisbee every Saturday morning. We feature local musicians while you enjoy shopping for healthy local foods and artisan crafts. Choices for Sustainable Living booth features workshops for healthy lifestyle changes.

9am-1pm, Saturdays, BisbeeFarmersMarket.org FOOD CONSPIRACY CO-OP Located on funky Fourth Ave., the co-op is a natural foods grocery store that has served the Tucson community since 1971 and emphasizes organic, local and fair trade options. Among its many delicious offerings, the co-op serves homemade bagels, muffins, and green chili breakfast wraps, and features a hot food and salad bar. Everyone can shop at the co-op and anyone can join. 412 N. Fourth Ave. 520.624-4821 FoodConspiracy.coop HEIRLOOM FARMERS’ MARKETS Four local farmers markets that support our region’s farms by: connecting consumers directly to local food producers, strengthening urban-rural agriculture and small food businesses. Heirloom Farmers’ Markets dedicated to the benefits of local food. 520.882.2157 HeirloomFM.com

BambooRanch@juno.com|520-743-9879 BambooRanch.net

HIGH DESERT MARKET Gourmet food and gift market and cafe. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner with indoor and outdoor seating. We do all our baking on premises, serve generous gourmet salads and sandwiches, quiches, pizzas, desserts and more.

520.432.6775 203 Tombstone Canyon, Bisbee, AZ 85603 HighDesertMarket.com NOGALES MERCADO Enjoy the border experience at our all-local farmers’ market in the heart of downtown Nogales with Santa Cruz County produce, meat, baked goods, jams/jellies and much more every Friday afternoon. The Nogales Mercado is part of Cosechando Bienestar, an initiative in Nogales to renew food traditions so that locally-grown food is enjoyed by all for better health. 520.375.6050 Facebook.com/NogalesMercado RINCON VALLEY FARMERS & ARTISANS MARKET Enjoy the beautiful scenery and discover a one-of-akind shopping experience featuring fruit, produce, eggs and meat from local Arizona farmers, local raw honey, artisan breads, beautiful artwork, crafts, furniture, aprons and more handcrafted by our Artisans. We are open EVERY Saturday year round from 8am to 1pm.

520.591.2276 RVFM.org

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RIVER ROAD GARDENS We are a small urban farm, using Biodynamic principles, located on the grounds of the Tucson Waldorf School. CSAs available. 3605 E. River Road, 520.780.9125 RiverRoadGardens.com SANTA CRUZ RIVER FARMERS’ MARKET Fresh, sustainably grown foods from local farmers. Arizona fruits and vegetables, free-range meat, eggs, honey, baked goods, and natural plant products! Live music, cooking demonstrations, children’s activities and free workshops. A great place to get to know your community! West Congress Street, just west of I-10 at Mercado San Augustín, 520.882.3313 CommunityFoodBank.org SHOPORGANIC.COM An online retailer of carefully selected Organic and Non-GMO products. Local Tucson customers can shop online and pick up at our facility.

We offer shelf stable groceries, bulk foods, personal care, household items, gluten free, raw, and more.

520.792.0804 ShopOrganic.com

138 July - August 2014

SIERRA VISTA FOOD CO-OP Our store has a full natural & organic grocery selection as well as frozen, dairy, bulk foods, organic and local produce, specialty & organic cheeses, olives, cruelty-free cosmetics, premium supplements, and more! 96 S. Carmichael, Sierra Vista 520.335.6676 SierraVistaMarket.com SIERRA VISTA FARMERS’ MARKET Open Thursdays at Veterans’ Memorial Park in Sierra Vista, AZ. Meet local growers, ranchers, beekeepers and bakers. Take home some of the bounty of southern Arizona! Grass-fed meats, desert heritage foods and plants. Contact sierravistafarmersmarket@cox.net SierraVistafarmersMarket.com TIME MARKET A neighborhood market since 1919, we bring specialty goods to the table: craft beers, esoteric fine wine, wood-fired pizza, espresso, and artisan handcrafted organic natural yeast breads. We sell organic produce and use it for our restaurant in sandwiches, salads and pizzas. We are committed to honest communication about sourcing, and enjoy featuring local farms in our menu. 444 East University Blvd., 520.622.0761 TUCSON CSA Offering weekly boxes of local, organically-grown produce since 2004. We also offer pasture-raised eggs and chickens, grass-fed meats, cheese, and bread (from Barrio Bread). Pickups are Tuesdays or Wednesdays, 4:00-7:00 pm, The Historic Y, 300 E. University Blvd., TucsonCSA.org HOUSEWARE & HARDWARE ACE HARDWARE Locally-owned and managed, we are an affiliate of the Ace Hardware co-operative. Five locations across Tucson, from Downtown on the West to the far Southeast side. We look forward to helping with your next project, no matter how small or large. Our locations listed at 135Hardware.com BUFFALO GALS Three-quarters hardware store, onequarter gift shop. 3149 HWY 83, Sonoita 520. 455.5523 BuffaloGalsOfSonoita.com HF COORS Lead free, microwave, oven, broiler, freezer and dishwasher safe. All our scrap and waste is inert or recycled. Our 200 foot long primary kiln is one of the most energy efficient in the world. 1600 S Cherrybell Stravenue 520.903.1010 HFCoors.com TUMACOOKERY 45 minutes south of Tucson, in Tubac, this well-stocked kitchen shop is a foodie destination for gadgets, appliances, cutlery, gourmet food and more.

Great local products, and knowledgeable, friendly staff, make Tumacookery a regional favorite. Worth the drive to Tubac all by itself! 2221 S. Frontage Road, Tubac, 520.398.9497 Tumacookery.com HERBAL MEDICINE DESERT TORTOISE BOTANICALS We provide handcrafted herbal products from herbs wildharvested and organically grown within the Sonoran desert bioregion. Owner John Slattery conducts the Sonoran Herbalist Apprenticeship Program, wild foods class, private plant walks, and individual wellness consultation services. 4802 E Montecito Street DeserTortoiseBotanicals.com TUCSON HERB STORE Located in the Heart of Downtown since 2003. Dedicated to serving a variety of ethically wild-crafted and botanical products of the southwest desert. We carry: bulk herbs, teas, herbal tinctures, beauty care products, soaps, books, incense, and much more! 408 N. 4th Ave., 520.903-0038 TucsonHerbstore.com YARD WOMAN An old-fashioned natural remedy shop specializing in herbs and herbalsin the Western Herbal Tradition. Custom blending, essential oils, homeopathics, handmade soaps and lotions, books, tarot cards and yard art. All natural. Servicing Baja Arizona since 2004. 6 Camino Otero, Tubac 520.398.9565 YardWoman.com

CAT MOUNTAIN LODGE A bed & breakfast in the desert! Featuring eco-friendly accommodations in a vintage ranch setting with five unique spacious rooms. Providing Southwestern comfort—mixed with modern conveniences. Enjoy free full breakfast at Coyote Pause Cafe. Reserve on-site Star Tours at Spencer’s Observatory. 2720 S. Kinney Road 520.578.6085 CatMountainLodge.com COPPER CITY INN A truly delightful inn in the heart of Old Bisbee, with beautiful rooms, excellent queen beds, abundant lighting, spacious bathrooms, balconies, free wi-fi, complimentary bottle of wine, organic coffee, parking, free off-site continental breakfast, DVDs, electronic locks. View website video: WYSIWYG. Bisbee is cool! 99 Main, Old Bisbee, 520.432.1418 CopperCityInn.com ELDORADO SUITES HOTEL Offering an excellent downtown Bisbee location, expansive outdoor balconies, beautiful views, spacious suites, and many modern amenities. 55 OK St, Bisbee. 520.432.6679 EldoradoSuitesBisbee.com JAILHOUSE INN Once the Bisbee Police Station, the historic Jailhouse Inn offers five clean, quiet rooms with full modern baths, Cable TV, wi-fi, refrigerator.

Perfect downtown location, parking available. Walking distance to restaurants, bars, galleries, shops and Old Bisbee attractions. 8 Naco Road, Bisbee 520.432.8065 JailhouseInnAZ.com LA POSADA DEL RIO SONORA La Posada del Rio Sonora is a boutique hotel and restaurant on the Plaza Principal of Banámichi. Our 250 year old adobe has 10 rooms and suites and two apartments. This is the heart of “La Ruta Rio Sonora” with nearby hot springs. 70 Calle Pesqueira, Banámichi, Sonora, Mexico, MexicoEcoResort.com LANDSCAPING & PERMACULTURE AHIMSA LANDSCAPING Ahimsa Landscaping is an ethically-focused, small design + build business specializing in creating sustainable landscapes through the integration of permaculture design principles and water harvesting techniques for the desert environment.

Inquiries at info@ahimsalandscaping.com 520.345.1906 AhimsaLandscaping.com LOCAL ROOTS AQUAPONICS We raise fish and plants together to create mutually beneficial ecosystems with a focus on food production. Aquaponic system sales, live fish, heirloom seedlings, consulting, site assessments, pool/pond conversions, tours, workshops, speaking events and more. 765.276.6427 LocalRootsAquaponics.com PRIMAVERA WATER HARVESTING + SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPING Design and installation of earth works, cisterns, or greywater systems for food producing plants or gardens. Free estimates on all projects. 520.882.9668 Primavera.org/WaterHarvesting WATERSHED MANAGEMENT GROUP Helping you with water harvesting, soil building, edible and native gardens, and watershed restoration. We’re a Tucsonbased non-profit serving the community by sharing our technical expertise and offering hands-on workshops, training programs, custom property consultations, site plans, and project implementation. 520.396.3266 WatershedMG.org LITERATURE ANTIGONE BOOKS Zany, independent (and 100% solarpowered) bookstore. Books for all ages plus large selection of unusual gifts and cards. Regional books on cooking, gardening, sustainability, green living and more.

Voted Tucson’s best independent bookstore. Located in Tucson’s unique Fourth Avenue shopping district. 411 N. 4th Avenue 520.792.3715 AntigoneBooks.com

BOOK STOP A Tucson institution for decades (since 1967!), the Book Stop stocks thousands of quality used and out-of-print titles. Monday-Thursday: 10am-7pm, Friday-Saturday: 10am-10pm, Sunday: noon-5pm. 213 N. 4th Avenue, 520.326.6661 BookStopTucson.com

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INNS AND B&BS

MASSAGE, SPAS & SALONS COYOTE WORE SIDEBURNS A high quality progressive hair salon. Our stylists are well-trained and current.

If you would like to speak to a stylist about your hair service prior to making a commitment, consultation appointments are available. New location: 2855 E. Grant Road 520.623.7341 DR. FEELGOOD’S SPA & SALON A full service salon in Bisbee offers women’s and men’s hair styling, nail service, facials, waxing and more. We also offer a variety of relaxing massages and the only private sauna and hot tub in Bisbee, Arizona. 8 Naco Road, Bisbee 520.432.8065 DrFeelgoodsAZ.com GLOW SKIN CARE & LASHES Melinda M. Spreng’s philosophy is ‘beauty from within.’ She uses all natural products and methods to make you look and feel your best! 3101 N Swan Rd. 520.261.4635 GlowSkinCare-N-Lashes.SkinCareTherapy.net ROOTED THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE & BODYWORK A small, locally owned clinic staffed by independent massage therapists located in the heart of Tucson, minutes from downtown and the University of Arizona.

Rooted offers a wide range of modalities, including therapeutic, sports, Thai, prenatal massage, Chi Nei Tsang & Skincare.. 1600 North Tucson Boulevard Suite 120, 520.326.8300 RootedMassageTucson.com ORGANIZATIONS BISBEE HUB Are you traveling to Bisbee soon? Find out what’s in store before you travel by visiting BisbeeHub. com and checking out the events calendar. We are also working on a business directory so come back again and again and see why Bisbee is so special! BisbeeHub.com COSECHANDO BIENESTAR An initiative to renew food traditions in Nogales so that locally-grown food is enjoyed by all for better health. We do this by improving access, building residents’ capacity to grow food, supporting sound policy and promoting local business.

520.375.6050 Facebook.com/NogalesMercado ETHERTON GALLERY Founded in 1981, Etherton Gallery specializes in 19th, 20th century and contemporary fine photography, and features top local and regional artists working in all media. We also manage the Temple Gallery at the Temple of Music and Art. 135 S. 6th Avenue 520.624.7370 EthertonGallery.com FOOD FOR HORSES An organization that helps to feed rescued animals and helping families before they’re forced to give up their horses; or worse, abandon them. Food for Horses raises money along with Food Trucks With A Cause/Tucson Food Truck Rally. These food trucks donate 15 percent of their sales to Food for Horses. For more info: 520.982.2645 KXCI COMMUNITY RADIO Connecting the communities of Tucson and Southern Arizona to each other and to the world with informative, engaging and creative community-based radio programming.Tune in at 91.3 KXCI Tucson, or listen on-line at kxci.org.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART The MOCA inspires new ways of thinking through the cultivation, interpretation and exhibition of cutting-edge art of our time. 265 S. Church Avenue 520.624.5019 Moca-Tucson.org NATIONAL CENTER FOR INTERPRETATION A research and outreach unit at the University of Arizona charged with social justice for language minorities through cutting-edge research, training, and testing for interpreters and translators while advancing professionalism. 800 E University Blvd Suite 200 520.621.3615 NCI.Arizona.edu

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Desert Tortoise Botanicals Tucson, AZ

*Wild harvested Herbals from the Sonoran Desert

PIMA ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS A nonprofit metropolitan planning organization with Transportation Planning, Environmental Planning, Energy Planning and Technical Services divisions. 1 East Broadway Blvd, Suite 401 520.792.1093 PAGRegion.com PRESIDIO SAN AGUSTIN Located at the corner of

* Wild harvested Herbals Tucson, AZ and Court Streets in downtown Tucson.

Washington During the week parking is available in a nearby garage the Sonoran Desert *Herbalfrom Education on Alameda Street; metered parking is available on * Consultation Services nearby streets. On weekends and after 5pm street parking is free. 196 N. Court Street, 520.837.8119 * Herbal Education TucsonPresidio.com www.desertortoisebotanicals.com www.sonoranherbalist.com *Consultation Services

s

DeserTortoiseBotanicals.com SonoranHerbalist.com

SOUTHERN ARIZONA ARTS & CULTURAL ALLIANCE A not-for-profit organization that exists to ensure that, through engagement in arts and culture, our communities produce strong, inspired citizens.

520.797.3959 SAACA.org

Tucson, AZ

TOHONO CHUL PARK One of the “World’s Ten Great Botanical Gardens” according to Travel + Leisure magazine, and the place in Tucson where nature, art and culture connect. 7366 N Paseo Del Norte 520.742.6455 TohonoChul.org

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SONORAN INSTITUTE Founded in 1990, the Sonoran Institute informs and enables community decisions and public policies that respect the land and people of western North America. 44 E Broadway Blvd, Suite 350 520.290.0828 SonoranInstitute.org

TUCSON CLEAN & BEAUTIFUL A non-profit organization with the intent to preserve and improve our environment, conserve natural resources, and enhance the quality of life in the City of Tucson and eastern Pima County. These goals are achieved through initiating educational and participatory programs implemented with broad-citizen, multicultural support. 520.791.3109 TucsonCleanAndBeautiful.org

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TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART Western, Latin, modern and contemporary, and Asian art fills our historic city block in downtown Tucson for an everlasting experience while traveling exhibits keep the paint and clay fresh for each visit. 140 North Main Avenue, 520.624.2333 TucsonMuseumOfArt.org TUCSON ORIGINALS Since 1999, The Tucson Originals have been the driving force in promoting the value of Tucson’s independent restaurants and supporting Tucson’s culinary diversity. Visit our website for information on restaurant membership, events and special offers. 520.477.7950 TucsonOriginals.com YWCA TUCSON The Cafe at the YWCA: Setting the Table for Change. The Galleria Art and Gifts: Gifts with Purpose. Social Enterprises of the YWCA Tucson. Our Mission: Eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. 525 N. Bonita Ave. 520.884.7810 YWCATucson.com WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH CENTER The WRRC is committed to assisting communities in water management and policy, educating teachers, students and the public about water, and encouraging scientific research on state and regional water issues. 350 N Campbell Avenue 520.621.2526 WRRC.Arizona.edu PLANTS, SEEDS & GARDEN SUPPLY

Hours: M-F 7:30am - 2pm 525 N. Bonita Ave. Tucson, AZ 85745 (520) 884-7810 ywcatucson.org 140 July - August 2014

ARBICO ORGANICS Arbico Organics has been providing organic solutions for homeowners, gardeners, farmers and pet, horse and livestock owners since 1979.

Products include beneficial insects and organisms, natural fertilizers, amendments, composting supplies, weed and disease controls, critter control and more.

800.827.2847 Arbico-Organics.com ARID LANDS GREENHOUSES We sell the most unusual plants: cacti, succulents, pachycaul trees, pachyforms, terrestrial bromeliads and orchids, and bulbs. Order online or to visit and browse, call ahead. 520.883.8874 AridLands.com

BAMBOO RANCH Providing Desert Grown Bamboo since 1986. Specializing in non-invasive clumping bamboo suited to harsh conditions. Providing plants, poles and expert advice on species, growing and care, for privacy screening and shade. 520.743.9879 BambooRanch@juno. com, BambooRanch.net ECOGRO A recognized resource for aquaponics, sustainable growing methods, unusual and rare plants, education, equipment and supplies so that plant and garden enthusiasts can acquire the tools and knowledge to achieve their goals of growing healthy food, minimizing environmental impacts, enjoying healthy plants and experiencing the pride of achievement. 657 W. St. Mary’s Road 520.777.8307 EcoGroHydro.com MESQUITE VALLEY GROWERS NURSERY A destination garden center with 24 acres of plants grown onsite, including desert natives, shade trees, fruit and nut trees, shrubs, roses, cacti and succulents. Also featuring fountains, statuary and garden accessories.

Knowledgable staff on hand for planning, learning & diagnosis. 8005 East Speedway Boulevard 520.721.8600 NATIVE SEEDS/SEARCH Revered Tucson nonprofit and world-class seed bank saving and sharing the seeds of the desert Southwest since 1983. Classes, tours, seeds, native crafts and more! 3061 N. Campbell Avenue (store) and 3584 E. River Rd. (Center). 520.622.0830 NativeSeeds.org RILLITO NURSERY & GARDEN CENTER An independent family-owned business that has provided our customers with a diverse inventory of quality plants and products since 1994. Our goal is to provide quality products and excellent service at a fair price. 6303 N. La Cholla Boulevard 520.575.0995 RillitoNursery.com SILVERBELL NURSERY & COUNTRY STORE We sell bedding, garden and landscape plants, water harvesting supplies and now even pet food. “Our success is yours.”

We believe that if we sell you a plant and tell you how to plant it, feed it, water it, harvest it and prune it, and you and the plant are successful, you will be back. 2730 N. Silverbell Road 520.622.3894 TANK’S GREEN STUFF Our mission is to create value added products from stuff that was once considered waste. To create jobs and great products that can be used to build a sustainable local economy. Our compost is a naturally made soil amendment, containing no fertilizers or chemical products. 520.290.9313 TanksGreenStuff.biz REAL ESTATE & PROPERTY MANAGEMENT BARRIO VIEJO RENTALS Become part of downtown’s historic district. Apartments rent from $650-$900 a month.

Offices range from 400 to 6,000 square feet, and leases include off-street parking. Let us welcome you to the neighborhood. 520.623.4091 BarrioViejo.com HERBERT RESIDENTIAL Offering modern, urban living in downtown Tucson! Come see our newly remodeled studio and one bedroom apartments with breathtaking city views. 520-777-5771 HerbertLiving.com JILL RICH REALTOR I am dedicated to our Long Realty mission: To create an exceptional real estate services experience that builds long-lasting relationships. “It’s like having your grandma in the real estate business.”

520.349.0174 JillRich.LongRealty.com RESTAURANTS, BARS & CAFES 1702 A pizzeria and craft beer bar extravaganza. On tap, 46 craft beers from the all over the 50 states and world complement our fresh hand-tossed pizza made with the very best ingredients. 1702 E. Speedway Boulevard 520.325.1702 1702AZ.com 5 POINTS MARKET & RESTAURANT Bridging South Tucson and downtown Tucson, We serve breakfast and lunch. We are also a grocery store and deli. 756 S. Stone Avenue 520.623.3888 5PointsTucson.com

ARMITAGE WINE BAR & LOUNGE The setting changes character as the night lengthens, with its Old World ambiance and intimate conversation areas providing a relaxing setting for lunch, dinner, weekend brunch or winding down after the workday. As the evening progresses, the lights dim and the music picks up tempo, transforming into an energized nightspot. 2905 E Skyline Drive 520.682.9740 ArmitageWine.com AUGUSTIN KITCHEN Three-time Iron Chef winner Ryan Clark’s Agustin Kitchen is a twist on new American and classic French cuisine with an emphasis on local ingredients. 100 S. Avenida del Convento 520.398.5382 AgustinKitchen.com BEYOND BREAD Locally-owned and operated since 1998, we offer a variety of hand-crafted breads, delicious sandwiches, house-made soups, fresh salads and decadent pastries all in a comfortable and friendly environment. We make just about everything from scratch, using only the finest ingredients. Serving Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Three locations in Tucson, visit our webpage to find the one closest to you.

BeyondBread.com BISBEE’S TABLE New American Cuisine in the heart of Old Bisbee. Fresh. Local. Original. Seasonally-updated menus. Featuring Arizona wines and a craft cocktail menu, including microbrewed beers. Special menu for gluten free diets. 2 Copper Queen Plaza, Bisbee.

520.432.6788 facebook.com/BisbeesTable BOCA TACOS Tacos with attitude! Happy Hour daily 3pm to 6pm. Come explore with us on Exotic Taco Wednesday. Catering services available. 828 E. Speedway Boulevard. 520.777.8134 BocaTacos.com CAFÉ BOTANICA Recipes from our imagination, fresh produce, committed chefs, and un-adulterated, handmade food have always been the hallmark at Gallery of Food Catering Company. And… well… Café Botánica is our experiment. We are diving in with commitment to sustainable, locally-grown and seriously pleasurable dining. Join us for lunch at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. 2150 N. Alvernon Way 520.326.9686 GalleryofFood.com CAFÉ DESTA Offering authentic Ethiopian cuisine, great food and great coffee in a relaxing environment. 758 South Stone Avenue 520.370.7000 CafeDesta.com CAFÉ PASSÉ Dedicated to serving great coffee and coffee drinks, locally-sourced organic food whenever we possibly can, craft cocktails and an eclectic beer menu.

It is also home to Tucson’s best patio and biergarten with a patio bar, live music four nights a week and local art.

415 N. 4th Avenue 520.624.4411 CafePasse.com CAFÉ ROKA Celebrating 20 years of serving the Bisbee community and Baja Arizona. We create a wonderful dining experience for our guests, providing delicious food, beverages & warm hospitality. Reservations recommended. 35 Main St., Bisbee, 520.432.5153 CafeRoka.com THE CORONET Brasserie-style restaurant, old world rustic cuisine, cute bar, quiet music, big patio, good shade, outstanding coffee. 402 East 9th Street 520.222.9889 COYOTE PAUSE CAFE Comfort food with a Southwestern twist! Cheerful unique atmosphere. Breakfast & lunch daily 730am-230pm, dinner Fridays 4-8pm.

Serving omelets, salads, sandwiches, vegetarian choices, beer, and wine. Located in west Tucson at Cat Mountain Station with shopping, buy-sell-trade fashion, art, antiques. 2740 S. Kinney Road 520.883.7297 CoyotePauseCafe.com

CUP CAFE The signature Hotel Congress restaurant, attracts every walk of life for its eclectic American fare served seven days a week in downtown Tucson.

“The Cup” is an award-winning destination for locals and visitors alike, complete with a full bar, dining room and plaza seating. 311 E. Congress Street 520.798.1618 HotelCongress.com/Cup

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ACACIA Located in the Catalina Foothills, Acacia offers an exquisite panoramic view of the city and features award-winning cuisine by Chef Albert Hall. Enjoy fresh, natural and local ingredients lovingly prepared in the friendliest and most comfortable setting in Tucson. Join us for lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch and Happy Hour daily. 3001 E. Skyline Drive 520.232.0101 AcaciaTucson.com

CUSHING STREET BAR & RESTAURANT Uptown comfort food, garden patios, full bar and live jazz have made this 1860s historic landmark a local favorite for 40 years.

Book an intimate party in a private dining room or a wedding for 100 guests. Family-owned since 1972. 198 W. Cushing St. 520.622.7984 CushingStreet.com DELECTABLES International selections in a casual atmosphere. Breakfast, lunch, dinner & late night. Dogfriendly patio dining, Live music every Friday & Saturday.

Full bar, excellent wine list. Home-made desserts.

Vegan & gluten-free menus. Catering. 533 N. 4th Ave., 520.884.9289 Delectables.com DOWNTOWN KITCHEN + COCKTAILS Innovative farm to table cooking with global influences + killer cocktails from James Beard Award Winner Janos Wilder in an art-filled, urban setting with roomy outdoor patio. Dinner, Happy Hour, Bar Menu seven nights and Late Night Friday and Saturday. 135 S. 6th Avenue 520.623.7700 DowntownKitchen.com ELVIRA’S Established in 1927 in Nogales, Mexico, Elvira’s is now in Tubac, bringing you the best Mexican cuisine and award-winning dishes! 2221 E. Frontage Road A101, Tubac 520.398.9421 ElvirasRestaurant.com

Enjoy beautiful scenery & discover a unique shopping experience featuring fruit, produce, eggs & meat from local Arizona farmers, local raw honey, artisan breads, beautiful artwork, crafts, furniture, & more crafted by our artisans.

EPAZOTE KITCHEN & COCKTAILS A sensory experience for the eyes and the palate featuring locally inspired innovative Southwestern fare and majestic views of Pusch Ridge. Enjoy patio, bar and restaurant dining nightly. 10000 N. Oracle Road 520.544.1705 EpazoteKitchen.com FALORA In the historic Joesler-built Broadway Village, Falora builds pizzas & salads anchored in tradition, with a sharply creative angle. Ingredients are simple, fresh; imported from Italy or brought over by local farms. Lunch/Dinner— charming patio or cozy interior.

At Broadway Village: 3000 East Broadway 520.325.9988 Falora.com FOOD FOR ASCENSION CAFÉ A new paradigm of sustaining community by providing pure food through fair systems that interact together and support a vibrant life, vibrant community, and a vibrant self with the ultimate intention of reconnecting our body mind and soul. Opening Fall 2013. 330 East 7th Street 520.882.4736, FoodForAscension.org

Landscape Design Darbi Davis, MLA, ASLA 520.247.2456

GOODNESS Our goal is to create innovative and healthy food that tastes great. From fresh pressed juices to salads and wraps, something for everyone. 2502 North Campbell Avenue 520.777.4465

RedBarkDesign.com

GOURMET GIRLS GLUTEN FREE BAKERY/BISTRO Everything is gluten free, from the seasonally-inspired menu to the outstanding selection of handcrafted baked goods. Enjoy house specialties all prepared in a dedicated kitchen with no cross-contamination.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner by reservation. 5845 N Oracle Road 520.408.9000 GourmetGirlsGlutenFree.com HUB RESTAURANT & CREAMERY Enjoy American comfort food, downtown made ice cream and over 20 craft beers on draft. Voted Best Casual Dining, Best Ice Cream and Best Late Night-Eats 2013. 266 East Congress Street 520.207.8201, HubDowntown.com KINGFISHER An American bar and grill specializing in regional cuisine from across the U.S. serving several varieties of fin fish, shellfish, and oysters. Great intimate bar with happy hours and late night menu everyday. 2564 E. Grant Road 520.323.7739 KingfisherTucson.com

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surly wench pub full bar | Fresh kitchen burlesque | live music billiards | air hockey | arcade 520-882-0009 www.SurlyWenchPub.com 424 n. 4th avenue tucson, arizona

SILKSCREEN PRINTING STICKERS HATS SHIRTS PATCHES POSTERS «««««« 520.907.9309

TanlinePrinting.com

LA COCINA RESTAURANT CANTINA & COFFEE BAR We care deeply for our community and strive to provide a gathering place for all. Tucson musicians take the stage most days of the week, our Cantina pours local beer, and we support our local farmers and ranchers. 201 N Court Avenue 520.365.3053 LaCocinaTucson.com LA ROCA Enjoy authentic Sonoran cuisine with the freshest ingredients from Mexico. Take in the rich ambiance of the historic Casa Margot. Visit our unique shops below the restaurant to find local art, hand-crafted home goods and beautiful clothing.

LaRocaRestaurant.com for more information & reservations.

LE BUZZ CAFFE A one-of-a-kind hangout popular with cyclists, climbers and locals with great in-house roasted coffee, full espresso bar, sublime baked goods, hearty breakfasts, soups, salads, panini and quiches. The Le Buzz “house” cookie is worth the trip alone. 9121 E. Tanque Verde Road 520.749.3903 LeBuzzCaffe.com MARTIN’S COMIDA CHINGONA Nestled right on Fourth Avenue, Martin’s is fun, casual, and independent.

Martin’s serves traditional Mexican food with awesome interpretations by chef/owner Martin Fontes. 557 N 4th Avenue 520.884.7909 MAYNARDS MARKET & KITCHEN We established the first downtown market, and paired it with a charismatic restaurant and bar. Both are fueled by a passion for celebrating the best of place, product and service. 400 N Toole Avenue 520.545.0577 MaynardsMarket.com MISS SAIGON Each dish is recreated with the same recipes Grandma passed down. This is authentic Vietnamese home style cooking with a warm and inviting ambiance. 47 N 6th Avenue 520.884.4778 MissSaigon-Tucson.com MOTHER HUBBARD’S CAFE Serving contemporary Native American Comfort food. Breakfast & lunch only at the NW corner of Grant and Stone —just minutes from Downtown Tucson. Come taste the love! 7 a.m-2 p.m. daily. 14 W. Grant Road 520 623 7976 OVERLAND TROUT Farm to table restaurant in Sonoita by celebrated chef Greg LaPrad. Dedicated to supporting local and producing quality meals. Lunch, Dinner, Cocktails. 3266 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.9316 OverlandTrout.com PARISH A Southern-fusion gastropub. It draws its inspiration from Louisiana, Texas, Arizona comfort, cuisine, hospitality and community. 6453 N Oracle Road 520.797.1233 TheParishTucson.com PASCO KITCHEN & LOUNGE Urban farm fare is how we describe traditional comfort food and drink, approached with an eye toward modern techniques and an emphasis on fresh, local ingredients. Our menu is infused with the soul & passion that Chef/Owner Ramiro Scavo brings into the kitchen and also into the lounge. Enjoy Chef “Miro’s” unique creations in our comfy neighborhood setting or grab & go from our curbside farm cart. 820 E University Boulevard 520.882.8013 PascoKitchen.com

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PENCA Mexico City Cuisine and international Bar located in the heart of Downtown Tucson. In December 2013, Food & Wine magazine named Penca “one of America’s best bars.” 50 E Broadway, 520.203.7681 PencaRestaurante.com PITA JUNGLE “The Art of Eating Healthy”.

Mediterranean inspired dishes made from scratch daily with only the freshest ingredients. The menu is based on offering a healthful and natural cuisine abounding with vegetarian and vegan options. Catering available.

5340 E. Broadway Boulevard 520-207-6873 and 7090 N. Oracle Road, 520-797-7482 PitaJungle.com PIZZARIA BIANCO Chris Bianco who won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2003, helped spawn a generation of independent and artisanal pizzeria’s, lending his advice, wisdom and food philosophies to dozens of fellow chefs and restaurateurs.

Now he brings his philisophies to Tucson. 272 E Congress Street PizzeriaBianco.com

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PLAYGROUND BAR & LOUNGE Everyone gets picked!

Beer, wine, cocktails and a full menu. Rooftop venue available for events. 278 E Congress Street 520.396.3691 PlaygroundTucson.com PREP & PASTRY We are a “Modern American Eatery,” serving breakfast, lunch, and brunch. All food and drinks are prepared with fresh ingredients and sourced locally.

3073 N. Campbell Avenue 520.326.7737 PrepAndPastry.com PROPER A casual, urban dining establishment serving contemporary, farm to table cuisine. Brunch daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner nightly from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Happy Hour M-F, 3-6 p.m. Late Night, seven days, 10 p.m. to midnight. 300 E. Congress Street 520.396.3357 ProperTucson.com GREEN START JUICE BAR This juice bar at La Entrada de Tubac is locally owned and features organic juices made from the freshest ingredients. We offer super-food smoothies, juices and salads. Gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, vegan. Try our Juice or Raw Food Challenge!

2221 Frontage Road, Ste N-101, Tubac 520.841.0001 REILLY CRAFT PIZZA & DRINK Offering reasonably priced modern Italian food in a casual urban setting.

Our menu features artisan hand-made pizzas, as well as craft drinks. We also offer fresh baked sandwiches for lunch and fresh hand-made pastas for dinner. Check out our brand new beer garden! 101 E Pennington Street 520.882.5550 ReillyPizza.com RENEE’S ORGANIC OVEN Renee’s Organic Oven serves up creative and traditional pizzas + so much more.

We offer a casual space for you to enjoy a menu filled with local and organic ingredients. Everything we do is made possible by our connection to great people and we would love to add you to our mix! Happy Hour, dine-in, take out . Reservations encouraged, but walkins welcome! 7065 E. Tanque Verde Road 520.886.0484 ReneesOrganicOven.com ROCCO’S LITTLE CHICAGO PIZZERIA Real Chicago Pizza, right around the corner! Since 1998 Rocco DiGrazia has been serving perennially award-winning pizzas, Buffalo wings, and chocolate chip cookies on Broadway’s Sunshine Mile. Check our gigantic beer selections, too. You’ll agree it’s a Helluva Pie! 2707 E. Broadway Boulevard 520.321.1860 RoccosLittleChicago.com SANTIAGO’S MEXICAN RESTAURANT Authentic, fresh creative Mexican cuisine in the heart of Old Bisbee.

Fresh fruit margaritas! Designated as one of the top 25 restaurants in Arizona by Arizona Highways Magazine.

1 Howell Avenue at Brewery Gulch, Bisbee. 520.432.1910 Facebook.com/SantiagosMexican SCREAMING BANSHEE PIZZA AND WINE BAR A unique, eclectic restaurant housed in a renovated gas station. We take pride in our hand-crafted woodfired pizza, salads, small plates, calzones and sandwich specials. Featuring a full bar, signature cocktails, local beers, and unique wines. 200 Tombstone Canyon Road, Bisbee. 520.432.1300 ScreamingBansheePizza.net SHELBY’S BISTRO A Southern Arizona restaurant, located in the artistic and historic town of Tubac. It offers Mediterranean style cuisine. Lunch or dinner, it is a highly enjoyable experience! 19 Tubac Road 520.398.8075 ShelbysBistro.com SURLY WENCH Established 2004. Late night kitchen featuring fresh, never frozen beef and homegrown herbs.

Delicious burgers, tacos and more. Full bar, Black Cherry Burlesque, live music, djs, billiards, air hockey, arcade, foosball, darts. Daily happy hour/ nightly drink specials.

424 N 4th Avenue 520.882.0009 SurlyWench.com

THUY’S NOODLE SHOP Authentic, from-scratch Vietnamese food, specializing in pho, a noodle soup Beef or vegan. #9 Naco Rd., Bisbee, 520.366.4479 TIA NITA’S CANTINA Enjoy your favorite drinks in postmodern bordertown surroundings (in Sonoita). Full bar opens at 2pm daily, serving Barrio beers on tap. Italian kitchen open for dinner nightly, serving fresh homemade pizza, wings, sandwiches and more. Closed Tuesdays.

3119 S HWY 83, Sonoita 520.455.0500 TUCSON TAMALE COMPANY More than 30 different kinds of incredible tamales. Mild to spicy, Meaty to Vegan to sweet, we have just about any kind of tamale you can think of and then some! Two locations to serve you. 520.305.4760 TucsonTamale.com WILDFLOWER AMERICAN CUISINE This award-winning restaurant sets the standard for innovative, classic cuisine. With European and Asian in uences, the New American menu changes seasonally.

Modern meets shabby-chic in the colorful sky-lit dining room; or choose to dine in the climate controlled patio.

520.219.4230 FoxRestaurantConcepts.com WHYLD ASS COFFEE SHOP An organic, plant-based, culture experience. We feature “more than fair trade” coffee. Our restaurant offers healthy, tasty vegan alternatives that are made with only the finest organic ingredients, many locally sourced. Live music and poetry on weekends. 54 Brewery Avenue, Bisbee 520.353.4004 WILKO A modern gastropub featuring inventive classic American comfort food in the Main Gate district at Park and University. Everything on our menu is prepared on site and whenever possible we use local and organic ingredients. We have more than 30 wines by the glass, a craft cocktail bar, 11 quality brews on tap, and an extensive tasting menu featuring the best artisan cheeses and salume available from small local and regional producers. 520.792.6684 BarWilko.com WISDOM’S CAFE Your neighborhood restaurant for more than 69 years. Let our family serve your family mouth-watering Mexican food that is lovingly prepared and steeped in tradition. Owned and operated by four generations of the Wisdom family. 1931 E. Frontage Rd., Tumacacori 520.398.2397 WisdomsCafe.com

ZONA 78 Tucson’s premier destination for artisan pizza, Italian specialties, and an eclectic selection of wines, spirits, and beers. Zona 78 sources many ingredients locally and has an in-house charcuterie. Two locations: 78 W. River Rd., and 7301 E. Tanque Verde Rd. Zona78.com

COPENHAGEN IMPORTS Committed to providing the highest quality service to our customers. Come in and experience our comfortable showroom with exciting displays and sales consultants who are truly interested in your furniture needs. 3660 E. Fort Lowell 520-795-0316

Tucson's Best Mobile Bistro We cater wedding, holiday party, picnics and office lunches

find us on facebook!

COWGIRL FLAIR Sonoita’s local “Gussy’d Up Outfitters” providing locals and tourists a variety of contemporary western wear, boots, jewelry, and home décor with a unique style at 3244 HWY 82 #5 in Sonoita, Arizona Wednesday through Sunday 11am to 5pm. 3244 HWY 82, Sonoita CowGirlFlairSonoita.com DESERT LEGACY GALLERY Offering Southwestern gifts and accessories. We also have a frame shop and an interior design service. If you like beautiful Native American and contemporary Southwest jewelry, saddle up your horse and ride on in! 3266 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.0555 DESERT VINTAGE We’ve come to be known as a great source for excellent, one-of-a-kind vintage pieces of quality and flair. We buy men’s and women’s vintage clothing and accessories seven days a week. Come by and check us out! 636 N. 4th Avenue 520.620.1570 ShopDesertVintage.com

Learning. Growing. Eating.

520.375.6050 · facebook.com/NogalesMercado

HEART OF GOLD Offers true antiques(over 100 yrs old) and consignments from local estates. The owner is a certified appraiser and can help with consignment services, an estate sale, or appraisals of your treasures.

P O Box 1273 Sonoita 520-394-0199 or cell 520-240-4490 HOW SWEET IT WAS Locally-owned since 1974, we specialize in vintage fashion from the 1880s-1980s. We also buy vintage everyday. No appointment necessary.

419 N. 4th Avenue 520.623.9854 MAST TUCSON A local lifestyle boutique. Specializing in handmade jewelry, leather goods, accessories, home goods & select furnishings. The three co-owners create the lion’s share of the stock, artfully curating an enticing selection from fellow designers and artisans. At Mercado San Agustin, 100 South Avenida Del Convento 520.495.5920 ILoveMast.com MERCADO SAN AGUSTIN Tucson’s first and only Public Market hosting to several locally-owned shops, eateries and incredible experiences. Our courtyard is home to the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market and many other special events. Open seven days a week with Farmers’ Market on Thursdays from 4-7 p.m. 100 S. Avenida del Convento 520.461.1110 MercadoSanAgustin.com PICÁNTE A treasure trove of traditional handmade crafts from Mexico, Guatemala and Latin America.

Artisan works include colorful ceramics, tin objects, carved wood santos, and fine silver jewelry. There is an incredible collection of textiles, huipils, fabric by the yard, hand-embroidered blouses and dresses, and oilcloth. 2932 E Broadway Boulevard 520.320.5699 PicanteTucson.com POP-CYCLE A gift shop devoted to handmade items produced from recycled, reclaimed and sustainable materials. The products are fun and whimsical, with a little something for everyone. Many items are produced locally, some by the store owners. 422 N. 4th Avenue 520.622.3297 PopCycleShop.com

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WISDOM’S DOS Street Tacos, Sonoran Dogs, Sliders, Nachos, Burritos, Hummus, Soup, Salads, Cheese Crisps and homemade Ice Cream await you when you want a quick, delicious lunch or want to stop in for drinks and apps BEFORE dinner. 4 Plaza Rd., Suite 102, Tubac 520.216.7664 WisdomCafe.com/dos

BUFFALO EXCHANGE We buy, sell, and trade designer wear, basics, vintage, and one-of-a-kind items. You can receive cash or trade for clothing on the spot! We’re a family operated company that works to sustain the environment by recycling clothing. 2001 E. Speedway Blvd. (Campus) 520.795.0508 & 6212 E. Speedway Blvd.

(East Side) 520.885.8392 BuffaloExchange.com

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TAVOLINO RISTORANTE ITALIANO Specializing in simple, elegant food, Tavolino’s Northern Italian cuisine features: fresh salads, homemade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, succulent rotisserie meats and luscious desserts.

Lunch: Mon-Sat 11 a.m.-3 p.m., Dinner: 5:00-10 p.m. (11 p.m. Thu-Sat), Happy Hour Mon-Sat 3-6 p.m. and 9-11 p.m. 2890 E. Skyline Dr. 520.531.1913 TavolinoRistorante.com

RETAIL SHOPS & PLAZAS ANGEL WINGS THRIFT & GIFT SHOP Offering a “boutique” shopping experience with an ever changing and wide variety of inventory. All proceeds go to Our Lady of the Angels Mission Catholic Church, newly built, in Sonoita. 22 Los Encinos Road.

3101 N. Swan Rd Tucson, AZ 85712 (520) 261-4635

glowskincare-n-lashes.skincaretherapy.net

edible

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TASTEFUL KITCHEN Modern vegetarian cuisine creatively prepared and farm-to-table fresh. We showcase regional heritage foods infused with Southwestern sauces and flavorings. Everything from scratch using whole foods, local organic when available, and few processed ingredients. Dine in, take out, weekly meals to-go, boutique catering, cooking classes, private function room. Dinner is served Tue-Sat 5 p.m.-9 p.m.

Free parking. Reservations recommended. 722 N. Stone Avenue 520.250.9600 TheTastefulKitchen.com

Grammy’s

ARTISAN JAMS, JELLIES, PICKLES AND MUSTARDS, HEIRLOOM TOMATOES located in Cochise Arizona

RUSTIC CANDLE COMPANY Locally-owned and operated.Our candles are hand poured on site. All styles, sizes & fragrances. Enjoy a fabulous selection of home decor, gift, incense, soap & much more! 324 N. 4th Avenue 520.623.2880 RusticCandle.net STAGECOACH BAGS Handmade, one of a kind, cowboy boot purses made from authentic cowboy boots. Custom orders available. Unique styles for all that love the look of bling and western flair. Located in Cowgirl Country.

PO Box 393, Sonoita 480.265.5312 StageCoachBags.com SWEET POPPY A one of a kind along with a unique selection of furniture, accessories, and much more.

Located in the Mercado de Baca in Tubac next to Shelby’s Bistro. 19 Tubac Rd, Tubac (520) 398-2805 SweetPoppy.webs.com SWEET RIDE GIFTS & ACCESSORIES We carry a variety of Sonoita tees for men women and kids. Old guys Rule Tees, Hats and gift Items, Beautiful Bling Belts

by Nocona and Jewelry for ladies. Also motorcycle related gift items for our biker enthusiasts. Stop in and see Valorie, she will be glad you did. 3244 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.4717

Grammys.AZ Always a great place to find Briggs and Eggers organic fruit.

BRING YOUR KIDS BY FOR A FREE APPLE!

Find us at all Heirloom Farmers’ Markets and the Sierra Vista Farmers’ Market

TUCSON THRIFT SHOP Tucson’s unique vintage and costume-wear resource for the fun side of life!

Established in 1979, we have evolved with the 4th Avenue community into a blend of old and new. A marketplace for street-wear and theme party needs.

Hours: M-Th: 10-8, F-Sat: 10-9, Sun: 12-6.

319 N. 4th Avenue 520.623.8736 TUMACACORI MESQUITE SAWMILL A leader in raw and finished mesquite materials. From lumber, slabs, posts, to exotic burls and burl slabs, The Sawmill has an ever changing selection. 2007 E. Frontage Road 520.398.9356 Tumacacori MesquiteDesign.com YIKES TOYS! A cornucopia for the curious! Enchanting books, wacky wonders and old-school novelties. Brainbuilding science, kooky kitsch and fantastic fun. We offer amazing toys and gifts for all ages. Specializing in Pop Culture & Quirky Fun. 2930 East Broadway Boulevard 520.320.5669 YikesToys.com SCHOOLS GREEN FIELDS COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL Challenge.

Inquiry. Balance. The foundations of a Green Fields education. From Kindergarten to Commencement, students are encouraged to develop their interests in Academics, Fine Arts, Sports, and more. Class sizes are small and students receive individual attention. 6000 N. Camino de la Tierra 520.297.2288 GreenFields.org KINO SCHOOL Where students are given the responsibility and freedom that are the essence of a democratic society. Students of all abilities succeed where learning, creativity, respect for others, and community thrives. 6625 N. First Avenue 520.297.7278 KinoSchool.org

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SKY ISLAND HIGH SCHOOL A tuition FREE Public High School Now Enrolling Grades 9-12. Our integrated curriculum is guided by layers of this regional ecosystem - its history, cultures, arts, archeologies, & natural patterns - and linked to the larger world. 6000 E 14th Street 520.382.9210 SkyIslands.org ST. GREGORY COLLEGE PREPARATORY SCHOOL Inspired learning—Beyond strong academics. St. Gregory develops inspired students who are encouraged to pursue their individual passion and develop a love for learning. Our students are well prepared to excel in college and go on to create impactful and fulfilling lives.

3231 N. Craycroft Road, 520.327.6395 StGregorySchool.org

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TUCSON WALDORF SCHOOL Tucson Waldorf School is located in the scenic Binghampton Rural Historic Landscape and is home to the River Road Gardens CSA farm. Children from Parent-Child Classes through 8th Grade experience an engaging education which cultivates joy and excellence in learning. The arts are integrated throughout a classical curriculum and handson work. Weekly tours available.520.529.1032 Tucson Waldorf.org SERVICES DNA PERSONAL TRAINING/CROSSFIT Science-Based Fitness and Nutrition - CrossFit - Kettlebells. Wise training for wise people. 186 E Broadway Boulevard 520.327.0600 DNAPersonalTraining.com ORDINARY BIKE SHOP Servicing bikes of all sorts and selling new and used bikes and parts. “Life is like riding a bicycle—in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein. 311 E 7th Street 520.622.6488 OrdinaryBikeShop.com SOLAR ENERGY SERVICES & PRODUCTS SOUTHWEST SOLAR Providing the highest quality evaporative cooling products, customer service, and passive heating/cooling techniques; while being a model business for environmentally conscious and safe business practices and ethics through our use of renewable and sustainable energy sources and green building technology. 5085 S. Melpomene Way 520.885.7925 Southwest-Solar.com TECHNICIANS FOR SUSTAINABILITY A Tucson based, locally-owned, mission-driven company specializing in renewable energy and sustainable technologies for residential and commercial settings, including solar electric (PV) and solar hot water. 520.740.0736 TFSSolar.com TRAVEL & TOURISM SILVER CITY Be here for lunch—a three hour drive from Tucson. Nationally recognized cuisine, historic downtown district, arts, Gila National Forest, WNMU University, fresh air, clear skies, mild climate, great festivals, a top-ten destination, quaint and quirky!

575.538.5555 SilverCityTourism.org VENUES, THEATRES & ENTERTAINMENT BISBEE ROYALE A cultural events venue screening new, classic and foreign films & hosting wine tastings, poetry, flamenco concerts & more! 94 Main Street, Bisbee BisbeeRoyale.com RIALTO THEATRE Recognized by the Tucson Weekly as the Best Indoor Venue for 9 year running, the nonprofit Rialto Theatre is the best place to see live music in Tucson, bar none. 318 E Congress Street 520.740.1000 RialtoTheatre.com LOFT CINEMA A local nonprofit cinema dedicated to creating community through film, honoring the vision of filmmakers, promoting the appreciation and understanding of the art of film. Check out the Loft Cinema Farmers’ Market on Saturdays from 8 a.m.12 noon on the patio. 3233 East Speedway Boulevard 520.795.7777 LoftCinema.com

Currently showing on PBS Television Check Your Local Listings or go to ediblefeast.com

www.ediblecommunities.com

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presents

LAST BITE

Dream Renewed

by Petey Mesquitey

M

20 YEARS AGO , Ms. Mesquitey and I started contemplating a move from our wonderful little homestead northwest of Tucson. On an acre and a half with a shared domestic well, we gardened, raised goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys, dogs, cats, and a couple of daughters as well. The beautiful desert that surrounded us was destined to become a development called Ironwood Meadows, although the ironwoods had been salvaged and moved to another subdivision eight miles to the west. Enough! We were so outta there.

We started looking for a house and land in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County. I had big dreams. I had already spent 15 years working in nurseries and thought it would be very cool to start a wholesale nursery that specialized in upland native species. I wanted a lot of land and an agricultural well that pumped hundreds of gallons of water a minute. Oh yeah.

So we searched the flat scruffy agricultural areas of that valley for that dream. One day our hunt took us out of the Sulphur Springs Valley and close to the Chiricahua Mountains where we followed real estate signs off the blacktop highway, down a dirt road, across a creek, arriving at a closed gate with a For Sale sign attached. Beyond the gate we could see a mobile home, a large metal barn, and a domestic well. I turned to Ms. Mesquitey and said, “I think we can live with 35 gallons a minute.”

We sold our home in the Sonoran Desert and with the help of many friends, we moved to the desert grassland to live in a 1991 Marlette near the banks of the Ol’ Guajolote. And we did start a little nursery that produced native seedlings for other nurseries or agencies doing reclamation. We called our place Spadefoot and of course our slogan had to be, “We toad you to grow native.”

Meanwhile, I was still commuting to Tucson to help make ends meet. I was spending days away from the dream. But then, several years ago, two serendipitous things occurred within weeks of one another. I got a part-time job at a large wholesale nursery 25 miles from home, and our friend Valerie McCaffrey, mother of the Bisbee Farmers’ Market, told me that I should OR E THAN

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start offering Spadefoot’s native plants at the market. “Call the manager, Laura Smith, and set it up” she said. “Just do it. You’ll love it.”

I did and I do. Now on Friday afternoons, you’ll find me loading up our old pickup with homegrown native plants. Early on Saturday mornings, we rumble the 50 miles and five stop signs to the Bisbee Farmers’ Market to set up and sell. And this is where I get to chat to people about my passion. “These Emory oaks have the most edible acorns of the borderlands.” Or: “Oh my, let me tell you about this senna and how the bees that pollinate it visit your garden as well.”

But listen, passion flows from all the vendors. Local meat, local veggies, local honey, local soap, local bread, local crazy everything that comes with much chatter and you hear, “Hey, our garlic is in and Emma made some tortillas.” “Try a taste of this new cheese.”

“We have goat chorizo today.”

Interesting folks come from all over to shop and jabber at the market.

Leashed dogs and unleashed children scamper through the park. For us it’s a dream renewed. That’s it! That’s what Ms. Mesquitey and I found at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market, a dream renewed. So, I tell anyone who will listen: You can get everything you need at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market.

I mean, even all the children know and the dogs of Bisbee bark it: you can get everything you need at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market.

Oh, there are lots of interesting people, and yes, it’s true, there are men that wear dresses, and sometimes the women do, too.

Horticulture, agriculture, and permaculture can be found, and a lot of folks with no culture at all are always hanging around.

So ride your bike, or drive your car and find a place to park it, ‘cause you can get everything you need at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market.

Even all the children know and the dogs of Bisbee bark it, You can get everything you need at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market.

Yeah, even all the children know and the dogs of Bisbee bark it, Bow wow, bow wow, bow wow wow wow, at the Bisbee Farmers’ Market.

Petey Mesquitey’s radio show, “Growing Native,” heard on KXCI, has celebrated the beauty of Baja Arizona for more than 22 years.