Edible Baja Arizona - September/October 2015

edible

September/October 2015 • Issue No. 14 • $4.99

BAJA ARIZONA

BREAD OF THE DEAD No. 14 September/October 2015

The Food of Día de Los Muertos Ancestral Eats • Best Day Ever • Not Slow Food

4  September /October 2015

Features

Contents

6 COYOTE TALKING

8 ONLINE What’s happening at EdibleBajaArizona.com?

10 EDITORIAL An open letter to Governor Ducey.

12 VOICES We asked students and faculty in Pima Community College’s Culinary Arts program: What dish represents Baja Arizona to you?

20 GLEANINGS Good Day Café; Grammy’s Garden; Zinman’s Food Shop.

28 BAJA EATS 37 THE PLATE

39 KIDS’ MENU 45 EDIBLE HOMESTEAD Companion planting; worm composting; Italian 101.

64 FARM REPORT 126 WHAT THE ANCESTORS ATE Recreating prehistoric food in Baja Arizona from hidden stories in ancient fragments.

70 IN THE BUSINESS At Feast, chef and owner Doug Levy changes his menu monthly, keeping the food fresh and the kitchen creative.

76 LOCAL Could you eat local food–and only local food–for 30 days?

82 YOUTH Taylor Moore’s Best Day Ever project gets kids into the garden.

94 TABLE After 93 years serving their famous fresh green-corn tamales, Lerua’s is where the community comes to eat, celebrate, and connect.

106 ARTISAN From Patagonia to St. David, southern Arizona cooks are bringing communities together for a plate of food—and a side of faith.

118 PROFILE Ranked No. 8 in the world for competitive eating, Tucson’s Michelle “Cardboard Shell” Lesco is inhaling hot dogs and taking names.

160 ESSAY Photography by Adela Licona; words by Alison Hawthorne Deming, Emma Perez, and Manuel Muñoz.

166 BUZZ Demand is heating up at Sentinel Peak Brewing Company.

172 BOOZE NEWS All the news that’s fit to drink.

146 DEATH BECOMES US Day of the Dead pays homage to the deceased in jubilant fashion, with bread of the dead, sugar skulls, and other favorite dishes.

182 INK Book reviews: Don’t Say A Word, Mama; My Tata’s Remedies; four kids’ books by Jorge Argueta.

186 LAST BITE Notes on beginning an urban farm in the Santa Cruz River Valley.

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“YOU ARE THE SKY. EVERYTHING ELSE–IT’S JUST THE WEATHER.” — PEMA CHÖDRÖN

COYOTE TALKING

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of Edible Baja Arizona left in early July, it just so happened that a complete restructuring of our advertising sales department and the business side of the company was already in the works.

It was time to clear out the garden, add compost to the beds, and plant some new seeds. It’s been exciting to work with Monica Pracko, our favorite consultant of all time, who has spent the last seven weeks assisting in restructuring the company while simultaneously being instrumental in helping us create this very issue (there is always a deadline, regardless of anything else going on). Monica spent nearly ten years at the Tucson Weekly, most recently as its advertising sales director, and has brought a wealth of expertise and guidance to our project.

We hope she can maintain a connection with us as a coach and resource. Thank you, Monica!

And as part of the ongoing transition, we are pleased to introduce two new members of the Edible Baja Arizona team: Johnny Smith, our advertising sales consultant and Kate Kretschmann, our business coordinator. Johnny will be out in the field, working with existing and new advertising partners to help them create successful marketing programs. Kate will be in the office every day, providing top-notch service to our advertising partners, handling subscriptions, and taking care of myriad office tasks. We look forward to their contributions.

Johnny Smith’s first job, nearly 30 years ago, was as a busboy at the well-loved Conti’s Italian restaurant on Tucson’s Northwest side (ask him to tell you about their frequent guest, “Uncle Joe” Bonanno). He’s held many positions in Tucson’s restaurant industry, including managing the legendary Café Terra Cotta in its heyday and working most recently as a representative for Alliance Beverage. Trained as a sommelier and a certified Cicerone (an expert in beer), Johnny’s love of the food and beverage industry runs deep. Raised by an Irish farmer from Georgia and a Mexican-born mother, Johnny’s comfort foods run the gamut. Pig’s feet and Oxtail are as favored as caviar and porterhouse. He shares his passion for Baja Arizona and its food and drink with his wife, Marcia.

Kate Kretschmann is a Michigan transplant with an editorial background in encyclopedia publishing and online advertising, having worked as an editor, writer, researcher, and project coordinator. After years of traveling both domestically and around the world, she stopped

by Tucson in 2012 to help family members open a new restaurant, fell in love with the place, and has refused to leave ever since.

Read a Q&A with Kate and Johnny at EdibleBajaArizona.com. hen two staff members

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that precedes the autumn equinox, we delve into death and ancient ancestors through the lens of food and tradition.

Artist and writer Paul Mirocha, with the help of his daughter Anna Mirocha, searches for the tastes and textures of the foods that would have been eaten by the Hohokam, the people who lived and farmed along the Santa Cruz River for thousands of years and who are regarded as ancestors by the Tohono O’odham.

The archaeological record is full of clues, and Paul created some fantastic artwork to accompany the quest for ancient menus items.

“The Mexican is … familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love,” wrote Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude. And no tradition better exemplifies that sentiment than Dia de los Muertos—the Day of Dead—celebrated on November 1 and 2. Lourdes Medrano writes about the foods and dishes that have become an essential part of the tradition, including pan de muerto (bread of the dead), sugar skulls, tamales, rice, sweet pumpkin and mole. It’s a celebration that connects us in a special way with loved ones who are no longer with us.

The prose and poetry of Alison Hawthorne Deming, Manuel Muñoz, and Emma Perez join Adela Licona’s images of life in the Sonoran Desert.

Autumn Giles talks with Mike Hultquist, Jr. and Sr., to reminisce about the history of Lerua’s famous green corn tamales. And Lisa O’Neill introduces us to the kids of the Best Day Ever gardening project, who are taking their gardening skills to the market, proving you can have kale with a side of cute.

As always, there’s much, much more to discover in this issue. We’ll see you around the table. ¡Salud! n this issue

—Douglas Biggers, editor and publisher

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Editor and Publisher Douglas Biggers Managing Editor Megan Kimble Art Director

Steve McMackin

Digital Content Manager Kate Selby Senior Contributing Editor Gary Paul Nabhan Designers

Lyric Peate, Sally Brooks, Bridget Shanahan

Copy Editor

Ford Burkhart

Proofreader

Charity Whiting

Consultant

Monica Pracko

Advertising Consultants

Dhyana Wasson, Kenny Stewart

Contributors

Amy Belk, James Bourland, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Bryan Eichhorst, Autumn Giles, Renata Gonzalez, Laura Greenberg, Sara Jones, Molly Kincaid, Lourdes Medrano, Anna Mirocha, Paul Mirocha, Manuel Muñoz, Lisa O’Neill, Emma Perez, Logan Phillips, Jock Soper, Haile Thomas, Shelby Thompson, Debbie Weingarten

Photographers & Artists

Jackie Alpers, Casia and Eric Fletcher, Tim Fuller, Katya Granger, Liora K, Isadora Lassance, Elijah LeComte, Adela C. Licona, Danny Martin, Steven Meckler, Paul Mirocha, Taylor Noel, Bridget Shanahan, Jeff Smith, Shelby Thompson

Distribution Royce Davenport, Mel Meijas, Shiloh Thread-Waist Walkosak, Steve and Anne Bell Anderson

On the cover: Day of the Dead sugar skull designed by Bisbee

baker and artisan, Juliette Beaumont.

Photo by Steven Meckler

Above: Barrel cactus fruit. Photo by Adela Licona

We’d love to hear from you.

307 S. Convent Ave., Barrio Viejo Tucson, Arizona 85701 520.373.5196 info@edibleBajaArizona.com EdibleBajaArizona.com

Say hello on social media facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona youtube.com/EdibleBajaArizona twitter.com/EdibleBajaAZ flickr.com/ediblebajaarizona instagram.com/ediblebajaaz pinterest.com/edibleba

V olume 3, I ssue 2.

Edible Baja Arizona (ISSN 2374-345X) is published six times annually

by Coyote Talking, LLC. Subscriptions are available for $36 annually by phone or at EdibleBajaArizona.com. Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without the express written permission of the publisher. Member of the Association of Edible Publishers (AEP).

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Join the Conversation Edible Baja Arizona is always serving up fresh content online! Visit EdibleBajaArizona.com.

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hanks to our wonderful digital content manager, Kate Selby, we have been doing some new and interesting things at EdibleBajaArizona.com! Here are just a few of the highlights.

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ur Instagram account has been bursting with photos from places we visit, restaurants we enjoy, gardens we grow, and behind-the-scenes looks at how we make the magazine.

(Left) Sandwich from new downtown grocery Johnny Gibson’s.

(Right) Behind the scenes peek at the making of Issue 14.

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Go to EdibleBajaArizona.com/newsletter to sign up!

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ocaditos is a weekly newsletter that packs the flavor of Edible Baja Arizona’s online offerings into tasty little bites. It offers: • A weekly upcoming local event roundup.

• The best of the eBA blog and social media.

• Great giveaways for subscribers, like free movie tickets to the Loft, and gift certificates to delicious local restaurants.

• Exclusive original recipes, and more!

and Edible Baja Arizona digital content manager, Kate Selby, is going local in a big way: for 30 days, she will attempt to eat nothing but locally sourced food. Even her salt will come from the Baja Arizona region! Local Girl Goes Local officially kicks off on Sunday, September 13, but Kate’s already posting resource guides and useful tips for eating local to the LGGL Tumblr. From now until October 10, tune in for daily vlogs (video logs), twice-weekly blog posts, weekly challenges, seasonal recipes made with local ingredients, and more. Follow along as Kate learns just what it takes to eat local in today’s globalized food system: LocalGirlGoesLocal.tumblr.com ocal gir l

facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona youtube.com/EdibleBajaArizona twitter.com/EdibleBajaAZ instagram.com/ediblebajaaz pinterest.com/edibleba

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An Open Letter to Governor Ducey Dear Governor Ducey,

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the 2016 state budget into law this spring, many Arizonans were unlikely to understand how your decisions might harm their own future health. They did not fathom that your budget-cutting measures are a deferred maintenance scheme that fails to deal with costly public health issues—and fails to adequately support the 600,000 Arizonans who suffer from diabetes today, or the 1.2 million people plagued by obesity.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that you cut from hunger relief, Medicaid, nutrition education, and disease-prevention programs in the state will not “save” the taxpayers anything. These cuts will only exacerbate systemic problems and increase future costs, especially to tribal communities and Hispanic and African Americans who are particularly susceptible to these diseases in our state.

Let us explain how this is a food justice issue. The number of children living in persistent poverty in Arizona has increased 37 percent since 1990.

And yet, not only did you cut $9 million out of relief programs that might help these children, you also limited the number of years that their parents could draw upon such programs. This gives many poverty-stricken families no other option than buying cheap foods with empty calories—and often these foods have so little nutritional value that they only increase the frequency of obesity and diabetes. It’s a vicious cycle.

You also made significant cuts to Medicaid that will limit access for our elderly citizens to such programs. You derailed the transportation services that formerly brought them into health clinics that offered guidance on eating well and preventing diseases. And while across the country most state budgets now include a line item for diabetes education and prevention, Arizona’s budget does not.

In 2009, the legislature cut $59 million from the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension budget, adversely affecting farmers, tribal herders, urban gardeners, and 4-H programs for kids. Now you have cut an additional $109 million from the budgets of the three state universities.

Their programs have been responsible for much of the research and training in nutrition, disease prevention, and medical care in our state.

You also axed the budgets of our community colleges, which train many culinary professionals, dieticians, and nutrition counselors who promote healthy eating practices. Per student, Arizona’s colleges have suffered a loss of funding greater than that of any other state, and our college graduation rates are now the lowest in the nation.

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hen you signed

These “penny-wise and pound-foolish” policies have contributed to a public health crisis with human and economic costs of epic proportions.

By 2012, the medical treatment costs for Illustration by Rand Carlson the 470,000 Arizonans with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes had already reached $4.76 billion a year. That bill was higher than the $4 billion that Arizona farmers and ranchers received for growing all the food and fiber produced in our state the same year.

But since that study was done, the number of Arizonans given a diagnosis of diabetes has been increasing by 11 percent every two years. What does that mean for our future?

By 2017, the cost of treating all Arizonans with diabetes will approach $5.8 billion a year. Two-thirds of this bill for diabetes care will need to be covered by state and federal budgets—which is to say, by taxpayers.

If diabetes goes unchecked, every year $3.6 billion of our taxes will go to care for Arizonans who suffer from this nutrition-related disease. It will be the ultimate price we pay for the state’s deferred-maintenance plan, making the “money saved” by the new state budget as ephemeral as an ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day.

Isn’t it time to redirect Arizona agriculture so more of the healthy food our farmers produce becomes accessible to the poor, the elderly, and the youth of our state who need it the most? Isn’t it also time to discuss whether our precious water would be better used to grow nutritious food crops for state residents whose health is at risk than to grow cotton and other commodities to be shipped overseas?

Governor Ducey, we invite you to tell our readers and our state’s taxpayers what your next budget will do to stem the tide of Arizona’s rising public health crisis. ✜ We encourage all readers who are eager for a response from the Governor’s office to call the Governor’s office at 520.628.6580 or comment on Twitter @dougducey.

—The Edible Baja Arizona Editorial Staff

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VOICES

We asked students and faculty in Pima Community College’s Culinary Arts program: What dish represents Baja Arizona to you?

Photography by Casia and Eric Fletcher

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our recipes and menu based on the local and indigenous crops growing in our Pima Community College organic garden that we feel reflect Baja Arizona’s flavors and history. The items growing in the garden right now that directed us into preparing these recipes e c r e at e d

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are Tohono O’odham squash, tomatoes, cilantro, I’itoi onions, chiltepin, green chiles, jalapeños, amaranth, cabbage, and tepary beans from a previous harvest. Although we do not currently have a fig tree, we were able to source some locally grown figs from Mission Garden for our fig and almond tart.

Arizona Tepary Ranch Beans Ingredients:

1 pound uncooked, dried tepary beans ½ pound bacon, diced 1½ pounds canned diced or fresh tomatoes 1½ onions, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced ¼ pound diced green chiles 1 teaspoon chile powder ½ teaspoon dried oregano ¼ teaspoon ground cumin Salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Sort beans, discarding any foreign material. Soak overnight. Place beans in a large stockpot. Add enough water to cover beans by 2 inches. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Boil 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let soak, covered, 1 hour. Drain. Add water and simmer, partially covered, for 1 hour.

Cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Add bacon and the drippings to beans. Add tomatoes with juice to beans. Add onions, garlic, chiles, chile powder, dried oregano, and cumin. Simmer, partially cooked, 3 hours or until beans are very tender. After 3 hours, the beans should have a little liquid. If they become too dry, add more water. If beans have too much liquid, uncover and boil over medium heat, stirring frequently. Season with salt to taste. Garnish with fresh oregano if desired. Cut lime into wedges; pass to the table to squeeze over each serving. Serves 6-8.

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Roasted Tohono O’odham Squash, Amaranth, and I’itoi Salsa Tacos Ingredients:

Squash: 1-2 Tohono O’odham squash, each ½ - ¾ inch cubed 24 I’itoi onions, sliced ¼ cup olive oil 1½ tablespoons cumin Salsa: 6 chiltepin, crushed 4 cups fresh tomatoes 16 I’itoi onions ½ cup cilantro 2-3 cloves garlic ¼ cup olive oil Juice from 2 limes Amaranth: 1¼ cup amaranth grain ½ cup scallions, chopped 1 cup fresh cilantro ½ cup lime juice ¼ cup olive oil 2 garlic cloves, pressed Tacos: 32 corn tortillas 1 pound Mexican goat cheese, crumbled Sides: Chopped cilantro, diced tomatoes, lime wedges, sour cream or Greek yogurt

Directions: Preheat oven to 375˚. Cut squash into ½ - ¾-inch cubes. Thinly slice onions. Toss with olive oil and cumin. Roast until tender, 20-30 minutes, depending on size of cubed squash. While squash cooks, cook amaranth.Combine seeds with 2 ½ cups water in a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until grains are fluffy and water is absorbed.

To make salsa, blend ingredients together. Prepare sides. Heat tortillas and layer each with amaranth, squash, and salsa. Top with cilantro, tomatoes, a squeeze of lime juice, and sour cream or Greek yogurt. Serves 16.

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Red Cabbage Slaw for Tacos: Dressing: ¼ cup lemon juice ¼ cup orange juice 2 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 tablespoon clover honey ¼ cup freshly chopped basil leaves Salt and freshly ground black pepper ½ cup canola oil

Slaw: 2 cups napa cabbage, finely shredded 1 large carrot, finely shredded ¼-⅓ head green cabbage, finely shredded 2 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro 1 green onion, minced 1 teaspoon chopped jalapeño or 1 teaspoon serrano chile, to taste 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice ½ teaspoon cumin seeds or ¼ teaspoon ground cumin Salt and pepper, to taste

Mission Fig and Almond Tart Ingredients:

Crust: 1½ cups all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons sugar, plus 1 tablespoon 1 lemon, zested ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt 10 tablespoons (1¼ sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into ½-inch pieces 3 tablespoons ice water

Filling: 3½ ounces almond paste, at room temperature, cut into ½-inch pieces 1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, at room temperature 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 tablespoon honey 6 large or 12 small fresh figs, sliced, stems removed; or 20 dried figs, reconstituted ¼ cup apricot jam

Directions: Prepare crust. Fill crust and fold like a galette.

Top with jam. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.

Oatmeal-Mesquite Raisin Cookies ½ cup room-temperature butter ½ cup vegetable shortening 1½ cups brown sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 large eggs 3 cups old fashioned oats 1 cup all purpose flour ½ cup mesquite flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup raisins

Directions: Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, combine butter, shortening, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and cream together.

Beat with electric mixer until combined. Mix oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add to the wet mixture and stir until combined.

Add raisins. Use a tablespoon to measure batter and place onto an ungreased baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove and let cool on a cooling rack. ✜ Faculty: (From left) Darryl Wong, culinary faculty, Pima Community College Desert Vista Campus; Elizabeth Mikesell, Center for Training and Development chef instructor, Pima Community College Desert Vista Campus; Barry Infuso, lead faculty, Pima Community College Desert Vista Campus Students: (From top left) Jamaal Henderson, Casandra Suarez, Sammie Cota, Arnette Jones, Guadalupe Thomas, Adan Salazar Pima Community College Desert Vista campus offers two culinary curriculums. Visit Pima.edu to learn more.

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The Tucson Historic Warehouse Arts District is North of the railroad tracks, bounded by 4th Avenue on the east, Stone on the west, & 6th Street to the north.

4th Ave.

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The district was created to be a center for incubation, production, and exhibition of the arts with artists at its heart. Through the renovation of historic buildings with in the district, self-sustaining affordable arts spaces can contribute to the economic and social growth of the city.

gleanings

Matching Tim Lowery’s love of community is his interest in experimenting with flavor combinations.

A Passion for People

Everyone gets another chance at Good Day Café.

By Kate Selby | Photography by Taylor Noel

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an unassuming strip mall just east of Craycroft on Speedway, at Good Day Café, the staff wear tuxedo T-shirts and friendly smiles. Tim Lowery opened the café in 2013 with the help of his daughter, Karen McKissick, both on a mission to create a restaurant where everything is homemade and priced right. “Breakfast shouldn’t cost you what you spend for dinner,” Lowery says, noting that it’s one of the few places in town where customers can still buy a $1.99 breakfast meal any time of the day.

Lowery’s passion for quality food is a driving force behind Good Day Café’s menu: “You’re coming here for breakfast, you should get the best breakfast you can get,” he says. The pancakes are made from his grandmother’s recipe, as is the chicken-fried steak. Everything is made from scratch. Lowery grew up near 29th and Craycroft, and he says that he likes giving back to the community he grew up in. “It’s a pleasure to have a business right here in Tucson, especially here in my neighborhood,” he says.

His focus on community doesn’t stop with serving good food; Lowery makes a point of buying all his ingredients through Merit Foods, a Tucson-based food distribution company, and keeps his soda fountain stocked through Kalil Bottling Company, another Tucson-based vendor. ucked into

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“Growing up in a military family, you learn how to cook,” he says. “I like doing weird combinations; it would be fun to blindfold everyone, sit them down, and let them eat something different instead of the same thing.” He recently debuted one such “weird” item, an alternative to hashbrowns he calls “tater balls.” Customers choose their own mix-ins to be added to shredded potatoes, which are formed into balls and deep-fried. Lowery recommends dipping them in his homemade bourbon syrup, the recipe of which is a closely guarded secret. Just in time for the start of the NFL season, Lowery added 32 NFL-themed burgers to the lunch menu, inspired by the top-selling foods served at each team’s stadium.

Yet ultimately, it’s not about the food. Lowery describes how some of his staff members came to Good Day Café after facing their share of troubles. “You see things go from [serving] food to changing people’s lives,” Lowery says. “It’s fun to come together with people who thought life was almost gone, [who have] come back from that, and be friends.” It may manifest as serving breakfast and lunch, but for Lowery, it comes down to the people. “I have a passion for people, because people change.

Just like new foods, everyone deserves a chance.”

Good Day Café. 5683 E. Speedway Blvd. 520.722.9621.

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Sue Wyckoff runs the Grammy’s Garden stand with the help of her husband and extended family.

In Grammy’s Garden

Sue Wycoff is jamming with fresh produce.

By Kate Selby | Photography by Taylor Noel

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G r amm y ’ s G ar den stand, Sue Wyckoff greets customers with a calm smile, unruffled by the bustle of the Sunday Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park.

Wycoff started Grammy’s as a fresh produce stand 12 years ago, “with a couple greenhouses and a few tomatoes.” Six years later, she opened a commercial kitchen with equipment she had been collecting over the years and added jams, jellies, and preserves to the list.

These days, Wyckoff focuses less on growing her own produce and more on making sure the produce and products she brings to market are the very freshest, highest quality they can be. She emphasizes the importance of sourcing GMO-free, organic produce, both for her canned products and in the fresh produce she brings to market from other growers: heirloom tomatoes and assorted vegetables from BestFresh Farms, and fruit from Briggs and Eggers Orchard, both in Willcox. She keeps her prices down by picking up produce directly from her suppliers. Shoppers at Grammy’s can trust that their produce is always fresh: Wyckoff goes out on Wednesdays to gather the produce she brings to market, ensuring as short a delay as possible between the farm and her customers’ kitchens.

Taking center stage at Grammy’s are Wyckoff’s preserves, jams, and jellies. “I use everything local I can,” she says. In addition to growing some of her own produce and working with local farms, market farms, and backyard growers for the rest, she harvests prickly pear fruit and other wild produce, and sources citrus fruits from the excess harvested throughout Tucson by gleaning group t the

22 September /October 2015

Iskashitaa, which helps Wyckoff access the “amazing variety of citrus available” in and around Tucson. She keeps her ingredients simple, striving to ensure that the products she brings to market are “pure products”—cane sugar, fresh lemon juice, and GMO-free pectin, no fillers. And of course, fruit.

Wyckoff makes her jams using fresh, seasonal produce, or produce that was frozen while in season. “When I run out of peaches in my freezer, I don’t make peach preserves until next year. Fruit is seasonal, just like vegetables,” she says. The other detail that helps Grammy’s stand out from store-bought brands?

Wyckoff always makes both a sweet version and a hot habañero version of her products. Wyckoff says each product is a chance for her to be creative and explore flavors, such as her Cardamom Grapefruit Jam. A seasonal favorite for autumn is Grammy’s Apple Pie Jam, made with fresh apples, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, and Wyckoff’s own secret blend of seasonings.

Why does she love working the farmers’ markets? Wyckoff says she likes people, and is happy to talk with shoppers about her canning process. “People want to learn; a lot of vendors resent when people say, ‘I’m going to make that,’ but I don’t. I want people to be able to do it safely.”

Find Grammy’s Thursday at the Sierra Vista Farmers’ Market, Friday at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Jesse Owens Park, Saturday at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Steam Pump Park, Sunday at the Heirloom Farmers Market at Rillito Park, and Sunday at Santa Fe Square Farmers’ Market.

Visit Facebook.com/Grammys.AZ.

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After accidentally buying a seven-foot smoker along with the property for his new vegetarian restaurant, Erik Shapiro kept it in the community.

A Smoker’s Connection

An old meat smoker stays connected to its original community.

By Kate Selby | Photography by Taylor Noel

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S hapiro had a problem—a seven-foot-tall problem.

He had purchased the Beaudry Plaza property in Tucson’s Dunbar/Spring neighborhood, intending to open up a vegetarian restaurant. Then he discovered a seven-foot smoker on the back patio. Initially, Shapiro thought he had stumbled onto a relic of Tucson’s forgotten past: in 1953, the future site of Zinman’s Food Shop was a smokehouse called Zinman’s Skillet, in the then-predominantly African-American neighborhood of Dunbar/Spring. But after some sleuthing, Shapiro determined that despite the smoker’s well-worn appearance, it had only been installed about 15 years prior.

What the smoker lacked in historical significance, it made up for in unrealized potential. It was far, far larger than what he needed for the vegetables he planned to cook at the vegetarian Zinman’s Food Shop. “I thought at first we could use it—I had heard of smoking vegetables, but this is really for putting half a pig in there and cooking it for 12 hours.” He decided to find the smoker a new home, but it couldn’t be just any restaurant.

Shapiro wanted to ensure that the Dunbar/Spring community that once surrounded Zinman’s Skillet would continue to have r ik

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access to the smoker for special events and other community functions. He jokes, “I decided to give it instead of sell it so I could attach strings to it.”

Ramiro Scavo, the owner of Pasco Kitchen & Lounge, didn’t mind Shapiro’s requirement that he share the smoker. Scavo is preparing to open up a new barbecue restaurant on University Boulevard called Reds, and Shapiro’s smoker was exactly what he needed. The deal was struck: Shapiro could rest easy knowing that the neighborhood churches and community groups could continue to be able to use the smoker, and Scavo would put it to good use teasing the noses and tempting the appetites of every barbecue lover in Main Gate Square. Even better, the Dunbar/ Spring neighborhood is only a few blocks away, making it easy for community members to stop by.

When asked why it was so important to preserve the smoker’s connection with its old neighborhood, Shapiro explains, “ It’s a nice thing to do.” He smiles. “And it’s a really good story.” ✜ Look for Zinman’s Food Shop in late fall 2015. Zinman’s Food Shop on Facebook: bit.ly/ZinmansFoodShopFB

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eat to live—I live to eat. At least some of the time anyway. I dig food.

Eating out. Eating in. Cooking it, studying it, obsessing, tweaking old recipes, and creating new ones. I’m always reinventing the wheel, especially when I fail.

Few of us have been left untouched by food culture. If we’re not talking about food, we’re indulging in it. Like music, certain meals live in our cellular memory. Food is community. And if we don’t eat, we die. Which obviously lends a certain urgency to the whole eating thing. Add geography, culture, and ethnicity to the mix and our passion for food has biological beginnings.

Food is organic design, and our taste buds have gone global. It’s not just the bigger cities that lay claim to tasty morsels of artisan grub. The Old Pueblo holds its own and keeps growing.

The first time I landed in Tucson I was in the prime of youth, with my family, and we opened a restaurant (which definitely chewed up some of that youth). I cooked, waitressed, and lost my temper. First we were blessed with a good review, then we were sent to food purgatory. So I’ve been on both sides of the cash register.

Game of Plates is my favorite series not yet streaming. So stay tuned to each issue as I bring some of the latest dishes: From food palaces to courts, four-star razzle-dazzle to the local pizza joint to the food truck or push cart. How the food goes, so will I. So if you have news, press releases, ideas, or info, please send them along to LGreenb472@aol.com or text me at 520.404.4234. ome people

28 September /October 2015

I

Braised short rib tacos from Harvest.

to move from one craving to another. And this month I’ve been gnawing on some serious Middle Eastern. My new go-to is Za’atar Mediterranean Restaurant, housed in a vintage 1960s drive-through. Owner Ari Badan, who is Kurdish, cooks up authentic Greek-Lebanese-Turkish the way he ate growing up. Lunchtime often finds a line, brought to you by word of mouth raves. I tend to reach for the falafel plate ($8), which is crunchy and well seasoned, and comes with a decent mound of smoked baba ganoush (they grill the eggplant daily) next to a fine rise of perfectly seasoned hummus. The Greek salad (red onion, olives, feta chunks, tomato, cucumber) sounds just the right notes of citrus. And Za’atar turns out some cosmic pita from scratch everyday: small and oval shaped, crusty brown loaves that have a lightness to them. Their cheese bread (think Greek pizza) is sprinkled with three seem

Syrian varieties that Ari christens “sweet cheese.” It bakes in about nine minutes, and watching it crisp, then bubble in my field of vision … well, I’ve found my happy place. They also offer meat and herb versions ($3.50 to $4.50).

Menu offerings include chicken, beef, lamb, roasted vegetables, rice, and salads. Check out their daily specials. Seating is limited.

Great place for takeout or catering. Za’atar. 2825 N. Country Club Road. 520.323.4074. Visit Za’atar on Facebook for specials.

Venturing out of my comfort zone, I wander up to Oro Valley (this used to be land of the rural). And in a little strip mall, not far from golf courses and postcard Catalina mountain views, Harvest Restaurant made a convert of me. With its muted earth tones and cozy feel, once I sat down, I grazed for hours.

Bruschetta from Harvest Restaurant.

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Local and seasonal is the song of Harvest. They source locally—the meat comes from Double Check Ranch—and make their food from scratch. Every morning, when the cooking begins, they roast bones, veggies, spices, and herbs, then reduce it for hours, until it goes round the bend into a serious stock. The result is their popular Baked 7 Onion Soup ($6.90) so richly caramelized, it has flavor rings: a puddle of onions on the bottom, toasted croutons, and a curtain of melted Swiss. I found sounds coming out of me I didn’t know were possible.

And the braised short rib tacos ($9) come with a gorgeous rendition of red onion, avocado, and aioli across a soft flour tortilla with a drizzle of queso cotija cheese. Owner Lisa Shapouri says her customers would riot if she moved the dish off her menu rotation. The soup of the day ($4.50-$6.50) was more like a stew, a rich lamb and fig invention, again with house-made stock that had all the texture of velvet sliding down.

No matter what I ate, like the spring mix with salted watermelon and feta crumbles, it made me swoon. And when Lisa mentioned their French fries were the best in town, and put those handcut, cumin-parsley babies in front of me, after two bites, I believed it (apologies to other contenders). Whatever their secret (and it is secret), may it continue into the afterlife.

Coming here is like going to the home of a great cook who knows it’s the small 30 September /October 2015

touches that amplify the experience. They make their ketchup from the ground up, a gorgeous blood red that isn’t too sweet or too tart. Their bruschetta shines with a house-made pistachio pesto armed with capers, tomato relish, and artichokes, topped with a thick slice of housemade mozzarella.

I finished off my graze with their excellent house churned ice creams. Perfect texture without being cloyingly sweet. Lisa makes all the desserts herself. And for all you gluten free’ers, she bakes her own gluten-free bread and buns.

Reza and Lisa Shapouri were set to open their second Harvest location in September 2015 next to the Whole Foods on River and Craycroft. 10355 N. La Cañada Drive, Oro Valley. 520.731.1100.

Visit Harvestov.com.

One summer, years back, I wandered around New York City just visiting bakeries. I stalk quality-baked goods the way I used to hunt for shoes—with obsessive focus.

It’s harder to do in Tucson, as the local bakery scene has been largely absorbed by supermarkets. So when I spied Breadsmith just a few doors down from Harvest, I felt the old familiar stirrings. The irresistible tango of flour, water, and yeast in the form of gorgeous bread loaves.

After years of shopping at their local Milwaukee Breadsmith, a European-style chain, owners Mike and Jan Kruziki, decided to bring the idea of the bakery along with them on their move to Oro Valley. There are 35 Breadsmith stores in 14 states and each one is independently owned; the Kruziki’s own the only Arizona location, and bring a Midwestern warmth to the neighborhood.

Here you’ll find racks of freshly baked bread that send waves of aroma in all directions, from Country Buttercup to Marathon Multigrain, Brioche to Freedom Bread, Traditional Rye or Garlic Cobblestone.

There’s crusty European style as well as American soft-crusted sandwich bread, along with sweeter specialty doughs.

Everything is made from scratch daily, with no additives or preservatives, then baked in a six-ton stone hearth oven, steam-injected, imported from Europe.

Their dough is never frozen.

I couldn’t resist their coffee cake or Buttertop bread, which morphed into a stellar French toast in my kitchen, soaked through like a pudding but hearty enough to stand up to a fork.

And the coffee cake has a fine crumb, perfect with that cup of Joe, moist and rich with spices. Bread leftover at the end of the day is donated to a local food bank.

10355 N. La Cañada Drive.

520.219.7985.

Visit Breadsmith. com for daily flavors.

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“What I consider a grocery store’s main social function is to bring people in the neighborhood together,” says Paul Cisek, one of the owners of the new Johnny Gibson’s Downtown Market, which opened in the dead of summer to rave reviews and some serious love after a 42-year downtown grocery market drought.

Johnny Gibson’s, named after the late local barbershop owner, weightlifter, war hero, and downtown cheerleader, is an adventure in pure pleasure. The ceilings are high and the exposed red brick offers an old fashioned touch. Rows of fresh colorful veggies and racks of stainless showcase everything from artisan flavored olive oils to milk, eggs, peanut butter, jam, and so on down the food chain. Think of it as the new Mecca of nourishment, minus high convenience store prices.

Without any recent history to chart their current demographic, Cisek says, “We decided to make sure that we put enough of the various lines in: natural, traditional, private label, and gourmet grocery so we

32 September /October 2015

would see a trend by virtue of the types of foods people were buying.” After about a year they’ll have a better idea of what to stock based on item sales.

In the meantime, the shop has plenty of local vendors, including Santa Cruz Chili & Spice Company, Isabella’s Ice Cream, Tucson Tamale Company, SunRise Baking Company, Arbuckle Coffee Company, Alejandro’s Tortilla Factory, Don Juan Tortillas, Green Valley Pecan Company, Fermented Tea Company, and others. And they’re excited and open about carrying new local vendors.

They’ve got a full service deli and fresh fish, and their meat market will be up and butchering soon (complete with spit-roasted chickens). The outside back patio is a hidden gem. It’s a community meeting place where you can hang with

friends, indulge in some beer and wine, have lunch, and bring your computer (wi-fi is free.)

All this beauty didn’t come cheap—a $1.1 million-dollar build-out, and it shows throughout the market’s 6,000 square feet.

Gibson’s purchases their major grocery items through Bashas’, and Cisek says he loves being affiliated with the Arizona chain because they’re “a family, they’re not looking to open up all over the country. They have opened a warehouse to independents. And they don’t have to do that.”

As for Arizona, it turns out we’re a leader in the grocery wars. Cisek, a veteran of the market business, says, “There are more grocery stores per capita [in the state]. I think we’re No. 1. That’s why you don’t see a lot of independents, because of the competitive nature of the grocery stores in Arizona. They can’t compete.”

Of course, Johnny Gibson’s will prove them wrong. 11 S. Sixth Avenue.

520.393.8544. GibsonsMarket.com. ✜ Laura Greenberg is a Tucson writer.

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34  September /October 2015

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36  July/August 2015

1

2

The Plate Plate the

4

3

That one thing they should never take off the menu.

1234 Photography by Isadora Lassance

Ermanos Zip Burger The burger to put a zip in your step (or a nap in your afternoon). The grass-fed beef in the seven-ounce patty comes from Double Check Ranch. Topped with their secret “zip sauce,” burnt onions, on a brioche bun. $11 ($7 during happy hour).

220 N. Fourth Ave.

5 Points Market & Restaurant Huevos Rancheros So good, they were mentioned in our nation’s paper of record. Local corn tortillas come smothered in pinto beans, over-medium eggs, sharp white cheddar, house ranchero sauce, pico de gallo, avocado, and cilantro-serrano pesto. $9.

756 S. Stone Ave.

Gringo Grill & Cantina Gringo Burger Sonoran flavors on an American classic: this halfpound burger made with local grass-fed beef comes with mesquite bacon, jalapeño jam, beans, lettuce, and tomato. $14 5900 N. Oracle Road

Café Desta Combination vegan & meat tasting platter A feast to feed a family. Café Desta’s shared plates come with a generous side of injera, a pancake-like sourdough bread with the perfect mix of spongy and soft to scoop up all that deliciousness before you. $45.

758 S. Stone Ave.

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38  September /October 2015

KIDS’ MENU

Haile’s Healthy Swaps

By Haile Thomas | Photography by Jackie Alpers

S

I’ve had so much fun teaching my kids’ cooking camps; enjoying much needed time to play, relax, and rejuvenate on the beaches in California; and precious moments taking super-early morning walks with my mom to beat the Arizona heat. But even though the temperatures are still soaring, we’re back to school now, which inspired me to get into the kitchen and create some simple, easy, nutritious, and delicious recipes to fuel a fantastic new school year.

My first swap takes on sugary breakfast foods like donuts and cereals. I love to literally mix things up a bit by making yummy smoothies. The best part is they can be made out of an unlimited combination of fresh and delicious ingredients. My Chocolate Cherry Zucchini smoothie recipe is fun, flavorful, and a refreshingly sweet way to get your daily veggies. All the kids in my cooking camp really loved this recipe. Plus, did you know that zucchini is heart-healthy? Just another reason to blend it up right now. ummer is a blast !

Mediterranean Chickpea Flatbread Ingredients:

2 medium-sized pita bread 1 can chickpeas ¼ cup hummus per flat bread (store bought or homemade) 1 teaspoon cumin ½ teaspoon paprika ¼ teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 1 cup cherry tomatoes ¼ red onion, thinly sliced

Directions: Preheat oven to 400°. Season the chickpeas with cumin, paprika, garlic powder, and salt. Pour chickpeas onto baking pan, and roast for 25-30 minutes. Meanwhile, cut your cherry tomatoes in half, chop the cilantro, and thinly slice the red onion. Next spread ¼ cup of hummus onto the pita bread. Then divide and top pita bread with the chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro. Bake the pita bread for about 5 minutes, or until heated through. Serves 2.

My next swap takes on pizza. I know this is a very popular (and in my opinion, boring) lunchtime meal, because eating cheese, peperoni, and maybe a few other toppings isn’t always the healthiest or adventurous choice. That’s why I like to swap pizza out for my Mediterranean Chickpea Flatbread. I love Mediterranean flavors like cumin and paprika, which really make the flavors in this dish pop! The chickpeas are used both in hummus form, as well as whole roasted on top of the flat bread, imparting plenty of calcium to keep our bones nice and strong.

Finally, an essential component to back-to-school recipes is making sure they are simple and quick to prepare, and my Green Rice and Tofu Fajita Bowl is a fantastic example of a perfect lunch to bring to school. I love how colorful and flavorful the green rice is, and how well the spinach, jalapeño, and cilantro work together. And, the crispy tofu just makes it all complete.

It’s truly perfection.

I hope that these swaps will inspire you to get creative with back-to-school meals, and to have a happy and healthy new school year!

Haile Thomas is a 10th grader at The Gregory School, a motivational speaker, a young chef, and the founder of the HAPPY Organization.

Green Rice, Black Bean & Corn, and Tofu Fajita Bowl Ingredients:

For tofu: 1 package extra firm tofu 1 green bell pepper ½ yellow onion 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon fajita seasoning 3-4 tablespoons coconut oil For green rice: 4 cups cooked brown rice 1 cup spinach ¼ cup cilantro ¼ of a jalapeño ¼ of a yellow onion ¼ cup vegetable broth 1 clove garlic For Bean and Corn Mix: ½ can black beans ½ can corn 1½ cups diced cherry tomatoes

Directions: Cut tofu into equal sized cubes and set aside. Heat a pan on mediumhigh heat, and add coconut oil.

Add the tofu to the pan and cook for about 2 minutes. Add salt and fajita seasoning to the tofu, and distribute evenly by stirring the tofu around the pan. Cook the tofu for another 10 minutes, or until slightly crispy and golden brown. Mix in the bell peppers and onions, and heat through.

Add all green rice ingredients to a blender, except for the rice, and blend until smooth. Pour the green sauce over the precooked brown rice, and stir until the rice is completely green. Dice tomatoes, and combine beans, corn, and tomatoes in a bowl. Season with a dash of salt. Set aside. You can warm this mixture or serve cold. Layer the green rice mixture, then the bean and corn mixture, and finally top with tofu. Enjoy! Serves 4.

40 September /October 2015

Chocolate Cherry Zucchini Smoothie Ingredients: 2½ 1 1 4 2 2

cups soymilk (or your favorite milk) small zucchini cup frozen cherries pitted dates tablespoons cocoa powder tablespoons almond butter (or chia seeds) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Add all ingredients to a blender, blend until smooth, and enjoy! Serves 2.

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[E dible H omestead ]

Companion planting in raised beds.

Good Bedfellows

By Amy Belk | Illustrations by Danny Martin

I

love the visual appeal of a tidy, organized vegetable

garden. I have a helpless crush on the promise of using clever hand-made plant markers to identify wellgroomed rows of tomatoes and groups of herbs, all growing neatly in their appointed spaces.

Despite my irrational fondness for mini-monocultures and neat little rows, I’ve come to accept that my garden will probably never be well-groomed or organized enough for a plant marker, and that’s OK. Indeed, putting a variety of plants together in one bed is often a much better plan than grouping each type of plant together in one place. Plants can help each other out in a surprising number of ways when they’re allowed to intermingle.

Companion planting has been practiced for centuries by farmers and growers all around the world, but it’s the home gardener, often working with a smaller amount of space, who can benefit the most from learning which plants make good bedfellows. Since now is a great time to start planting so many of our cool-season veggies and herbs, this is the perfect time to consider a wilder approach with your next garden plans. This planting season, why not see what happens

when you mix things up a bit, and use small spaces to your advantage?

We know that large groups of the same type of plant are much easier to spot (or smell) from a distance, so one of the first benefits of growing a mixed variety of plants together is that hungry critters will have a more difficult time finding their favorite snacks. And there are a number of other less-obvious interactions happening at the same time. The smell of one plant might help mask the smell of another; a smaller plant may stay protected beneath a bigger plant’s canopy; and another plant could help repel a pest or pathogen.

Sunflowers, for example, are tall enough to provide excellent afternoon shade for tomatoes in the summer. The snap beans and peas that we plant by seed in September or as transplants in October are known to boost the growth of nearby plants by increasing nitrogen levels in the soil. When grown within the vegetable beds rather than sequestered to the herb garden, certain herbs can help keep pests and pathogens at bay, and can often lend a subtle flavor to vegetables grown nearby.

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[E.H.]

Tomato and basil do better together, on the plate and in the garden.

It’s interesting to note that what’s good together on the plate will often grow well together in the same soil. Such is the case with tomatoes and basil. Basil is said to impart a delicate flavor to tomatoes, and gardeners have noted that both plants seem to just do better when the other is growing nearby. Like a lot of the aromatic herbs, basil plants produce substances that have some antimicrobial and antifungal properties while also deterring some pests with their strong scent. Tomatoes, on the other hand (and some other members of the nightshade family), produce substances that help deter harmful nematodes in the soil.

Perhaps that’s why asparagus—which many of us can begin planting around the beginning of October—gets along so well with both tomato and basil plants. Although it takes a while for this crop to pay off—you should wait at least one year before your first harvest—once you get asparagus going you’ll have fresh spears to harvest every spring (and sometimes summer) for 12 to 15 years. Parsley is a great cool-season herb to seed around your asparagus starts in fall.

These two plants will happily keep each other company until you can add some basil and tomatoes to the bed next spring.

Another famous pairing is strawberries with spinach. If you’re one of the many of us who just planted strawberries in August, try starting some spinach from seed in the same bed.

46 September /October 2015

Both plants have similar soil and food preferences, but their roots occupy different soil levels, so they’re not in direct competition for nutrients. In addition, the saponin produced by the spinach helps to repel some of the bacteria and fungi that can keep strawberries from thriving.

Now is a great time to plant any of the brassicas (also called cole crops: cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, collard greens, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabaga, and kale), but you’ll want to try to keep them away from tomatoes, strawberries, radish, or pole beans. Most plants in the cabbage family prefer growing near celery, dill, onions, leeks, or potatoes.

Alliums (onions, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) are all especially useful as companion plants in the garden. As you’re planting your fall and winter crops, disperse some allium bulbs throughout your lettuce, beets, and brassicas to help protect them from a number of nibbling critters and hungry pests.

Garlic is probably the best-known and most-used member of the allium family. This stinky bulb helps to protect all kinds of plants from pests, but keep in mind that companion planting doesn’t always mean that the benefits are mutual.

Many of the plants that like to have alliums nearby don’t appreciate the dry soil conditions that are necessary for

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[E.H.]

Companion planting is all about fostering diversity.

alliums to produce a tasty bulb. It’s sometimes the case that we grow two plants together for the benefit of one more than the other.

The only veggies that don’t like having an allium nearby are beans and peas. Plant these legumes along with some carrots, lettuce, or radishes instead. The deep taproots of radish and carrot mix well with the more fibrous roots of a lettuce, and the nitrogen bump from legumes growing in the same bed will make everyone happy.

In many ways, companion planting is all about fostering diversity in your garden beds. Having a good mixture of root types and differing speeds of growth within the bed will help reduce competition for nutrients. A variety of leaf types and a mixture of smells Garlic, Allium sativum will help obscure your garden goodies from pests. A tiny ecosystem can exist in your own back yard! ✜ Amy Belk is a garden writer and photographer, a certified arborist, and a certified nursery professional who has been learning from her garden for 15 years (and counting). She and her husband homestead on a little piece of the desert in the heart of Tucson.

48 September /October 2015

PLANT NOW Baja Arizona includes a variety of elevations and hardiness zones. Most of us can plant the following veggies and herbs this September and October, but check with local resources for more detailed information about the best times to plant or sow seed in your area. If marked with an asterisk (*), it’s recomm ended that you don’t seed or sow until temperatures drop below 100.

Seeds to sow: anise*, beets, beans (snap), bok choy, borage*, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, calendula*, carrots, celery, chamomile*, chervil*, cilantro*, collard greens, cucumber, cumin*, dill*, endive, fennel, French sorrel*, kohlrabi, leek, lettuce, mustard greens, parsley*, peas, radish, salad burnet*, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips.

Plant/transplant starts of: asparagus*, beets*, bok choy*, broccoli*, Brussels sprouts*, cabbage, carrots*, cauliflower*, collard greens*, endive*, fava beans*, fennel*, garbanzo beans*, garlic, garlic chives, green onion*, kale*, kohlrabi*, lavender*, lettuce*, leeks*, marjoram*, mustard greens*, potatoes, onions, parsley*, parsnip*, radish*, rosemary*, rutabaga*, sage*, spinach*, sweet bay, Swiss chard*, thyme*, turnips*. For rhubarb and salsify, plant after September in cooler zones of Baja Arizona only.

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[E.H.]

A Happy Kingdom of Worms —in Your Kitchen

By Ford Burkhart | Photography by Elijah LeComte

H

er long braids bob merrily as Linda Leigh

circles the demo box, spraying water on the cloth that covers the featured performers, a couple hundred wiggly worms.

“They are too dry,” she tells an early customer at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park. “Their skin has to be moist for them to survive.” Worms breathe by the diffusion of air through a moist coating on their skin, Leigh explains.

Every few minutes, a visitor or two stops to look in on the pinkish-to-multicolored worms. With Leigh’s help, they turn back the cloth and dip their hands into the black humus to lift a glob of wormhood, as if to wish them a good morning.

These worms do feel friendly as they crawl about your hand. Nothing creepy about these guys, the all-stars of Leigh’s five-year-old Vermillion Wormery in Oracle.

It’s just past 8 a.m. on a summer Sunday and Leigh (rhymes with day) has already been delivering minilectures for a half hour, almost nonstop, to passersby. It’s what you’d expect from the former college teacher and lifelong researcher.

Leigh was an original crew member living in the Biosphere 2, 30 miles north of the market. Before she moved into the Biosphere 2, in 1985, Leigh worked as its biome design coordinator, working alongside specialists

52 September /October 2015

in all aspects of building food webs—experts in worms, soil, butterflies, as well as engineers and architects in the design of the rainforest, savannah, and desert. She was eventually selected as one of eight Biospherians chosen to “walk our talk,” and lived inside Biosphere 2 from 1991 to 1993. While inside, she managed those wilderness systems, and worked daily in the agriculture system with the other Biospherians.

“We grew most of our food during that time and of course recycled all of our ‘waste’ … well, really no such thing as waste in a truly closed system, is there?” she recalls.

Before becoming a worm entrepreneur, she also worked for the Nature Conservancy and at the research department of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to identify, collect, and grow desert plants that could be appropriate for drylands agriculture.

A lifelong student of botany, a few years ago, Leigh hit on a new mission: creating a world with less organic waste.

She returned to worms, those wrigglers who love to eat extra bits of lettuce or orange peel and excrete what becomes a gardener’s gold. She says that adding vermicomposting to gardening was a natural process, completing the total systems cycle that she loves to practice and study.

“Spreading the worm,” as Leigh calls her work, came serendipitously. A neighbor was getting married and had to ditch her worm bin for marital harmony. Leigh took

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Worm castings make for gardener’s gold: nutrient-rich soil.

over. She failed, the worms bailed, and she began studying.

“I learned from the ground up,” she says. It helped that she had a Ph.D. in systems ecology and energy analysis from the University of Florida.

As Leigh buzzes about her booth, more customers line up for a quick tour of the worm bin, or to buy some small Egyptian spinach starters or a few herb plants. Some will buy a bag of worms or just the dark fertilizer, called castings.

Leigh studies each potential customer to see if they have the necessary character to take some of her worms away.

“That’s why I vet people,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t want my worms going home with just anybody. I want only those who will be faithful stewards. Starting a worm bin has a pretty strong learning curve.”

Mainly, they have to remember to keep the bedding, a mix of shredded cardboard and coconut coir, or fiber, moist, but not too moist.“I won’t send my worms home to their death in the wrong environment,” Leigh says.

“Why start a worm bin?” asks a potential customer.

“To get rid of your garbage and improve your plants,” Leigh says.

But one customer has his own view.

“They become like my pets,” says Donald Lockwood, a massage therapist, who came to the farmers’ market with his wife, Charity Whiting, and daughter, Ruby Rain. They buy a bag of worms to restart their bin. Their first experiment failed. “It was a disaster. They all died,” says Lockwood, who vows he’s learned enough to start again.

“You get really bonded with them. It makes you happy to toss in your food scraps and have them poop out this great fertilizer,” he says. “We water all our plants with the mix of castings and water, what we call compost tea.” Their

54 September /October 2015

compost tea is made with one cup of worm compost per gallon of dechlorinated water, plus 1 teaspoon of unsulphured molasses, stirred periodically for least 24 hours to keep it oxygenated.

Another lesson to be learned is heat.

This morning, the temperature is on its way to 109. But in the shade, Leigh’s worms are no more than 75° to 80°.

Leigh explains that the worms can survive anywhere as long as their bedding is between 34° and up to 88°. But they are happiest between 60° and 75°.

At the Vermillion Wormery site in Oracle, Leigh and her business partner, Doug Shepherd, have built eight 4-by-8 feet concrete bins and few others made from wooden pallets, all sunk about a foot into the ground to provide some insulation from heat and cold.

She uses horse manure, food scraps from friends and restaurants, coffee grounds, and shredded paper to grow worms for sale. The horse manure has too much sand to be ideal for her marketed castings; for that, she uses llama, sheep, or goat manure. Leigh looks over at the Adventure Coffee Roasting booth. “I take all their grounds home to the worms,” she says.

Just then, a UA student arrives, seeking advice. “I’d like to know whatever I need to know to get started,” says Emily McIntosh, just back from the Peace Corps in Mozambique.

Ten minutes later, she knows. She places an order for a quarter pound of worms, for $6.25. Delivery next Sunday.

She passed the test.

“I’m so excited,” Emily says, before she departs. ✜ Ford Burkhart has called Tucson home for going on 70 years; his 1917 bungalow has a tree he planted in 1947.

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Linda Leigh and Doug Shepherd co-own Vermillion Wormery and raise their red wiggler worms in Oracle.

S o you bought worms . W hat next?

The bin To prepare your 10-gallon bin for a pound of worms, drill 3/8-inch wide ventilation holes in the bottom, upper edge, and top of the bin. Keeping it indoors works best in extreme summer or winter temperatures. Worms are happiest, and eat and reproduce more, between 60 and 75 degrees. If you are managing the worm bin correctly, there should be no smell and no invasive critters.

Bedding Vermillion Wormery mixes compost and coconut coir, which can hold a lot of water. The compost kick-starts the microbial community to start breaking down the food you put in so that the worms can eat it. To test for the correct amount of moisture in the bedding, take a handful (without worms) and squeeze it as hard as you can. A few drops of water should come out. If it’s too dry, mix in some water. If it’s too wet, add some shredded paper or cardboard.

Adding the worms Place the worms and the material they are packed in on top of the bedding in the bin. Watch them wiggle down into the bedding—they will move away from the light into the dark bin.

Lay shredded paper on top of the bedding and worms. Moisten the paper—it will keep your bin cool in the summer and help maintain the moisture level. Worms will eat it eventually, so add fresh shreds and new bedding now and again.

56 September /October 2015

For the next night or two, your worms might be a bit restless in their new home. Leave the bin in a place with a light turned on (in a bathroom, say, or laundry room) and the bin top removed for the next two or three nights so they won’t be tempted to explore outside the bin. Start feeding them food scraps in a few days, after they’re settled in. Using compost as part of the bedding offers plenty of food for a few days before you start your regular feedings.

Feeding the worms Your worms will eat food scraps, coffee grounds, shredded cardboard and paper, compost, and other organic materials.

They don’t eat soil or anything that is not organic. Don’t feed them dairy or meat, which will become stinky. Chopping and freezing food scraps before feeding them to worms increases the surface area of the food for microbial growth, breaks the cell walls of the plant, and kills fruit fly eggs and larvae that could be a problem later.

Start with a light feeding, maybe a cup or so, and bury it an inch or two under the surface. Cover it with bedding.

Once that food has been consumed, feed them more. If you have a 10-gallon bin, you can typically feed your worms up to a half pound of veggie scraps a day. You can add a tablespoon of ground eggshells or fine sand to help the worms grind the food. It’s best to not feed a lot of any one particular food at a feeding.

Worms will eat everything from food scraps to coffee grounds.

Harvesting The worms will let you know when to collect the castings. When all the contents of your bin look like dark coffee grounds, it’s harvest time. Using the dump-and-sort method, dump the bin contents on a flat surface where a light, or the sun, can shine on them. Make little piles of castings and wait a few minutes until the worms burrow down away from the light. Brush the castings away until you have a pile of castings and a pile of worms. Harvest your castings, and have a bin with fresh bedding ready. Put the worms in it, and start all over again.

Using worm castings Seedlings: Use up to 20 percent worm compost in your potting mix. More than 20 percent will not harm plants, but it won’t offer much additional benefit.

Vegetables and annuals: Side dress with about ½ cup of worm compost per plant as needed.

Transplants: Provide 1 inch of worm compost in planting hole before placing plant.

Potted plants: Mix 1 inch of worm compost with top of soil around base of plants as needed.

Trees and shrubs: Mix 1 inch of worm compost with top of soil around base of plants every month during growing season.

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Italian 101

Text and Photography by Shelby Thompson

Basic M arinara S auce In my Italian family, Sunday dinners are centered on a generous pot of sweet marinara sauce and a few good bottles of red wine. Once mastered, marinara sauce plays a powerful role in enhancing the flavor of an array of Italian dishes. To make the perfect marinara sauce, you need good ingredients and patience.

Tomatoes It is important to use high-quality tomatoes as they are the main ingredient in any marinara sauce. Although fresh tomatoes are wonderful, I save them for salads and use canned San Marzano tomatoes for sauce. Picked and canned as soon as they are vine-ripened, San Marzanos have a sweet and concentrated flavor that is difficult to find elsewhere. Because these tomatoes are canned whole, they will need to be puréed before they are put into the sauce.

Wine A small amount of red wine has the ability to help create marinara sauce with great depth of flavor. It is important to use good wine because its flavors become concentrated during the cooking process. Chianti is great for tomato-based sauce because its acidity levels complement those that are found in tomatoes.

Time Perhaps the most important thing to remember when cooking marinara sauce is that it requires patience. Marinara sauce is created in a progression of steps, and it is important that the flavors in each stage of the process have adequate time to develop. The entire cooking process is done over low heat, so the ingredients are encouraged to mingle and develop together during the simmering process.

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Marinara Recipe:

2 2 ½ ½ 1 1 1 1 1

tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil large cloves of garlic, minced cup diced yellow onion cup good red wine tablespoon high quality tomato paste tablespoon cane sugar 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes, puréed tablespoon fresh basil or ½ tablespoon dried basil tablespoon fresh oregano or ½ tablespoon dried oregano ½ teaspoon sea salt Pepper, to taste

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy pot over low heat.

Add the minced garlic and sauté for 30 seconds.

Add the diced onion and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent (about 3-5 minutes).

Add the red wine, tomato paste, and sugar to the pot and stir to combine.

Cook the wine mixture for 5-10 minutes, or until the wine reduces to about half.

Add the puréed tomatoes, salt, and pepper to the pot and stir until everything is combined.

Turn the heat to the lowest setting, cover most of the pot with a lid (allowing about an inch for steam to escape), and let the sauce simmer for at least 30-60 minutes.

If you are making a larger quantity of sauce, let it simmer for at least an hour for best results.

Stir the herbs into the sauce 10 minutes before you remove the sauce from the heat.

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B

Herbs

asil , oregano, and flat-leaf parsley are some of the

herbs used most frequently in Italian cooking, but a variety of other leafy green herbs such as sage and thyme also show up. While buying or growing fresh herbs is a wonderful way to liven up a meal, it is easy to end up with a lot of leftover herbs after you’ve finished cooking.

If you know how to properly store herbs to keep them vibrant and flavorful for next week, next month, and next winter, you can have flavorful meals all year long.

Drying Herbs Dried herbs are wonderful for sauces, salad dressings, and spice blends. You can dry herbs the same way you might dry out a flower: upside down.

Wash and dry your herbs thoroughly. Bundle each individual type of herb and tie each bundle together with a piece of twine. Tie each bundle along a clothes hanger and store the hanger in a cool, dry place. Allow 4-7 days for your herbs to properly dry out. Once dry, store the dried herb leaves in airtight Mason jars.

Short-Term Preservation

How to Cook Dry Pasta

When stored correctly, herbs can last for up to two or three weeks in the refrigerator. The key is proper storage.

As soon as your herbs are picked from the garden or brought home from the market, rinse and dry them carefully.

Dampen two connected paper towels (a flour-sack towel would also work) and lay on the countertop.

Arrange your herbs in a flat row along the length of the towel. You’ll want a different towel for each type of herb.

Beginning with the towel end nearest to you, carefully roll the herb-filled towel into a loose bundle.

Store bundles in an unzipped gallon-size bag in the refrigerator.

In today’s markets, there are entire aisles shelved with various types of pasta. Whether you choose whole-wheat linguine, tagliatelle, or gluten-free penne, it’s important to know how to properly cook dried pasta. Pasta that is cooked al dente, or firm to the bite, is ideal. To achieve an al dente texture, don’t overcook your pasta.

Fill a large pot ¾ full with water and heat on the stove over high heat. Once the water is boiling, add 1 tablespoon of sea salt and your desired amount of pasta.

Immediately stir the pasta with a long wooden spoon so that the individual pieces do not clump together.

Cook the pasta for 7-10 minutes, stirring it every 2 or 3 minutes.

At the 7-minute mark, remove a piece of the pasta to test its consistency. The pasta should be soft but should retain a firm bite.

Thick pasta shapes, such as farfalle and linguine, typically take longer to reach al dente consistency than do thin shapes such as angel hair and orecchiette.

Once the pasta is al dente, drain it in a large colander over the sink.

Return it to the pot that it was cooked in and coat with marinara or a touch of olive oil and grated Parmesan. ✜

Long-Term Preservation My favorite way to store herbs for seasons is to freeze them in a small amount of olive oil, which preserves the herbs’ vibrant flavors all winter long.

In an empty ice cube tray, fill each empty cube with herb leaves. You can keep the various herbs in separate cubes or combine them to create herb blends.

Pour enough olive oil in each cube to cover the top of the herbs. Store the tray in the freezer.

When you are ready to use your herbs, simply place a cube in a small bowl for about an hour to let it thaw.

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Shelby Thompson practices yoga, plays ball with her black lab Cola, and cooks. Her blog thesunandthespoon.com provides nutritious, plant-based recipes for fellow food lovers.

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Watermelon and squash from Big D Farms.

FARM REPORT What’s in season in Baja Arizona.

By Sara Jones | Photography by Liora K

I

n September and October, many farms in the northern

hemisphere are preparing to close up for the winter, and farmers are looking forward to a well-deserved break. Not so in Baja Arizona. Hot temperatures last into the fall and mild weather allows many farms to continue to produce throughout the winter. In the fall, many farmers here are working overtime preparing their fields for winter crops, while continuing to maintain and harvest their summer crops. Plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and eggplant continue to pump out fruit, although more slowly now as daylight begins to wane. Plants that have produced for months are sprawling and oversized.

Okra plants can tower over six feet tall, while squash hide behind gigantic leaves. This is an abundant time of year with lots of heavy produce. Big summer melons sit alongside giant pumpkins and winter squash at market stalls. The seasonal overlap provides a wide selection of fruits and veggies for market shoppers as farmers from various elevations and climate zones bring a wide variety of produce to sell.

In our sometimes scorching desert, the cool-weather growing season tends to be less demanding in terms of

64 September /October 2015

both resources and labor. It is usually a relief when the long, hot days of summer finally come to an end. Many farmers work from sunup until sundown, so the long days of summer can be particularly exhausting. Rattlebox Farm owners Dana Helfer and Paul Buseck are just returning to the market after a summertime hiatus. To conserve water and make time for other projects, Helfer and Buseck grow a drought-tolerant cover crop during the hot, dry months of May and June. Then, when monsoon rains start in July they plant summer crops, ready to be harvested in the fall. “At our farm in southeast Tucson, we plant zucchini, green beans, winter squash, cucumbers, melons, watermelon, flowers, green onions, basil, as well as cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, and eggplant that we start in the greenhouse,” says Helfer. As the hot temperatures subside they also start planting cooler-weather root and leaf crops.

“When our CSA starts in September or October, this gives us a great mix of late summer and early fall veggies and fruits,” says Helfer. For more information about Rattlebox Farm CSA, email rattleboxfarm@gmail.com.

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A

pples , to many people, are a

symbol of fall. In Baja Arizona, the apple season starts early and extends for several months. Apples grown here tend to be smaller but sweeter than apples grown elsewhere in the nation. Our long growing season ensures that the apples have plenty of time to accumulate sugars and sweeten in the desert sun. Each type of apple has a slightly different growing season and they appear at markets at different times throughout the season. The texture, sugar content, and acid levels vary for each type of apple, meaning that some apples will perform better in baking or applesauce and others are better for eating fresh. Early season apples tend to be more delicate and don’t last as long in storage as later season apples.

One early apple, the Red Delicious, has long been a supermarket standard. The Red Delicious has a bad reputation of being mealy and tasteless, but if you have never tried a freshly harvested, local Red Delicious you will be amazed at the difference. These delicious apples really deserve their name and are great served in simple sweet or savory salads. Later in the season, Pink Lady, Fuji, and Granny Smith apples become available. In the past decade or so Pink Lady apples have become widely available at both farmers’ markets and supermarkets. Bred in Australia, the Pink Lady and its cousins,

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the Sundowner and Anna’s apple, are hot climate apples, well adapted to our desert growing conditions. With an equally tart and sweet flavor, the apples have a dense crisp flesh and store well.

These apples are late season apples and should be available at markets well into the winter months.

Baja Arizona’s longest running U-pick orchard, Apple Annie’s, has a convenient chart on its website letting customers know when each variety becomes available as well as the special qualities and flavors of each. In addition to picking your own apples and pumpkins, there are plenty of fun fall activities. Visit AppleAnnies.com.

Although it sometimes seems like summer will go on forever, eventually it comes to an end. Fall is a great time to preserve produce that will be going out of season soon. Making a few quarts of quick pickles is an easy afternoon project that doesn’t require special equipment.

These pickles, which are stored in the refrigerator rather than canned, can last a couple months. Summer veggies like peppers, green tomatoes, squash, okra, and green beans are all prime ingredients for pickling. Cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and squash can be left whole if very small, quartered lengthwise for spears, or chopped into a relish. Green beans and okra are best left whole. ✜

Fresh apples from Big D Farms.

Basic Quick Pickle R ecipe Fill two clean quart jars with your choice of veggies, whole or chopped. In a medium saucepan bring to a simmer: 2½ 2 1 ¼ 6 1

cups white vinegar cups water heaping tablespoon salt cup sugar whole cloves garlic, peeled tablespoon whole spices (peppercorns, coriander, mustard seeds, and dill seeds are a traditional mix, but browse around online for ideas).

Stir until salt and sugar are dissolved; then pour hot liquid over veggies, making sure to evenly distribute spices and garlic. Let cool, then screw on lids and store in refrigerator for up to two months.

68  September /October 2015

IN THE BUSINESS

A Changing Feast At Feast, chef and owner Doug Levy changes his menu monthly, keeping the food fresh and the kitchen creative.

By Megan Kimble | Photography by Elijah LeComte

Feast changes its menu monthly. Why?

I’d worked at restaurants where people do the same dish over and over. One of the most enjoyable things about being in this business is being able to play in the kitchen. The No. 1 reason we change the menu is because we’re entertaining ourselves. I know what it’s like to prepare a dish that I’ve prepared 5 million times before. There’s no love in it, and I think you taste that as a guest.

The other reason is seasonality. There’s so much mediocre food out there, because people insist: We do strawberry shortcake year-round, even though the strawberries are so bland.

It’s been 14 years—168 months—where we’ve done this, and every month has been different.

Why is it important for you to serve food from local producers?

If you get your food locally, the quality can go up so dramatically.

Everything you get from California is grown with the intention of shipping it rather than the intention of it being delicious.

You can order tomatoes from Willcox and say, I want beefsteak tomatoes, or you can order tomatoes from US Foods and you’re ordering what are called 5 by 6 vine-ripe tomatoes (packed 5 rows by 6, and stamped 5X6 on each pack of 30). They have to be a uniform size and they have to be picked prematurely so that they don’t bruise on the way over. You’re harvesting for shipability rather than for taste, texture, or quality.

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Roughly what percentage of your menu comes from local producers?

If you go as far as Arizona, not that much of our menu is local.

Thirty to 40 percent at absolute most. It’s local but it’s big.

Shamrock dairy, Hickman’s eggs, Blue Sky Farms. The quality is fine, but it’s not the same as calling up Sleeping Frog Farms, or Jojoba Beef.

What’s holding you back from sourcing more food from local producers?

For us, logistics has always been the biggest sticking point. We’ve always wanted to support local producers. But with many small growers, one spate of bad weather, and it’s over—they don’t have the product.

We end up having to go with sources that were more reliable in terms of being able to deliver it in a timely way on a regular basis. Knowing that it was going to be here. Even the bigger farms, like Hayden Farms, were growing spigarello for us, and it was a weird winter, and there was one freeze that knocked it all out, and we had to pull it off the menu a month early because we just couldn’t get it.

What we need as a restaurant is consistency. To be able to Doug Levy says the challenge for sourcing more food locally is logistics.

get something on a regular basis, to be able to know for certain that it’s going to be here. Right now, that piece doesn’t exist. I’m constrained to do what’s going to be safe and what I know I’ll be able to have for my menu.

When you say you’re sourcing an ingredient locally—how much of that ingredient do you really need to put a dish on your menu?

It really depends on the dish—how much the dish requires, how popular the dish is, what time of year it is. If it’s February and we’re in the middle of the gem show, I need a ton of that ingredient, because we’re going to serve 180 dinners a night.

Compare that to a dish we’ll make in June or July when we’ll have 80 people in here a night. We used to get eggs from ReZoNation Farm. They lay more in the summer, so there’s an abundance of eggs in the summer, when we have a dearth of guests. When we’re busy in December or January, that’s when they’re not laying nearly as much.

Local food—particularly local meat— often costs more than the food available in the commodity market. How do you explain the price differential to your customers?

We’ll bring in beef from Rio Santa Cruz.

And it’s expensive! He’s feeding those cattle alfalfa, sorghum … It’s amazing stuff. I pay more for that beef, and our guests understand that. To a surprisingly large extent, they’re willing to pay that premium for something that’s really high quality.

You can always get cheaper beef. You can get what’s called “no roll beef,” which doesn’t have the USDA roll [the grade stamp] over it, which is what they serve at free Las Vegas buffets. You can always go lower. You can always get something cheaper. The question is: What are you happy to put your name on?

How do you convey seasonality to eaters—how weather, for example, affects the availability of a certain food?

Right now we have sea urchin on the menu, which is fished off of Santa Barbara. The weather has been very finicky out there, so there are nights we say, the weather is bad off of Santa Barbara, so we don’t have that dish tonight; instead we’re 72 September /October 2015

offering this dish with sea scallops. Same thing when we lost all that spigarello.

We don’t have it, but we’re offering the dish with Swiss chard tonight. People understand. It’s not like customers say, “I’ll have the ice cream,” and we say, “All we have is fish.” We’re trying to help people understand that this is fresh food, harvested by people.

Any ideas on making local food more accessible to restaurants and chefs?

If only there could be some kind of a service that helps bridge that gap between what we at restaurants need and what farmers produce, but also helps with running around town to deliver. I can’t really go pick up food at farms or at the farmers’ market. I don’t know if there’s ever a good time for a restaurateur to go trundling off to the market. It always amazes me when you see these pieces on TV, where it’s like, oh, this chef goes and strolls the farmers’ market in Brooklyn and gets the freshest whatever … and I’m going, who really is doing that? I can tell you, there is no restaurateur who is working a 12-hour day at their restaurant, and saying, oh, I better get up three hours early to find enough stuff to run a restaurant with. We go through maybe $3,000 worth of produce a week. I can’t imagine doing that without cleaning out a farmers’ market, let alone getting enough of any one ingredient. For us, it’s a question of scale and a question of logistics.

I’d rather source my food here [in Baja Arizona], and I don’t mind paying a little more for it. I think my guests are willing to pay for it. But it needs to be there in abundance and consistently, and it’s just not there yet. We’re in an early stage of this whole process. ✜ Feast. 3719 E. Speedway Blvd.

520.326.9363. EatatFeast.com.

Megan Kimble is the managing editor of Edible Baja Arizona and the author of Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food.

From top to bottom: Grilled romaine and radicchio salad with bresaola, shaved Parmesan, and Castelvetrano olives; squash blossoms stuffed with house-made ricotta cheese; smoky farro pudding with roasted grapes, garlicky walnuts, lemony greens, and avocado brulée.

LOCAL

Local Girl Goes Local Could you eat local food–and only local food–for 30 days?

By Kate Selby | Illustrations by Katya Granger

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the Edible Baja Arizona editorial team first hatched the idea of documenting the process of someone eating only locally sourced foods for a month, my first thought was, “Oh, yes, someone should totally do that!” Meaning, of course, someone absolutely not me.

While I love reading about, writing about, talking about, and of course eating food, I don’t actually know much about eating local. I split a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share with a friend for a while; I love seeing locally sourced foods on a menu; and I dutifully select my produce from the shelves at the grocery store marked “Locally Grown” when I can, but that’s about as far as I’ve gone. I’m also somewhat timid when it comes to venturing outside my cooking comfort zone. Last week I had to ask Google if the fat purple-white root brooding on my cutting board was, in fact, a rutabaga or a parsnip. Prior to starting work as Edible Baja Arizona’s digital content manager, I did not know who our local food producers were, and I have yet to make it to a single farmers’ market. hen

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It isn’t that I lack the motivation—I love the idea of lessening my environmental impact and supporting the Arizona economy through eating local. It’s just that, like so many people, I’m busy.

I manage to squeeze a 25-hour workweek and the occasional freelance project around the schedule of my deceptively adorable 10-month-old daughter, who ruthlessly demands such time-intensive attention and activities as Being Read To and Standing With Help (multiple times a day, no less, the tiny dictator). There are a couple of days a week when she goes and hangs out with her grandparents so I can go into the office (thanks Mom and Dad!), and my husband, Chad, tag-teams parenting duties when he’s not working his 9-to-5 job and attending classes. Even so, I spend most of my evenings falling asleep in front of my keyboard, because after the baby is asleep is usually the only time I can get Real Work done.

Follow this local girl’s adventures in local eating at LocalGirlGoesLocal.tumblr.com

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Still, it was only a matter of time (the length of a conversation at this year’s staff retreat, as a matter of fact) until I reconsidered my initial response and ended up volunteering to eat local food, and only local food, for 30 days. Why? I’ve been wanting to localize our eating habits—maybe a little incredibly public accountability is exactly what I need. And yet, I’m fairly nervous about trying to feed our family entirely on food produced within the Baja Arizona region.

I’ve started looking at the labels of the food I buy at the grocery store, marking with some despair the pile of staples that are going to be off limits. Tillamook extra sharp cheddar cheese from Oregon? Off the list. Bananas from Ecuador for our morning smoothies? Nope, not so much. At first, I feared eating local might mean giving up bread, but managing editor Megan Kimble assures me there are indeed farmers growing wheat in Arizona. And thankfully, we won’t be without salt, as soon as I find somewhere that sells salt harvested from the Sea of Cortez.

What makes me most anxious is the time involved. I suspect it’s going to require some serious planning for our family to successfully go local. We live on Tucson’s eastside–I can’t just make a quick run to the Food Conspiracy Co-Op when we run out of something. The closest farmers’ market happens on Friday mornings at Trail Dust Town; if the baby takes a nap at 9 a.m. and the farmers’ market closes at noon, will I have enough time to buy what we need for a weekend of cooking? Not to mention the temptation of grabbing (nonlocal) fast-food and takeout when we get too busy to cook during the week. Of course, it wouldn’t be a challenge without some specific goals in place. So, in

addition to sourcing our regular meals from local ingredients, we will also try to stay within our monthly food budget, host a locally sourced dinner party for friends, and attempt to eat an entirely locally sourced meal at a restaurant.

I’ve started to arm myself with the resources I’ll need to make this happen. We will be rejoining the Tucson CSA, and with some help from Shelby Thompson’s column on the Edible Baja Arizona blog and other CSA-inspired recipes, we should be able to tackle the produce hodgepodge that results. I’m reading both Gary Paul Nabhan’s Coming Home to Eat and Megan Kimble’s Unprocessed, and will be using their experiences as a guidebook for my own adventure.

I’m scouting out where the farmers’ markets are; where to find basic ingredients like flour, eggs, and cheese; what stuff I can find in my nearby grocery stores and what I can’t. I’ve also set a Tumblr blog at localgirlgoeslocal.tumblr.com, where I will post daily videos, observations, and useful tips and tricks I come across along the way, in addition to posting weekly updates on the Edible Baja Arizona blog.

And so, biting my nails, eyeing the calendar, and with one last longing glance toward the fresh Hawaiian pineapple that would taste so good grilled and served atop a locally sourced burger (but hey, no cheating!), I’m ready to begin. ✜

If the baby takes a nap at 9 a.m. and the farmers’ market closes at noon, will I have enough time to buy what we need for a weekend of cooking?

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Follow Kate’s adventures in the world of local food with her Local Girl Goes Local Tumblr: LocalGirlGoesLocal.tumblr.com Keep up to date on Kate’s progress with her weekly Monday updates on the Edible Baja Arizona blog: EdibleBajaArizona.com/blog

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Wellness & Beauty Services and Products in Baja Arizona

YOUTH

Growing for the Future Taylor Moore’s Best Day Ever project gets kids into the garden—and out in the market.

By Lisa O’Neill | Photography by Tim Fuller

D

alongside Jan Carlos as they harvest handfuls of red and orange grape tomatoes that cascade into tan woven baskets. One row over, Daniel’s sister Emily reaches under the green vine to pick tomatoes with light yellow skins. The weather report predicts 110 degrees today and even at 10 a.m., the sun beats down hard. On the far side of the garden, Elfride takes stock of her row: “Tomatoes, squash, dino kale, chard, chard, chard,” she says. Weeds have taken over and need to be pulled. At the end of the row, sunflowers rise high out of the ground, backdropped by the blue summer sky and the chain-link fence that encloses the garden.

Although growing food during summer in the desert may be challenging, it’s not out of the ordinary. But this garden and these gardeners are. Emily, Daniel, Jan Carlos, and Elfride are all under 14 and part of the Best Day Ever Kids Gardening Project, conceived and led by Taylor Moore, a retired lawyer and gardening enthusiast.

Daniel and Jan Carlos, both 11, talk about good bugs and bad ones: ladybugs eat other insects but white moths lay eggs in squash that hatch worms that eat the plants from the root.

Their fearless leader, Taylor Moore, 84, roams the garden in a sunhat, stopping to help them harvest and answer questions. a n i e l wo r k s

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“What do I do with these?” Elfride, 8, asks, showing him some green stalks she’s pulled.

Taylor says, “Those aren’t good so we’ll—” “Put ’em in the compost,” she sings, finishing his sentence with him.

Every week, the kids of the Best Day Ever Kids Garden Project work in four gardens: harvesting produce, tending the garden, planting, weighing the food, and accounting for expenses and income. On Sunday, the eight kids who have worked the hardest at harvest sell their wares at St. Philip’s Plaza Farmers’ Market and the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park.

“We fully believe we are going to change the planet right here in South Tucson,” Moore says. “The solution is not to replace capitalism but to nudge it and replace the value system. Instead of worshipping the dollar, what we focus on is trying to have ‘the best day ever.’”

The Best Day Ever crew celebrates a hard day’s harvest.

(Clockwise, from bottom) Alexie Aguilar, Alizay Mozo, Daniel Morel, Leah Farbstein, Emily Morel, Nate Clark, Navaeh Romero, and Taylor Moore.

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Kale with a side of cute: Every Sunday, the eight kids who have worked the hardest at harvest sell their wares at St. Philip’s Plaza Farmers’ Market and the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park.

Moore sees the work these kids are doing as the antidote to a planet suffering from climate change and a culture of greed. “The answer to climate change is food security. Right now, we are working backwards,” he says. “If you were the person in charge of remedying the world, you would know to get kids involved in food security issues. The younger, the better.”

Brian Lambert, the principal of Hollinger K-8 School, agrees. He was introduced to Taylor by Hollinger’s outdoor education teacher, Steve Bland, who told Lambert of the gardening work Moore was doing at other schools.

Lambert invited Moore to work with kids on existing gardens at Hollinger that needed more time and attention. He could barely believe his eyes when he saw Taylor working with kids beginning in preschool to dig up weeds and prepare the gardens to be planted; the investment of the kids was contagious—teachers started an after-school gardening club. Although he has seen the work at his school’s garden, this is Lambert’s first visit to the program’s newest garden, at 38th Street and Seventh Avenue, and as he speaks, he harvests tomatoes alongside his students.

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“We fully believe we are going to change the planet right here in South Tucson.

The solution is not to replace capitalism but to nudge it and replace the value system. Instead of worshipping the dollar, what we focus on is trying to have ‘the best day ever.’ ”

“What leader would not want someone with that wealth of knowledge to come in to work with kids and teach them the right way to do things, especially with the focus on sustainability, health and nutrition, and what the kids can do?” Lambert asks. “When I arrived today, they asked, ‘Mr. Lambert, what are we gonna do?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know.

You tell me!’ This is exactly what we as educators want to do, to learn from our kids and learn what they’re passionate about.”

An assortment of grownups— parents, grandparents, neighbors, and volunteers—cut up watermelon and cantaloupe for the kids to pass around. They help garden and take breaks in the shade. The dozen kids, ranging in age from 4 to 14, harvest and weigh the fruits of their labor.

They break for lunch: some sit and eat tortillas, beans, and orange juice while others, across the garden, spray each other with the water hose until they’re drenched and overtaken with laughter. When Moore makes the call that lunch is over, the kids rush back to harvesting duties.

(From left) With Moore’s help, Isabella Gamez and Francisco Terrazas harvest what they’ve planted.

Emily Bonilla and her brother, Noe Bonilla, show off a pair of prize cucumbers.

M

gardening until he was 50 years old. When he and his wife divorced, he was left with the house and her robust garden. Neighbors started to complain of overgrowth in his yard and he figured he’d better do something about it. He went out to pull weeds. “It turned out what I was pulling was cilantro,” he recalls, laughing. “No wonder it smelled so good.” After that, gardening became a passion.

When Moore was a child, his mother ran an orphanage in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. There were always children running through. When he retired from his career as a lawyer and began volunteering, Moore decided to combine his love of gardening with his lifelong love of children.

Moore’s first kids’ garden project started in the low-income community of Anapra near El Paso. It was there that Moore met Lola, a 9-year-old girl who would alter his outlook forever.

A hard worker during harvest, Lola was chosen as one of the kids to go to the Saturday market. Taylor picked the kids up before sunrise and they began the day as always: watching the sun come over the mountains as the kids harvested sunflowers and sang. At the end of a long day’s work, Moore dropped oor e didn ’ t start

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Lola at home and as she got out of the car, she told him, “Oh Mr. Moore, this was my best day ever.” As he drove away, he thought: “I’m an old man at the end of my life, why do I need a 9-year-old to teach me this? Why can’t every day be my best day ever?”

In March of 2013, Moore moved to Tucson to be nearer to his daughter, Charlie, and granddaughter, Willa. But he was also ready to begin another kids’ project and was inspired by the Las Milpitas de Cottonwood community farm run by the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.

The Tucson project started in Moore’s first backyard garden, down the street from Milpitas; it is now operating at four locations: Las Milpitas community farm, Pueblo Magnet High School, Hollinger K-8 School, and their newest venture: The Best Day Ever Kids Garden at 38th Street and Seventh, which offers individual plots so each kid can have their own garden.

Moore says our natural talents must be challenged to have that best day. “These kids are working with nature and doing it all themselves. They feel fulfilled at the end of a long day’s work,” he says. “This can change the value system of capitalism. If you had a zillion dollars, you cannot buy that feeling. You have to earn it.”

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A smile makes a sell, and Emile Morel, Elfride Obomo, and Alizay Mozo are all smiles at the Sunday farmers’ market.

“W

like to hear about our project?” Willa, 12, asks a potential customer walking by the Best Day Ever Kids Garden Project stand at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market. Since it’s Father’s Day, Willa, Moore’s granddaughter, and her mom, Charlie, have come to market to help out. Hollyhocks, an edible flower, float in a bowl of water. Baskets of chard, kale, and tomatoes are spread across the table.

The project receives much community support: The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and Community Gardens of Tucson provide seeds, equipment, and volunteer support.

Restaurants Urban Fresh and the Tasteful Kitchen donate their compost.

Monetarily, the Best Day Ever Kids Garden Project is built to be self-sustaining. The kids reimburse Moore $10 for gas to take them to the market each week. The kids pay their rent for setting up shop at market and their expenses for lunch. The kids calculate how much to pay the gardeners, a third of what they anticipate making at market for items harvested.

When Moore started, someone advised him to handle the money himself, but for him, the whole purpose of the project was to empower kids every step of the way, from planting to harvesting to selling. “If you live a life and somebody trusts you, life is good,” he says. “But if you live a life where no one trusts you, life stinks. All day, every day.”

They also have a rule that the youngest kid who can do a job, and wants to, gets to do it. With things like accounting, this can slow down the process, but Moore thinks the time is well spent.

After market, Moore and Clark take the kids to the many restaurants that buy their produce including Café Passe, Urban ould you

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Fresh, Tucson Botanical Gardens, Prep & Pastry, The Nook, and Five Points Market & Restaurant.

At Five Points, Sunday brunch is beginning to slow down when the kids arrive carrying plastic bins of produce to sell.

After showing owners Brian Haskins and Jasper Ludwig what is available and calculating the price, Emily, 13, writes two handwritten invoices in her notebook, one for the restaurant and one for their records.

Moore appreciates that, in addition to being a regular buyer, Five Points has never lowballed them. That is not true for all Tucson restaurants, some of which have expected significantly lower prices for quality produce just because the vendors are kids.

Since the kids started coming, when the restaurant opened a year and a half ago, “They’ve become a lot more professional,” says Ludwig. “I coached them, saying: ‘Clean it, make it look beautiful.’ They’re learning not just how to grow food but to go through the whole line of product.”

Ludwig, who grew up on a farm, adds, “Many kids these days don’t have any introduction to what they are learning and certainly not the importance of local food and local economy.”

Leaving Five Points, the kids pile into Moore’s car for their next destinations. After they drop the trailer off, they’ll head to Café Passe to tally their efforts from the week. Then they will prepare to do it all over again.

“You don’t need a revolution. You need to let the people at the top know there is a way they can feel fulfilled every day,” says Moore. “That will change the planet.” ✜ Lisa O’Neill originally hails from New Orleans but has made her home in the desert, where she writes and teaches writing. Her gumbo is not as good as her mama’s, but she’s working on it.

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Historic photos courtesy of the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum

B i s b e e , A Z An unusual art town built in a deep canyon...

FUN EVENTS TO ATTEND THIS FALL:

● Every Saturday, 9am-1pm - Bisbee Farmers Market

● Oct. 10th - Vintage Bisbee Wine Tasting

● Every Second Saturday Bisbee After 5 ArtWalk

● Oct. 17th - Bisbee 1000 Stair Climb

● Sept.12th, Noon - 10pm - Bisbee Blues Festival

● Oct. 22nd - Cochise College Pit Fire Pottery Festival

● Sept.19th, Oct. 3rd, Nov. 7th - The Old Bisbee Ghost Hunt

● Oct. 24th - B.R.A.T.S. Art Coaster Parade

● Sept.18th, Oct. 9th - The Oliver House Ghost Hunt

● Nov. 13th - 15th - 4th Annual Sidepony Express Music Festival

● Sept. 25th - 27th - The Oliver House Haunted Weekend ● Oct. 9th - 10th - Bisbee Plein Air Competition

stay in

● Nov. 14th - Friends of the Copper Queen Library Altered Books Show

bisbee, arizona

Historic photos courtesy of the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum

stay in

bisbee, arizona

EXPLORE

BISBEE

eat & drink in bisbee

eat & drink in bisbee

TABLE

Cheaper by the Dozen After 93 years serving their famous fresh green corn tamales, Lerua’s is where the community comes to eat, celebrate, and connect.

By Autumn Giles | Photography by Jeff Smith

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S r . walks out of the kitchen of Lerua’s holding an ear of corn in each hand. “The perfect kernel has a dimple,” he says, running his finger along a row of uniformly indented kernels. “If you push down on a kernel and it pops, it’s too tender.”

“We know our corn,” says Mike Hultquist Jr., chef and, along with his father, co-owner of Lerua’s Fine Mexican Foods in Tucson. Top-quality white corn, which the family sources from Chihuahua, Sonora, or Sinaloa, depending on the season, is essential for their well-known and widely adored green corn tamales, which have a signature dough of fresh ground kernels rather than masa and are wrapped in fresh green corn husks.

Before working with their current “corn broker,” also affectionately known as “the corn guy,” Mike Sr. recalls that his mother, Carmen, would send him to Mexico with $500 cash and a flashlight to purchase the fresh corn necessary for the tamales.

He remembers walking across the border and struggling to get many of the vendors to take him seriously until he told them that he didn’t just want a pound or two, he wanted to buy their entire truck of corn. ik e

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Shining the flashlight into the ears of corn let him see how translucent the kernels were. A kernel that allows too much light through has too much liquid and will produce an overly wet green corn tamale dough. He has other tricks too. “There better be worms,” he explains. “They don’t waste their time on bad corn or GMOs.” “The corn guys kind of find us,” says Mike Sr. Over the years, Lerua’s has developed a reputation for paying top dollar for the best corn. When it’s good, they’ll buy two to four acres at a time. There’s a school and church in a village near Ímuris, Sonora, with a plaque out front which mentions Lerua’s helping make the buildings possible by buying their corn for so many years.

Mike Sr. describes his late mother Carmen as, “a very enterprising woman with a degree in chemistry.” Carmen was a Tucson native whose father immigrated to the area from Palma, Italy, after a couple-year pit stop in Guaymas, Sonora.

When Mike Hultquist Jr., left, returned to Lerua’s from culinary school, Mike Sr., right, told him “don’t touch the regular menu.”

She graduated from Tucson High and the University of Arizona. According to Mike Jr., the story of how Lerua’s came into the Hultquist family starts with Carmen Hultquist’s tenacity. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it,” was her mantra when she began speaking with Tony Lerua about the possibility of purchasing Lerua’s.

“She really wanted something of her own,” says Mike Jr. “She really didn’t want to be a housewife.”

So when Tony Lerua told her she could work for him without pay for four years and only then would he think about selling her the restaurant, she did it.

“She was a class act,” says Mike Jr. In the early 1920s, in the earliest iteration of Lerua’s, Tony Lerua’s wife, Elisa, starting cooking out of their home on Fourth Street. “People would come with gallon buckets,” to buy or barter for Elisa’s food, explains Mike Jr. When Lerua’s went brick and mortar, it maintained its original spirit of feeding the community by producing quantities for take out in a market setting with a couple tables.

At the time that his grandmother bought it, Lerua’s was what Mike Jr. calls “a good old fashioned Chicago or New York deli with Mexican flair.” There was a freezer stocked with albondigas and tamales, shelves of canned goods like escabeche, and steam tables. Adorning the front of the building were what Mike Sr. calls “plants that looked like they would eat you.” Mike Sr.’s brother Brad, who runs El Torero in Tucson, concurs. He remembers “all those weird plants” out front—some people thought it was a florist.

It stayed that way until the ’70s when the family revamped the space, adding more tables and making it feel more like a restaurant. However, Mike Jr. explains that even after Lerua’s had a more traditional set-up, “everybody walked through the kitchen and said ‘Hi’ to Carmen.” The parking lot would be full and the restaurant would be empty because everyone was in back with her, Mike Jr. remembers.

“They would talk to her as if they knew her since high school,” he says. After her husband died, a number of suitors frequented Lerua’s, including a gentlemen Mike Jr. calls “The Reverend.” “He was in love with my grandma,” he says.

Mike Jr. explains that, for the most part, “they still produce quantities like Mrs. Lerua.” The large batches of meats, beans, and tamales that they make every other day during the week are measured in gallons and dozens. He admits that, particularly after culinary school and three years working in fine dining establishments in California, he struggled with the idea of making such large amounts. “Why are you doing 15 gallons?” he asks, explaining that he later realized, “This is not about a five-course meal. You’re going to feed people.” In talking about the women who make up Lerua’s culinary heritage, he makes these connections often—feeding, nourishing, and community.

“Lerua’s has, in a sense, been feeding the community,” for almost a hundred years, he says.

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Corn is king at Lerua’s; they source top-quality white corn from Chihuahua, Sonora, or Sinaloa, depending on the season.

For 44 years, Rita Reyes has been opening the kitchen at Lerua’s and doing prep work for the green corn. It takes 11 hours to make a batch of green corn tamales. “The thing about green corn is it’s a labor of love,” says Mike Jr. The green corn tamales at Lerua’s are still made according to Carmen’s original recipe, save for the lard, which they stopped using in 1995. Mike Jr. believes their current oil blend produces a better finished product in addition to being a little healthier. Plus, it allows them to offer a vegan version.

The corn needs to be shucked and the silks removed. Reyes and other women in the kitchen take the silks home and use them to make tea. The corn is then cut from the cob by hand,

The best tamales come from the freshest corn: Alicia Ramirez (front) cleans white corn cobs while Rita Reyes shucks.

resulting in 10 to 12 gallons of cut corn. In her day, Carmen bought a volcanic stone mill that is “70 to 80 years old and still going strong,” according to Mike Jr. It mills the kernels just enough to slightly break them apart.

After the tamales steam, they have to be re-shaped. Mike Jr. compares the dough to a soufflé—it will rise and fall, changing shape during cooking. He calls Alicia Ramirez, known as “Lecho,” the head tamale maker who has made green corn tamales at Lerua’s for 18 years, “a perfectionist” when it comes to reshaping the tops after cooking. “She loves to make them look good,” he says.

During an average week, they sell 20 to 35 dozen green corn tamales take out per day and 20 dozen per day in the restaurant.

In the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they sell about 5,000 dozen green corn tamales alone.

In preparation, they stockpile pallets of the best-selling tamales at a local cold storage facility.

After culinary school, when he returned to Lerua’s to take on a larger role, Mike Jr. remembers his father telling him one thing: don’t touch the regular menu. So, he didn’t. He’s particularly proud of their barbacoa, his father’s recipe, which uses beef marinated in escabeche, giving it unexpected depth of flavor. Their carne seca is made in-house from start to finish.

Mike Jr. created the specials menu, which constantly changes, to give himself a creative outlet but honor his father’s request to keep the regular menu intact.

On the day I visited, it featured cider-braised carnitas tacos and “L.B.C tacos,” with Maine lobster, crispy pork belly, and chorizo. He recently collaborated with Iron John’s Brewing to create Masa Cheve, a green corn lager that’s now available at the restaurant. When he isn’t at Lerua’s, Mike Jr. typically spends two days a week at his mother’s restaurant, La Roca, in Nogales.

“The thing about green corn is it’s a labor of love.”

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Alicia Ramirez checks on steaming pots of tamales. “This is not about a five-course meal,” says Mike Jr. “You’re going to feed people.”

“This place is really embedded in Tucson,” says Mike Jr. of Lerua’s. “A kid just got baptized, someone just got promoted—they’re here.” He enjoys seeing the younger families in the area beginning to make it their own. Despite its storied history, Lerua’s future remains uncertain due to the city’s plans to widen Broadway. Although they’ve been in limbo, holding off on improvements as a result of the plans for decades, Mike Sr. now thinks they’ll lose the building within a year.

Lerua’s is 93 this year. “I would love to see it hit 100,” says Mike Jr. ✜ 100 September /October 2015

Lerua’s Fine Mexican Foods. 2005 E. Broadway Blvd.

520.624.0322. LeruasFineMexicanFoods.com.

Autumn Giles is a freelance writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in Modern Farmer, New American Homesteader, and Punch. Her first book, Beyond Canning: New Techniques, Ingredients, and Flavors to Preserve, Pickle, and Ferment Like Never Before, will be out in February 2016.

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Where art & History meet

T u b a c, A r i z o n a Events in Tubac this fall:

Sept. 12th & 26th - Living History: Spanish Colonial Foods

Sept. 12th & Nov. 7th - Starry Saturdays at Tumacรกcori National Historical Park

Sept. 13th, 20th & 27th - Exhibit:Trincheras Archaeological Site at Tubac Presidio State Historic Park Sept. 13th & 26th - Frontier Printing Press Demonstrations at Tubac Presidio State Historic Park Sept. 19th & Oct. 24th - Family Sleepover at Tumacรกcori National Historical Park Oct. 1st & Nov 1st - The Arizona Cavalcade of History Oct. 2nd & Nov. 6th - Friday Nightfall On Tubac Road Oct. 3rd - Archaeological Sites Special Tour

Oct. 3rd - Barktoberfest at Plaza De Anza - includes all you can eat plus two drink (beer/wine) tickets.

Oct. 17th - Anza Days at Tumacรกcori National Historical Park

Oct. 27th - Full Moon Nights at Tumacรกcori National Historical Park Nov. 6th - 8th - Tubac Fall Arts & Crafts Festival at Tubac Village

Dine in Tubac

Explore Tubac

ARTISAN

Food and Faith From Patagonia to St. David, from pizza joints to cloistered monasteries, Baja Arizona cooks are bringing communities together for a plate of food—and a side of faith.

By Jock Soper | Photography by Casia and Eric Fletcher

T

of growing, preparing, and sharing food has been inextricably linked to the exercise of faith and acts of religious service since the first stirrings of civilization. Food rules and rituals abound in most major religions, helping to define the beliefs within each community. In southeastern Arizona, evidence of the power of the relationship of food and faith is clearly seen throughout the secular and religious landscape.

Ecuador-born Cecilia San Miguel, the owner and chef of the Velvet Elvis Pizza Company in Patagonia, says, “When I’m cooking, I’m praying.” She prepares fresh, healthful meals and serves them in a dining room festooned with icons of the Virgin of Guadalupe as well as the actual portrait, on velvet, he wor k

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of Elvis Presley. San Miguel does not admit to being religious, but is a person of faith, with deeply held beliefs based on her cross-cultural experience with shamans, priests, and healers.

Her business reflects her beliefs: the purity of ingredients, the community table where strangers may meet over a meal, the quietly comfortable service. It is a caring, mindful experience.

You can order, eat, and run, but most guests linger. It is a place for sharing a sense of community, even for those visitors just passing through.

From left: Father Henri of the Holy Trinity Monastery, AjahnSarayut Arnata of Wat Buddhametta, Cecilia San Miguel of the Velvet Elvis Pizza Company, Sister Victoria of Santa Rita Abbey.

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An unconventional faith: At the Velvet Elvis Pizza Company, Cecilia San Miguel says, “When I’m cooking, I’m praying.”

Food as a tool for defining a community is clearly expressed at the monthly community buffet served by the Buddhist monks at Tucson’s Wat Buddhametta temple and meditation center. As many as 200 local non-Buddhists enjoy the hospitality of the monks each month at a buffet supper of Thai food prepared by the monks and their “mothers” from the community. This is an inversion of the usual relationship in which the monks rely on the community to sustain them in their lives of prayer and contemplation. Donations from guests help the monastery to pay its bills and continue charitable works.

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Because Buddhist monks rely on their community for their sustenance, the dietary restrictions on monks are open-textured and practical, says AjahnSarayut Arnata, abbot of the Wat Buddhametta. “Your life depends on the community. You eat what you are given,” he says. “If there is meat in the bowl, that is your meal.”

The daily meals of the monks, taken in silence, end with an afternoon luncheon, an act of moderation that puts less of a burden on the community that sustains them. The meal is taken slowly, the abbot says, to aid digestion. “When I am eating, I am meditating.”

“When I am eating, I am meditating,” says AjahnSarayut Arnata at Tucson’s Wat Buddhametta temple and meditation center.

Abstention from certain foods and periods of fasting as a path toward the sacred are commonplace in some religions, but not in Buddhism. “Fasting is not required,” the abbot says. “Buddha says it is not the middle path. He tried it, he says, and it doesn’t work. The mind is not at peace when you are hungry.”

Fasting, however, is a part of religious practice at the Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David, near the San Pedro River in Cochise County. Father Henri, the French-born abbot of the monastery, explains that fasting is an important element of Benedictine spirituality, following the scriptural model of Christ in the desert. He links the physical and the spiritual, saying that an empty stomach also “empties the mind, so that it can be filled with the word of God.” Meals at the monastery are quiet, with food served and eaten in silence while a designated reader offers a text to illuminate the 110 September /October 2015

spirit. “The church and the dining room are the same,” Father Henri says. “In church we break bread through the Eucharist, and that flows over into the dining room where we break bread together. At the meal we take nourishment for our bodies from the food, and spiritual nourishment from the readings.”

Bread is an important part of the economic life of the monastery. The bakery at Holy Trinity produces Benedictine bread for sale. The round, crusty loaves are baked using whole grains and whole wheat flour, with raisins and other dried fruits and pecans mixed in.

The pecans used in the bakery come from a mature orchard of nut trees along the roadway at the front of the monastery grounds. More than a ton of nuts are harvested in midwinter, some put aside for the bakery, and some packaged for sale in the monastery visitor center.

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Food rules and rituals abound in most major religions, helping to define the beliefs within each community.

At the Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David, “The dining room and the church are the same,” says Father Henri.

Father Henri combines the literal and the symbolic in describing how important the sharing of a meal is within the Benedictine order. “The central idea of the sacrament of Holy Communion,” he says, “is that Christ became bread.”

That fundamental tenet of Christian faith, linking spiritual and physical food in celebration of the sacred, is both the belief and the business of Santa Rita Abbey near Sonoita. The bakery at Santa Rita Abbey produces thousands of pounds of altar breads used in the celebration of Mass in hundreds of churches across the country.

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Santa Rita Abbey is the cloistered hilltop home to Cistercian nuns, led by Sister Victoria, who pioneered the establishment of the bakery as a way to sustain their monastic lives. The Cistercian order, like the Benedictines at Holy Trinity, follows the Rule of Saint Benedict, but with a somewhat stricter interpretation of its requirements for quiet solitude and a simple, balanced life of work and prayer.

Sister Victoria speaks animatedly about the deep beliefs of her way of life, and the simple pleasures of preparing food as part of her service to others. “There is something holy about

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Nuns at Santa Rita Abbey produce thousands of pounds of altar breads. “There is something holy about working in a kitchen,” says Sister Victoria.

working in a kitchen,” she says. “A little thing like peeling carrots frees your mind to be with God.” When the abbey started making altar bread 15 years ago, everything was done by hand. It was a matter of learning by doing. They found a convent in Canada that was producing altar breads. That led them to France, where Sister Victoria found a company that made bakery equipment specifically for producing the wafers. Today, many technical elements of the process are managed by computers.

The altar breads have only two ingredients, whole wheat flour and well water, so temperature, timing, and humidity are critical to producing a well-founded wafer. The Santa Rita version is a little darker in color and more substantial than what other bakeries offer, in order to make them more like bread, more directly evocative of their symbolic meaning.

Limiting their workday to only five hours to balance their lives in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict, the sisters still produce more than 13 million wafers per year.

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Sister Victoria can cite chapter and verse on the meaning of the sacramental wafers, but beyond that, she points out that food is important throughout the New Testament. “Jesus talks about food all the time. When he restores life to the little 12-year-old girl [in Mark 5:22-43], what does he tell her family? He doesn’t say ‘go pray.’ He says, ‘Give her something to eat.’” ✜ Velvet Elvis Pizza Company. 292 Naugle Ave., Patagonia.

520.394.2102.

Wat Buddhametta. 1133 S. Swan Road. 520.745.4624.

Holy Trinity Monastery. 1605 S. St. Marys Way, St. David.

520.720.4642.

Santa Rita Abbey. 14200 E. Fish Canyon Road, Sonoita.

520.455.5595.

Jock Soper is a writer living in Patagonia. His family business is MacLeod & Henry. He was formerly a brick maker, now a communications consultant.

VISIT MT Lemmon TUcson’s sky island paradise

A visit to this natural treasure is wonderful in every season.

Climbing 6,000 feet in 25 miles, the scenic Catalina Highway takes you through six distinct life zones, amazing geological formations, and awesome vistas, ending at 9,157 feet in a conifer forest!

Shop and Dine in Summerhaven and Ski Valley • Stay in a Cabin • Stargaze at the UA Sky Center Hike Cool, Forested Trails • Learn at the Palisades Visitor Center • Have a Picnic • Pitch a Tent Ride the Ski Lift •Climb a Rock • Listen to the Wind in the Pines • Relax on a Deck • Savor a Vista

PROFILE

Michelle Lesco Doesn’t Do Slow Food Ranked No. 8 in the world for competitive eating, Lesco—aka the Cardboard Shell— is inhaling hot dogs and taking names.

By Debbie Weingarten | Photography by Liora K

O

4, thousands of spectators gathered at the original Nathan’s Famous restaurant on New York’s Coney Island to witness the 2015 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. The 32 competitors, 16 men and 16 women who are bused to the event from a secret location, filed out before their adoring fans. Among the competitors was Tucson’s Michelle Lesco, otherwise known as the Cardboard Shell, the No. 8 ranked competitive eater in the world, according to the International Federation of Competitive Eaters (IFOCE) and Major League Eating (MLE).

By day, the 5-foot-4-inch, 115-pound Lesco teaches math to juniors and seniors at Pantano High School. But when she’s not teaching, Lesco slips into a kind of gastronomical alter ego, dominating professional eating competitions across the country.

Lesco, who attended high school in Willcox and moved to Tucson in 2001, has been tackling food challenges since 2009, when she visited Lindy’s on Fourth Avenue to cheer on two of her male friends, who were planning to attempt the OMFG challenge—a burger consisting of nine one-third-pound patties (three pounds) of meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and Lindy’s sauce, made famous after being attempted by Adam Richman of the Travel Network’s Man v. Food. As legend has it, the guys chickened out, and Lesco ended up taking on the challenge instead. She surprised everyone— including herself—by consuming the entire thing in 30 minutes, beating Richman’s time of just over 40 minutes, and becoming the first woman to finish it. But Lesco, who describes herself as “highly n J uly

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competitive,” was determined to conquer the OMFG in less than 20 minutes (in which case, Lindy’s foots the cost of the $24.99 burger). Lesco went back “a handful of times,” continuing to battle the beast, eventually whittling her time down to two and a half minutes.

From there, Lesco was hooked. And so began a pattern: Lesco’s friends would tell her about a food challenge, and she would show up and devour it. She ate her way around Tucson’s eating challenges—through La Botana’s five-pound burrito, and the Hog Pit Smokehouse Hog Trough challenge, which consists of a one-pound burger, one pound of brisket, a pound of pulled pork, a pound of fries, and a pickle. The only Tucson food challenge that has eluded Lesco is the Boca Taco Challenge, a buffet line of 17 tacos and an enormous baked potato, loaded with meat and other fixings. Lesco holds the Boca record for most successful attempt, but the challenge got the best of her on two occasions—although that was before Cardboard Shell went pro.

In 2011, Lesco’s friends convinced her to register for a Nathan’s qualifying contest in Tempe. With zero preparation, Lesco devoured 21½ hot dogs and buns, stepping squarely into professional competitive eating territory. She signed a three-year contract with Major League Eating, adopted the nickname Cardboard Shell (because when she orders take-out food, all that’s left is the cardboard container), and went on to A high school math teacher by day, Lesco transforms after school into her alter ego, “The Cardboard Shell,” capable of downing dozens of donuts.

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place fourth in the women’s competition in New York— despite getting the hiccups and stopping eight minutes into the 10-minute contest.

As the great Cardboard Shell has risen to the top of the competitive eating world, Lesco’s father, a retired Star Trek stuntman, occasionally attends her competitions, and her mother hangs giant “Go Michelle!” signs in the yard of her Willcox home. Lesco says her parents and four sisters “are the first people I text after a competition.”

Though Lesco originally attempted to hide her life as a professional eater from her students, she was eventually outed by a newspaper article.

Now Lesco says she fields regular questions about her eating. No surprise—there might be nothing cooler than having a professional competitive eater double as your high school math teacher.

“They are fascinated.

They love it,” she says, and then recalls a time when she crafted a math problem based on a competitive eating scenario, in order to sustain her students’ interest in the math lesson.

“We were studying arithmetic sequences, and I made up some question—it wasn’t totally accurate to hot dog eating, but it was close,” Lesco says, laughing. “If I eat this many [hot dogs] in the first minute, and I eat a quarter of a hot dog less each minute thereafter, how many will I eat after 10 minutes?”

By now, Lesco’s competitive “eatography” is exhaustive. She has consumed Twinkies, gyoza, ribs, turkey, pumpkin pie, kimchi, pepperoni rolls, cupcakes, tacos, corn, ice cream, tamales, pork sliders, and chicken wings. In 2013, she became the first woman in history to beat Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas in an eating contest. That same year, she beat Joey “Jaws” Chestnut—the No. 1 ranked competitive eater—in a rib competition. In 2014, Lesco was flown to Japan to entertain Navy troops by downing pulled pork sandwiches and hot dogs and offering technique tips to budding Navy competitive eaters.

Although MLE sponsors eating contests all year long, the Fourth of July Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is the most famous and epic of them all. It is the World Series of professional competitive eating, featuring the top eaters in the world—including Chestnut, who holds the world record of 69 hot dogs and buns; 120 September /October 2015

Matt “Megatoad” Stonie, this year’s newly-crowned winner; and the top female in the sport, Miki Sudo, who is Lesco’s good friend and training partner. The Nathan’s Contest and its regional qualifiers are the only MLE-sanctioned competitions in which men and women compete separately.

For Nathan’s competitors, the Road to Coney is paved with training. Lesco commits to regular trial runs, in which she cooks 40 hot dogs and tries to eat as many as she can in 10 minutes. Lesco admits that hot dogs aren’t her specialty—she’s better at “debris” challenges, like wings or ribs, which require a different mental strategy and finger dexterity to pick off the meat. To improve her hot dog technique, Lesco records her trial runs and watches the videos in order to pinpoint areas of weakness.

And because hot dog eating is based on throat control and stomach capacity, Lesco focuses on training her body to avoid the gag reflex and stretching her stomach with watermelon, Gatorade, and chocolate milk (she can drink a gallon in about five minutes).

Despite the high-calorie foods regularly ingested by competitive eaters, the professional circuit is largely composed of physically trim and athletic people. Lesco stays in shape by running, snowboarding, hiking, cycling, and working out at the gym—especially during competitive eating season. Lesco credits her competitive personality with the perseverance she needs to make it through the competitions.

“You have to be competitive,” she says, “I’m completely there and focused. It’s such a mental game. You have to tell your body, ‘We’re not stopping.’ The closest thing I can relate it to is that I ran cross country in high school ... you want to quit with all of your being, but no matter how much you want to give up, you’ve got to keep pushing.’”

But how long can a human body sustain this kind of gastronomical rigor? For those of us watching from the sidelines, our jaws drop in a kind of simultaneous horror and admiration as we ask ourselves a slew of anatomy-related questions. The impact to an eater’s long-term health is one of the most obvious. When asked how long she thinks her body can keep this up, Lesco shrugs. “I have no idea,” she says. “I’m going to keep doing it until it stops being fun.”

The competitive eating circuit picks up in the summer, which works for Lesco’s school schedule.

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nat ur ally bubbly ,

down-to-earth individual, Lesco remains humbly devoted to organizing service-learning projects for her students. Having spent the last several years organizing youth empowerment programs, Lesco spends a significant amount of her free time volunteering for local nonprofits. She also participates in Big Brothers, Big Sisters as a Big Sister. Voted MLE’s Humanitarian of the Year, Lesco has used her platform to fundraise for various causes—most recently for the organization charity: water, which funds clean water initiatives in developing countries.

On stage at Coney Island, Lesco presents as a dedicated athlete. Wearing athletic shorts, a monogrammed Nathan’s T-shirt, striped baseball socks, and red armbands, she exudes an impressive confidence and a sturdy grace. On TV, the ESPN 122 September /October 2015

announcers comment on the great year she’s had and consider her a threat to the top women in the sport—namely, Sudo and Thomas.

The event is a spectacle like no other: screaming fans wear giant hot dogs on their heads, paint their faces, and wrap themselves in American f lags. But behind the scenes, there is a seriousness to this circus. A line of judges stand, clad in black and white referee jerseys, their entire purpose to count hot dogs and look for signs of cheating (“reversal of fortune,” or vomit, which means automatic disqualification—very rare in the pro scene). Muscular “bun boys” and model-esque “bun girls” stand behind the eaters with the intensity and devotion of personal trainers, yelling encouragement when eaters start to nauseate or drop their pace.

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“You have to be competitive,” says Lesco. “It’s such a mental game.”

And then there is the emcee, George Shea, founder of the IFOCE and MLE, and the marketing guru largely responsible for turning the Nathan’s competition into the multimillion-dollar vaudevillian event that it is today. Wearing a straw hat and suit jacket, Shea introduces Lesco in his over-the-top style, something between a proselytizing preacher and a performance poet. “She is pure muscle and pure intensity, and her soul shines like magnesium set afire in the dark of a February night! Ranked No. 8 in the world—10 pounds of boysenberry pie, 50 tacos—she is the first person ever to weaponize the stomach!”

Lesco crosses the stage and gives a wave to the cheering crowd. A sea of hot dog heads, homemade signs proclaiming “Joey ate my lunch,” foam noodles, and professional cameras stretches out as far as the eye can see. ✜ For more information about Michelle “Cardboard Shell” Lesco, visit cardboardshell.weebly.com, or find her on Twitter @cardboardshell or on Facebook at facebook.com/ cardboardshelleats. For more on Lesco’s fundraising efforts, visit My.CharityWater.org/RoadtoConey.

Debbie Weingarten is a writer, mother, and budding competitive eating enthusiast.

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What the

Ancestors Ate Recreating prehistoric food in Baja Arizona from hidden stories in ancient fragments.

B y P aul M irocha , with A nna M irocha P hotography by P aul M irocha

“Now Indian children make a game of searching for bits of clay that were once somebody’s bowl or mug or cooking pot or dipper.

Their parents look at what they find and tell them, ‘Remember—treat that with respect. It is so old.’

They say every piece of clay is a piece of someone’s life.”

—Byrd Baylor, from When Clay Sings

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Previous Page, left to right: goosefoot, lamb’s quarters, or huauzontle (Chenopodium berlandieri) nutritious seeds, stems, and leaves; domesticated amaranth (Amaranthus cruentus), nutritious seeds and leaves, an Aztec staple food also used in ritual; tansy mustard (Descurainia pinnata), edible seeds with a mustardy tang; Palmer’s amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri), a wild weed with nutritious seeds, stems, and leaves.

Above: Allen Denoyer’s archaeological site photos documenting the broken pot with the burned squash seeds as he uncovered them. Courtesy of Desert Archaeology, Inc.

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er e ,

take a look at this.” Suzanne Fish bent down and picked up what looked like a small, flat stone. She handed it to me to pass around the small group of people standing on the summit of Tumamoc Hill. We were listening as Suzanne and Paul Fish, her husband and a fellow archaeologist, led a tour of this historic landmark and archaeological site in Tucson. The object was of a nondescript brown color, quite weathered—yet light flashed from tiny bits of mica on its surface as I turned it over in my hand. “It’s a fragment of an old pot,” I volunteered.

“Exactly,” she said. “A plainware sherd, from Early Ceramic times before they painted pottery. Between 500 and 700 A.D., there was a prehistoric village up here built by the early Hohokam people. Once this sherd was kitchenware, then trash, now an artifact.

These artifacts are common, yet each contains a story that contributes to a larger story—a narrative—that will always be incomplete.”

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that prehistoric potters used materials close at hand, so sherds found at a site are usually locally made. But Tumamoc sherds are made of clay and sand from sites all over the Tucson valley, many visible from the hill’s apex.

“So people from different prehistoric villages carried pots up this steep slope?” someone asked.

“Apparently,” said Suzanne. “But we’ll never know exactly why.”

“What was in those pots?” someone else asked.

“Perhaps food, drink, or provisions for special events,” Suzanne said.

“So maybe those ancient villagers all met to party up here,” offered a listener, generating laughter.

“That’s as good a conjecture as any,” Paul said, as Suzanne carefully replaced the sherd. “The Hohokam couldn’t grow much food here; there was no water. Yet they labored hard to build these rock terraces, trincheras, on the hillside around us, uzanne explained

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The preserved remains of seeds, stems, and rinds from domesticated squash have been found in caves in southern Mexico dating back at least to 8000 B.C., older than the earliest evidence for cultivated maize and far older than beans. One theory suggests that wild gourds filled an essential function for thousands of years—as containers for food and liquids. These inedible gourd fruits may have also been eaten after being painstakingly processed to remove their bitter taste. Eventually domestication selected out the bitterness and increased the size of seeds and pulp. (From left to right) Wild cushaw squash seeds, Cucurbita argyrosperma; domesticated squash seeds, Cucurbita pepo; Tohono O’odham ha:l squash seeds, Cucurbita argyrosperma. Pictured actual size.

indicating social organization and shared beliefs. But to know the reason for sure, we’d have to interview the sherds themselves.”

We stood under an empty sky in warming air, clutching water bottles. Below us to the east was downtown, beyond it the vast valley. To the southwest, Baboquivari Peak, the sacred mountain of the modern Tohono O’odham, who historians believe are related to the Hohokam. We don’t know to what degree this relationship is genetic, but the Tohono O’odham see themselves as the Hohokam’s descendants, and their culture does retain many aspects of the Hohokam culture—including food traditions.

“We know that around 400 to 500 B.C., when people started living up here, significant changes were happening,” said Paul.

“We see humans shaping their environment, like with these trincheras—and the irrigation canals down near the Santa Cruz River, probably the first in North America. After many thousands of years, mobile foragers were settling into villages, farming with these canals. Farming allowed the Hohokam to flourish but also made them more dependent on rain.”

We’d parked our cars that morning near a large circle of rocks marking a “big house,” a community or ceremonial structure excavated on this summit in the ’90s and then reburied. And before construction of a road and radio towers on this summit, there’d been evidence of an ancient plaza.

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I began to think there was more to this than ancient people just filling their bellies. The anthropologist Ruth Underhill wrote in the 1930s that O’odham religion was fundamentally based on food, because survival depended on “bringing down the clouds” that watered crops. Native peoples’ ceremonies throughout the Southwest and Mexico lasted for days, and both visitors and participants had to be fed. I’d also read about “competitive feasting,” an archeological term describing when people from different villages gathered to eat together, and I imagined that this hilltop was a place for that gathering, and a sanctuary for the accompanying rituals.

These people wrote nothing down, preferring an oral passage of knowledge. Fittingly, the name we give the Hohokam, from the O’odham word huhugam—“those who are gone”—omits more than it explains. Yet these people were still people essentially like us. How did they explain the world? What did they value?

Why did they live on this dry mountain, exposed to summer heat and monsoon storms—and did they appreciate this beautiful 360-degree view like I do?

Everyone eats. It’s physical and intimate, yet universal. Could I reconstruct a prehistoric recipe? Could I taste something as the ancients had?

The clues had been in those pots … or pots like them. I decided to try to unravel this mystery.

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Tepary beans are often found in ancient Hohokam sites in southern Arizona. This quintessential desert food has been known to yield a crop from a single monsoon soaking. The wild, creeping ancestor of modern beans has small, rock-hard seeds that were scattered from the pods as they ripened.

Domestication created a more manageable bushy plant, producing larger seeds with softer skins, which stayed in the pods for easier harvesting.

(From left to right) Wild tepary beans, Phaseolus acutifolius; O’odham Sacaton brown tepary beans, P. acutifolius; O’odham Sacaton white tepary beans, P. acutifolius. Pictured actual size.

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another archaeologist, Allen Denoyer, at the Oro Valley Farmers’ Market at Steam Pump Ranch. He runs the Hands-On Archaeology program, which replicates everyday objects from the past to learn how ancient people may have used them.

That day he’d just finished a demonstration for onlookers, reproducing an ancient Clovis dart that could’ve been made 12,000 years ago to kill huge mammals like mammoths. Arranged nearby were other “primitive technology” replicas that no longer looked primitive to me.

Denoyer is an “ancient-technologies specialist” at Archaeology Southwest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring and protecting historical sites and educating the public about them.

He and his collaborators had recently built a pit house to help learn how people lived thousands of years ago. Summer monsoons had washed away parts of its adobe covering, which provided a scientific opportunity to learn how the original builders had kept up on home repairs. As an experiment, they even planned to burn it down to see how easily it would catch fire. But as it turned out, went to see

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there was a different pit house that had already burned that was of more interest to me in learning about the Hohokam’s food plants.

A few years before, Denoyer told me, he’d been on a dig to document a site where a deep storm drain was going under a city road. If old remains are discovered in such circumstances, he explained, laws require archeological investigations before development. At this site, once workers were about hip-deep to the curb, they started to uncover prehistoric houses from 1,200 years ago.

One of these houses had burned and collapsed, flattening and burying a set of pots that had been arranged on the house’s plastered floor. The fire’s intense heat had carbonized—thus preserved—those pots’ contents. He thought one black mass looked like squash seeds, one looked like wild amaranth seeds.

Another pot apparently held corn and beans.

Plant remains are very hard to find preserved unless burned— Denoyer had hit archaeological gold.

But in order to know for sure what the plants were, they had to be sent to the lab for analysis.

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North America

A Changing Kernel

The sequence of maize (or corn) specimens shown here is a visualization of the diversification that resulted following domestication of maize from its wild ancestor, teosinte, in southern Mexico, around 9,000 years ago. Through human selection, maize evolved larger cobs and more rows of larger kernels, and early flint and popcorn kernels evolved to include additional softer kernel types such as flour, dent, and sweet corn.

These kernel types offer culinary diversity and, along with kernel color, have traits considered very important by modern Native Americans.

Periods of Corn Migration 1,000 AD 2,000 BC 6,000-7,000 BC

Mexico Corn's Origin

South

America

All the maize varieties pictured here are modern, except for the grey silhouette of the early small cob maize found in archaeological sites in the Tucson Basin, which is primarily known from burned and damaged cob fragments. (Maize samples courtesy of Native Seeds/ SEARCH) Images are actual size.

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Teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize, which was domesticated in tropical southern Mexico around 7,000 B.C.

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Representation of an early Agricultural “small cob” maize grown in the Tucson basin around 2000 B.C. Although there is not enough data to accurately illustrate its form, archeologists speculate that it was small and not a reliable food source until much later.

Popcorn, the hard-kernelled early corn grown in the Southwest.

Chapalote maize has both popcorn kernel varieties, and the lesshard flint kernels.

Tohono O’odham 60-day flour corn, probably similar to a type of Hohokam maize that appeared around A.D. 500 and may be a type found in Denoyer’s pit house site.

Modern Tohono O’odham June dent corn appearing post-Spanish contact, probably the late 1700s.

Sweet corn from a local supermarket.

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I went straight to the analyzers—James Heidke, a research ceramicist, and Michael Diehl, a paleobotanical specialist—at the offices of Desert Archaeology. On their table was Exhibit A: Denoyer’s photograph of the arrangement of broken pottery on the floor of his famous pit house, as he’d uncovered it. It was like a crime scene photo.

“What do you think people were cooking there?” I asked.

“There was a pot with squash seeds that was probably used for storage, since the seeds were unprocessed,” said Heidke. As Diehl and Heidke explained, the ancients were pretty diligent about getting the grittier bits of plant remains out of their food. The few times archaeologists had found a burned, intact pot, it almost always contained clean seeds, without bracts (a kind of leaf) or pods.

“Seems like a lot of work,” I said.

Diehl conceded—food preparation had been complex, he said. Those people thought deeply about their food’s origins.

“We have a list of plants identified here,” Diehl continued. “A mixture of shelled corn, squash, beans, goosefoot (of the genus Chenopodium) or amaranth, seeds from several wild grasses, and tansy mustard—a weed related to London rocket, a European invader. These people must’ve liked tansy mustard’s taste—more of it’s found in digs around Tucson than elsewhere.”

I’d seen that weed—London rocket—taking over my yard.

“Last but not least,” said Diehl, “we found wild tobacco remains.”

The Hohokam, I learned, smoked tobacco ritually to make cloud shapes as they prayed for the rain that made their food possible. I decided to consider that plant part of the recipe forming in my head.

Heidke determined that there were three pots in Denoyer’s photo, all smashed together, two in the category of vessels used for “cooking, storage, or water cooling.”

The other was a large serving platter.

Deihl guessed that the Hohokam’s communal eating had been like people eating Ethiopian food—many gathered around the same pot, maybe grabbing bits of food with their fingers, little tortillas, or broken sherds from another pot.

Diehl added, “This is where Jim and I cooperate on narratives. But we try to stick to the facts. There are so many narratives to choose from—they aren’t science; they’re literature.”

With that, these men passed me on to the project manager on Denoyer’s dig, Michael Lindeman. “His job is to write the narrative,” Diehl told me. “If there is one.” o

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a stewpot,” Lindeman said, sitting across a different table at Desert Archaeology. “I relate Hohokam cooking to my grandparents’ cooking. Like the Hohokam, my grandparents grew most of what they ate, and their stews mostly contained vegetables.”

“Allen thought Hohokam food must have been bland,” I offered. “Chiles were common in Mesoamerica, and wild chiltepines grew locally—but the Hohokam apparently weren’t interested.”

“I didn’t find my grandparents’ food bland,” Lindeman said. “Although I did often ask for more meat. Maybe the Hohokam were vegetable connoisseurs—maybe they didn’t want to add anything to the taste of the crops themselves, which were nutritionally complete. But they still flavored their food with meat. Most of the animal bones we find at Hohokam sites are from rabbits— probably invaders caught in the fields.

Killing something like a deer would be a chance for a community feast.”

Lindeman didn’t know why anyone might have burned a house down with food inside.

“But since those remains at the site are incredibly consistent with what we find everywhere in southern Arizona, we can make statements about trends during those times.”

What were those trends? Well, Lindeman explained, the slow domestication of crops like corn from ancient Mesoamerica allowed human populations to increase far beyond those of their own hunter-gatherer ancestors. The Hohokam built canals to water their crops, yet for this very reason, they were living beyond the natural capacity of the land, and some years crops failed entirely due to drought or floods. That’s why farmers kept the old, reliable wild plants—like wild-grass seeds, saguaro fruit, and mesquite beans—in their diet: as a safety net that helped them get through scarcity.

It was genius. The resulting food surplus allowed Hohokam culture to prosper and spread over the desert of Baja Arizona—at least for a good, Tepary beans. long run.

“Then what?” I asked.

“The Hohokam eventually disappeared from the archaeological record.”

But their food traditions didn’t disappear. i m ag i n e

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O’ odham people have inherited their predecessors’ intimacy with the Sonoran Desert—dwelling in the same climate, living and farming on the same land, using the same resources. And I knew oral traditions had a long memory. To find out what remained, I wanted to speak with a living Tohono O’odham cook.

I asked Phyllis Valenzuela, events coordinator and resident “traditional-foods chef” at the Tohono O’odham San Xavier Co-op Farm, to explain how she sees her tribe’s connection to the Hohokam through the two peoples’ traditional cuisine. As it happens, not only is she familiar with most of the foods found in Denoyer’s pit house, she also uses them in her own cooking.

And as with the Hohokam, she said, food was central to the Tohono O’odham culture as an intense labor of love. Traditional cooks in her tribe “don’t really use spices,” she said, because they prefer not to let other flavors interfere with those of the savory plants they work so hard to harvest and prepare. Plants grown at home taste infinitely better than anything store-bought, so why mask their taste with spices?

But, Valenzuela said, a few extra flavors were allowed. Meat was one of them: Her tribe still hunts animals mainly for their meat’s ability to flavor food. But when they did hunt larger animals, it was for a feast.

Just as Lindeman was speculating, I thought.

“It’s like chicken,” she said—like the broth or bouillon we use in soup. Valenzuela hadn’t heard of tansy mustard, but her people do use its modern cousin, London rocket, to give dishes a mustardy tang.

Finally, Valenzuela said, she uses just a bit of salt in her dishes. She agreed that the Hohokam probably did, too, “If they had it from their salt pilgrimage to the Sea of Cortez.”

Right there at the farm, the tribe grows many of the crops the Hohokam grew: squash, corn, tepary beans. And Valenzuela knows amaranth— also found in that pit house—as “wild spinach.”

“To this day, at home I still have my grandmother’s metate,” she said, “and I still use it.”

So these food traditions lasted thousands of years— somehow linking the Hohokam and the Tohono O’odham, mostly through memory, I thought. But orally passed traditions had probably been reinforced, enduring millennia, through the necessity that comes from living—and eating—in the harsh yet bountiful Sonoran Desert. Geography is destiny.

Geography is cuisine. ohono

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t sunset,

I’m walking alone along a trinchera on Tumamoc. As electric lights start appearing down in the valley like tiny jewels, I imagine a time when there were only campfires visible, all along the Santa Cruz River.

Near my feet I notice a pot sherd. I leave it alone—I learned from Valenzuela that Tohono O’odham tribal members don’t disturb such relics; they’re sacred and must be blessed first. The stories are so easily lost, I think, while the things last forever. Yet someone might still remember fragments.

What stories will archaeologists—if there are any, 1,000 years from now—infer about us 21st-century people? Will they catalog old digital-media storage units that nobody knows how to read anymore, wondering what our belongings can tell them about our society? Asking themselves, What did those ancient Americans think about?

What was important to them? Why did they make so many models of cars? Would they catalog Styrofoam cups and do dissertations on our food packaging?

Only time will tell, and it doesn’t give up its secrets easily. ✜ Archaeologysouthwest.org.

Thanks to Massimo Boscolo, Paul and Suzanne Fish, Melissa Kruse-Peeples, Allen Denoyer, Joyce Rychener, James Heidke, Mike Diehl, Mike Lindeman, Bill Doelle, Phyllis Valenzuela; excavations at La Villa were sponsored by the city of Phoenix.

Paul Mirocha is an illustrator and photographer who likes desert plants—both to taste and to draw. Imported 35 years ago from a greener, wetter place, he is the artist-in-residence for Tumamoc Hill.

Anna Mirocha—Paul Mirocha’s daughter—is a Tucson-born writer interested in learning more about her Sonoran Desert homeland through the intersection of prehistory and food.

(Left) Chapalote corn.

(Below) Exploding wild tepary pod.

Tohono O’odham Bosol

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have any actual Hohokam recipes. Maybe the ancients didn’t think in terms of recipes. But we do have many from the current residents of the area, the Tohono O’odham. Phyllis Valenzuela of the San Xavier Co-op Farm shared one of her own recipes, whose ingredients were all available to the Hohokam. (Except one—wheat, which the Spanish brought to southern Arizona. We like to think of wheat berries as a modern version of the Hohokam’s wild-grass seeds.) e don ’ t

San Xavier Co-op Farm’s Bosol

1 2 2 2 2

pound red tepary beans cups roasted whole-kernel corn cups wheat berries gallons water tablespoons salt

Combine ingredients in a large pot at a rolling boil for 4 hours. Serves 20.

A good source of traditional O’odham recipes that are written down is the book From I’itoi’s Garden: Tohono O’odham Food Traditions, co-authored by Mary Votto Paganelli and the late Tohono O’odham elder Frances Manuel after seven years of work with more than 30 other elders (Tohono O’odham Community Action, 2010).

Squash (Cucurbita pepo)

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Death Becomes Us 146  September /October 2015

Day of the Dead pays homage to the deceased in jubilant fashion, with bread of the dead, sugar skulls, and other favorite dishes.

By Lourdes Medrano | Photography by Steven Meckler Read this story in Spanish at EdibleBajaArizona.com. edible Baja Arizona 

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in western Mexico, Griselda Vargas’ early The merrymaking associated with the observance can baffle memories of the Day of the Dead holiday involve a home those unfamiliar with a culture whose view of death may seem altar laden with marigolds, candles, a variety of dishes, and peculiar. In his book Labyrinth of Solitude, the Mexican Nobel a special sweet bread. laureate Octavio Paz wrote: The food and fragrant, yellow flowers surrounded photo“The Mexican ... is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses graphs of deceased loved ones whose divine return was eagerly it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and awaited during a days-long ritual punctuated by prayers, laughter, his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much fear in his and music. Too young to understand the complexities of a cenattitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away: turies-old tradition, Vargas he looks at it face to face, patiently kept her eye on with impatience, disdain or the altar’s rainbow of sugar irony.” skulls that made her mouth The Day of the Dead water in anticipation. dates to a 16th century “When you’re a child, blending of indigenous you’re just waiting to eat rituals and European the candy skulls,” she says.

Christian beliefs. Unable Food is central to the Day to stamp out the local cusof the Dead celebration. toms, Spanish conquerors Mole, pronounced MOHwho arrived in what is now lay, tamales, rice, posole, Mexico shifted them to sweet pumpkin, and the coincide with the Catholic bread of the dead, pan de celebrations of All Saints’ muerto, are typical edibles Day and All Souls’ Day. found on altars and dinner The observance in tables. Families also permodern Mexico actually sonalize the altars to entice involves more than one the deceased back to earth day, and mainly revolves with dishes and drinks once around Nov. 1 and 2. The favored in life. first day honors children Out of respect for the and the second, adults. Celdead, no one at Vargas’ ebrations vary from state home would touch the to state and can last longer food until after the departin rural areas and regions ed had savored it. Family with strong indigenous and neighbors prayed toinf luence where ancient gether and placed flowers traditions hold deep culon graves in the nearby tural meaning. In many cemetery, certain in their places, families spend the belief that although no night at cemeteries eating longer in physical form, the traditional foods such as dead briefly dwelled among tamales, chiles rellenos, the living again. Back at and enchiladas next to the home, everyone shared the scrubbed-clean graves of meal prepared earlier and relatives. Tequila, hot chocremembered the departed olate, and corn-based atole, with anecdotes. “It was a are choice drinks. very festive time,” Vargas In the northern region, recalls. residents more recently The native of Jalisco began to mark the holiday state now lives in Tucson, in greater, more visible but her hamlet still observes numbers, largely because Dia de los Muertos much of migration from southern At El Rio Bakery, Mario Leyva adds a final egg wash on loaves states and rural areas of the as it did in her childhood. of pan de muerto to give them their characteristic sheen. country.

Indeed, late October ushers in the annual extravaganza In the border town of throughout Mexico with the predominant sight of artsy skulls Nogales, Sonora, across from Arizona, it wasn’t until about 30 grinning and decorated skeletons, some life-size, mimicking daily years ago that Luz Amelia Gonzalez’s family-run bakery started life as they eat, cook, work, and play. baking the bread of the dead, an integral part of altars. row ing up

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“People who had moved here from the south would come in n T ucson , Vargas keeps alive the observance through her and ask if we had the bread,” she recalls. “So we looked into how Mexican bakery in Barrio Hollywood. A few days before Dia de it was made and then we started baking it.” los Muertos, customers start arriving at El Rio Bakery at West Juan Pedro López, who bakes a massive amount of the special Speedway and Grande Avenue to pick up the bread of the dead bread at Gonzalez’s La Espiga de Oro bakery every year, says that bakers Daniel Mendoza and Mario Leyva shape into form. he remembers only a handful of places in town that offered it “There’s high demand for it,” she says. “We also deliver to before his employer did. The bread, usually round and topped grocery stores, restaurants, and schools.” with sugary decorations that represent bones, now abounds in And each year, the bakery adds more schools to its list of bakeries, grocery stores, and food stands. customers.

Each year, a growing number of schools in Nogales incorVargas and her husband, Guillermo, bought the bakery a few porate Day of the Dead altars as an educational tool to teach years ago from Sabino Gomez and his wife, Artemisa, who had students about their heritage. It’s partly in growing recognition established it in 1971. The original owners didn’t start selling the of the observance and partly bread of the dead until the to minimize the inf luence mid-1970s, when schools of Halloween just over the and walk-in customers border, Gonzalez says. began asking for it.

“The Day of the Dead is “At first we were maknot to scare, or to be sad,” ing small quantities, but by she explains. “On the conthe time we left the bakery, trary, it’s a day to celebrate the pan de muerto was very and remember the life of popular,” Gomez recalls. people who have died.”

The number of MexAs October wanes, a ican bakeries in Tucson convoy of trucks packed has risen since El Rio with freshly cut marigolds, opened, and most have wreaths, and harvest fruit incorporated the bread of makes its way to the town’s the dead into their array of cemeteries. Parked along baked goods. Not all offer the streets leading to the Mexico’s ubiquitous sugar final resting place of many, skulls that Vargas coveted the trucks join a legion of as a child, but many do. vendors offering oranges, At El Rio, which also roasted corn on the cob, offers Jalisco-style food, sugar cane, carne asada tacos, bakers Mendoza and Leyva and numerous other wares to are accustomed to making those visiting the graves of the sweet bread of the dead. loved ones.

Although they don’t reveal The revelry resembles all the ingredients, some a carnival. Crammed in bakers flavor the treat with between tombs, many anise and orange-blossom border families indulge in water. Other variations use Sonoran-style red posole and ground cinnamon, sesame corn tamales. Champurrado, seeds, lemon zest, or ora thick drink made of corn ange juice. f lour and chocolate, often Year after year, Leyva accompanies the bread of and Mendoza prepare huge the dead, which most eat as batches of dough in a hot dessert.

At El Rio Bakery, Daniel Mendoza shapes dough into human forms that will work area. Standing before Families reminisce about become part of Day of the Dead celebrations honoring the deceased. a large table not far from a the deceased and some sing big oven, the men mold and along with roaming musicians punch dough into round late into the night. Entrepreneurial-minded youths, bucket and loaves and doll-like figures lying flat on their backs. They banter broom in hand, make a few pesos cleaning tombs. while a radio blares Spanish music in the background. They then “It definitely has grown, as more and more people who believe place them on baking sheets and load them into a fermentation in the custom have moved to Nogales over the years,” López says cabinet. Lastly, they top the bread with dough “bones” and, after of Day of the Dead celebration. baking it, brush a bit of butter on it and roll it in an orange glaze.

Similarly, the holiday tradition—or parts of it—has spread The main baker is Mendoza, and Leyva helps out during north across the U.S.-Mexico border. busy times. Leyva used to bake the Day of the Dead bread at La 150 September /October 2015

Co-owner Guillermo Vargas at El Rio Bakery in Barrio Hollywood; the bakery was one of the first in Tucson to offer bread of the dead.

Espiga de Oro in Nogales, working with Gonzalez’s late father, Manuel González. He remembers marking the observance by taking flowers to the graves of relatives there.

Mendoza grew up in the city of Tapachula, in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. The Day of the Dead back home is considered one of the most important holidays, he says.

Cemeteries overflow with flowers, families set up altars in their homes, and singing children in costumes knock on doors asking for pumpkin candy.

Like Leyva, Mendoza also got his start as a baker in Mexico.

In Tapachula, he learned to make the bread in the form of round loaves and figures that he calls monitos, which symbolize a deceased person.

“Schools have competitions and the best monito wins,” Mendoza says.

For his boss, Guillermo Vargas, preparations for the Day of the Dead in Zapotiltic, the Jalisco town where he was born, begin early.

“People go clean the graves about eight days before, and on Nov. 1 and 2 they light votive candles on graves and pray for the deceased,” he says. “The cemeteries are very crowded.”

In Ameca, another Jalisco town where he lived for some years, the custom was to create a communal altar outside a particular home that all residents in the neighborhood could embellish with photos and offerings. He later moved to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. There, “many people mostly just take flowers to the cemetery,” he says. “And people always sell bread of the dead at church entrances.”

Griselda Vargas hopes to revive her family tradition of building an altar in Tucson, like the one her family and neighbors used to take turns setting up in their homes to celebrate the holiday together. She wants to put it in the bakery, and an image of her late father, José Villa, to take center stage. The cheese enchiladas and sweet pumpkin he loved will be close. Right next to the requisite bread of the dead. ✜ El Rio Bakery. 901 N. Grande Ave. 520.624.4996.

Lourdes Medrano is a Tucson writer who covers stories on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border. Follow her on Twitter: @_lourdesmedrano.

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~:Banda Calaca:~

The Day of the Dead Altar

~:Banda Calaca:~ is a community memorial altar rooted in the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition. This installation, created by Tucson artist Hank Tusinski, is a large-scale, 15-piece skeleton band marching atop a platform and beneath a circus tent top. Says Tusinski, who has spent 15 years focusing on the Day of the Dead, “The altar is a place to reflect and connect—with our lives and those who have gone before us, and influenced our own sense of self and place.” Visit the Tucson Museum of Art from Sept. 26 – Jan. 3 to see an exhibition of Tusinski’s work.

Also called an ofrenda, or offering, the altar is built to ease the journey of departed souls back to this world. It can be simple or elaborate, with two tiers or more, and typically includes: • A photo of the deceased.

• The bread of the dead, pan de muerto, which is a symbol of those who have died.

• Skulls made of sugar or nonedible materials to symbolize death and the afterlife.

• Favorite foods of those who have died, including drinks and fruits of the season.

• Personal objects that once belonged to loved ones, such as a book.

• Candles, marigolds, and copal incense to welcome and guide the temporary return of the departed.

• Paper banners, or papel picado, with skeleton and skull cut-outs in yellow and purple colors that signify the union between life and death.

• A glass of water to quench the thirst of traveling souls.

• Salt, a purifying element.

• A cross and other religious figures.

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RECIPES

Food of the Dead

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By Renata Gonzalez

and pan de muertos is a complex undertaking. It takes a lot of time and requires many steps. Do not attempt to make these dishes by yourself, in a day. It is meant to be a celebration, shared by family and friends, a time to remember those who are no longer with us. Spend the time together—cooking, laughing, learning, tasting, and sharing stories. Love and remembrance are ingredients that are essential to this wonderful tradition. ak ing mole

Mole Poblano con Pollo Ingredients: To toast: 5 chiles pasilla (largo) 5 chiles guajillo 5 chiles ancho/mulato 2-3 chiles de arbol 1-2 tablespoons chile pods 12 ounces unsalted peanuts or walnuts 12 ounces almonds ½ cup sesame seeds; separate some for garnish 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1 teaspoon anise seeds 4 whole all spice 4 cloves ½ tablespoon whole peppercorn To grind: ½ Mexican canela stick 1 tablespoon dried oregano ½ tablespoon dried thyme 3-4 tablespoons kosher salt, to taste To fry: 200 grams good pork lard or ¾ cup canola oil ½ ripe plantain (platano macho), diced 1 large white onion, diced 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 2 old tortillas (or tostadas) 2 slices stale sourdough bread, broken into pieces To soak: 5 cups chicken broth, hot (enough to cover ingredients) 4 whole tomatoes, charred ⅓ cup raisins 1½ ounces Mexican chocolate (½ bar) For chicken: 8 pieces cooked chicken (cook with 6 cups water, 2 carrots, ½ onion, 2 garlic cloves, 2 celery stalks, kosher salt to taste). Reserve the broth.

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Instructions: There are 3 separate processes in assembling mole: toasting, grinding, and frying.

Toasting: Remove the stems and seeds from the dry chiles. Separate 2 tablespoons of the chile seeds. Toast two sides of the chiles in a skillet (hot, no oil) three at a time, being sure not to burn (5-10 seconds). Place them in a large mixing bowl and add the hot chicken broth to soften. Toast the chile seeds; continue with toasting almonds, peanuts, and sesame seeds; place them in the broth. In the same skillet, one ingredient at a time, toast cumin seeds, anise seeds, all spice, cloves, and peppercorns. Grind all together in a small bowl.

Grinding: Grind all toasted spices with canela, oregano, thyme, and salt in a molcajete, or a mortar, and mix with the chicken broth.

Frying: In a large skillet, heat the manteca, or frying oil, until smoking.

Once ready, add plantains and sauté until golden brown; stir a bit and use a slotted spoon to transfer them to the hot broth bowl. Add onion to the oil and fry until translucent. Add garlic, tortillas, and bread, one at a time; sauté until tender and mix with the broth.

Add roasted tomatoes (skinned and chopped), raisins, and Mexican chocolate, to the broth (enough to cover all ingredients) and soak for 10 minutes or until the chiles are soft.

Assembling: Place all soaked ingredients in blender or food processor, and blend until well incorporated and texture is smooth.

Add the blended mole sauce to a large pot, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a simmer, stirring almost constantly for at least 2 hours, or until the sauce reduces and is darkened and thickened. If it gets too thick, thin it out a bit with water or stock. Taste and add salt if needed.

Serve over the warm chicken pieces and garnish with toasted sesame seeds. Top with ½ slivered white onion, mixed with the juice of 2 limes, 1 tablespoon white vinegar, a pinch of salt, and 1-2 thinly sliced serrano chiles.

For vegetarians: Use vegetable stock and serve sauce over tortillas for enchiladas, chilaquiles, or with huevos rancheros.

You can freeze the sauce for later use. Defrost and then reheat slowly in sauté pan over low heat before using. Makes 8 portions.

Mexican Rice Ingredients: 1 ½ 2 3 2 ½ 1

1 ½

cups rice tablespoons vegetable oil cups chicken broth medium tomatoes, chopped white onion, chopped garlic clove, chopped Salt to taste carrot, peeled and finely chopped cup frozen peas

Instructions: Rinse rice under cold water, drain excess water, and set aside to dry slightly.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan, and add the rice. Cook over medium heat until it starts to become a delicate golden brown. Stir frequently for about 10 minutes. Remove the excess oil with a spoon if needed.

Meanwhile, pour the tomatoes, garlic, and onion into a food processor or blender with ½ cup of the broth. Add the tomato mixture into the rice and stir over medium high heat. Bring to a boil and add salt to taste. Stir in the broth and vegetables and mix once. Cover the pan and reduce heat to simmer, cook until all the liquid has been absorbed.

Remove pan from heat, without uncovering it, and let it stand for 10 minutes. Using a fork, lightly fluff up the rice and serve.

Makes 6 servings

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Pan de Muerto

Ingredients: Starter: 1 ¾ cup flour ⅔ teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 2 packets dry yeast (7 grams each) ⅓ cup lukewarm water 2 eggs

For eggwash: Egg whites and milk To decorate: Softened butter White sugar

Dough: Starter culture ⅔ cup white sugar ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature 1 ¾ cup flour 3 egg yolks 2 tablespoon orange juice

¼ teaspoon orange blossom water (if can´t find it, use Mexican vanilla) 1 tablespoon orange zest

Instructions: To make starter culture, mix the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast together in a mixer or beat by hand. Add water and eggs. Knead about 3 minutes until dough is elastic and shiny. On a floured table, shape into a ball and place in a greased container. Cover and let rise approximately 2 hours (the ideal temperature is 77°).

To make the bread: Mix starter with remaining bread ingredients. On a floured table, divide the dough into two equal portions 158 September /October 2015

(for two loaves). Work one half of the dough at a time. Separate each half into three sections. Use one third to make four smaller pieces of equal size for the decorations. Form one of the pieces into a small ball for the center, and the others into strips to make the “bones.”

Form the larger portion into a ball, as round as possible. Place all pieces on a baking sheet and let rest until double in size, approximately 1 hour.

Brush large ball with eggwash and place small ball in the center and the

strips vertically around the loaf. Firm up with both hands. Brush the bread again with eggwash. Bake at 375° for five minutes, then lower the temperature to 355°. (If the dough browns very fast, place a sheet of aluminum foil over the bread.) Turn off the oven and leave the bread inside for 2 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack.

To decorate use a pastry brush to paint the loaf with softened or melted butter and sprinkle with white sugar. Makes 2 medium loaves.

ESSAY

Sonoran Desert Musings: A collaboration between word and image.

Photography by Adela Licona

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Golden Pomegranate Say yes to the pomegranate because the pomegranate said yes to the desert yes to Afghanistan and Sonora yes to Pima and O’odham yes to Father Kino’s gunnysack packed with quince, peach, and pear crossing perilous ocean east following learned rivers north.

A river learns the land while carving its way as fruit learns its sweetness from enduring seclusion crammed in dense and lightness ground.

The pomegranate made no complaint of its hardship above ground or below yes to aridity yes to monsoon yes to backyard yes to industrial orchard.

Persephone and Eve knew pomegranates.

What color were the arils that they pulled from the mottled leathery skin?

Blood red if history were to tell the truth. But in the Mission Garden and in a thousand backyards lost among weeds stands the tree growing Father Kino’s golden pomegranate.

Wait for it to ripen then slice off the top and bottom. Open the cask of the fruit and find black seeds and flesh so bright and wet they look like frogs’ eggs in a pond. But no each seed is portioned in its leathery room each cluster nested in protected space this golden fruit that is the yes defying history.

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Here, eat this

H

e r e , e at t h i s ,

I say. You eye suspiciously the desert yield, a candied barrel cactus fruit so unlike an apple or a peach but you eat devouring the meat, the seeds, the juicy flesh, and wonder what else I will offer as you sit, watch, judge, and build more borders with elusive boundaries that will mean nothing to us, the ones who traverse spatial temporal fences across deserts while nourished with a fruit you never saw until we pointed to the desert f loor. Lurking in a corner, I offer more. Only through the offering will I discover all that you are and not what you claim to be. You are a stranger, still the foreigner after centuries, after lifetimes never having seen or sensed or believed that an eagle, a snake, and a cactus could create a myth so fervent that your antecedents, who condemned us, could not have predicted our thick-skinned persistence. We cannot be expunged.

Or forgotten. We flourish. Even in the desert heat the saguaros bloom, the prickly pear ripens, birds sing, and we thrive. We wait. We thrive. From this corner, hidden but not unseen, I see you laugh. I watch your greedy laughter as you pat your dogs lapping at your legs costumed in army green, a putrid green, not a life-giving green. And so you hunger for the fruit’s palpable flesh as you mock me sitting patiently in the shadows studying others who try to inhabit you as I have tried so many years. It’s a gamble. This waiting. This impetuous patience. Last night my companion in the desert asked, will our journey ever end? Will we escape?

Of course, I lie. Can’t you see? In the distance? We’re close. So close to the end. I lie believing my convictions. I peep from corners where you won’t suspect I might be.

I take sustenance from the desert, a space in which borders and boundaries and fronteras are merely metaphoric linchpins no longer geographic margins we are forced to abide but instead freedom of space overtakes, overwhelms. Newness is born. Yet we know that really nothing is wholly new. Maybe we seek an old way of being with holy forms of consciousness—una frontera nueva in which identities are supple and sacred to the touch.

Like ancient seeds newly planted, reviving what lay dormant, these kernels will expand into re-imagined landscapes of belonging.

What if you surrendered? Gave up and gave in to that which you’ve always known.

An ancient knowledge gestures toward surrender. A spirit summons you to pause and look and see what you’ve refused to see.

No one is asking you to sacrifice whatever.

No one has said, there’s only one way to love. You’ve narrowed your vision, you see. Look beyond the cracks and fissures to interstitial dreams and desiring bodies.

Truth is not truth, freedom is imagined, the soul is transient, migratory, eager to go, ready to move across space, nontemporal, nonlinear. In these dreams, time is unsettled, undone. Time is not time, space is not space, a heart is not a heart but an organ to play, to fine-tune and play like a magnificent instrument that screams and groans from being squeezed relentlessly through the evening’s blue, blue night.

Here, eat this, you say. My tongue grazes tender pulp. I take sustenance from ancient seeds—these kernels will expand into re-imagined landscapes. Of belonging.

By Emma Perez

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My Grandfather’s Basket

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little to gather, there was always yucca to work, the fibers sticky inside the leaves. Or bark to thin down from hard to soft, the skin of the ash tree in layers all around. To discover something in nothing, Abuelo said, all it took was to turn a thing this way and that. Consider how to use it. Cup a yucca leaf and it held water. Weave bark strip tight enough and it held weight.

An old saying about the sun: la cobija de los pobres. A blanket for the poor. Abuelo owned nothing but the sky and practiced patience under the shade of a tree, weaving a basket to gather what was going to come. Our hunger waited for the wind to clatter walnuts to the ground, a heat to spring the berries onto the vines. hen ther e was

W

for Abuelo to finish his basket, the edges of it gaping open like a new mouth to feed. But our hunger couldn’t wait and we struck out to bring back whatever our tiny hands could carry. The small, hard citrus out of season. The blackberries staining our mouths. Our impatience made our hands useless.

A basket is meant to gather for everyone, Abuelo reminded us. He told the story of the loaves and fishes, reminded us that what fit in one basket spilled into 12. Some of us remembered the Sunday story and some of us did not. But by then we knew.

If the basket stayed empty, it meant hunger again.

And so came the walnuts, the winter citrus, the wild dandelion. The pine nuts for roasting, the prickly pears, and the spiny cactus leaves. Nopal, said my grandfather, as if some things needed better names for what they yielded.

Blanquillos, I said, when I handed him the basket of gathered eggs. He held one up. Huevos, he corrected, because they weren’t white at all. To turn a thing this way and that, to remember where it came from. The bits of mud and flecks of blood dotting the shells. Not just food but nourishment. A hen feather matted in the hay, still cradling the eggs. ✜ e waited

By Manuel Muñoz Photography Adela C. Licona is an associate professor of English at the University of Arizona, and an affiliated faculty member in Gender and Women’s Studies, Institute of the Environment, Mexican American Studies, and the Institute for LGBT Studies. To follow Adela’s photography, visit MiVidaLandscapes.blogspot.com.

Writing Alison Hawthorne Deming’s most recent book is Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit (Milkweed 2014). Her new book of poems, Stairway to Heaven, will be out from Penguin in 2016. She is Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona.

Manuel Muñoz is the author of Zigzagger, The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, and What You See in the Dark. He lives in Tucson.

Emma Pérez has published a history book, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History, and three novels: Gulf Dreams; Forgetting the Alamo, or, Blood Memory; and Electra’s Complex. She is a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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BUZZ

Untapped Potential Demand is heating up at the eastside microbrewery Sentinel Peak Brewing Company.

By James Bourland | Photography by Steven Meckler

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H ilder br and was told to put his money where his mouth is. Years after coming home from a two-year tour of duty in Würzburg, Germany, in the early ’90s, his wife, Jeannie, was tired of hearing him complain about the lack of good beer in the United States. So she bought him a home-brew kit.

Within a few days, the former Army interpreter bought a few extra beer kits. Within two months, he was experimenting with all-grain flavors to achieve the tastes he found in Germany.

“The things I experienced over there were totally new,” said Hilderbrand, 43. “All the beer flavors, just the different styles … Once I got the kit, I was just off to the races.”

Today, Hilderbrand—a firefighter at the Golder Ranch Fire District in Oro Valley—is one of three owners of Sentinel Peak Brewing Company, Tucson’s easternmost microbrewery. He is also the brainchild behind the brewery, and four of the flagship beers the brewery serves, including the 1811 Desert Blonde, Salida del Sol Amber, Icebreak IPA, and the Dewpoint Dunkel—a dark, smooth German-style brew.

Although the University of Arizona graduate—with a bachelor’s in secondary education and a master’s in teaching er emy

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English as a second language—had the recipes ready for thirsty customers in 2012, getting the brewery started was a different type of animal.

To put it together, he enlisted the help of fellow firefighters Matt Gordon and Taylor Carter. Carter—who claims the brewery came about from a “lack of sleep and drinking too much beer” on days off from the station—is the head of sales and marketing.

Gordon manages brewpub operations. All three are still working firefighters, and regularly finish their shifts at the station and head into town to work at the brewery.

They opened the microbrewery in January of 2014 at a strip mall on the corner of Grant and Swan. Tucked away in a corner

by PetSmart and behind Trader Joe’s, the brewery is quickly establishing itself as a player in Tucson’s craft beer scene.

When customers walk through the doors of the brewery and take a seat at the bar or any table, a quick glance outside the garage bay doors shows a spectacular view of the Santa Catalina Mountains.

The three Sentinel Peak owners still work as fulltime firefighters.

(From left) Jeremy Hilderbrand, Taylor Carter, and Matt Gordon.

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Sentinel Peak is available on tap at 30 spots around Tucson, ll of this comes at a time when craft beer could not be including Saguaro Corners Restaurant and Bar, Monkey Burger, more popular, across the country and in Arizona, where Good Oak Bar, and Tap and Bottle. “I’d like to see our beer the number of breweries has increased from 47 in 2013 all around Tucson,” said to 53 breweries across the Hilderbrand, who was born state in 2014, according to in Detroit, Michigan, and the Brewers Association. moved to Tucson during For Sentinel Peak, the high school. “I’d like to be growth of the industry has a name that people recoggone hand in hand with nize when they talk about their growth. Carter says craft beer in Tucson.” sales have expanded every The demand is there, single quarter they’ve been and the supply is quickly in business. catching up.

Hilderbrand estimates “We had a one-year, that the brewery serves three-year, and a five-year about 600 beers per week, plan,” said Carter, a gradwhich range from $4.75 to uate of Salpointe Catholic $5.50. Their four flagship High School. “At about 10 beers are always on tap, but months or so, we hit our they rotate through 20 seaceiling for our three-year sonal beers throughout the plan.” year. Their most popular The brewery, which beer? The Icebreak IPA. currently employs 25, has They also sell growlers. expanded next door, adding The brewery also offers a about 500 square feet of full menu. space to the taproom. The While many breweries 10-foot by 20-foot brewing in Tucson are located space—which once held downtown, the trio decided the 1.5-barrel system and to move to central Tucson produced up to three barto focus on a different type rels per brewing day—has of demographic. become more efficient.

“Outside of that downNew water heaters, a town circle of breweries six-barrel holding tank, and and clubs, I wanted to give a 250-gallon cold tank have the rest of Tucson a taste ramped up production to of the microbrewery expenine barrels a day. (A barrel rience,” said Carter—who creates 31 gallons, which Hilderbrand says was “half can fill up to 248 pints.) A joking” when they chose patio now spans the front the location. of the brewery, soon to be “Grant and Swan, Sentinel Peak recently expanded their production to nine barrels a day, covered by a solar panel couldn’t get any more under the watch of head brewer Sam Diggins. ramada. central than that. It’s a “We maxed ourselves really busy intersection,” out way too fast, which is said Carter. a great problem to have,” While the cross-streets Carter said, removing his may have been a big Sentinel Peak Brewing help to the visibility of Company hat, and running the brewery, the zoning his hand through his hair. proved more difficult.

“At the same time, we didn’t Many of the microbrewhave the infrastructure, or eries located in downtown the money put together for are based out of warehousthe next upgrade. We really es, which are zoned as have just been scraping by industrial—which works, to get to the next level.” since the beer is brewed at the location.

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THE HISTORIC

PRESIDIO DISTRICT

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Head brewer Sam Diggins begins the transformation of grain into beer.

In this case, the strip mall that contains the brewery is commercial property. Although it required some work with the City of Tucson, the brewery was granted its licenses within the standard six-month period.

Carter admits the location is a little “weird,” but it seems to be working. “We generated that east side, that foothills, that central crowd, that does not want to go downtown, and some of our customers really didn’t have an idea of craft beer till they came into the brewery.”

The trio initially used Kickstarter to help fund the start-up phase of the brewery. The crowd-funded web campaign was Hilderbrand’s idea, and it worked: Sentinel Peak received almost $36,000 in donations, almost $9,000 more than they were expecting.

Carter estimates that almost 65 percent of the backers were people from Tucson—people they didn’t know—who liked the idea of having a centrally located brewery.

“When we first opened, we got a really bad review on Yelp,” Carter said. “A lady did not like the pallet art. She said the beer was good, and the food was good, but this weird funky artwork that they had using pallets was just weird.”

One pallet—a 140-pound, five-foot-by-eight-foot wooden mass—which held a grain order for the brewery, was put to a 170 September /October 2015

more creative use after fulfilling its original purpose. Now, it’s dedicated to the early supporters of the brewery’s Kickstarter campaign. Multicolored planks of wood—etched with black ink—give the names of those who donated. One plank reads “The Godfather.”

“We figured we might as well do something with it,” Carter explained. “It’s heavy. We had to put ridiculous supports in there.”

Gordon—a Catalina Foothills High School graduate—is a go-get-em kind of guy. “Why’d I go with beer? It’s the nectar of the gods, man,” Gordon said. “It’s delicious. I mean, why’s the sky blue? You know what I mean?”

He might not brew, but he’s made his own contributions to the brewery’s identity. The interior of the brewery, including walls and floors, tables, chairs, and bar itself were all remodeled

by Gordon.

The 35-foot bar was made from poured concrete, a one time, cross-your-fingers type of creation. “We built everything from scratch. We had a product used to the point where it was beat down, broken, and ready for the scrap yard,” Gordon said. “Not only because we could, but also because it helped save money.”

And, he said, “if you want something done right, do it yourself, right?”

Jordan Branch delivers two flights of Sentinel Peak’s flagship brews to waiting customers.

A

s the brewery grows , so

do the beer selections. While the regular four are always on tap, Hilderbrand is working with head brewer Sam Diggins on the next set of test batches, to refine for production. An oatmeal stout, American porter, and an imperial red are in the fall lineup, while an Oktoberfest brew is in the fermenter. They’ve experimented with White Sonoran wheat from BKW Farms in Marana, and hope to reach out to a farmer next spring for local hops.

Hilderbrand’s endless variations of draughts are more than just moneymakers for the brewery. “I don’t really make a beer unless I have a connection to that style,” said Hilderbrand—his favorite beer is the Icebreak IPA. “The recipes that I come up

with, a lot of them come due to experiences that I’ve had, or places I’ve been.”

The personality of the beer and of its creator is not just limited to the tap—the entire brewery exudes it.

“We want it to be a place where people can go to relax,” Hilderbrand said. “And have it be a place that people are comfortable going to.” ✜ Sentinel Peak Brewing Company. 4746 E. Grant Road.

520.777.9456. SentinelPeakBrewing.com.

James Bourland is a high school journalism teacher and freelance writer.

When he’s not teaching the youth of the nation, he’s out looking for his next story.

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S

A rizona ’ s seemingly unstoppable fervor around craft beer has allowed Tucson to grow from three wellknown breweries a decade ago to the dozen or so we have now. This rapid growth doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon, and finally the underserved market northwest of Tucson will have its own brewery. Todd and Erika Button are in the process of selecting a location from three potential properties in Marana to open their Button Brew House concept. Todd holds a certificate in craft beer business from the University of Portland and underwent extensive training from the American Brewers Guild in Vermont. The Buttons plan to open with a 10-barrel system, hoping to avoid the limitations of smaller systems that many of Tucson’s microbrewers have had to cope with as they grew. Although the opening is many months away, you can keep up with their progress and their drinking adventures on Twitter and Instagram at @buttonbrewhouse.

The area around Tucson International Airport is generally considered to be a desolate wasteland overflowing with uninspired fast food, over-sanitized chain hotels, bleak industrial parks, and a strip club that changes identities every few years.

As in any neighborhood in Tucson, dig a little deeper here and you find something that couldn’t exist anywhere else. The outhern

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Territorial Bar is on its face another biker dive bar. One side of the building is adorned with an American flag mural, the other features a “Harley Parking Only” sign. The expected domestics are on draught and they have an appealing selection of Mexican beers in bottles. There are fewer than 20 seats around the bar, but the smoking patio past their two pool tables could seat a small army. The tattooed crowd is friendly, the fried pickles are exactly what you want them to be, and the service is friendlier than any New American concept downtown could ever be. Skip the Applebee’s on the way to the airport; stop by The Territorial.

The Territorial Bar. 3727 S. Palo Verde Road. 520.514.9035 The last time I interviewed David and Jessie Zugerman about Tucson Hop Shop, they were still hunting for a location to open their “craft beer bottle shop, growler fill station, craft beer bar, and purveyor of artisanal beer-making kits.” Happily, they have found their home at the Metal Arts Village near the intersection of River and Dodge. Just a short distance off of The Loop, Tucson’s bicycling community will have a new favorite watering hole. Tucson Hop Shop hopes to be open before the end of the summer, following the construction of their outdoor beer garden (with the help of a last-minute Kickstarter). Tucson Hop Shop. 3230 N. Dodge Blvd.

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Tasting Notes

By Brian Eichhorst | Illustrations by Bridget Shanahan

Dew Point Dunkel, Sentinel Peak Brewing Company This dark and medium-bodied Munich Dunkel-style beer maintains the vocabulary of tasting notes usually attached to a stout or porter (toffee, hazelnut, maple syrup) while maintaining a mouth-feel and lightness that allow a more quaffable brew. The beer utilizes both Tettnanger and Crystal hops and carries an ABV of 5.7 percent. The tasting room is under construction as they expand into the storefront next to them, but their beers are still pouring. Stop by for a long lunch with a pint of the Dew Point Dunkel.

Sentinel Peak Brewing Company.

4746 E. Grant Road. 520.777.9456.

174 September /October 2015

2009 Callaghan Vineyards Padres Ken Callaghan is one of the top winemakers on the Arizona wine scene and continues to embrace the arid climate as something to be celebrated in his wine production. Honest expression of terroir and proper varietal selection should always be a priority over mass marketability and increased production numbers. The 2009 Padres is a prime example of what our region is capable of. This red blend of 60 percent Tempranillo, 30 percent Grenache, and 10 percent Syrah showcases the concentrated stewed plums you might find in a southern Rhône wine with the green bell-pepper zest in some international-styled Riojas. The full body and wide net of tannins demand that this bottle be enjoyed with prime rib for dinner. Callaghan Vineyards. 336 Elgin Road. Elgin. 520.455.5322.

Frozen Piña Colada Many locals may not realize the importance of Kon Tiki but their reign as the king of tiki here in the Southwest has endured since 1963. As all things tiki come back into popularity across the country, we should all take a trip to Kon Tiki and pay respects to our elders in the cocktail game. Their frozen piña colada is a classic for a reason: creamy, acidic, a little chewy, and chock full of rum. Blending the cocktail makes it a bit more drinkable, as the dilution brings the absurd amount of sugar into context. This drink is best enjoyed with a group of close friends, and a cab driver near by. Kon Tiki. 4625 E. Broadway Blvd. 520.323.7193. ✜ Bryan Eichhorst is a native Tucsonan, unapologetic sommelier, dedicated evangelist of Oaxacan mescal, and the beverage director at Penca.

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SONOITA/ELGIN & TOMBSTONE WINE MAP To Tuc s

on/Ph

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To Bi sbee (25 min. )

14

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80

12

Note: Many roads have been omitted for clarity.

1 2 3

CHARRON VINEYARDS

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

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

AZ HOPS & VINES

3450 Hwy 82, Sonoita 888-569-1642 AZHopsAndVines.com Thurs: 10-4, Fri-Sun: 10-6

4 5

HANNAH’S HILL

3989 State Hwy 82, Elgin 520-456-9000 HannahsHill.com Sat-Sun by Appointment

WILHELM FAMILY VINEYARDS

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

176 September /October 2015

6 7 8

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RANCHO ROSSA VINEYARDS 32 Cattle Ranch Lane, Elgin 520.455.0700 RanchoRossa.com Fri–Sun: 10:30-3:30

CALLAGHAN VINEYARDS 336 Elgin Road, Elgin 520.455.5322 CallaghanVineyards.com Thurs–Sun: 11-4

FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS 342 Elgin Road, Elgin 520.455.5499 FlyingLeapVineyards.com Daily: 11-4

9

To Ft. Huachuca (50 min.)

Sierra Vista (1 hr.)

KIEF-JOSHUA VINEYARDS

370 Elgin Road, Elgin 520.455.5582 KiefJoshuaVineyards.com Daily: 11-5

10 V471 Elgin Road,EElgin ILLAGE OF

LGIN

520.455.9309 ElginWines.com Daily: 11-5

12 L2368 Hwy 83,RElgin IGHTNING

CELLARS

IDGE

520.455.5383 LightningRidgeCellars.com Fri-Sun: 11-4

W 13 T15 N 4th Street,WTombstone OMBSTONE

INE

ORKS

520.261.1674 TombstoneWinery.com Daily: 12-6

V S S W 11 S290 Elgin Canelo Road, Elgin 14 334 E Allen Street, Tombstone ONOITA

INEYARDS

520.455.5893 SonoitaVineyards.com Daily: 10-4

ILVER

TRIKE

INERY

520.678.8200 SilverStrikeWinery.com Daily: 12-6

Santa

Cruz County

Take a trip through Wine Country...

WILLCOX AREA & BISBEE WINE MAP d.

From Exit #331

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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 VINEYARDS: WILCOX TASTING ROOM 154 N. Railroad Avenue 520.766.0600 KeelingSchaeferVineyards.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5 CARLSON CREEK 115 Railroad Avenue 520.766.3000 CarlsonCreek.com Thu-Sun 11-5 ARIDUS TASTING ROOM 145 N Railview Avenue 520.766.9463 AridusWineCo.com Tasting Room Daily: 11-5 Crush Room Daily: 11-5 w/appt.

ARIDUS CRUSH FACILITY 1126 N. Haskell Avenue 520.766.2926 Mon-Fri: 11-5, Sat-Sun: By Appt.

11 12 13 14 15 16

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Exit #331

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PASSION CELLARS AT SALVATORE VINEYARDS 3052 N. Fort Grant Road 602.750.7771 PassionCellars.com CORONADO VINEYARDS 2909 E. Country Club Drive 520.384.2993 CoronadoVineyards.com Mon-Sat: 9:30-5:30, Sun: 10-4 FORT BOWIE VINEYARDS 156 N. Jefferson, Bowie AZ 520.847.2593 Daily: 8-4 BODEGA PIERCE TASTING ROOM 4511 E. Robbs Road 602.320.1722 BodegaPierce.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5, M-W by Appt.

PILLSBURY WINE COMPANY 6450 S. Bennett Place 520.384.3964 Pillsburywine.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5 Weekdays by Appointment 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 Road 602.320.1485 LawrenceDunhamVineyards.com

By Appointment Only GOLDEN RULE VINEYARDS 3525 N. Golden Rule Road 520.507.2400 GoldenRuleVineyards.com Thurs-Sun 11-5 Mon-Weds: by Appointment FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS: BISBEE TASTING ROOM 67 Main St. Bisbee 520.384.6030 Fri-Sat: 12-7 Sun: 12-6

Liquor, sugar, fresh herbs

Gi and n, verm out gar an o nish (u h l i ve, c sually onio o n Ingr , or lem cktail edie on t wist nts a w ) (opt ith ice, s re mixe . d iona h a k into a ch l), and s en illed t mart rained ini g lass.

Gin, sweetened lime cordial Liquor, lime juice, sugar

Liqu or s erve d ov er ic e Liquor, citrus juice, sugar, carbonated water Originated in India and contained liquor, sugar, lemon, water and tea or spices. Modern punches contain rum, fruit juice and sugar.

the ng ed to i r l,” us du ies was itche he d n h I ,t c Sw est bran led “ izzle the W l Sw . In o all ca the In , a sm drink Rum uda gan t d s a m r 0 e an m be 160 a ru cam of Be ents icks are e r t i k h b t s m n s ch hic . i dri lish zle wh cial stab swiz es, w tems offi 0s, e e on shap ors’ i 193 ertis rious llect o v ad ke va hot c ma now

Liquor, muddled sugar and bitters, twist of citrus rind

Liquor, lemon or lime juice, egg white and a sweetener

Liquor (usually gin), lemon juice, sugar, carbonated water Stirring melts the ice, but shaking cracks it, which makes the final drink colder. Shaking makes the drink cloudier than stirring, so clear drinks are generally stirred.

a f s, nt sing rs o es. e i o b u red , by flav r cu g e s n i s ga h ng a gla ase t h su i n i f le us mb o re cr Co ttom er to or to bo dl s, he mud rind t n y i le us Shaken or stirred all e-sty r citr u l us est s o with ice, then b p er h strained into a glass

Liquor, ginger ale (or ginger beer), citrus juice

e The first person to place a littl d eve beli is k drin rum a in umbrella to have been Donn Beach, the ants. founding father of tiki restaur ctice pra the up ed pick Trader Vic’s a ame bec it and 0s, 193 y earl in the anAsi The n. widespread phenomeno ular style umbrellas were highly pop Rim ific Pac gs thin all n whe at a time were considered exotic.

Liquor, sugar, cream (optional) and whole egg— the most common is eggnog

Any single liquor, unmixed and uncooled

bambiedlund.com

edible Baja Arizona

181

INK

Book Reviews by Molly Kincaid Children’s books / Libros para niños

Arroz Con Leche; Salsa; Guacamole; & Tamalitos

By Jorge Argueta

House of Anasazi Press

T

Jorge Argueta, a children’s book writer based in San Francisco is whimsical, lively, and instructive on cooking edibles that are accessible to kids. A Native Salvadoran and Pipil Nahua Indian, Argueta writes bilingual books, in Spanish and English, spotlighting traditional dishes with fanciful verse.

Each book includes a recipe for the dish named in the title, as told by a child narrator recounting the tale of learning to cook the dish with her family. Argueta utilizes vivid imagery sure to keep a child’s attention: cilantro trees must be washed, avocado boats slide down a sour river of lime, Maya and Aztec corn kernels dance in the pot. But it is difficult to recreate the dreamy and frenetic fun of his prose without simply quoting him. From a recipe for Arroz Con Leche: he poetry of

Don’t forget the salt and the sugar.

Take the salt cellar and dance around.

Shake it until little stars come out.

Next it’s time to add more clouds and sugar snow.

It’s snowing.

It’s raining In the kitchen.

Salt stars and sugar snow are falling from your hand.

No olvides la sal y el azúcar Toma el salero y bailando agítalo hasta que salgan estrellitas.

Después te toca anadir mas nubecitas y nieve del azucarero.

Está nevando.

Está lloviendo en la cocina.

Están cayendo estrellitas y nieve de tu mano.

In a similar fashion, Argueta instructs on how to make guacamole, salsa, and tamalitos in his other books from this series. Each features a different illustrator, all of whom are up to the task of bringing visual life to Argueta’s extraordinary words. In particular, Duncan Tonatiuh’s illustrations in Salsa, inspired by pre-Columbian and Mixtec paintings, are exquisite.

182 September /October 2015

Don’t Say A Word, Mamá/ No Digas Nada, Mamá

By Joe Hayes, Illustrated by Esau Andrade Valencia Cinco Puntos Press 2013

I

are to teach a lesson, the moral of Don’t Say a Word/No Digas Nada, Mamá is on the virtue of sharing. A spin on the Gift of the Magi, it is the story of two sisters named Rosa and Blanca. As children, they were always helping each other perform the tasks assigned by their mother.

As adults, Rosa got married and had three children, while Blanca remained single and lived on her own. One year, the two of them planted gardens, and each helped the other pick her bountiful produce. Rosa reasoned that Blanca did not have a husband and children to help her out, and told her mother that she would give half of her tomatoes, chiles and corn to Blanca. When giving some produce to her mother, Rosa told her of this plan, but asked her to keep it a surprise: “No digas nada, Mama.”

On the other hand, Blanca decided that Rosa had more mouths to feed, and she set out to secretly give half of her produce to her sister. Likewise, she asked her mother to keep it a secret.

The two crossed paths in the dark of night, stowing into each other’s kitchens to deliver their edibles.

Each sister, in response to the inexplicable proliferation of tomatoes and corn on her kitchen counter, gave even more produce to Mamá. At first, Mamá kept the secrets of her daughters from each other, until the day she ended up with mountains of hot chiles—which is when she decided to reveal what each sister had been up to.

Hayes grew up in southern Arizona, and his stories are inspired by the storytelling tradition of the American Southwest. Esau Andrade Valencia’s illustrations are lovely, with soft expressive faces as the central theme. Valencia is originally from Tepic Nayarit, Mexico, and his folk art style echoes Rufino Tamayo and Diego Rivera.

Visual beauty, humor, storyline, and a moral come together in this excellent book for kids. f childr en ’ s books

184 September /October 2015

My Tata’s Remedies/ Los Remedios De Mi Tata

By Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford, Illustrated by Antonio Castro L. Cinco Puntos Press 2015

A

rooted in Tucson, Rivera-Ashford tells a tale of a grandfather who is known for using traditional herbs as homeopathic treatments for various ailments. In both English and Spanish, the book is practical and useful, as well as entertaining for children.

Tata, as the child narrator relates, has been treating neighbors and family members since he was a young man. When the narrator’s little sister is stung by a bee, Tata packs her arm with mud and makes a wrap out of cloth soaked in corn silk. He makes a powder out of cat’s claw pods for diaper rash, a rinse from elderberry blossoms for itchy eyes, and marigold blossom and hummingbird flower tea to treat a fever.

Perhaps even more valuable than the medical advice is the lesson in cross-cultural diversity. One of the neighbors who comes to Tata for treatment is a recent immigrant from Angola. For children whose first language is English, the Spanish text offers encouragement to learn another language prevalent in our region.

This melting-pot approach comes naturally to the author.

Rivera-Ashford’s Jewish ancestors settled in Nogales years ago, and she taught school in the border region for 30 years before retiring in Tucson. Her themes are deeply tied to the varying cultures of the border—another book, Hip Hip Hooray, It’s Monsoon Day!/Ajua, Ya Llego El Chubasco! celebrates the rainy season here in the desert. ✜ story truly

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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LAST BITE

By Logan Phillips

acacia tooth legume bark shovel metal pick strike first coffee sun beam sun burn calendula earthwork consensus worktrade placekeeping pura lechuga wheelbarrow balance equinoctial jamaica ice aguantar vara solar cook creosote breath nectar 100Âş doldrum blood quantum crestate of family tree gristle sizzle cloudwater stamen greywater rebate oasis progress

Before pickswing, even before lines scratched on compacted sun-bleached surface, there’s the stories to consider first:

how water walks down subtle slope, how many summers the trees have shaded, who has been here before and what stories they have left in the soil.

First the listening, holding dust in my fist, trying to remember the sensation of cool on the skin, dirt under the fingernails, waiting on the heat to break, the sun to sink, waiting for the shadow of thunder, for the rain, always the rain.

Oh urban human, mi chamaquito, child prodigy of animal kingdom, enlightened and troubled, vain and fervent for the caliche bar, the metal strike, the sweat-mud, desire to mark the earth with my likeness impatient for fruit and labor, eager to begin work-listen.

Logan Phillips is a writer, performer, educator, and DJ based in Tucson.

His debut book of poems Sonoran Strange (West End Press, 2015) is available at DirtyVerbs.com. Visit EdibleBajaArizona.com to follow along as he builds an urban farm in downtown Tucson.

186  September /October 2015

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