Edible Baja Arizona - May/June 2016

May/June

2016

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Issue

No.

18

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Gratis

Celebrating the gastronomy of Tucson and the borderlands.

LETTUCE LABOR No. 18 May/June 2016

UNESCO 30 Years Later • Whiskey from Field to Glass Working Yuma's Lettuce Fields • Becoming Janos 2016-05.indb 1

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Features

Contents

6 COYOTE TALKING

10 ONLINE What’s happening at EdibleBajaArizona.com?

12 VOICES We asked Tucsonans: Why do you love where you eat?

24 EDITORIAL Remarks from the 30th anniversary of Tucson’s designation as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.

30 GLEANINGS At-home fermentation in The Cave; growing seedlings at Dreamflower Ga den; a new CSA program at Echoing Hope Ranch.

38 BAJA EATS 44 THE PLATE 47 EDIBLE HOMESTEAD Inviting beneficial insects into the ga den; canning the season; surviving a Sonoran summer; Gardener Q&A. 102 BECOMING JANOS Janos Wilder has spent most of his life in the kitchen. How he got there—and why he stayed.

66 FARM REPORT What’s in season in Baja Arizona.

70 SONORAN SKILLET Shades of smoothie.

80 IN THE BUSINESS The Yuma-based historian and veteran foodie Tina Clark is helping invigorate the city’s food scene.

84 MEET YOUR FARMER Forever Yong’s John and Yongson Rueb grow garlic and vegetables on six acres near Amado.

94 A DAY IN BAJA ARIZONA Exploring Old Bisbee.

96 YOUTH In a juvenile detention center garden, youth learn how to plant, grow, and harvest food.

132 BUZZ Hamilton Distillers’ new malting system links grain to glass.

140 INK A Q&A about the Lost Restaurants of Tucson; a review of Divided Spirits; a poem from The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide.

116 SWEAT VINAIGRETTE In the lettuce fields of the uma Valley, laborers are often the most vulnerable link between field and fork.

146 LAST BITE The cooking class from hell.

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COYOTE TALKING

E

“ENERGY IS ETERNAL DELIGHT.” —WILLIAM BLAKE

very member of the Edible Baja Arizona team plays a critical role in making the magazine happen every eight weeks, both in print and online. To use a restaurant analogy, if our editors, writers, photographers, illustrators, and designers are cooking it up in the kitchen, our circulation staff plays the role of waiters, delivering fresh issues to hungry readers at more than 300 outlets in Baja Arizona. Royce Davenport heads down to Bisbee; Steve Anderson visits locations in the far northwest, west side, and the foothills; Gil Mejias and Shiloh Walkosak-Mejias run the metro grid like nobody’s business, packing a cargo van with 5,000 copies at a pop, and have recently added Tubac, Patagonia, and Sonoita to their travels; Scott Muehlman ventures into Willcox and Douglas and other hinterland locations. All the hard work that goes into every issue would be for naught without the contributions from our stalwart distro staff.

Shiloh is our newest team member to help local food artisans, farmers, and producers connect with passionate readers in our special Artisans & Producers advertising section in every issue. We’d like to see the section grow to many pages and become a comprehensive resource to foster and support our local food system. Call Shiloh at 520.248.0667 to reserve your spot in the next issue.

T

“What the UNESCO designation did for Tucson was offer an opportunity for us to pay attention— unflinching, prolonged attention—to the food that sustains us. And when we looked, we realized that to eat well is to live well—and that no one thrives unless we all do.”

can be a great vantage from which to view the present. Megan Kimble envisions a Tucson 30 years hence that has been utterly transformed as a result of the UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation that we received in December 2015. We’re still grappling with many questions about what the designation means and how it can produce positive changes across the community. As she writes, “That which we pay attention to grows. And what the UNESCO designation did for Tucson was offer an opportunity for us to pay attention—unflinching, prolonged attention—to the food that sustains us. And when we looked, we realized that to eat well is to live well—and that no one thrives unless we all do.” Pay a visit to Tucson in 2045 and see if it’s a place you want to be—and consider how you can play a role in making some version of this future a reality.

Since 1983, when he opened his namesake restaurant, Janos, in the El Presidio neighborhood in Downtown Tucson, Janos Wilder has been a driving force in Tucson’s culinary community. Debbie Weingarten’s profile of Janos starts early and digs deep, focusing on this James Beard Award Winner’s ability to transform and innovate through location, concept, and cuisine.

From his formative childhood days in his mother’s kitchen to the recent opening of his latest venture, The Carriage House, Janos has seemingly shifted seamlessly between his roles as chef, entrepreneur, and community builder while still immersed in the constant challenges of the restaurant business.

John Washington travels to the Yuma Valley to document how technological advances, agriculture at a massive scale, and the lives of field workers are intersecting in one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world.

More than half a billion heads of lettuce come out of the winter fields, while 10,000 people cross the border between Mexico and Arizona every day to harvest this produce. From his story: “This is the pace of modern American farming: A Mexican-American great grandfather dipping at the waist and brandishing a lettuce knife like a musketeer … He is an early link in the long chain of food production; he may also be the most vulnerable.”

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

—Douglas Biggers, editor and publisher

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Editor and Publisher Douglas Biggers Editor

Megan Kimble

Art Director

Steve McMackin

Advertising Sales Director John Hankinson Business Coordinator Kate Kretschmann Online Editor Kate Selby Senior Contributing Editor Gary Paul Nabhan Designers

Lyric Peate, Bridget Shanahan, Sally Brooks, Kylie Daniels

Copy Editor

Ford Burkhart

Proofreader

Charity Whiting

Contributors

Amy Belk, Sophia Chen, Autumn Giles, Laura Greenberg, Edie Jarolim, Sara Jones, Maya Kapoor, Ken Lamberton, Shelley Littin, Jeevan Narney, Lisa O’Neill, Kay Sather, Shelby Thompson, John Washington, Debbie Weingarten

Photographers & Artists

Scott Baxter, Julie DeMarre, Tim Fuller, Zoya Greene, Aidan Heigl, Randy Hoeft, Lio a K, Danny Martin, Steven Meckler, Jeff Smith, G ace Stufkosky, Kristin Tovar, Ellen Wagner, Cody Winiecki

Interns Jordan Glenn, Aidan Heigl, Karen Schaffne , Rachel Wehr Distribution

Royce Davenport, Gil “Not Mel” Mejias, Shiloh Walkosak-Mejias, Steve and Anne Bell Anderson

On the cover: Green forest romaine lettuce from Rattlebox Farm, a 4.5

acre farm along the Pantano Wash on the southeast edge of Tucson.

Photo by Steven Meckler

Above: Cross section of green forest romaine lettuce.

Photo by Steven Meckler

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

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V olume 3, I ssue 6.

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

by Salt in Pepper Shaker, LLC. Subscriptions are available for $36 annually by phone or at EdibleBajaArizona.com. Copyright © 2016.

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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Hungry for More eBA? Edible Baja Arizona is always serving up fresh content online! Visit EdibleBajaArizona.com.

From the Blog:

Food Nerd W

h at do Baja Arizona’s food stars eat on their day off? What’s the weirdest food item hiding in their refrigerator? Who cooks when they’re not on the clock? We track down the passionate people who make cooking, eating, and thinking about food their day job, and take a peek at the eater behind the professional in our Food Nerd blog series.

Among our favorite revelations: Tucson-born nomad chef Tara Kligman adores durian merah, an extra-smelly fruit banned on public transportation in Asia; Feast owner and chef Doug Levy is most likely to splurge on sea urchins, “whose roe is like eating a bit of the ocean”; long before opening Lotus Garden, Darryl Wong’s favorite childhood food was oxtail stew.

For more, check out the archives and catch the latest posts online at: bit.ly/FoodNerd

B

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

• The best of the eBA blog and social media.

• Great giveaways for newsletter subscribers, like movie tickets to The Loft Cinema and gift certificates to local restaurants.

• Exclusive original recipes, and more.

Go to EdibleBajaArizona.com/newsletter to sign up!

O

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

instagram.com/ediblebajaaz (Left) Shelby Thompson’s artistic arrangement of her weekly Tucson CSA share, with curly kale, I’itoi onions, lettuce, quelites, spinach, sweet potatoes, Swiss chard, and black beans. (Center) A successful vineyard takes the right grape varieties, the right weather, determination, and luck: Callaghan Vineyards on a recent Edible Excursions tour. (Right) eBA editor Megan Kimble enjoyed sustainably sourced Escondido, Guaymas, and Sayulita tacos at Fini’s Landing while researching sustainable seafood.

instagram.com/EdibleBajaAZ youtube.com/EdibleBajaArizona facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona

pinterest.com/EdibleBA twitter.com/EdibleBajaAZ

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VOICES Matt Baer

We partnered up with Why I Love Where I Live to ask Tucsonans: Why do you love where you eat?

Photography by Kristin Tovar

To read the full stories behind why these readers love where they eat, visit EdibleBajaArizona.com/LoveWhereIEat and join the conversation!

Follow @ediblebajaaz and @whyilovewhereilive on Instagram, and tell us why you love where you eat—and why you eat where you live—with the hashtag #whyilovewhereieat. We'll feature our favorites on the blog.

instagram.com/EdibleBajaAZ

facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona

Matt Baer My job takes me all over the city so I get the opportunity to check out a variety of restaurants. One of my favorite places is Crossroads Restaurant Drive In. The friendly staff is quick to bring chips and salsa to the table and take an order. My favorite time to visit is in the middle of the summer for an icy Coke and a plate of chicken enchiladas. The chicken is full of flavo , the enchilada sauce is tangy and salty, and it comes with delicious refried beans and rice. Whether it’s a business meeting, a friendly lunch, or some needed solitude, I seek out Crossroads any chance I get.

Crossroads Restaurant Drive In 2602 S Fourth Ave.

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Jessica Kranz

Hilary Cummins

Jessica Kranz There are many great things about our Tucson community and one of them is food.

Since its arrival, Penca has been a favorite location for my girlfriend and me. This restaurant has been a place to celebrate and to share meals with friends. The cocktails are fun and inventive—their Bourbon and Tepache is my staple drink. The food is always delicious, and it’s great to have vegetarian options when so many restaurants are turning towards meat-heavy comfort food. Penca’s location is great as it is walking distance from home and so close to downtown event spaces and art galleries. Whether the evening starts or ends here, it is a beautiful space to enjoy a wonderful meal.

Hilary Cummins While there are plenty of incredible restaurants that we enjoy, my husband and I actually eat the majority of our meals at home. We have always loved cooking together—it allows us to eat healthy, save money, and spend intentional time with each other. We try to use as many local, organic ingredients as possible. We purchase Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares from local farms. Participating in CSA really pushes our creativity because we get a different harvest each week—it’s a great way to try new foods and support Arizona’s farmers. Ultimately, one of our favorite aspects of cooking at home is sharing meals with our incredible community of family and friends. It is a joy to cook for others, and we love it when our nearest and dearest are brave enough to try our latest recipe. So, while cooking at home requires time, patience, and a lot of trial and error, it’s made our life abundantly more delicious.

Penca

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

50 E. Broadway Blvd.

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Christy Wilson

Colby Henley

Christy Wilson Caruso’s Italian Restaurant was one of the first restaurants that my then-boyfriend (now husband) and I discovered together during college.

We have always loved Italian food, but grew up in a town without an Italian restaurant. Not only was it close to campus, but it also served the most outstanding vegetarian lasagna, house salad (that dressing!), and garlic toast we had ever eaten. The pasta sauce in the lasagna has the perfect blend of sweetness from the tomatoes and herb mixture that complements the rest of the ingredients packed between the sheets of pasta and cheese. I love the chunks of vegetables stacked between each layer, and it’s all topped with more sauce and cheese that’s bubbling when served. To this day, I savor every single bite of Caruso’s vegetarian lasagna.

It’s consistently delicious and tastes as amazing as it did the first time I tried it during colleg .

Colby Henley Why do I love to eat at Time Market?

Some of it has to do with the fact that I have a history of many meals in this place: first as a A student, then working near the University, and now living nearby, too. It’s long been the go-to place for a slice of pizza at lunch or late night coffee and dessert. They serve such quality food, with a perfect mix of familiar flavors and innovative combinations, and I think I could almost live on their Pain au Levain. Beyond the tasty food, it’s a great place for people watching, with lots of big windows along the sidewalk and a cozy patio for gathering with friends. I also love that it’s long been an anchor in the neighborhood, with local ownership who invest in and contribute back to Tucson. So I guess I love eating at Time Market because it is everything a neighborhood market/café/bar should be.

Caruso's

Time Market

434 N. Fourth Ave.

444 E. University Blvd.

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Kristina Harris

Janet Miller

Kristina Harris At Mi Nidito, I always look to see if there are any new celebrity photos on the visitor “wall of fame.” My photo still remains, to commemorate my time as Wilma the Wildcat at the University of Arizona (try to find it). The food is consistently delicious and served piping hot! The chile relleno plate is beyond heavenly; the chimichanga de chile verde, enchilada style (with a side of sour cream) is always delicious and big enough to share (but why would you want to?). The flautas topped with guacamole are amazing; the bowl of albondigas and their savory “homemade soup” are especially comforting on a cold winter day (or any day it’s below 70). Growing up in Tucson, I took for granted having delicious and authentic Mexican food in my backyard. That is, until I moved away to the east coast. Twelve and a half years later, I'm back home and the very first place I celebrate my “homecoming” is at Mi Nidito.

Janet Miller I find my favorite cold winter night comfort food at Kimchi Time. Their dolsot bibimbap is a delicious dish served in a heavy hot stone bowl.

The savory meat and vegetables come served over rice, with a raw egg on top. You push the egg to the side and the heat of the bowl cooks it. The rice on the bottom is a special treat because the hot bowl makes it all golden brown and crispy.

The whole thing stays hot for as long as you want to linger over the meal; sometimes I just want to curl up around it on the table and snuggle it. It’s unimaginable now, but there are a lot of wonderful cool summer items on the menu too. And the restaurant is so friendly! The owner and his family have created such a welcoming atmosphere: you feel like you're in their home, and they make everyone feel like they’re visiting family friends.

Mi Nidito

Kimchi Time

1813 S. Fourth Ave.

2900 E. Broadway Blvd. Suite 186

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Peter Zimmer

Joseph Cyr

Peter Zimmer Recently, a group of friends went to Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink to celebrate 10 years of being a “group of friends.” It was the perfect place for this occasion. The table was quickly filled wit craft beers, wines, meatballs, Brussels sprouts, and bruschetta-type toast appetizers. As stories, laughter, and conversation progressed, the table was quickly filled with salads, pizzas, and pastas. I was a perfect night—the product and perpetuation of relational fruit. Although this group could have a great time regardless of venue, our restaurant choice was certainly a catalyst. The flavors an combinations were amazing. The space was warm and stylish, making us feel the perfect balance between comfort and occasion. I love eating in places that are unique to their communities and have a passion for making the very best version of what they make. I get this sense at Reilly and I enjoy it. Their outdoor beer garden and downstairs basement bar provide additional options to gather, eat, and drink.

Joseph Cyr In Tucson, there are tacos, tortas, and then Takamatsu ... for birria coreana! If you've been to Jalisco in central Mexico, you’ve probably heard of the spicy stew made with roasted peppers and goat. Well, this is Arizona, and Takamatsu is a Japanese/Korean restaurant ... so what's birria coreana? Its real name is “yeom-soh-tahng.” It's intensely red and flavored with lots of fragrant wild sesame leaves and seeds ... and goat. My mother is Korean, but growing up, I never had this dish.

Finally, one night, I decided to order it, and our waiter—who was Mexican—asked me, in Spanish, if I'd ever had “birria de chivo,” the Mexican goat stew. “Sí, en Guadalajara!” He replied: “Well, then, you'll like this!” Be careful, though, when it's served to you: it arrives, bubbling, in a stone bowl that's been pre-heated in the oven. It's a taste of elsewhere that somehow transcends cultures and takes people back to their varied homes.

Reilly Craft Pizza and Drink

Takamatsu

101 E Pennington St.

5532 E. Speedway Blvd.

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EDITORIAL

December 11, 2045 Remarks from the 30th anniversary of Tucson’s designation as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.

By Megan Kimble | Illustration by Cody Winiecki

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ello , and welcome ! We’re gathered in this beautiful garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Tucson’s designation as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, which our city was awarded three decades ago, on December 11, 2015.

In 2015, when Tucson received this award, there was already considerable energy and passion around local food. School gardens had sprouted across the city. The University of Arizona had launched the Center for Regional Food Studies. Tucson Unified School District and Tucson Medical Center were at the forefront of the many institutions that would eventually begin purchasing fresh food from local producers. The City of Tucson had updated its land use code to encourage urban agriculture.

And many, many Tucsonans were visiting farmers’ markets, eating at local restaurants, and growing their own food.

Still, our local food system—and our community as a whole— was far from secure. In 2015, 97 percent of the food we ate in Tucson came from someplace else. Every year, Arizona imported $3.2 billion in food while exporting $2.8 billion, even as many of the small farmers who were growing food to feed Arizonans were struggling to earn a living. One out of every five adults was considered food insecure, as were one of three children; hundreds of thousands of people turned to the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona for emergency food relief. Meanwhile, Arizona provided less state funding per student than any other state in the nation.

But we wouldn’t have received recognition as a UNESCO City of Gastronomy had there not already been a passionate group of citizens committed to building a stronger, more resilient food system. And in 2015, many of these people wondered: What does this designation mean for Tucson? We realized, of course, that the designation would be what we made of it. And that food touches everything—that by addressing food, we might also be able to address other, more complicated issues.

That which we pay attention to grows. And what the UNESCO designation did for Tucson was offer an opportunity for us to pay attention—unflinching, prolonged attention—to the food that sustained us. And when we looked, we realized that to eat well is to live well—and that no one thrives unless we all do.

Recognizing that the success of our local food system—and any claim that we had to represent Tucson on the world stage as a City of Gastronomy—depended on the success of our local producers, one of the very first things we did was mobilize our resources to support our agrarians. In 2020, the City of Tucson, Tucson Unified School District, and the University of Arizona adopted the Good Food Purchasing Policy, a metric-based food procurement policy that considered local economies, environmental sustainability, fair labor, animal welfare, and nutrition when deciding what food to buy. Thanks to the leadership and support from many of Tucson’s institutions—and, of course, demand from its citizens—local food can now be found in

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markets, restaurants, hospitals, and schools across the city. With a stable market for their products, Baja Arizona’s farms flourishe and multiplied—as you’ll soon be able to taste at tonight’s public dinner.

But before our dinner begins, I invite you all to wander down to the banks of the Santa Cruz River, just a few hundred yards away. As you watch its slow meander below Tucson’s shimmering skyline, you might remember how this view once seemed impossible. This seasonally flowing river is perhaps only the most photogenic reminder of how Tucson reclaimed its water at just the right moment. After the severe drought of the early 2030s led to food scarcity, we awoke to how much of our water—in the form of cotton, alfalfa, and other non-food crops—was being exported to create wealth elsewhere. As water became increasingly scarce, in Arizona and worldwide, our state leaders worked collaboratively with community and regional stakeholders to realize a successful water policy that finall provided incentives to use water for food crops that would feed Arizonans, prioritizing local economic development and ecological health across our watersheds.

Thirty years ago, we were still trying to capture rainwater and move it as quickly as possible away from where it landed.

Today, as you surely saw on your way here, our streets, sidewalks, and public spaces are designed to capture water and keep it here—to grow desert plants, sidewalk gardens, and public fruit orchards, all of which have sequestered carbon and helped prevent heat from building on our city streets.

Tucson’s climate has changed to an extent that might have seemed unimaginable in 2015. It is hotter and drier today in Arizona than it has ever been before. The many students here tonight won’t remember what Tucson was like three decades ago and so I won’t linger in the past. I won’t ask, as many of you surely have, why we continued business as usual for so very long.

Because, finall , we did act.

In 2015, we’d just begun to rebuild our energy generation and distribution systems based on renewable energy. Tucson Electric Power has long since hit the target it set in 2015 to be 30 percent solar-powered by 2030. Today, nearly two-thirds of the energy used by Tucson residents and businesses comes in the form of solar energy.

And Baja Arizona’s farmers have pioneered methods of growing food in this new climate. Many of these methods are in fact thousands of years old, reintroduced and reimagined by today’s Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui leaders. Peer-topeer networks of growers across the region—indeed, across the globe—have shared knowledge about soil health, carbon sequestration, landscape restoration for pollinators, heat-tolerant crop varieties, and water-saving technologies, to everyone’s benefit Food has brought people together in ways that we never expected. The search to define and retain our culinary identity led to a quest for food justice and food sovereignty, which in turn

led to large-scale organizing and political transformation. In the years following the UNESCO designation, as our community leaders struggled against an antagonistic state legislature, voters turned out en masse to elect new representation. We voted against representatives who didn’t prioritize diversity, education, and the environment—values that, we realized, were essential for Tucson to successfully pursue its gastronomic goals.

Tucson now boasts the highest voter turnout in state and local elections of any city in the country. In the 2014 general election, less than 40 percent of Arizonans voted. Last year, 9 out of every 10 people living in Pima County cast ballots.

This kind of engagement has transformed our community in fundamental ways.

We are a much wealthier community than we were 30 years ago. But we know that wealth is not something someone gives us. Wealth is not purchasing power. Wealth is access—wealth is capacity. And so we focused on building access and creating capacity, right here in Tucson. Our business and community leaders have worked to empower people and neighborhoods to build their own wealth—by growing food, investing in local processing infrastructure, and sharing services, goods, and knowledge.

We’ve supported businesses that support our community.

And after national immigration reform offered a path to citizenship to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in Arizona, farm and restaurant laborers were finally able to organize and lobby for better wages and working conditions. By raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, we decided to support the many wage workers—particularly on farms and in restaurants—who have contributed to Tucson’s gastronomy from its very beginning. Many of these workers, including immigrants and indigenous peoples, seized the opportunity offered by increased economic stability to open food businesses of their own, expanding and deepening Tucson’s rich gastronomy.

And it continues. The students of 2015—the first wave of second, third, and fourth graders who learned how to grow vegetables, turn compost, and tend chickens at their schools—are now in their 40s and have taken leadership positions across Tucson, teaching a new generation of students about environmental stewardship and what it means to live in harmony with this place.

Tucson won this award 30 years ago because we knew—then as now—that food is connected to nourishment in fundamental ways. It was never about the next great meal. It’s always been about connection—about how food powers connection, how connection creates community, and how people in strong communities feed each other. Tucson is a city with a strong sense of identity. In 2015, we understood that every single person eating and living in this city had claim to the UNESCO designation.

What we’ve done since is simply to fulfill that promise—to bring you all, quite literally, to the table. ¡Salud! ✜

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gleanings

Echoing Hope Ranch launched a CSA program in early 2016, offering crops grown on the ranch by residents, employees, and day program participants.

Echoes of Community

Echoing Hope Ranch combines a CSA program with respite for autistic adults and teens.

By Shelley Littin | Photography by Aidan Heigl

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h i t e wa s h e d wooden fences contour the green fields, freshly tilled earth, and arched greenhouses of Echoing Hope Ranch. Community and living structures nest within copses verdant with trees. Mountain quail chitter when the wind blows. “It’s very peaceful here,” says Marla Guerrero, executive director of the nonprofit organization that provides respite, support, and employment to autistic teenagers and adults in southern Arizona. Guerrero understands the burden of living with an autistic family member, having striven for years to fulfill the needs—and to recognize the strengths—of her autistic son, Chris.

Echoing Hope Ranch was started by a group of friends, including Guerrero, familiar with the difficultie faced by autistic adults. They purchased land in 2009 and built the ranch, modeled upon similar programs that serve those with disabilities across the country. Today, the ranch has eight autistic residents, who live and work independently in a secure and supportive environment.

Their work involves caring for their home, caring for the land, and learning to grow food.

In 2016, the ranch started its own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Customers can purchase shares of crops grown on the ranch for a nine-week season. The seasons run successively spring through winter, and customers can purchase shares for just one season or for several.

Each week, CSA shareholders receive a wooden box full of fresh produce grown on the ranch. The crops vary depending on the time of year—Guerrero said that summer harvest

includes broccoli, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, melons, and corn.

The CSA crops are tended by ranch employees (many of whom are autistic), residents, and day program participants.

Echoing Hope’s day program provides varied activities for autistic individuals, including horticulture, music, art, and exercise.

Echoing Hope also offers in-home services to support individuals with disabilities and their families, as well as paid and volunteer opportunities for autistic individuals. “To feel like they have some control, that they’re an important part of a team—I don’t think that’s an opportunity many people with disabilities ever receive,” Guerrero said.

“I find the ranch offers the peaceful environment that people with autism seem to really need,” she said. Over time, she has watched residents become comfortable with the rhythm of life at the ranch, especially two long-term residents: “They’ve really bonded. You don’t see that often with people with disabilities.

These two don’t always talk but they understand each other and they help each other out.”

Guerrero’s son Chris died from cancer shortly after moving to Echoing Hope, where he lived independently for the firs time in his life. “I believe everyone with autism has something unique to share,” Guerrero said. It’s become a guiding philosophy of Echoing Hope Ranch: To acknowledge each person as a dynamic human being, and to strive to help individuals build a satisfying life.

EchoingHopeRanch.org.

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Karen and James Christian designed a specialty fermentation chamber to help individuals and families get into home fermenting.

Crafting the Cave

With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, James and Karen Christian are crafting a small fermentation chamber for easy at-home curing.

By Shelley Littin | Photography by Taylor Miller

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n an endeavor to reconnect with the rustic, urbanites are trying it all: home-grown herbs, garden greenhouses, beer brewing, jelly jarring, chicken cooping. Perhaps you’ve canned your own clementines? Dried your own dates?

Try making your own deli meats and curing your own cheese in a home fermentation chamber.

Fed up with indecipherable ingredients and who-knows-howprocessed commercial meats and cheeses, husband-and-wife team James and Karen Christian decided to home-cure their own.

Karen, who has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and chemistry education from the University of Arizona, spends much of her time watching their three children and making homemade meals.

Both Karen and James value healthy, made-from-scratch foods, so home-fermenting seemed a natural step to take. They soon discovered a glitch: while there are online tutorials by intrepid meat-smiths with guidelines to rig an old fridge or freezer for fermentation, there is no small-scale product to allow city-dwellers to cure their own meats and cheeses.

So they got creative, designing the first-ever—as far as they know—cure-it-yourself home fermentation chamber, which they called the Cave. The roughly mini refrigerator-sized appliance is big enough for beer brewers yet small enough to grace a garage, living room, or basement.

For five years now James and Karen have refined recipes for fermenting cheese, sausage, salami, prosciutto—and don’t forget the beer. They call their project Swiss Hills Ferments. James, who has a background in international business relations, hopes to turn their passion into a business focused on teaching people to ferment foods at home using the Cave.

“Our mission is to help other regular people to ferment foods in their house or apartment,” said Karen. “We’re trying to bring those farming traditions back to life.”

Built by Veenema Design Works, the Cave maintains the specific temperature and humidity needed for fermenting, drawing similar or less energy than a refrigerator.

There is room for all inside the Cave. “Your meat products would hang on racks to dry, and you can place cheeses or products that you’re pickling on the shelving unit. They’d be ready to eat after you enjoy the taste,” she said. “The longer you leave cheese in the chamber, the stronger the flavo . If you’re making beer it can sit on the floor of the unit.

Home-fermented products have another plus: They’re high in probiotics, the healthful bacteria proclaimed to balance digestion and boost immunity.

Whatever the reason, Karen notices a movement in the making. “It seems that people are going back to crafts such as knitting, woodworking, or fermentation,” she said. “The community around these projects is wonderful and welcoming.

Everyone is willing to teach you or help you get started. It’s time to get excited about creating your own food again.”

The Cave will be available beginning in the summer of 2016 for $575. Follow their Kickstarter campaign to help fund the build-out at SwissHillsFerments.com/kickstarter.

Shelley Littin is a science journalist and anthropologist. She spends her free time running unreasonable distances in beautiful places.

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In her backyard garden, Lorien Tersey grows vegetable starts, herbs, and native plants to sell at the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market.

A Backyard Dream

Lorien Tersey turns seeds into seedlings—and produce for sale —in her Dreamflower Garden.

By Kay Sather | Photography by Aidan Heigl

W

hen I first went to visit Lorien Tersey’s Dreamflower Garden, I forgot to bring the house number.

I knew which city block it was, though—Glenn just east of Aqua Vita—so I walked it. Once. Twice. I gave up.

That’s how well her house fits into the neighborhood It’s the backyard where Tersey’s full-time business grows both produce and potted seedlings for sale at the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market on Thursdays at the Mercado San Agustín.

She and her husband own just under an acre; they were lucky enough to buy a second small parcel adjacent to their lot (the seller tired of paying the taxes) so now Tersey’s microfarm takes up that piece as well as the original backyard.

Here rows of seedlings in pots wait to be transported to Thursday’s market, where she has a large, well-stocked booth.

Collard greens, kale, and herbs grow from the ground, fed by drip irrigation. Tersey will sell these through the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona’s consignment table.

A soft-spoken blonde in her 40s, Tersey has been a gardener her whole life. “My mother started me out as soon as I could drop a seed into the ground,” she says. ”I’m a compulsive gardener.” Her large backyard begged to be cultivated. When the recession hit she decided to try turning the plants into cash.

Seedlings, in their thin little pots, are especially thirsty, she says, so it helps a lot that the property is on a well. She doesn’t have to pay for water, only for electricity to run the pump.

Chickens, dogs, and rabbits animate the backyard scene too but aren’t part of the business, except to the extent that their noise alerts her to visitors. She has a lot of those.

“I actually love visitors,” she says. “The community aspect of this is, to me, the most important part.” People stop by for different reasons. One of the chicken coops belongs to a neighbor; the chickens pay rent in eggs. One little boy, who has been exposed to the garden since babyhood, comes every year to pick caterpillars off the fennel and raise them at home. When the butterflies emerge from their chrysalises, he brings them back to the garden.

“It’s important to grow ornamentals as well as food plants,” she says. “For the insects.” A red-flowering pomegranate and a pink sea of native penstemon grow in the front yard—adding beauty to the neighborhood, as well as those important pollinators.

Dropping by the gardens is just one way to participate in this microfarm community. Shopping at the Santa Cruz consignment table is another. (Usually her herbs are labeled Dreamflower, though she also consigns some unlabeled produce.) Or visit Tersey’s seedlings booth. She carries seasonal vegetable starts, native plants, and 50 kinds of baby herbs. If you’re not sure what to plant, or when or where, or even why, just ask the expert gardener who grew them. ✜ Find Dreamflower Garden on Facebook Kay Sather lives in Tucson and farms her own urban back yard, writes about practical environmentalism, and builds with free-form adobe.

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La Roca CR

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r ep & P astry has been around since January of 2014, but it still has that new restaurant feel. That and a hip, high-ceilinged space—look up and you’ll notice raw beams traversing the length of the restaurant.

Look down and you’re walking on paint spattered concrete floors. There s a blue wall decorated with artistic white chalk scribbles: Brunch without booze is just a sad late breakfast and All you need is bacon & a good cup of COFFEE. Weekends find lines out the door while servers inside hurry with hot plates and fresh pots of coffee. The outdoor patio is dog-friendly and the service is friendly and fast. My mom orders the simple breakfast ($8) and I go for Missy’s meatloaf sandwich ($9.50). Our food is delivered within minutes. The place hums with

conversation. Mom’s two eggs over easy, with hash-brown potatoes flecked with onion and bell pepper, have good color; the toast is perfect, and her bacon chewy. “The yolks are good and runny,” she says, and then plows through every bite, leaving crumbs.

My Missy’s meatloaf is stuffed between grilled whole wheat, with a sweet-and-tart raisin ketchup, a light blanket of arugula, tomato, and a smear of garlic aioli, with hot French fries on the side. The meatloaf is sliced thin but still has a crunchy top—and it’s plenty moist and well-spiced. While the condiments give it a twist, the flavor leans to American classic I always say about making a sandwich: too much, and it’s a fight to get it in your mouth; too little, and it feels like you’re eating a slice of pizza.

This was just right. And because lately I’ve got a thing for dipping, I order the soup—a bowl of tomato that was thick and creamy, with a shot of salty and a bit of sweet. And so Missy got dunked and that was a marriage of flavor I gave my total blessing to.

Anyone who eats here regularly knows about their desserts, so I decided to try their croissant/donut hybrid, otherwise known as a doughsant, but they were

sold out. I picked up a maple bacon dossant the next day. It’s a circle of thin layers of pastry dough, just like a croissant, but with curves. Then fried.

While the bacon trend may be waning for many, the shock of sugar against the salt is still palate pleasing. It’s enough fat, sugar, and salt in a few bites to qualify as an entire meal ($4). They also feature a long list of French toast, in flavors like S’mores, Apple Strudel, or Strawberry Shortcake that easily edge into dessert. No shortage of sweet here.

The menu features popular trends in dining—pork belly, duck confit—as well as a classic and the famed old-fashioned Monte Cristo sandwich. This is not a grab and go eatery, so make time to relax.

Prep & Pastry. 3073 N. Campbell Ave. 520.326.7737.

PrepandPastry.com.

(Clockwise, from top left) At Prep & Pastry, a simple breakfast plate, Missy’s meatloaf sandwich, and tomato soup.

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Craft Beer & Wine Bar features comfort foods with a dash of modern at the south end of Fourth Avenue, just before the downtown underpass.

Jennifer and I visit on a late Friday afternoon. The place is morphing from its daytime vibe of a mellow hipster nook into a bustling happy hour destination.

Ermanos is a great upscale neighborhood bar, visually pleasing with its industrial architecture of high ceilings, concrete floors, reclaimed wood, local art on the walls, and one massive skylight near the bar—very warehouse chic. (I’m feeling a whole lot of Brooklyn love recently in the Old Pueblo.) It’s a long, narrow space, with built-in half-booths with wood tables along the wall, running the length of the room.

Jennifer orders a local beer, Barrio Blonde, from the many craft beers available from local and national breweries. Her ceviche comes as a perfectly round disc of chopped shrimp, scallions, green pepper, tomato, and spices with a salted layer of guacamole. The fish ’n’ chips came with, as the name would suggest, a side of house-made fried chips, and she made short work of both.

I was in the mood for their popular Zip burger. It came with two slices of thick slab bacon, coated in their reduced herb and butter sauce (heavy on soy and Worcestershire) with intensely flavored caramelized “burnt” onions and a thin coating of havarti dripping down the sides. The herbed fries are house cut and salty. (Note: They no longer use Double Check Ranch meat, although though the change is not yet reflected on their regular menu.

There’s a good playlist going in the background—rock ’n’ roll with some funk—and they have live music Thursday and Saturday evenings, plus Sunday brunch. With good acoustics and friendly service, Ermanos is a bar first, but it s one you can enjoy eating at. There’s a separate large back room that anyone can sit in or reserve for private parties. rmanos

Barrio Blonde at Ermanos.

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olina ’ s M idway , in central Tucson, has been serving up authentic Mexican food since 1953, showing that not all Sonoran cuisine is cooked equally. Jennifer and I come through the doors on a late weekday afternoon, while it’s still busy.

Angel, fast on his feet, delivers our feast on a large platter, resting it on a small stand, before we organize it on our table. There was that much food.

We share a combo plate of spinach enchiladas, one topped with a creamy white béchamel, the other crowned in a traditional red enchilada sauce, then finished with a curtain of melted cheese. The greens were fresh; a bite of green with a swirl of cheddar was a tasty fusion of bitter and savory. The side of rice and beans had frijoles so velvety and rightly spiced, I wondered, how could a simple bean get so creamy? I asked a passing server, “Is there lard in these?”

He laughed, saying, “Lard and love.”

Then came bean enchiladas, which I transformed into a multilayered invention of corn tortillas, rice, beans, cheese, sauce, and a final smothering of guacamole. It was a fiesta pie fabrication that I’ll repeat.

The carne seca burrito (reconstituted dried beef simmered in a rich stock scented with garlic and chiles) is such an Old Pueblo classic that Jennifer says, “This is what I craved when I lived in New York City, to the point of tears.” It’s that good, with a kick of unyielding heat.

Molina’s atmosphere is a bit retro, with red brick rounding the arched doorways, colorful paintings on the walls, and large old-style booths. And they serve Mexican comfort food that continues to live up to its expectations since I first ate here in the late 1970s.

As we were finishing our meal, Angel came by our table and said, “The albondigas is done. Would you like a taste?” I had ordered it earlier. It’s a light broth with scallions and tomatoes sailing across the top, and the tender meatballs called to my taste buds.

A woman lunching nearby told us she comes every week for their albondigas. She adds, “And try their flat enchiladas. They’re made with corn and cheese. Very unusual.” Next time.

Molina’s Midway. 1138 N. Belvedere Ave. 520.325.9957 Molina’s Midway’s carne seca burrito.

Ermanos Craft Beer & Wine Bar. 220 N. Fourth Ave. 520.445.6625.

ErmanosBrew.com.

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t was time to get back to some veggie-centric eating, so Jennifer and I stopped in at Choice Greens, a fast, casual eatery in central Tucson.

Design your own chopped salad from a base of iceberg, romaine, spinach, organic spring mix, or organic kale; choose four “choppings;” and then deliver the filled-out paper menu to the cashier.

It’s obvious why they call it Choice Greens; they offer more than 50 ingredients and 20 dressings. From anchovies to tuna, couscous to quinoa, cheddar to Parmesan, apples to Mandarin oranges, there’s something for everyone.

I went with half iceberg/half romaine, chopped extra fine, hard-boiled egg, avocado, chickpeas, scallions, feta, green peas, corn, and a half order of bacon. This was a kitchen sink salad, tossed with a creamy ranch on the side.

The feta and bacon offered savory bites, the corn delivered sweet, and the greens had a hint of bitter. A basic salad with four items is $6.99; each additional topping costs 69 cents.

Jennifer ordered romaine with kalamata olives, chickpeas, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, hard-boiled egg, hearts of palm, and artichoke hearts.

All the different textures from the mozzarella to the chickpeas provided the right contrast to the crunchy greens. And since she chose everything that went in her bowl, she loved it.

I go to Choice Greens to get my veggie fix. They’re locally owned, have colorful paintings of veggies on the wall (to keep you in the mood), and although it’s often packed, the lines move fast.

You can check the nutrition facts of your order at their website, where there’s a dietary calculator. (My salad was 405 calories, if you’re wondering.)

They also make classic Cobb, Greek, Asian, and other salads, plus fast-fired small pizzas (pick your own toppings), soups, panini, and sandwiches. The teas come from Tucson-based Maya Tea.

Choice Greens . 2829 E. Speedway.

520.319.2467. ChoiceGreens.com.

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Choice Greens custom salad.

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L it tle I taly gem located in a cluster of industrial warehouses—once you find Roma Imports, you’ll keep coming back. The restaurant is busy at lunch, with a small line of customers at the front register placing orders off white boards featuring rotating specials.

While waiting for our food, I peek through the long bank of freezers that stock meatballs (beef or chicken), several kinds of lasagna, shepherd’s pie, gluten-free pasta, spaetzle, fettuccine, pizzas, curries, goulash, raviolis, and a deep selection of sausage they make fresh every two weeks.

All their signature dishes are cooked preservative free, using excellent ingredients, made from scratch, ready from Roma’s freezer to yours. All you have to do is heat them up. It’s one of Tucson’s best take-out selections.

There’s a back room with long tables topped with the familiar red and white checked tablecloths synonymous with old-fashioned Italian joints. Everything is family style. Mom and I sit at a table with a bunch of friendly strangers and dig in.

Sometimes there’s no improving on old standards. The spaghetti and meatballs ($7.99), a classic I never tire of, comes with traditional soft beef meatballs piled on pasta, all t’s a

flavored with a rich, sweet marinara. The Roma Stallion ($8.99) is pork shoulder bathed in wine and herbs and slow roasted, then served with pickled veggies on Italian bread.

(I swap out the veggies for the German-style slaw).

The chunks of pork are savory against the slight sour from the coleslaw, and it’s love at first bite.

For dessert, Mom digs into a chocolate-covered cannoli stuffed with cream, and her eyes light up.

Owner Lilian Spieth’s personal history reflects her varied menu offerings. A Jew born in Calcutta, India, she moved to Israel in her teens, then spent her married adult years in Germany before settling in Tucson.

Roma Imports is firmly e trenched in local foodie culture.

Today, nearly 17 years after opening, Spieth and her Roma family roll out nearly 800 meatballs a week.

Their deli counter offers top-quality Italian cured meats: wine-cured salami, capicola, Genoa salami, prosciutto di Parma, bresaola, and more, including all manner of fixings for your own cooking.

Roma Imports is at the top of my list for a food tour. Don’t miss. They cater. ✜ Roma Imports. 627 S. Vine Ave. 520.792.3173. RomaImports.com.

Laura Greenberg is a Tucson-based writer.

The Roma Stallion sandwich from Roma Imports.

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The Plate Plate the

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The one thing they should never take off the menu in Bisbee.

1234 Photography by Shelby Thompson

Sizzling Steak and Shrimp Fajitas Santíago’s Mexican Restaurant Perfectly seasoned shrimp and steak are sautéed with red and green peppers, onions, and tomatoes until they are tender and steaming hot. $16.99 2 Howell Ave., Bisbee

Pizza Dip Screaming Banshee Pizza A dish of bubbling cheese, tangy red sauce, and zesty pepperoni comes served alongside crusty slices of baguette, making for the perfect deconstructed pizza. $8.95 200 Tombstone Canyon, Bisbee

Greek Salad High Desert Market Café Piled high with fresh greens, peppers, tomatoes, olives, feta, and dolmas, this filling Greek salad comes with both tzatziki and a creamy balsamic vinaigrette for dipping and pouring. $7.95 203 Tombstone Canyon, Bisbee

Spring Gnocchi Café Roka Tender homemade potato gnocchi are paired with fresh pea shoots, roasted asparagus, and a vibrant pesto that will continually remind you how wonderful spring tastes. $18.50 35 Main St., Bisbee

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E dible H omestead

Garden Friends Inviting beneficial nsects into your backyard.

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By Amy Belk | Illustration by Danny Martin hen my husband and I moved into our house

it had been empty for several years, and we had a scorpion problem. We treated inside and out with a recommended nonspecific pesticide that was expected to last about three months. When it began to wear off, we o longer had a scorpion problem; we had a cricket problem, and a big one. Crickets reproduce much faster than scorpions (and everything else that eats them), and this experience was an excellent demonstration of what happens when you wipe out the good bugs with the bad ones.

Insect infestations are rarely a problem in nature unless a pest spreads into territory where there are no natural predators to keep it in check. We recreate this situation any time we nonselectively kill the insects that live in our yards. Instead of getting better, the situation often gets worse when pest insects reproduce quickly before their predators are able to catch up.

Even though scorpions still creep me out, I’ve learned that they’re one of the many beneficial insects that elp with pest control. Beneficial cr tters come in all kinds of shapes and sizes (insects, animals, and even bacteria), and most of them are far less creepy than the scorpion. They help us pollinate flowers and eat t e insects that we’d rather not have around.

Giving up broad, nonspecific pesticides a d encouraging (or even introducing) beneficial animals r insects is part of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to gardening. Rather than trying to eliminate pests, the goal of IPM is to mitigate them with the help of their natural predators, a hard spray of water from the hose (to help reduce large populations), and maybe some insecticidal soap when something gets out of hand.

For example, one great IPM approach to dealing with pests is to attract more hummingbirds by incorporating some of their favorite flowering lants into your garden.

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After enjoying some nectar, they’re likely to stick around for some aphids, flies, eafhoppers, weevils, small beetles, mosquitos, and gnats. They also really love spiders, and use spider webs to build their nests, so you defin tely need some eight-leggers around if you want hummingbirds to nest nearby.

The more I learn about who eats or uses what in my garden, the more I understand that there’s a lot more to the world of beneficial cr tters than the well-known insect predators like ladybugs and praying mantises (though there’s no doubt that these are fantastic insects to have around).

If you want to be pleasantly surprised by the staggering variety of biological controls you’ve probably never heard of, and how they can benefit our garden, take a few minutes to look through an ARBICO Organics catalog or visit their website. This Baja Arizona company (ARBICO stands for Arizona Biological Control) has been providing organic

solutions to customers all over the world for more than 30 years through its mail-order system. The company operates a 10-acre facility in Catalina, where some of its beneficial insects are raise , and it has a small retail store in Oro Valley that is packed with cool organic products and helpful staff Terri Towne has worked at ARBICO’s retail location for 20 years; she says that one of their all-time top sellers is a microscopic worm-like creature called a nematode.

This tiny organism is really good at parasitizing insects that live out part of their developmental stages in the soil, but it doesn’t limit its diet to strictly soil-borne pests.

ARBICO’s spring catalog lists 66 individual pesky insects that are controlled by just three species of nematode.

I was expecting their top-seller to be adorable ladybugs. But Towne said that the top-selling products at ARBICO are actually wasps. ARBICO calls them Fly Eliminators, and they’re much smaller than the wasps that most of us are more familiar with. Fly Eliminators are only about 1/8-inch long; they don’t sting animals or people; and they don’t harm our plants. The female wasps spend their time burrowing anywhere that flies mig t lay eggs, seeking out developing flies in t eir pupal stages.

When the wasp locates an unlucky fly pupa, she injects it with her eggs, and it soon becomes the first eal for the Fly Eliminator’s offs ring, stopping flies before they ever hatch into annoying adults. The whole process may sound

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a bit disturbing, but for me it’s not nearly as scary as sprinkling poison around my chickens, which peck at every single thing they see.

Of course, the well-known predator insects can be purchased, too, and ladybugs are a popular choice. These little workhorses eat 50 to 60 aphids daily in the larval stage, and 5,000 aphids as adults. They also eat a variety of other pests such as beetle larvae, thrips, whitefl , and mites.

Timing is important when introducing ladybugs or other beneficial insects into the garden. Releasing them at the wrong time of day or the wrong time of year might result in their immediate departure for cooler temperatures at higher elevations.

In addition, it’s sometimes necessary to release more than one batch, or to keep a continuous schedule of applications.

If you’re not into buying your garden friends, you can always invite wild critters to volunteer their services by leaving some of their favorite insects alone, and by planting some of the things that they might need for supplemental pollen, nectar, or shelter.

Using an IPM approach also means that some of what we’re growing gets shared with some bugs from time to time. A few caterpillars won’t do much harm to an established citrus tree, and you get some butterflies in exchange. And in my opinion, butterflies are a hole lot more fun than poison. ✜ Amy Belk is a garden writer and photographer, a certified arborist, and a certified n rsery professional who has been learning from her garden for 15 years. She and her husband homestead on a little piece of the desert in the heart of Tucson.

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y this time of year, there are way fewer holes being dug in the low-elevation gardens of Baja Arizona. Many of us are already spending way more time harvesting and watering than planting new veggies. Still, there are a few things you can get in the ground if you’re quick about it!

Sweet potatoes are the only thing that can be planted across all elevations this time of year.

Lower elevations have until around mid-June, but those above 3,000 feet have just a short window of time to plant them around mid-May. Those above 1,000 feet can plant okra, soy beans, and summer squash. If you’re above 2,000 feet you can add cantaloupe, cucumber, eggplant, muskmelon, pepper plants, pumpkin, and watermelon to everything above.

As we move into the higher elevations of Baja Arizona, our options open up even more. If you live around 3,000 feet or higher, you can plant everything previously mentioned as well as bush beans, lima beans, pole beans, beets, broccoli, celery, collard greens, sweet corn, mustard, parsnip, potatoes, radish, salsify, winter squash, and tomatoes.

Cabbage, rutabaga, endive, kohlrabi, cauliflo er, and spinach can also be planted at the highest elevations of Baja Arizona, above 4,500 feet.

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[E.H.]

Preserving Baja Arizona

By Autumn Giles | Photography by Grace Stufkosky

M

y boyfriend and I learned quickly that

when you buy a really old house in a really small town, everyone has a story about it.

When word got out that we had purchased our first home, a bright pink, 110-year-old folk Victorian on our town’s main drag, we were instantly inundated with “pink house” tales: “Did you know it used to be yellow?” “Geronimo made tortillas on the porch,” and, my personal favorite, “I was married in your guest house because it used to be a chapel.”

Before we even closed on our home, a friend of ours passed along a multipage, photocopied newspaper biography of Hattie, the woman who, in the early 1900s, raised her children in our home, spoke many languages, and—most importantly to me—fil ed the cellar off t e kitchen with home-canned food, which she subsequently gave away to those in need around town.

After I learned Hattie was a preserver like me, I knew we had found our house, and I felt so proud to be stocking the cellar again. Between Hattie’s time and mine, preserving hasn’t really gone anywhere.

In the same way that it made sense for Hattie to put up her surplus each year, preserving still makes sense to a growing number of people who are looking to source more of their food locally year-round and maintain a connection with traditional food ways. It remains an essential tool for those looking to cut back on food costs without compromising on quality and taste.

My favorite way to illustrate the economics of preserving is to talk about preserved lemons, the dead-easy yet completely transformative preserve made from salt,

lemons, and time. Can I cook without preserved lemons?

Absolutely. Indeed, I did for many, many years. However, in the depths of winter, do they infin tely improve my go-to roasted carrots? Without a doubt. I had never had them until I made them myself, because store-bought preserved lemons are cost prohibitive for me. Put simply, preserving empowers me to eat better for less.

Finally, there is much to be said for the social and community-building aspects of preserving. The firs time I canned was years ago during a canning party at a friend’s apartment. Today I maintain many of the connections with fellow preservation enthusiasts that I made during that single afternoon. The joy that comes from honoring the harvest by gathering friends and family to put up food and share knowledge and stories is perhaps the greatest argument for preserving food. I can only hope that in a hundred years, the person living in my house hears a story about me filling up t e cellar and feels at home, just as I did with Hattie.

My secret mission in writing this, which is indeed now not so secret, is to get more folks to see themselves as preservers. I think many of us, myself included for a long time, see the work of preserving as something separate from cooking. There are home cooks—plenty of them—and then there are preservers.

At its best, I think preserving is just another, albeit invaluable, tool for the home cook’s toolbox. Particularly as the excitement around eating locally and seasonally continues to grow, I argue that passionate home cooks can become better at what they love by having the skills to preserve.

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Fig jam with toasted fennel seeds A sweet preserve with a savory character.

B

efore living in the desert, I considered figs a rarity—a somewhat mythical, hard-to-transport fruit that was often out of my price range. When I lived in Queens, there was a fig tree in a nearby yard that I would visit just to admire and check on its progress.

Here, when monsoon season starts at the beginning of July, the fig trees ex lode. It’s truly magical.

Even with the added lemon juice, which provides the necessary acid to can the figs sa ely, the figs are qu te sweet. Just a touch of balsamic vinegar added at the end of the cooking period adds balance and brings out the savory side of the figs a d fennel.

Ingredients:

1 1 1 2 ½

teaspoon fennel seeds pound fresh green figs, cut i to ½-inch chunks cup sugar tablespoons bottled lemon juice teaspoon balsamic vinegar

Materials:

• Half- or quarterpint Mason jars with two-piece lid closure • Jar lifter • Tall stockpot with a lid and silicone blossom trivet (available online) for processing • Wooden chopstick • Clean kitchen towel

• Wide-mouth canning funnel • Paper towels • Preserving pot • Ladle • Large nonreactive bowl • Small stainless steel skillet • Mortar and pestle or spice grinder

Instructions: To toast the fennel seeds, heat them in a bare stainless steel skillet until they’re aromatic and just start to darken.

This won’t take more than a couple of minutes. Use a mortar and pestle or spice grinder to grind them into a coarse powder.

In a large nonreactive bowl, fold together the figs, sugar, and lemon juice. Add the fennel seeds and let the mixture macerate for at least 4 hours or up to overnight.

Transfer the mixture to your preserving pot using a spatula to scrape any sugar that has settled to the bottom of the bowl and, over high heat, bring to a boil that can’t be stirred down.

Cook for about 7 minutes, or until a dollop of jam placed on saucer and cooled for a few minutes in the freezer doesn’t run back together when you drag your finger through t.

Remove from the heat and stir in the balsamic vinegar.

Ladle into prepared quarter-pint jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and wipe rims. Place the lids on the jars and screw on the bands until they are fingertip tig t.

Process in the tall stockpot with lid for 15 minutes, adjusting for altitude as needed. (At 1,000 to 3,000 feet, increase processing time by 5 minutes. At 3,000 to 6,000 feet, increase processing time by 10 minutes.)

After 24 hours, check the seals. Label, date, and store out of direct sunlight without the bands for up to a year.

Yield: 2 half pints

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[E.H.]

Brined green tomatoes with basil A fresh, herb-infused brine perfect for tomatoes.

T

he degree of ripeness greatly affects how tomatoes behave in a ferment. Some folks like to ferment whole, ripe cherry tomatoes, which transform into something often known as cherry bombs due to their effervescent, explosive quality. Here, we’re using green or significantly underripe tomatoes. Using these firme tomatoes means that they can be sliced and brined without fear that they’ll turn to mush. Plus, they maintain a nice bit of crunch, even when they’re fully fermented.

In general, less is more when it comes to fresh herbs in ferments. Their fl vor will amplify as it infuses the brine throughout the fermentation period. Likewise, for long-term storage, it can be a good idea to pick out the herbs. If you’re eating them regularly and tasting, it may not be necessary to pick them out initially, but do so if and when the fl vor of the herb becomes overpowering. The same can be true for the garlic.

Ingredients: 1 garlic clove, crushed with the back of a knife 1 fresh basil sprig, about 4 leaves 425 grams green or very underripe tomatoes, cut into sixths Enough 5 percent brine (50 grams of salt per liter of water) to cover by at least 1 inch

Materials:

• Wide-mouth quart Mason jars • An airlock system designed for a wide-mouth quart Mason jar • A large nonreactive bowl

• A kitchen scale that has both grams and ounces • A wooden spoon • Something to weight the vegetables to keep them submerged (brining only)

Instructions: Place the crushed garlic clove and the basil at the bottom of a quart jar.

On top of the garlic and basil, add the tomato pieces, 1 handful at a time. You can shake the jar from side to side to help them settle, but do not pack them down. They should come no higher than the top of the jar’s shoulder.

Pour the brine into the jar so it completely covers the vegetables. Use a wooden chopstick to jiggle the contents to help remove air bubbles. Weight, cover with an airlock, and ferment for up to two weeks. You may begin tasting for doneness after 3 days.

Cover, label, and refrigerate for long-term storage.

Yield: 1 scant quart.

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[E.H.] S outhwest chow -chow

A spicy, Southwest-inspired take on the classic Southern relish.

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is a mustardy, end-of-season relish, meant to be a bit of a catchall for what has to be pulled from the garden. Green tomatoes often make an appearance, as does cabbage. Because it has its roots in utility, there are as many versions of chow-chow as there are folks who make it. This one has a Southwest bent and includes poblanos in place of sweet green or red peppers, cauliflowe , and tomatillos instead of green tomatoes. how - chow

This recipe takes just a bit of planning, as it needs to be salted and allowed to sit for 4 hours before going into jars.

If you start it on a weekend morning when you wake up, it will be ready to process after lunch.

Ingredients: 2 1½ 1 1 1 1½ 1¾ ¾ 1 1 ½

cups chopped cabbage, about ¼-inch pieces cups chopped cauliflowe , about ¼-inch pieces cup chopped tomatillos, about ¼-inch pieces cup chopped white onions, about ¼-inch pieces cup chopped poblano peppers, about ¼-inch pieces teaspoons salt cups distilled white vinegar cup sugar teaspoon whole yellow mustard seed teaspoon ground mustard teaspoon turmeric

Materials:

• Mason jars with two-piece lid closure • Jar lifter • Tall stockpot with a lid and silicone trivet for processing • Wooden chopstick • Wide-mouth canning funnel • Stainless saucepan

• • • •

Clean kitchen towel Paper towels Spatula Heavy-bottom preserving pot • Ladle • Large nonreactive bowl • Medium nonreactive bowl

Instructions: In a large bowl, use a wooden spoon to stir together the chopped cabbage, cauliflowe , tomatillos, onions, poblano peppers, and sea salt. Let the mixture sit for 4 hours, as the salt draws moisture out of the vegetables.

After 4 hours, take the chopped vegetables a handful at a time and squeeze them to extract as much liquid as possible. Do not rinse. Reserve the squeezed veggies in a medium nonreactive bowl.

Combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, ground mustard, and turmeric in the stainless saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar and salt.

Once the sugar and salt dissolve, add the vegetables and return to a boil. Reduce heat. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat and use a slotted spoon to transfer the relish to the prepared jars. Pour the brine (the remaining liquid) over the relish to cover, leaving ½ -inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and wipe rims. Place the lids on the jars and screw on the bands until they’re fingertip tig t.

Process in a water-bath canner for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude if needed. After 24 hours, check the seals. Label, date, and store out of direct sunlight without the bands for up to a year. Yield: 2 pints. ✜ Introduction and recipes adapted from Beyond Canning: New Techniques, Ingredients, and Flavors to Preserve, Pickle, and Ferment Like Never Before by Autumn Giles (Voyageur Press 2016) and photographed by Grace Stufkosky.

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Gary Gholson has owned his own hair salon, worked on HIV/AIDS communications research, and worked as a fitness nstructor. He started gardening with the help of the Community Food Bank’s Garden Program.

Gardener Q&A Gary Gholson brings his eclectic aesthetic to the garden.

By Sophia Chen | Photography by Julie DeMarre

G

ary Gholson’s home garden, located in east

Tucson, is a mosaic of vegetables and flowers, lined neatly with stone pathways and garnished with carefully placed ornaments. The garden’s design parallels the way he lives his life—it is eclectic yet meticulously planned, with a balanced eye for practicality and aesthetics. A Missouri native, the 68-year-old has lived in St. Louis, Italy, India and, final y, Tucson. He’s owned his own hair salon, worked on HIV/AIDS communications research, and worked as a fit ess instructor. Now retired, Gholson started planting his colorful beds with some help from the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona’s Garden Program.

How did you get your garden started?

When I moved into this house six years ago, I was using a walker because I’d gotten surgery because of abnormal excessive bone growth on both of my hips. The whole yard was just gravel and weeds, three feet high. I had to have people take care of the weeds because I couldn’t.

Later, I ran into a friend at the library, and she told me about the Garden Program. I contacted them and they put in a 4-by-10 foot raised bed almost fi e years ago. The two main people from the garden program, Melissa Mundt and Luis Herrera, came with about fi e volunteers. They brought the material, painted the boards, put it in, and dug out an area to mix native soil. I was still in a walker for a while after that, but I cleared [the yard] and put down the edging and the pathways while on my walker.

What exactly is the Garden Program?

The Community Food Bank runs it, and I qualify because of my income. They offer different classes on gardening in the desert, like how to position your garden and how to compost. I’m getting into the part of their program on water conservation. It has been a really great resource. You can get seeds and starts, too.

The program also asks you to come and volunteer. When I got into it, because of my walker, I couldn’t do things like put in a raised bed or help them in their garden. But I could do things sitting down, like putting seeds in packets or planting seeds into little pots.

You look very spry now.

Does the garden keep you active?

I have limited range of motion, so I use a kneeler because I can’t get down without support. But yeah, this gives me something to do. My recovery was great because I was in great shape from working in the yard, and I was a fit ess instructor from 2000 to 2009. Some days I’ll work for an hour; other days I might work four or fi e. I’ve taken out three palo verde trees in the yard, which takes a lot of physical activity and strength.

Gholson says he loves to look at and collect beautiful things.

His garden is decorated accordingly.

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When did you start gardening?

Every summer from the age of 3 until I was 11, I went to my grandparents’ 20-acre farm. They raised pigs and chickens and cows, and my grandfather had a great garden almost the size of my backyard, and they canned whatever they could. I helped him make sauerkraut and sausage and cure bacon.

Tell me a little bit about the ornaments you use to decorate your garden.

I love to look at beautiful things, and if the price is right, I’ll buy it. Like these cast iron urns—they were on consignment, and the price was so ridiculously low. I bought those white lion sculptures before I moved here, when I was back in Missouri taking care of my parents before they both died.

Aesthetics are clearly important to you. How did you pull off this look f r your garden?

When people ask me questions about gardening, I always tell them to start off w th a plan—put it down on paper. After I got the weeds and gravel cleared out, it probably took me six months to come up with a design I was happy with. I have a spiral notebook with graph paper, and it’s loaded with differe t perspectives.

Aesthetics have always been something I’ve had in my other home gardens. I had an antique shop back in St. Louis, so those interests come out. I was also a hairdresser and owned my own salon for 20 years.

Hairdressing, antiques, fitness nstruction, and gardening. What else have you done?

I did this language intensive program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the age of 47.

I thought, something new to do. For 10 weeks, I had three hours of Hindi in the morning, two hours of Urdu in the afternoon. Two weeks after the program ended, I went to northeast India and then wrote a paper on how language was being used in the media to report on AIDS in India.

What motivates you to do so many different th ngs?

Creativity. Look at Madonna and how she constantly redefines and recreates herself. The person inside stays the same, but you bring creativity outward. If you don’t stay creative, what’s the point? ✜ Sophia Chen is a freelance writer based in Tucson. Her work has been featured in Wired and Physics World.

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[E.H.]

Ask a Master Gardener

By Pima County Master Gardeners | Illustration by Danny Martin

Have a question about your garden?

Submit it at EdibleBajaArizona.com or Facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona.

You can also call the Pima County Master Gardener Plant Clinic at 520.626.5161.

How can I help my garden survive the high heat and aridity of the Sonoran summer?

In May and June each year, we often receive questions about damage to edible plants related to the effects f seasonal high heat and aridity. While we can certainly offer advice to aid plant recovery, what if you could get a lead on these issues and deal with them early enough to prevent serious damage? You’ve probably heard the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”—in the garden those words are golden. As we enter our foresummer drought period, it’s an important time to be present in our gardens.

The way to do this is very simple, and pleasant. It only requires that you take a refreshing walk around the garden oasis you’ve created and communicate with your plants. No, not a literal dialogue that will have neighbors turning their heads, but just a daily look-see in this active season.

R ead Your Plants .

With a regular daily walk around, you’ll be surprised at how well you can pick up early changes in the condition of your plants. Look for hydration. Ideally plants are turgid in the morning, slightly wilted in the afternoon, and regain turgidity in the evening. Not so? Then water the soil, not the plant, to a depth of at least 12 inches. Adjust your watering schedule as necessary, and nip dehydration in the bud. Look for nutrient deficie cies. Do leaves have increasing yellow coloration or green veining? Evaluate first then counter with iron, zinc, manganese, or nitrogen, if necessary. Look for signs of pest damage. Do leaves, stems, or root systems show damage? Are there visible signs of insect or animal pests? Use natural pest control methods when possible; avoid chemicals in vegetable gardens.

Do you see any bacterial, viral, or fungal activity on your plants? Use less toxic controls when possible; avoid chemicals in vegetable gardens.

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[E.H.] C heck your Plants ’ Microenvironments .

Check soil hydration. Push a fingertip i to the soil to check that it has some give and consistency. To check further, roll a bit of soil in your hand, squeeze it between your thumb and forefinge , and try to form a ribbon. Is it dry and crumbly? Consider upping the water.

Check sun, shade, and wind. Location is a key factor in successful plant growth—too much or too little sun or shade or direct exposure to winds can be a significa t factor in wilting and loss of vigor. Know your plants’ sun, shade, and wind requirements and limitations before planting and choose a location accordingly.

Use 30 to 40 percent density shade cloth during summer heat (shading is less critical for landscape plants). Shade cloth creates a beneficial egetable plant microclimate by moderating intense sunlight and heat during our desert summer. You can make an inexpensive shade-cloth frame from plastic pipes and zip ties. Leave at least a few inches of air circulation spacing around plants so you don’t create a heat trap.

plants themselves (stems, leaves). Check mulch throughout the season and replenish as it breaks down and settles.

Are you fertilizing soil as necessary? On a calendar, mark down plant-specific ertilizing information, including when, what, and how much. There is no onesize-fits-all or fertilizing. Use the right combination for the right plants and follow manufacturers’ directions.

Remember that over-fertilizing can lead to problems like salt burn or green leafy growth at the expense of fruit, and can attract unwanted insects.

Finally, keep a garden log for plants and locations.

List important highlights, including dates, actions, amounts, pest and disease issues, growth results, harvests, and your observations. You’ll fi d this is very helpful for future garden management and planning. Keeping in touch with your plants throughout the week will pay large dividends throughout the season. ✜ The UA Cooperative Extension Plant Clinic is available for additional guidance. Call 520.626.5161, or visit 4210 N. Campbell Ave. or extension.arizona.edu/pima-master-gardeners.

Have you added mulch?

Are you fertilizing soil?

For exposed plants, especially in pots, add mulch to reduce heat absorption, help control weeds, slow down evaporation, and (over time) add nutrients. Organic mulch ingredients for edible plants include compost, shredded tree bark, straw (free from weed seeds), pine needles, and dried leaves.

Before adding mulch, moisten the soil. Do put mulch around plants (and in between and down rows), but don’t put it right up against the

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BAJA ARIZONA

Farm Report

By Sara Jones | Photography by Liora K

E

is an exciting time at Baja Arizona farmers’ markets. Hardier greens and root vegetables will continue to be available from farms located at higher elevations, while farmers growing in lower elevations start bringing warm weather crops to market. Alex Atkin from Tucson Village Farm, located in central Tucson, says, “In May and June we harvest the onions, garlic, and potatoes that were planted in the fall last year.

Squash is one of the first summer crops to appear, along with cherry tomatoes, followed a bit later by larger slicing tomatoes, basil, and small sweet peppers like the Jimmy Nardello.”

Early summer is a good time to get tomatoes at local markets, as most tomatoes don’t produce during the hottest months of the year here. “Some of our cherry tomatoes continue to set fruit through the summer, as well as a few varieties of desert adapted tomatoes from Native Seeds/ SEARCH,” says Atkin, “but most tomatoes stop producing during the hottest months of summer.”

Tucson Village Farm is primarily a demonstration farm, offering educational programs for Tucson kids. In June, during their summer camps, kids harvest some of their own produce. This year, the farm has doubled production; when surplus produce is available, the farm offers a U-pick market on Tuesdays from 5 to 7 p.m. If you want to harvest your own tomatoes and other delicious summer veggies in a beautiful (and partially shaded!) farm, visit Facebook.com/ TucsonVillageFarm.

For many cooks, garlic is a kitchen staple, used year-round.

Luckily, garlic stores well, and decent garlic is available at local markets for much of the year. But in the spring, local garlic is hard to come by; so when garlic returns to our farmers’ markets, a r ly s u m m e r

as it does in May, it is an occasion to celebrate. Nearly all of the mature garlic harvested in Baja Arizona is pulled from the ground sometime in May or June. After garlic is pulled, it needs to cure for a couple of weeks before it will be available at market. “Curing garlic helps to move sugars from the leaves down into the bulb and dries the stem and papery skin to ensure proper storage,” say John Rueb of Forever Yong Farms, who cures his one and a half acres of garlic in bunches hung in the shade. “Our hot, dry southern Arizona climate is ideal for curing garlic,” he says.

Garlic can be divided into two main types: softneck and hardneck.

Hardneck garlic generally has large cloves that are easier to peel. Softneck varieties have tighter skins and thus store longer. Local farmers grow a wide variety of garlic adapted to our desert climate. Ajo rojo garlic is a particular favorite with local farmers. This creole garlic, a distinct variety of hardneck garlic, is prized for its hot and sweet flavo .

Ask your farmer to help you choose a variety, or experiment with several types. Roasting is one way to celebrate the abundance of garlic this season and is perfect for softneck varieties which are more difficult to peel.

To roast garlic, rub each bulb with oil and wrap in foil. Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes.

When garlic is cool enough to handle, slice off the stem and the top ½-inch of bulb to expose the inside. Pinch the bottom of the cloves to easily squeeze out the roasted flesh.

Since roasting mellows the flavor of garlic and intensifies the sweetness, you can use what seems like an absurd amount in a variety of dishes. Blend an entire head of garlic with 6 ounces of chèvre or cream cheese for a delicious dip. You can use roasted garlic to thicken sauces and gravies, season mashed potatoes, and add depth to stews.

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Shopping at local farmers’ markets this time of year can make meal preparation a breeze. When you start with fresh, ripe produce, simple recipes are sometimes the best.

Lightly steamed asparagus, green beans, and new potatoes, along with slices of fresh tomatoes and cucumber are great served with fresh garlic aioli or bagna cauda sauce for dipping (use roasted garlic for extra flavor). These veggies lend themselves to an easy sandwich, salad, or pasta.

May and June also mark the beginning of the summer fruit season. Apricots, raspberries, and blackberries make a

brief appearance, followed by peaches, plums, and the earliest melons. A combination of fruits and vegetables will make for an interesting sweet and savory salad, which is especially delicious garnished with fresh mint or basil. Stone fruit like apricots and plums are perfect sliced and topped with lightly sweetened whipped cream. Galettes, free-form rustic pies, are perfect for highlighting the freshness of the season. You can use a pie crust dough or pre-made puff pastry as the base for sweet and savory galettes.  Sara Jones is a longtime employee of the Tucson CSA.

Pan con Tomate (Ajo rojo) Simple and delicious, making pan con tomate is the perfect way to savor the arrival of tomato and garlic season. Just make sure you use the best quality ingredients you can find. You will need crusty bread and a very ripe tomato.

This typical Spanish breakfast is great served with a few olives and some feta cheese. It is also great as an appetizer or served with soup or salad for a light lunch.

Ingredients 4 thick slices crusty bread 1 big clove garlic, peeled 1 medium tomato, cut in half Extra virgin olive oil Flaky sea salt Toast or grill bread. Rub each slice with the garlic clove, then with the cut half of the tomato. Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil over bread and sprinkle with salt. Serve immediately.

Zucchini Roll Ups The ridged Costata Romanesco zucchini are ideal for this recipe, but you can use any long straight squash available, ideally under eight inches long. These rolls can be made with either very thin slices of raw squash (use a mandolin or vegetable peeler) or ¼-inch thick grilled slices.

2-6

1 6

small to medium size squash Fresh basil head roasted garlic ounces chèvre or cream cheese Oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper

Cut squash lengthwise into strips, setting aside first and last cuts (mostly peel for another use). Sprinkle squash with salt and pepper and a drizzle of oil and vinegar, and toss gently to coat. Let marinate for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, blend garlic and cheese together. If you are grilling the zucchini, lay marinated strips over a hot part of the grill and cook for about 90 seconds. Turn and cook on the second side for 90 seconds. Remove and let cool. Lay strips of squash out in a single layer. Place a basil leaf at the far end of each piece, then add a quarter size dollop of the cheese mixture over the basil.

Starting at the far end, roll up each slice and secure with a toothpick if desired. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

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THE SONORAN SKILLET

Smoothies of the Rainbow Text and photography

by Shelby Thompson

I

of the sweltering Sonoran summers, it takes every ounce of courage to turn on the oven. Kitchen temperatures climb quickly, forcing us to crank up the swamp cooler or (if we’re lucky) the AC. If cooking over a hot stove was enjoyable and rewarding in the winter, it’s now simply a sweaty pastime to be endured.

The solution to evading the wrath of summer’s oven is a blender and a wide variety of colorful, seasonal produce. The ingredients in smoothies do more than create sweet drinks; when blended, they create beautiful colors that range from deep, wild purple to blushful peach. Playing with vibrant produce, neutralizing yogurt, and even coffee beans, we discovered that with the right ingredients and recipes, it’s possible to create a multitude of colorful smoothies that are healthy for both you and your electric bill. This summer, Edible Baja Arizona will help keep you cool with new delicious smoothie recipes.

The smoothies are made from a variety of local ingredients, in an array of colors, and with a plethora of health benefits to nourish your body and make the summer heat a bit more bearable. Tune in to EdibleBajaArizona.com for more smoothie recipes and learn how to use your summer produce in a wonderful—and cool—new way.  n the heat

Cherry Chocolate 1 ½ 2 1 1 ¼ ½

cup frozen cherries cup frozen strawberries teaspoons cacao nibs pitted medjool date cup milk (dairy or nondairy) cup vanilla Greek yogurt ripe banana

Shelby Thompson practices yoga, hikes with her black lab Cola, and cooks. Her blog TheSunAndTheSpoon.com provides nutritious, plant-based recipes.

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Sweet Potato Pie

1 medium sweet potato, cooked and cooled 2 pitted medjool dates ¼ cup vanilla Greek yogurt ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon ⅛ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon honey ½ cup ice cubes (about 4) 1 cup milk (dairy or nondairy)

Peaches & Cream 1 1 ½ 1

cup frozen peach slices frozen banana cup vanilla Greek yogurt cup peach juice

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Blackberry Dream ¼ ½ 1 ½ 1 1

cup frozen blackberries cup vanilla Greek yogurt frozen banana teaspoon vanilla extract tablespoon honey cup milk (dairy or nondairy)

Blueberry Coconut

1 1 1 ⅔ 2

cup frozen blueberries ripe banana tablespoon almond butter cup coconut milk tablespoons unsweetened dried coconut ½ tablespoon chia seeds 1 tablespoon rolled oats

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Green Monster

1 frozen banana 1 cup frozen mango ½ apple 1 cup loosely packed kale or spinach 1 cup fresh orange juice

2 2 1 ½ ¼

Early Riser

frozen bananas pitted medjool dates tablespoon all natural peanut butter cup milk (dairy or nondairy) cup Exo roast cold-brew coffee

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Strawberry Banana

1 1 ½ 1

2 ½ 1 1

frozen bananas cup frozen strawberries cup milk (dairy or nondairy) scoop vanilla protein powder (optional)

Piña Colada

cup frozen pineapple chunks frozen banana teaspoon lemon zest tablespoon dried unsweetened coconut 1 cup coconut milk

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IN THE BUSINESS

At Tina’s Cocina The Yuma-based historian, historical preservationist, archaeologist, and veteran foodie Tina Clark is helping invigorate the city’s food scene.

Interview by John Washington | Photography by Randy Hoeft

You’ve spent the last 18 years mining Yuma’s history and exploring its food traditions. Now you and local chef Eddie Guzman run gourmet cooking classes and Farmer’s Wife Cooking Classes in a kitchen behind the Old St. Paul’s Church, a Gothic building built in 1909. Tell me about this kitchen.

This kitchen fed GI’s during World War II. Gen. George Patton was in the Yuma area with GIs who were training at bases in California and Arizona. Each soldier got a ticket for a free lunch once every three months.

Your parents were both chefs who worked for Vincent Astor, of the Astor Family (and the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan), and helped run its restaurant. What did you learn from being raised by two chefs?

My parents’ palates were really educated. I learned so much from them about being a gracious host. You open your heart and your kitchen and your home. They were really the consummate hosts.

People just loved to come to our house. Some of the best parties, I find, are when everybody ends up in the kitchen. That’s what we aim for with our cooking classes.

Tell me about the history of farming in Yuma.

Yuma has senior water rights on the Colorado River, and we irrigate 220,000 acres. It’s the winter veggie capital of the world.

If you’re in New York in a snowstorm in January and you’re

having a salad, you’re eating Yuma lettuce. This climate allows us to grow all the winter vegetables. Almost a quarter million acres of the most perfectly arable land, but there was no water.

Yuma agriculture started with Teddy Roosevelt, who tried to figure out a way to populate the western United States. In 1909, Yuma built the first dam on the Colorado River, the Laguna Dam, as well as the Yuma Siphon in 1912. It was an engineering miracle. Roosevelt launched the Reclamation Service, what is known today as the Bureau of Reclamation. This was an incredible agriculture community waiting to happen. And it’s why the desert can bloom. It’s called water.

What did they first plant?

Cotton was the big, big crop. They were experimenting with everything from the get-go. The Quechan tribe has been at the narrows of the river for hundreds and hundreds of years. They planted squash, beans, corn, and melons. They also experimented with wild lettuce. The Colorado River then was 100 times bigger than it is today. The tribe helped Juan Bautista de Anza cross the river in the 1770s. And they gifted the Anza expedition 3,000 watermelons. The settlers saw the desert coming to life.

The Colorado River was everything to the Sonoran Desert. An incredible ag community waiting to happen.

Tina Clark runs Tina’s Cocina, which offers cooking classes to Yuma visitors and residents in the historic St. Paul’s Chuch.

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How does this history affect Yuma’s contemporary cuisine?

Where did this beautiful red soil come from? It’s the rocks of the Grand Canyon, transported to Yuma by the Colorado River, which carried a load of silt that was 50 percent solid at some points. The old-timers described the water from this river as “too thick to drink, and too wet to plow.” If you wanted to have water at your house in Yuma you had to put it in a barrel and wait about three days.

It was a very sweet water. We can get the freshest produce, the crispiest, crunchiest lettuce. We’re eating highly nutritious food. It’s big agra in so many ways, but we have farmers who are so proud of what they grow. In a spiritual context, there’s this synergy about being proud of our industry here, honoring the farmer, and honoring the chef. The food scene in Yuma is sort of Johnny-come-lately compared to San Francisco, San Diego, Tucson. But we’re catching up.

How is the Yuma food scene making its mark?

We’ve long been considered a gas stop on the way to San Diego. This is one of the hottest places in the world. But Yuma is also a historical place. People have been crossing the Colorado River at this point for hundreds of years. Even during the Gold Rush of 1849, we had a hundred thousand people crossing the Colorado at Yuma. People still think of us as a pit stop, but we revere our farmers. We bless our farmers. And our farmers are putting Yuma on the foodie map. There is a real sense of community here.

Tell me about your Farmer’s Wife Dinners.

Most of the people who come are farmers’ wives or their children.

Wives of growers and farmers come together to share recipes and talk.

When we first started doing this, one of the wives thanked me, telling me that they hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. A farmer’s wife or two gets up and talks about their recipes, how they met their husbands. In the first year, every farmer’s wife had

a Jell-O recipe. We had a lot of Jell-O recipes at first. We’ve kind of graduated from Jell-O. The firs years they gave us the old recipes, but we have gotten more sophisticated. The first Farmer’s Wife class we had in here three and a half years ago, I was expecting 10 or 12 people. Thirty came. Now we hold it in the church and have dinners with as many as 100 people. Because they all want to hear these agricultural stories. There is a connection between the chef, the farmer, and the consumer.

What are some recipes from farmers’ wives that have surprised you?

Perhaps the greatest recipes have been the broccoli salads. Some of the best in the world that I’ve had.

But they are not low calorie. Lots of cheese, sometimes corn flakes Caulif lower, broccoli, cabbage, bacon, red onion, beets. This is a really hardy, interesting salad.

Yuma is a niche area with some of the greatest produce in the world, some of the most beautiful farm fields. And our restaurants are starting to get it. People are looking for more healthful foods.

What’s more beautiful than romaine, broccoli, broccolini, that grows right down the road from you?

You guide tours in the Yuma Territorial Prison Museum.

What did the prisoners eat?

The prisoners ate very well. Jose Maria Redondo, who opened the prison in Yuma, was a cattle rancher. So the prisoners had beef hash for breakfast, beef stew for lunch, and roast beef for dinner.

And guess who was selling them the beef? ✜ Tina’s Cocina at St. Paul’s Cultural Center. 45 S. Second Ave., Yuma. StPaulsCulturalCenter. com/cocina.html.

John Washington is a novelist, teacher, and translator. Visit JBlackburnWashington.com or find him on witter at @ EndDeportations.

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MEET YOUR FARMER

Forever Farm After almost two decades at Forever Yong Farm, John and Yongson Rueb have learned from experience how to plant, grow, and sell quality local produce at an affordable price.

By Autumn Giles | Photography by Jeff Smith

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a pistachio tree alive with bees, John and Yongson Rueb narrate the contours of their 20-acre farm just outside Amado. At 3,500 feet, Forever Yong Farm is cooler than much of the surrounding area; they get more monsoon rains than Tucson, and enjoy plentiful water year-round.

“We just fell in love with this particular area and this little valley.

We call it our little corner of the universe,” says John. The farm is indisputably beautiful, but it’s what’s under the surface that makes the land invaluable—abundant clean water and rich bottomland topsoil.

John and his wife, Yongson, started farming the 20-acre parcel 19 years ago, but their land has been in production for more than 100 years. Forever Yong is a small-scale diversified farm, with six acres in production out of the 20. John and Yong are “urban refugees from Chicago,” says John. They both worked in the corporate world—Yong as an accountant at a law firm and John as a stockbroker at the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

“We decided that long term, that wasn’t for us,” says John. “We wanted a simpler lifestyle and we wanted a more wholesome place to raise our boys.” Their sons, Ian and Carlton, were 6 and 8, respectively, when the family relocated.

“It really made our family stronger in retrospect. And closer,” says Yong. “They were really good helpers.” Yong points out that the boys are also “more environmentally sensitive” because of where they were raised. The boys are now 25 and 27 and still help out with big jobs on the farm, but “neither one is bent on being a farmer,” says John. it ting under

How did they make it from Chicago to Amado? “For some reason, we got in our minds that we were going to come out West: we were going to do some farming, and we wanted to grow garlic,” says John. Yong is Korean. “Koreans eat tons of garlic,” she explains. They recall visiting a farm for sale in the Pacific Northwest, where they were initially looking at properties.

The couple selling the farm told them, “‘Oh, we’re moving to Arizona,’” says John. “Yong and I looked at each other and said, ‘Maybe we’re moving to Arizona too!’”

Even in Baja Arizona, the garlic thing stuck. They’re known for their garlic and—with 20 varieties and around 42,000 plants— it’s the only crop that they grow on a large scale, and the only one that makes its way out of Baja Arizona. About 75 percent of the garlic they grow is sold wholesale to seed companies. “John has been very good at finding the varieties of garlic that grow really well in this region,” says Yong.

The pure air, plentiful water, and rich soil on their property are John and Yong’s top “reasons for doing what we do here.

Our second is probably to share our produce with others of all socioeconomic backgrounds,” says John. To that end, Forever Yong began working closely with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona very early on. “Back in the day when we started, there weren’t too many farmers serving the local food scene. We were recruited by the Food Bank when they decided Yongson and John Rueb moved to Arizona nearly two decades ago to begin farming. With two young boys, they didn’t “have any option but to succeed,” says Yong.

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Forever Yong has built a reputation on high-quality, consistent local produce.

(Clockwise, from top left) Radishes, spinach, kale, Swiss chard, turnips, and lettuce mix.

they wanted to start the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market ... We helped them get their market going,” John says. “Since our mission is to get our high quality produce to people of all socioeconomic classes, it’s just natural that we would be attracted to the food bank.” The Thursday Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market remains the only market that John sells at, April through October.

“One of John’s big things is to make it so everyone can afford local quality produce,” says Todd Stadtlander, the produce manager at Food Conspiracy Co-op in Tucson. When Stadtlander started working at the Co-op 11 years ago, the produce department was already buying food from Forever Yong. Each Monday, Stadtlander gets a call from John letting him know what’s good that week; Yong delivers the produce on Wednesdays.

“A farmer has to be tuned in to where they need to go next, what they’ve just learned, what that means for the future in the next season.”

“The really nice thing about John is that he understands the price point thing about produce. His prices are always very fair for—I hope—him and definitely for me,” says Stadtlander. He says that people come in and specifically ask for Forever Yong’s carrots. “Their cantaloupes are amazing,” he says. Stadtlander credits Forever Yong with helping build the Co-op’s reputation for high-quality, consistent local produce.

“He has been one of the people who has helped me to establish and continue to have local products on my shelf all the time,” says Stadtlander.

Forever Yong’s success hasn’t come easy.

“When we moved here with the two young kids … we didn’t have any option but to succeed,” says Yong. The grasshoppers, however, had another idea. “I mean, hordes,”

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John (left) and Yong harvest Swiss chard from one of the greenhouses they built from the ground up.

says John, of the grasshopper plague that they dealt with their first couple of years at the farm. “It was biblical locust swarms.

We’re going ‘OK, now what?’ And that’s when we built our first greenhouse, and we said, ‘OK, grasshoppers not allowed.’”

John and Yong built the greenhouse, on their own. Although the 48-by-30-foot greenhouse came as a kit with instructions, John says, “there certainly was a learning curve, but after building two more, we’re getting pretty good at it.”

“When we came to Arizona we were very naïve,” he says.

“We thought we were going to come farm in the desert and there weren’t going to be any bugs.” Now, he characterizes the biodiversity on their land as “mind boggling.” It’s important to them to not only work to maintain that biodiversity, but foster its expansion. “We’re trying to be a part of nature instead of, you know, going against it,” says Yong. They participated in a wildlife

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habitat improvement program; put in a pond to attract wildlife; planted “shelter belts,” rows of pine trees that help reduce wind and provide habitat; built brush piles for quail, and put in bat houses. “We have a pet herd of deer that literally lives here all winter,” says John, proud.

“We came here from the Midwest. So we got here, and the firs thing we did was plant sweet corn and green beans,” says John, with a laugh. They tried growing pretty much everything. “We had a lot of energy and not a lot of experience. Now we’re kind of flip-flopp on that,” says John. Experience allows them to expend less energy on questions like where, when, and how to plant collards, for example, as well as where to sell them and how much to sell them for. “As we gained experience, we refined our techniques and found out what works better … well, what crops, number one, we can grow well… and number two, we have a market for,” says John.

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After dealing with “biblical” swarms of grasshoppers, John and Yong built their first greenhouse and said, “OK, grasshoppers not allowed.”

Summer is Forever Yong’s high season. Kincho melons, a customer favorite that John compares to a sweet cucumber, are typically in the market by July, along with canary melons, crenshaw melons, cantaloupes, and watermelons. Their Burmese okra, a seed they’ve been saving for 17 years, has been a surprise favorite with market customers because, they say, it’s a lot less slimy and stays tender, even as it gets larger. John and Yong typically hire one paid employee during the summer to keep up with their workload and rely on volunteers from World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) in the cooler months.

After 19 years, “I always say, don’t make big mistakes,” says John. “You can make small mistakes, but don’t make big mistakes.” Big mistakes have the potential to jeopardize the financial viability of the farm. I ask him to tell me about one of his small mistakes. “O.K. I have a real good one,” he says. “We decided we were going to do a pumpkin patch … I bought the pumpkin seeds and on seed packets it always says how many days it takes to grow it.” Yong starts laughing. “These pumpkins said they were going to take 110 days to grow,” he continues. “So I figured October 15, I want the pumpkin patch ready, right?

I counted back 110 days and we planted them then. That’s for New England. In Arizona, it’s like 80 days. So by October 1, all the pumpkins were already rotting in the field.”

He stresses that for someone starting out in farming, a mistake like the rotten pumpkin patch isn’t hard to make. However, he also notes that it was a small mistake. They only planted an acre of pumpkins. “Little mistakes, incremental successes, and building on those incremental successes” are important to a farm’s longevity, says John. “A farmer has to … be tuned in to where they need to go next, what they’ve just learned, what that means for the future in the next season.”

John and Yong agree about the degree to which their success is tied to how much they love what they do. “We love this property and we love what we do, so that love puts us over the top,” says John. “We choose to make it work here.” ✜ Forever Yong Farms. 520.398.8030. ForeverYongFarms.com.

Autumn Giles is a freelance writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in Modern Farmer and Punch. She’s the author of Beyond Canning: New Techniques, Ingredients, and Flavors to Preserve, Pickle, and Ferment Like Never Before.

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A Day in

Baja Arizona

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Old Bisbee Text by Ken Lamberton | Photography by Zoya Greene

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Start your day at the Bisbee Coffee Compan (2 Copper southeast of Tucson, Queen Plaza) for a cup of Minwhere Highway 80 er’s Blend, roasted fresh right slips through the Mule Pass upstairs by Justin West and his Tunnel, Bisbee is a charming Diedrich roaster. This is the and colorful enclave of 5,000 blend that started it all, a bold people, resting, as one local mix that perfectly complements musician sings, “in the crotch their cranberry-orange scones. of the Mule Mountains.”

A few steps around the Founded in 1880 when copper corner, you’ll find Caro was discovered near Castle Rock, and saved by resourceful Lokey at Bisbee Books hippies after the mines pulled and Music, which features musical instruments, vinyl out in the 1970s, today the records, and hundreds of Queen of the Copper Camps boasts more than 100 galleries, books on subjects about the Southwest. Chat with Carol museums, restaurants, and shops. From a thriving art and about the latest titles from local authors, like Richard Shelton’s music scene, to its dining and Going Back to Bisbee or Melissa nightlife, its history and culture, its lively Main Street and Sevigny’s Under Desert Skies.

Next, take a walk across the infamous Bisbee 1000 stair climb event, and its proximity street to the Copper Queen Hotel and nearby Santiago’s to one of the world’s premier (2 Howell Ave.). Take note: nature-watching hotspots, Both offer a fully stocked ba Bisbee has something for (margaritas!), local music, and everyone. n hour and a half

lunch and dinner options, including the latter’s famous molcajete—steak and sautéed shrimp in an ancho-chipotle chile sauce with grilled red and green peppers and Oaxacan cheese, served in a 500-degree lava bowl. Outstanding. Just don’t set your beer near it.

Then head up historic Brewery Gulch. Opposite Bisbee Olive Oil, home to 60 of the world’s finest flavors virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars, the Stock Exchange Saloon was the most popular libation hall in Bisbee until Prohibition, when a brokerage firm relocated there. A stoc board—still in place today— replaced the bar, and a ticker tape brought the New York Stock Exchange to Arizona.

Patricia Steward has recently remade the place with three distinctive dining and entertainment venues, including a

saloon and grill. The Copper Plate wine bar and dining room feature world-class wines to go with their environmentally friendly steak, seafood, and pasta entrées.

At Old Bisbee Brewing Company you can sit next to the serving tanks in the tap room for a bratwurst washed down with their famous Holy Grail Indigenous IPA. Or cross the street to St. Elmo, which first opened in 1902 and i Arizona’s oldest continuously operated bar. (During Prohibition, it fronted as a soda shop and reportedly sold liquor via a convenient mine cart system beneath the floor behind th bar.) Here you can sample a draft of Electric Beer (formerly Dave’s Electric), Arizona’s firs beer and a brand now living on through Bisbee’s Beast Brewing Company (1326 W. Highway 92, No. 8).

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7 Continue walking up the Gulch to Youngblood Hill Avenue. The steep climb (everything is “up” in Bisbee—even the down is up) passes the Muheim Heritage House Museum (207 Youngblood Hill), an elegantly restored 19th century pioneer home with commanding views of the mountainside homes of Old Bisbee.

Or stay in the Gulch and check out the “cribs” area, Bisbee’s old red-light district. Concrete steps are all that remain, though some clever artist has created a beautifully ironic fence from metal bedsteads.

Backtrack to Stairway No. 2 of “The Great Stair Climb,” take the 100 steps up to Opera Drive, and follow this portion of the Bisbee 1000 course back to Main Street past flowering gardens

artful stone terraces, and the Italian-Renaissance-style Central School, now a haven for studio artists. Notice the brick and stone construction and hand-carved, painted designs (an eclectic mix reflecting styles from th Mannerism, Renaissance, Neoclassical, and Gothic Revival movements) that make Bisbee one of the most architecturally diverse towns in the country.

If you want an authentic mining experience, the Queen Mine Tour (478 N. Dart Road) will outfit yo with headlamp, hardhat, and yellow slicker and take you 1,500 feet underground on a mine train. Otherwise, Main Street Bisbee offer an afternoon of browsing pleasure, from shops featuring fiber and metal art to gol and silver jewelry, pottery,

8 hand-woven straw hats from Ecuador, vintage clothing, memorabilia, collectables, and antiques. Take your time, but be sure to stop in at the Inn at Castle Rock (112 Tombstone Canyon), an 1890s miners’ boarding house, and ask about its most recent ghost sightings.

Farther up Tombstone Canyon you’ll find several dining choices to finish your day: Contessa’s Cantina offers Mexican fare like tasty grilled fish tacos and High Desert Market serves exquisite takeout or dine-in meals like shrimp kebabs with yogurt tahini sauce.

Relax in the courtyard at Screaming Banshee Pizza (200 Tombstone Canyon) over a local brew and a wood-fired calzone as evening descends and the “B” on Chihuahua Hill winks on in blue light. ✜

Ken Lamberton is the author of six books, his most recent being Chasing Arizona: One Man’s Yearlong Obsession with the Grand Canyon State.

1 Copper colored hills above Old Bisbee. 2 Cruising down Tombstone Canyon. 3 Carol Lokey at Bisbee Books and Music.

4 Playing around on relics of Bisbee’s mining past: train cars. 5 Bisbee’s people are as colorful as its streets. 6 Bisbee is home to many artists, writers, and musicians 7 Vegan tacos at Poco on Main St. 8 Sipping suds at Old Bisbee Brewing Company.

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YOUTH

Inside Out In a detention center garden, youth learn how to plant, grow, and harvest food.

By Lisa O’Neill | Illustrations by Ellen Wagner

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in the garden spill over. Uncontainable.

Lush with green. Sunlight radiates, illuminating f lowers in shades of purple, orange, and yellow. A trail of peppers string down their green stalk. Red and green lettuce, spinach, and kale burst out of the ground.

This garden is in a recreational space at Pima County Juvenile Detention. Since 2014, youth placed at the juvenile detention center spend time in the garden as they await finalization of their court processes before being released to a guardian, to treatment centers or group homes, or to the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Garden beds are constructed from restraint beds that juvenile detention no longer uses. The first kids in detention to work in the garden helped paint the steel frames in bright colors and then pressed their hands into purple, red, and yellow paint, leaving their prints on the wooden beds that rest inside the frames. he r aised beds

Though most of the kids who stay in detention make it to the garden, the length of their stay—with a typical stay being 18 to 21 days—determines whether they plant, harvest, or see seeds grow into mature plants and set fruit. Youth who work in the garden—three to eight at a time—volunteer or are selected. For a few, being allowed to work in the garden is a privilege for exercising good judgment and responsible behavior.

One young man, 17, points to the bed he helped plant near the beginning of his time here. He’s now at Day 54. “See that cabbage and broccoli,” he says. “They taught us to take that thing [a spade] and make a circular hole in the ground. It can’t be too deep—and you have to water it but not too much or it could drown.” His mom has always kept a garden, he says, but he never paid much attention.

Garden beds are made from restraint beds that the center no longer uses.

They were painted with bright designs by the youth in detention.

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Throughout his time in detention, this young gardener has learned how to seed and harvest, and how to identify various fruits and vegetables, herbs and flowers. “It’s relaxing. A lot of times you are in your room or you’re not outside except for an hour of gym … I like to come outside and water the plants and chill.”

Kim Chumley, a senior management analyst at Pima County Juvenile Court, remembers when, in 2011, the garden was just a few potted plants in the living units. Now, the garden fills half of a 2,600-square-foot recreational yard and is growing. The garden receives educational support from Pima County Master Gardeners, and donations of fertilizer, plants, and seeds from the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona and Native Seeds/ SEARCH. The Pima County Public Library also provides support.

Chumley has been working with juveniles in the court system for 21 years, firs as a probation office in the courts, then as the first program coordinator in detention.

When she first became program coordinator, providing programming for detained youth was a foreign concept. But over time, she has seen a shift in the mentality of the court.

Pima County Juvenile Court has moved to a “trauma-informed” model, which means that the staff has a comprehensive

understanding of trauma, and works with youth in a way to manage potential triggers and avoid retraumatizing them.

Chumley notes the high prevalence of youth who have been trauma-exposed, not only in Pima County, but within the juvenile justice system nationwide.

This trauma-informed model affects the way staff members understand the youth and has resulted in programming to help the young detainees, most of whom are between 15 and 17 years old. Yoga was the first program Chumley brought into the detention facility. Rick Wood, interim court director, was a certified yoga instructor and came down on his lunch hour to work with boys who Chumley says were “the roughest, had the most challenges behaviorally.” She noticed the impact of the class: “You could hear a pin drop.

They were responsive, they really loved it.

I thought: This is key. They really need to be active and working on things that are meaningful and things they can take with them when they leave here.” Over time, the programming grew to include visits by motivational speakers; a dog therapy program; technology classes; journaling; Alcoholics Anonymous; voluntary religious and spiritual groups; art projects; and the garden. “A lot of these kids need to be nurtured,” she says, “But they also need to learn how to nurture.”

“I’ll probably want to do some growing on the outs.”

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P eggy Y oung retired and became a UA master gardener, she spent 13 years as an attorney in juvenile court. When Young retired, she decided to pursue a previous passion: horticulture, which she studied in college before choosing to go into law. She took a class at the University of Arizona to become a master gardener and, seeing an opportunity to marry her skills as a gardener and youth advocate, Young proposed expanding the previously established juvenile detention garden with Pima County Master Gardeners. After receiving approval, master gardeners began working in juvenile detention in September 2014. Since then, the six master gardeners rotate spending every other Sunday working with the youth.

On gardening days, the master gardeners arrive at 9:30 a.m. to assess needs—watering the garden, weeding, deadheading, fertilizing. When youth arrive at 10 a.m., they are assigned to a gardener and set of tasks, working until 11:30 a.m. The organically grown garden has f lourished with mint, garlic, strawberries, eggplant, and melon. Fruit trees— peach and plum—were purchased with donations from judicial staff In addition to providing hands-on knowledge and support in the garden, the master gardeners also provide nutrition lessons to the youth, many of whom have never tasted some of the vegetables they grow.

The master gardeners teach the youth about sugar consumption, fat content, and the benefit of eating whole grains instead of processed foods. They might measure out 17 teaspoons of sugar to see what goes into a bottle of soda, or seven teaspoons of Crisco to make a “blubber burger,” to see the amount of fat in a typical fast food burger. “You can see their eyes bulge out of their heads,” Young says. She says that the lessons stay with them for the long term.

“They do remember these things. They get it. At some point in their lives, they can use it.”

Many of the youth at the detention center are facing tremendous obstacles: “Issues of abusive parenting, issues of neglect, drug issues—either the children or parents or both—mental health issues in the family,” says Young. “Many systemic problems. Some of these kids have a parent in jail and another parent struggling to make it … There are income issues, resource issues.”

Two of the essential inputs that go into the gardening project are time and attention. “With the gardening, it’s about being with these kids and showing them that we care,” Young says. “I had one kid ask me whether I was paid to come back to the garden efor e

and I said, ‘No, we like coming back here,’ and he asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘We enjoy working with you.’ We’re not here to make a paycheck; we’re here because we enjoy being with them and that makes a huge impression.”

Young has watched her fellow gardeners’ perspectives shift as they engage with the youth. “The advantage of working in the juvenile system as long as I did,” she says, “is you realize that these kids are kids. And they respond as kids, especially in the garden with the things they are interested in: bugs, worms, vegetables, flowers. They open up like kids everywhere open up.”

She says that she can see how the youth respond positively and transform after working with mentors, even after only a few hours.

Gardeners emphasize that the garden belongs to the youth. They ask detainees for planting suggestions and reiterate to them that they are the ones who plant, water, and fertilize so that the plants will grow.

Working in the garden also helps the youth build a sense of competency and confidence. One of the youth gardeners, 16, says, “I think this is one of the best programs we have because we actually get to come outside and take care of things.”

The garden “teaches us new responsibilities.”

She says, “I learned how to take out plants by the roots. I learned to get leaves out for salads. It’s fun to come out here and do it. I like learning what plants you can eat. That’s my favorite part.” Jalapeños, lemon chives, and spearmint are her favorite plants. She notices when kitchen staff prepares salads using the food harvested from the garden. “I like it,” she says, “because I know I’m eating this food that we were taking care of.”

She says, “I’ll probably want to do some growing on the outs.”

At the end of each day of work in the garden, the youth harvest herbs and vegetables like lettuce, green peppers, and radishes to make their own salad. They mix the items in paper cups.

Sometimes they are trying these foods for the first time. Young brings a thermos of hot water for tea, and the youth harvest mint and stevia from the garden beds and stir them in and pour the concoction over ice. Then they sit together, tasting the fruits of their labor. ✜ Lisa O’Neill hails from New Orleans but has made her second home in the desert, where she writes and teaches writing. Her favorite food to make is lemon icebox pie.

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Becoming Janos

Janos Wilder has spent most of his life in the kitchen.

How he got there —and why he stayed.

By Debbie Weingarten Photography by Steven Meckler

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In the morning, while the restaurant remains quiet and unoccupied, Janos Wilder catches up on work in his “office” at Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails.

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March morning, Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails is empty. Chef Janos Wilder sits in a booth facing the windows that look out onto Sixth Avenue, his phone lighting up with messages every few minutes.

The day will unfold in a series of meetings, interviews, and installations in The Carriage House, Wilder’s new culinary teaching space and dim sum restaurant. The quiet of the morning is quickly broken—a UPS employee raps on the door to deliver a package; a produce truck shows up to unload the day’s vegetables; an accountant brings Wilder a stack of checks to sign. From the kitchen comes the clinking of dishes, the clanging of pots, and the smell of a gas range. n a wa r m

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Janos huddles with his waitstaff before every shift, reviewing daily specials and new menu items.

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J a n o s , a 4-year-old John Wilder watches his mother prepare a leg of lamb. The leg is whole, nearly down to the hoof, all of the small bones, gristle, and fat still attached. His mother, Joyce, rubs it in mustard, garlic, and soy sauce. She makes a flour paste and then studs the leg with rosemary. As always, she is without a recipe; intuition is her guide.

It is 1958 in East Palo Alto, California. John’s oldest siblings are at school, and his father, Dave, is at work. The kitchen belongs to John and his mother. From the record player comes the smooth crooning of Frank Sinatra. For a moment, Joyce is lost in the music; Sinatra is her celebrity heartthrob. She smiles at John, her youngest son, and twirls him across the kitchen. efor e he is

John equates the kitchen with love, with mother, with the savory-sweet smell of garlic browning in the oven. As he grows older, he sneaks pieces of meat off the bone when his mother isn’t looking. These are memories that John will carry for the next 50 years—as he becomes Janos, moves to Colorado, falls in love and marries; as he works in kitchens in Santa Fe and France and finally lands in Tucson. Just the thought of a leg of lamb f loods his senses with nostalgia—he remembers the gamey smell of the lamb, the rosemary, the layers of f lavors that permeate the meat as it cooks. For Janos, it is the dish that most expresses the love that can filter through food.

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(Top) Before the restaurant opens at 4, servers prepare for the dinner rush. (Below) Located at Sixth and Broadway, Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails attracts a loyal following, from downtown regulars to special-occasion guests.

n the 1960 s , Berkeley is alive with the civil rights movement.

People spill into the streets, carrying signs and chanting. Throughout elementary school, John goes with his parents to community meetings and rallies where they protest housing discrimination and racial segregation.

When Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered in 1968, John and his family march through Stanford holding hands with strangers in the street.

In his junior year of college in Boulder, Colorado, where he studies political science, John gets a job as a cook at The Hungry Farmer. It is 1975, and there are so many Johns working at the restaurant that it becomes hard

Oh my God, he thinks, Maybe I could sleep in. This is the beginning of Janos’ interest in local food, and at first it’s just practical. It’s sleep-motivated.

to keep them all straight. Nicknames are doled out by the chef, and he begins referring to John Wilder as Janos. When the chef quits six weeks later, the broiler cook, David Ruby, continues the nickname. David and Janos are two young chefs learning the dance of a busy kitchen. Together they cook fast and well. They are understaffed that summer, and the two must cover the entire line. They cook and plate shrimp, ribs, potatoes, steak, and Rocky Mountain oysters for 450 diners every night. For Janos, the choreography of the pace is exhilarating. Here in the busy kitchen at The Hungry Farmer, Janos lets his new name settle around him.

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(Top) Janos’s latest project is The Carriage House, a culinary teaching and event space.

(Bottom) After the space opened in February, The Carriage House started offering Sunday Dim Sum Brunch from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

n t h e s u m m e r , the Colorado mountains smell like ponderosa pine. Gold Hill, population 125, sits 10 miles outside of Boulder. At an elevation of 8,300 feet, steep roads and winter snows keep Gold Hill largely inaccessible to visitors for much of the year. But in the summer, the town buzzes with tourists.

In 1978, Janos meets his future wife, Rebecca, while working at the Gold Hill Inn. Janos is the chef and Rebecca—an artist and weaver who works as the K-3 teacher in the town’s two-room schoolhouse—waits tables at the Inn over the summer.

As a chef in a remote community, Janos faces a major sourcing problem: no one will deliver to Gold Hill. Early each morning, Janos walks down the dirt road to take stock of his ingredients at the Inn. Bleary-eyed from late nights spent in the kitchen and partying with friends, he takes his truck down the mountain to Boulder. In Boulder, he visits supermarkets, the butcher, the fish market. On his way back up to Gold Hill,

he writes the day’s menu in his mind. As he rounds the last mountain curve, the expanse of the Continental Divide opens up in front of him.

Finally, it occurs to him to begin sourcing his ingredients from neighbors in Gold Hill. He notices that someone is growing sorrel and rhubarb; another neighbor has a small garden. Oh my God, he thinks, Maybe I could sleep in. He begins buying vegetables, wild mushrooms, and trout from neighbors, avoiding the early morning trek to Boulder whenever possible.

This is the beginning of Janos’ interest in local food, and at first, it’s just practical. It’s sleep-motivated. But the concept sticks, becoming an anchor for his career.

Every summer for the next 30 years, Janos and Rebecca go back to Gold Hill. They hike through the woods, taking in the columbine flowers and the green of fiddleheads unrolling. Their walk is a meditation, a casual hunt for the red-orange of lobster mushrooms and the bright yellow of chanterelles, which they carry back to the old miner’s cabin that they now own.

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1981, newly married, Janos and Rebecca leave Gold Hill for Santa Fe. They are in their mid-20s, and the world seems to shimmer with possibility. Rebecca studies graphic design and Janos finds a job in a restaurant. They rent a 300-square-foot apartment, a converted stable that still resembles a barn. Too broke to afford furniture, they eat their meals on the surface of a yellow foot locker.

Janos becomes fascinated by French cooking and decides to apprentice under a French chef. He writes letters to the best restaurants in France, offering to intern without pay. One after the other, the restaurant owners say no—except for one, Roland Flourens, who writes that he will be in the United States and asks if he can visit Janos and Rebecca in Santa Fe. In preparation for Flourens’ visit, they buy a picnic table for the living room. When n

Flourens arrives, Janos serves an elaborate multicourse dinner on the couple’s wedding china. Flourens, though not entirely sold on Janos’ meal, admires his drive and potential, and invites him to France.

Janos is captivated by the smells and sounds of France. For four months, Janos apprentices under Chefs Jean-Pierre Bugat and Didier Pétreau, absorbing the flavors, the technique, the philosophy of French cooking. He goes with the chefs to the outdoor market, where farmers sell produce from the back of their trucks. On one visit, a farmer flags down Chef Bugat and hands him a paper bag filled with the season’s first tarragon, saved especially for him. There is a spark to this exchange and Janos is mesmerized. The relationship between producer and chef, he realizes, is the heart and soul of French cooking.

Janos met his wife, Rebecca, at the Gold Hill Inn outside of Boulder, Colorado. Rebecca is a painter and artist and works in a studio in the couple’s home.

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Janos Wilder sits in the refrigerated seed vault at the Native Seeds/SEARCH conservation center. He has been involved with the seed-saving nonprofit for more than two decades; he’s currently the acting chair.

h e n J a n o s r e t u r n s from France, he and Rebecca leave Santa Fe for Tucson—Rebecca was raised on the border, and they want to stay in the Southwest. In 1983, Janos opens his first Tucson restaurant, Janos, in an old adobe home in El Presidio neighborhood, a national historic district, located adjacent to the Tucson Museum of Art. Soon, it’s heralded as one of the top regional restaurants in the United States.

The experience is like being pulled through a tunnel—on the periphery, the world is happening, the desert is blooming, but Janos is moving too fast to take it all in. He stops only for a month, in July of 1984, when Rebecca gives birth to their son, Ben. That summer, the monsoons come early and water fills the streets. For a month when Ben is born, there is no restaurant. He and Rebecca focus on the baby, exploring the strange new space of parenthood. In August, Janos goes back to work. Days begin at 6:30 in the morning, and end at 10 or 11 at night. He often has the sensation of never actually leaving the restaurant.

At the restaurant, they make everything from scratch. They bake bread, they can tomatoes, they make pasta. Janos changes the menu every day. Twice a day, before lunch and dinner, he takes a handwritten menu to the copy store, where he uses a typewriter to type the menu before making photocopies.

After five years in Tucson, Janos and Rebecca start taking Ben hiking in the Tucson Mountains, and Janos begins to fall in love with the desert.

He is introduced to Native Seeds/SEARCH, still a new organization focused on saving seeds of desert-adapted plants. He is asked to cater a fundraiser dinner, which he does using only foods sourced from Native Seeds/SEARCH. He begins to connect with the stories of the foods that have grown in the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years—tepary beans, cholla buds, chiles. He describes this as “a window, a portal, a door opening.”

By the age of 30, Janos has spent half his life in the kitchen. His palate is developed; his technique is honed. The flavor profiles of the desert Southwest begin to collide and intersect with his French technique.

He studies regional dishes of the Southwest as though they are science projects—chilaquiles, tacos, enchiladas. He takes the chile relleno and reverse engineers it, questions how and why it is prepared the way it is—the batter, the type of chile, how it’s roasted. And then he rebuilds it.

He stuffs Anaheim chiles with lobster and brie. He covers it in French sauce. He pairs it with jicama salad. He makes taco shells out of egg roll wrappers. He infuses it with place: his California childhood, a visit to Tokyo with his parents, the mountains of Colorado, the French countryside. “I’m a guy that has tremendous respect for what’s come before me,” he says, “but tremendous respect for what’s possible.”

In the spring of 2010, Janos is planning the menu for Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails, set to open in October. At the end of April, Governor Jan Brewer signs Senate Bill 1070 into law, which sets off widespread protests against the anti-immigrant legislation. At Armory Park, just one block from the new restaurant, thousands of people gather to protest the law. Janos feels compelled to make a statement against SB 1070, and the new menu is the perfect vehicle. Since his youth, he has experienced the power of protest and the power of food—how it defines home, and how it returns us there, despite time, borders, or miles traveled through the desert.

Let’s do American food, he thinks, But let’s do real American food. And so the menu is born, an eclectic mix of worldwide cuisines, full of the foods that follow people as they migrate, dishes that serve as “touchstones to home.”

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(Top row) Janos often works dinner service at Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails, making sure every plate that goes out meets his approval.

(Bottom) Elizabeth Coloccia, Ben Blistein, and David Flieger, at The Carriage House.

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y now ,

Janos is conditioned to change. In 1995, he opened Wild Johnny’s Wagon, a food truck enterprise well before the era of food trucks. In 1998, Janos relocated to the scenic Westin La Paloma. J Bar was created in the same location in 1999. In 2002, Janos spearheaded Kai at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

And in 2010, Janos returned to downtown Tucson to open Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails.

There is a fire in Janos that keeps him dreaming and creating.

Perhaps it’s this same fire that has made him a self-professed browbeater in the kitchen. Janos admits to having developed a chef’s temperament that he is not entirely proud of. He wants his employees to be great, and cannot understand why anyone would give less than their best. Now, he says, he has softened, perhaps with age, and “would rather inspire people by appealing to their highest selves.” Time has also decorated him with numerous awards and recognitions, including a James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southwest, the MOCA Local Genius Award,

and acceptance into the Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame. He is chairman of the board of Native Seeds/SEARCH. The Carriage House is the latest of Janos’ endeavors. A culinary teaching and event space, The Carriage House is the manifestation of a decades-long dream of integrating education and cooking. In October of 2014, Janos was walking back to his restaurant from a meeting when he noticed a 1917 brick building in the alleyway directly behind Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails.

He contacted the building’s owner immediately. The design process began in May of 2015; construction began in October.

In order to function as a restaurant, the space required new plumbing, grease traps, sewer connections, new electrical, gas lines, hoods, and extra ventilation.

“After so many moves, you gain perspective that everything will be all right, but you don’t take that for granted by any means,” Janos says. “It’s exciting, but there are times when the stress just mounts. It doesn’t all go perfectly. Things come out of left field that you had no expectation of.

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The Carriage House’s Dim Sum brunch takes its inspiration from Hong Kong tea houses, which feature classy push-carts laden with small plates to share.

F ebruary 2016, The Carriage House finally opens.

On a Sunday afternoon, Janos hosts a Friends & Family Dim Sum event, which happens to fall on his mother’s 87th birthday. As she sits with Rebecca, Ben, and other family members, Joyce Wilder watches her son move around the room, greeting the many friends and colleagues who have come to celebrate his latest endeavor. The dining room is expansive, with high ceilings and exposed beams. Bartenders pour mimosas and servers push rolling glass carts filled with plated food. At the end of the meal, Janos surprises his mother with a birthday cake. His voice wavers as he honors the woman who inspired his love of cooking. She stands, tears in her eyes, and embraces her son. n

Nearly 60 years after they danced to Frank Sinatra in their East Palo Alto kitchen, the cooking space belongs once again to this mother and her son.  Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails. 135 S. Sixth Ave. 520.623.7700. DowntownKitchen.com.

The Carriage House. 125 S. Arizona Ave. 520.615.6100.

CarriageHouseTucson.com.

Debbie Weingarten is a freelance writer and the co-founder of the Farm Education and Resource Network (FERN). She serves on the City of Tucson’s Commission on Food Security, Heritage, and Economy, as well as the Pima County Food Alliance Leadership Council.

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In the lettuce fields of the Yuma Valley, laborers are often the most vulnerable link between field and fork.

By John Washington | Photography by Scott Baxter

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he let tuce seemed to glow in the moonlight. Thirty-two men and women flashing knives, folding boxes, bagging hearts: chewing up a Yuma Valley lettuce field. It was Day 55 of the romaine harvesting season, just after 5 in the morning, and the 32 cutters, sleevers, sealers, stickerers, boxers, drivers—the team of lechugueros—had already been up for hours.

All of them crossed the border from San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, between 1 and 2 in the morning, and boarded the crew bus (a converted, white-painted Blue Bird school bus hauling a

trailer with two portable toilets and a hand-washing station) that ferried them to this moonlit lettuce field. During harvest season, both San Luises (in Sonora and Arizona) come alive just after midnight, where 10,000 agricultural laborers cross the border to pick enough produce to send, every single day, 1,000 fibe -filled semi-trailers streaming out of Yuma.

Agricultural technology, utilizing GPS, drones, lasers, and sophisticated machinery, is changing the way America farms. But getting vegetables from the field to the fork still largely depends

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(Previous page) Before sunrise, a 32-person crew works on and around an expansive, mechanized lettuce harvester.

(Above) Lechugueros often begin their days at one or two in the morning, crossing the border at San Luis Río Colorado and heading into the fields.

on manual labor. Manuel (who declined to give his last name) has been working in the fields all his life. A great-grandfather, at 62 he’s still working on the front side of a romaine team, bending at the waist, cutting and defoliating romaine hearts, tossing them onto the outer conveyor belt of the harvesting machine.

He works six days a week with fluctuating hours, depending on how many boxes of lettuce the shippers order. The day I met him his knife was flashing so fast that I had trouble making out exactly what he was doing—each romaine in the ground was cut,

plucked, stripped, and tossed onto the belt in about two seconds.

This is the pace of modern American farming: a Mexican-American great-grandfather dipping at the waist and brandishing a lettuce knife like a musketeer. In about a minute, each romaine heart Manuel cut out of the ground would be bagged, boxed, and stacked on a flatbed truck—ready to be whisked away to a cold storage warehouse and then sent to your local grocer. Manuel is an early link in the long chain of food production; he may also be the most vulnerable link.

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a celebratory atmosphere in Yuma in late February. The annual Ag Summit drew dozens of exhibitors and nearly 1,000 owners, farmers, marketers, scientists, social workers, politicos and lobbyists (basically everyone other than the laborers) who help keep the agriculture engine chugging and the veggies on our tables. The tony Harvest Dinner was the marvel of the week, where local chefs, using mostly local vegetables, whipped up gourmet dishes for the cream of the Yuma farming community. The auction raised more than $150,000, which will fund scholarships for local agriculture students or be donated to area high schools. here was

The Yuma Valley grows, on more than 90,000 acres of land, as much as 90 percent of America’s leafy greens in the winter months. Yuma farms cultivate enough iceberg lettuce (among 40 other crops) to be able distribute annually one iceberg head to every man, woman, and child in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom, combined. That’s about a half a billion heads of lettuce a year. The farmers at the Harvest Dinner certainly had something to celebrate. But, as the night wore on, and even as a new Ford Fiesta was awarded to some lucky farmhand, I couldn’t help but think that it was almost time for Manuel to wake up and head to the fields.

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The Ramsay Highlander Romaine Harvester/Field Pack Machine, on and around which 32 lechugueros sweat, chop, sleeve, seal, fold, sticker, and toil.

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in front, four behind, working nine rows at a time. Between the two groups of cutters is the unyielding, stainless steel, $300,000-dollar, slowly marching Ramsay Highlander Romaine Harvester/Field Pack Machine—on and around which 32 lechugueros sweat, chop, sleeve, seal, fold, sticker, and toil. I watch as Manuel, standing in the machine’s path, picks the top of the lettuce with his left hand, pushes it slightly to one side, and then reaches down with his lettuce knife (a tool with a daily-sharpened blade that broadens from base to tip, where it is beveled), chops it off at the stalk, and then gives the heart a few deft whacks, shaking away the outer leaves (which may be i ve cut ters

blistered or ice-damaged) and tossing it on the exterior conveyor belt. The lettuce hearts fly little parabolas through the sky and land on the first of the numerous conveyor belts. The nearly 10-ton machine cuts, at the pace of about one step every 10 seconds, a 50-foot wide swath through the field On this crew, only men cut. They cut and toss the hearts onto the wing belts. The wing belts convey and dump the hearts onto the inner belt to “centralize the produce,” moving the lettuce from the outside and into the central aisle inside the machine.

On either side of the aisle, where dozens of romaine hearts are constantly zipping along on the inner packing belt stand the men

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Converted school buses ferry workers into the lettuce fields.

and women who sleeve and seal. There are three sleevers and two sealers on each side of the aisle. The sleever stuffs—rather brusquely, in a process called “orientating the produce”—six hearts into a stainless steel sleeve, a squat U-shaped device which acts like a shoehorn: the hearts are the feet, the plastic bags—into which the hearts are thrust—are the shoes.

The sleever then puts the heart-filled bags onto a tray at either side of the sealer. The sealer grabs the bag and slips the opening underneath a thin, wide iron, which heat-seals the bottom side of the bag—the topside, where you will access your lettuce, has a resealable zip lock. The sealer sticks the bag back on another belt, which is at head level. The sealed bag of six romaine hearts will ride, vertically, down the line to the packer, who stuffs seven bags into a cardboard box, lifts and then drops the box into a chute, where another belt conveys the boxes to the outer platform of the harvester. A stacker then takes the boxes off the machine and stacks them—a process called “side offloading”—on a trailer and into towers of eigh Meanwhile, three men are riding on an upper platform of the machine. Two of these men are making boxes; and one of

these two is also “driving” the harvester (he usually has to make adjustments just at the end and beginning of each row). The third man is using a sticker gun to put a small, fluorescent-orang sticker (which numerically identifies the harvest day, the crew, and the grower) on each bag and each box that will be filled with lettuce. One crew member (who was not a stickerer) said that stickering is the cushiest job.

It is a highly engineered, super-efficient field-to-bag, human-geared lettuce machine that turns glowing green fields into neatly stacked boxes of cleaned, zipped, and sealed bags—and leaving lettuce-littered tracks of field looking like a tornado has ripped through. I had to stare at the thing for about an hour, and—like a school kid on a Tinkertoy—monkey around for a long while before I made sense of the craft of it. With the aid of the machine, the team of lechugueros usually packs about 1,500 boxes, or around 63,000 hearts, each day of harvesting season.

This season, in about 110 days of harvesting, they will stack about 130,000 boxes, which is about 5.5 million hearts of romaine.

That’s a lot of lettuce, and also a lot of sweat.

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Emma Torres is the CEO of Campesinos Sin Fronteras, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote self-sustainability for farm workers.

the agricultural ironies of Yuma (and there are a few) is that you can eat local and eat large in the same bite. Though there are familiar companies like Dole operating in the Yuma Valley, most of the farms, even the big ones, are family-run. Bill and Vicki Scott are the vice president and director of quality assurance, respectively, of the family-run Amigo Farms, which manages about 7,000 acres in the Yuma area. On an early morning in February, the couple picked me up at my motel at 4 a.m. to show me one of their lettuce crews, where I met Manuel, at work. The Scotts, both University of Arizona educated, and with decades of experience in the fields, are a down-home, caring couple. They stopped at a Circle K and insisted on buying me a coffee. When they picked me back up hours later, we stopped for eggs at the local restaurant, Burgers & Beer. Bill speaks fluent Spanish and has a chummy rapport with Amigo workers. He sat on the crew bus with me and chatted with the field hands as we were ferried toward the farm The immediate conditions of these workers, as far as I witnessed, were not oppressive. They work hard, no doubt, but they are paid above minimum wage—$9 an hour, as well as a piece-rate of $1.85 a box, which can translate, depending on the weekly order from shippers and how quickly they slash through the lettuce fields, to as much as an extra $60 a day. They are also offered lunch breaks, water breaks, and shade cloth to work under when it’s hot enough—basic needs that are not always granted on other farms. Life in general, however, is not easy for these workers, and their aches don’t stop when they leave the fields.

The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs describes farm work as “extremely low-wage work … Most farmworkers earn less than $10,000 per year from what is often backbreaking and dangerous labor.” ne of

Emma Torres is the CEO of Campesinos Sin Fronteras, a nonprofit organization in the Yuma area whose mission is to promote self-sustainability for farmworkers. I asked Torres if life for farmworkers is better now than it was 20 years ago.

She hesitated to answer, explaining that it was better in some ways, and worse in others. Only some of the workers have year-round jobs. Many of them have to “seguir la corrida” or follow the crops, migrating with or without their families from Arizona to either California or Colorado. To save money on rent, workers often cram into small apartments.

For the farmworkers who don’t, or can’t, seguir la corrida, they may only have stable work four months of the year.

In the off-season, they either try to collect unemployment (not always successfully) or find odd jobs. “The farmworker population has always been at the bottom of the pole,” Torres said. In January, the Arizona Daily Star reported that Yuma had a “nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 23.3 percent.” Seasonally, unemployment numbers, according to Torres, can be as high as 78 percent. In July and August, San Luis becomes “a very depressed community,” she said.

Campesinos Sin Fronteras, which Torres helped found, fills a gap in basic services for farmworkers that otherwise would not be filled. She said it was “very unlikely” for those who work in the fields to receive any benefits at all, including health insurance. They have no sick leave, and often live day-to-day.

“There are no fringe benefits,” Torres said. (Amigo Farms offer health insurance to their workers through a provider in Mexico, which is often preferred by the workers who live in Mexico).

Other dangers and vulnerabilities include pesticide poisoning, workplace injury, family separation, minimum job security, and high stress.

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Blanca Lira Sanchez takes care of the bus that transports workers into the field, including emptying garbage and cleaning toliets.

or r es knows these fields, as well as their hazards. Originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, she moved to San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, when she was 12, and started working as a farm worker in California’s Salinas Valley that same year.

She dropped out of school after fifth grade to help her parents harvest strawberries, tomatoes, and grapes. “I was really good at it,” she told me.

She was making money, and she liked the work.

But then her husband died of pesticide-related leukemia at 25, when Torres was only 24 and their second child three weeks old. Torres heard the wake-up call. She knew that she needed to learn English, to go back to school. She didn’t want her kids “to end up in the same position I was in,” she said—that is, in the fields. She put herself through school, earned a GED, then later a bachelor’s degree, and finall , in 2009, a master’s degree in social work from Arizona State University. Now she concentrates on providing direct aid and advocating for workers' rights through Campesinos Sin Fronteras.

I spoke with Florencio, 31, another of the cutters at Amigo Farms, who described the never-ending toil of waking up closer to sunset than to sunrise, sleeping four hours a night (plus catching naps on the crew bus), and following the harvest from Yuma to Huron, California, to various parts of Colorado. His family is “mixed”—that is,

of mixed citizen status. Many of the workers who cross every morning have spouses or children without papers. Many U.S. citizens or legal residents, Torres told me, “decide to live in Mexico … it’s cheaper for them … But at one point or another they’re separated and they can’t be together.

Sometimes people follow the crops for months.”

I asked Florencio what toll the separation took on his family—he has a wife and two young daughters. “It’s hard,” he said. He would prefer to live in the U.S., keep his family together, and avoid the daily headache of commuting across an international boundary—if only he could afford it. Torres explained that it’s not just housing costs and citizenship status that keep workers living in Mexico. They can’t aff rd any of the basic services on the U.S. side: not healthcare, food, nor clothes.

Florencio nodded when Manuel, the great-grandfather cutting hearts next to him, said that he could “get used to everything.”

Many of the workers I spoke with deflected my questions about working conditions. Were they hiding something, or was life just tough—and they were in the middle of living it? I asked Florencio if he thought his working conditions were unfair. He looked at me with a sort of muscled resolve, and then answered, vaguely: “One needs to work in order to live.”

For her, the priority is clear, and the priority is not the worker.

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Even first-generation Mexican Americans, he told me, whose and growers I met, at JV Farms and Amigo parents worked in the fields, once they go to school “they want Farms, went out of their way to make the daily lives of their to run the machines, or drive the truck,” he said. “They don’t workers better. The Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association want to be cutters.”

(YFVA), a multifaceted nonprofit that promotes, protects, and As Torres explains it, it’s the system that leaves farmworkers lobbies for Yuma vegetables, also runs Labor of Love, a program behind, more than growers or farmers. Sale prices barely cover that occasionally delivers breakfast to workers out in the fields, production costs, and most growers, though relatively well-off, or gives them surprise shopping sprees at Target. Though the aren’t making millions, and their revenue is subject to weather priority seems to be on the product, Steve Alameda, the president and climate shifts, outbreaks of plant disease, and consumer of YFVA, told me that growers in Yuma “appreciate the heck out demand. I stood with Delgado and watched as a nine-acre of” the farmworkers. He described them as “talented, intelligent, field of romaine was disced (destroyed) by a tractor. Shippers hard-working. They can do anything.” And though Labor ordered less for the week of Love skims the surface than the farm had planted, of the real issues facing months ago, and the lettuce farmworkers, Alameda’s would be wilting by the enthusiasm marks a tonenext week when the next shift in the grower-worker orders came in. The nine relationship, at least in the acres of destroyed romaine Yuma Valley. represented a loss of about Emma Torres said that $7,800 for the farm. Before there is no open antagonism the row Delgado and I were between the workers and the standing in was chewed growers. It may be, however, into the dirt, he cut us both that the workers have lost a heart out of the ground, the battle. Because of mechand we took a couple of anization, the increased big bites of lettuce—it was reliance on guest-worker bitter, slightly milky, and programs (which bring farm delicious. (Etymologically, laborers into Yuma fields for the words lettuce and lactate capped six-month periods), share a common root. If and higher levels of educayou’re skeptical of lettuce’s tion, not many of the farmproximity to milk, try biting workers’ children are standinto a fresh romaine heart, ing out in the fields with or dropping any old head of lettuce knives. (Manuel, the lettuce into your blender.) great-grandfather, may very Bill Scott, of Amigo well be replaced by a wafarms, put it bluntly: “Growter-jet—the latest harvesting ers are at the shippers’ technology, aptly described whim.” The brunt of the by a University of Arizona instability in the agricultural study as a tourniquet tightsector, however, is borne by ening around available field the men and women who workers). Alameda told me work in the fields. They are that many of the children the most vulnerable. Torres of farmworkers are going described them as “reduced to school, and want to be Martin Vera works as a harvest supervisor. to just surviving.” driving or designing the so“They don’t have a voice. phisticated machinery—for They don’t have representawhich there are far fewer tion,” she said. Which is why, Torres explained, “I have learned jobs. Meanwhile, with parents (and even great-grandparents) still to try to be effective advocating for the farmworkers without rising at midnight and slogging through very early mornings, having to become the enemy of the growers.” there might not be another labor sector in the United States For all the advances in efficienc and safety that have gone that is more exploited, or more racially divided. into agriculture in recent years, Torres explained, the situation I asked Pablo Francisco Delgado, originally from Guanajuato, of the workers hasn’t demonstrably improved. She gave me an Mexico, and a planter at JV Farms, how many Americans work in example: Hairnets and gloves seen in the fields aren’t meant to the fields in the Yuma Valley. He estimated the number was about protect the worker, she said; they are “meant to protect the food five percent. I asked how many white Americans. “One percent,” from the worker.” For her, the priority is clear, and the priority he answered, and then revised: “Less than one percent.” He of big ag is not the worker. attributes the paucity of white American fieldhands to education. he ow ners

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nder her maroon Aeropostale hoodie, Odalis Aguilar, 19 years old, wears a baseball cap and a hairnet. She also wears a blue plastic apron, plastic sleeves, and blue medical-looking gloves. Aguilar grew up in Tucson, went to high school in San Luis, Arizona, and now lives in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico.

She is a U.S. citizen and a sleever, spending six days a week, during harvest season, stuffin romaine hearts into a metal sleeve and slipping them into a bag. The morning I met her, Aguilar was wearing heavy mascara and bright saffron-colored lipstick.

She had a round, striking face, and her brief glances up from the lettuce seemed like intense stares, maybe in part because she was covered from head to toe in fabric and plastic—not much was showing but the circle of her face.

I asked Aguilar what was hardest about her job. She said she hurts sometimes, and that this job “brings a lot of pain to people.”

She meant muscular pain (she sleeves a couple thousand bags a day) but admitted that the pain was also general, psychological.

She goes home every day after work, showers, eats, and goes to bed by five in the afternoon. By midnight she is up again, beginning her day, catching the lettuce hearts before they shoot past her on the packing belt. I asked if she had a future in the fields. “No,” was her definitive answer. She wants to be a nurse, and will start building credits towards a degree next fall at Northern Arizona University’s Yuma campus.

“We put a lot of effort into packing these things,” Aguilar told me as she snatched the hearts off the belt, stuffed them into the metal sleeve, shoehorned them into bags, and passed the bags to her right. “We try to make sure everything is safe, clean.” I asked her who was going to fill her role when she leaves for school, when Manuel finally retires, and when the generation above her is beyond working age. “Not me,” she said.

Maybe her reticence was due to the immediate demand of her work—she didn’t want to let too many lettuce hearts shoot by. Or maybe she was just looking forward to the end of her day.

Or the end of her time in the fields When I asked Florencio what he wished people who eat the lettuce he picks knew about his job, he straightened up, holding his sharp lettuce knife in one hand and a romaine heart in the other, thought for a moment, and said, “I just wish they paid me more.”  Campesinos Sin Fronteras. 201 N. Bingham Ave., Suite 1.

Somerton. 928.627.5995. CampesinosSinFronteras.org.

John Washington is a novelist, teacher, and translator. Visit jblackburnwashington.com or find him on Twitter at @EndDeportations.

(Above) Like most fieldworkers, Odalis Aguilar starts picking before daybreak.

(Right) A field worker, who declined to give his name, pauses in the morning light.

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he bar ley that becomes whiskey begins as a braid of seeds in a green stalk swaying in a furrowed field on a farm on the southwest edge of Marana. There are hundreds of varieties of barley, but this one is called Conlon, a two-row malting variety, selected because it heads early, tolerates heat, and has plenty of starch. Eventually, after the harvest in June, these kernels will be steeped in water, and that starch will become sugar and then the sugar will become alcohol and the alcohol will become whiskey.

But for now, on a cool morning in early March, the whiskey remains as rows of short grass, dozens of months away from spilling into someone’s glass.

Founded in 1965, BKW Farms is a 5,000-acre family farm irrigated from the Central Arizona Project canal, which bisects the property in a shimmering turquoise line. This is the second season Conlon barley has sprouted at BKW Farms, which otherwise grows mainly cotton and red durum wheat. In 2013, recognizing the demand for local grains, Ron Wong and his

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A Drop in the Bucket Hamilton Distillers’ new malting system links grain to glass.

By Megan Kimble | Photography by Tim Fuller

Stephen Paul peers into Hamilton Distillers’ new malting tank. Wet grain will germinate in this tank for several days, aerated with the help of the four rotating augers, and then will be dried for removal.

son, Brian, decided to expand their production to include certifie organic grains, starting with White Sonora wheat.

Local breweries in Tucson had expressed interest in local grains, says Karen Dotson, BKW’s organic farming program manager.

So had a furniture maker named Stephen Paul—Paul had recently purchased a 40-gallon copper still and started distilling mesquite-smoked whiskey, calling it Whiskey del Bac. “But they said, gee, barley is the main ingredient in all our brewing, in whiskey,” says Dotson. “Can you grow barley?”

After researching what varieties would grow well on their property—most malting barley grows at high elevation—in December of 2014, the Wongs planted 40 acres of Conlon barley.

It grew well. “Quite a few farmers came by to take a look at it,” says Ron Wong. “Barley is usually a short plant, but this grew so well and the seed heads were so big that it actually fell over.” In June of 2015, they harvested 175,000 pounds of barley. They cleaned the grain and stored it in dozens of 2,000-pound totes, stacked in a climate-controlled building. “And then it sat there,” he says.

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Head distiller Nathan Thompson-Avelino removes malted grain from the malting tank to begin the brewing process.

Assistant distiller Ramon Olivas inspects the steeping tank.

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Stephen Paul started Hamilton Distillers in 2011, he wanted to make mesquite-smoked whiskey—to distill liquor that tasted like the desert. But before he could smoke grain to turn into whiskey, he needed firs to malt it—to activate the enzymes that would convert a seed’s starch reservoirs into sugar, sugar that would then feed yeast to produce alcohol. So Paul built a malting system from a few five-gallon plastic buckets and a floor in an empty storeroom of his custom furniture company, Arroyo Design.

Brewers and distillers don’t use unmalted grain because its sugars aren’t yet accessible to yeast—“it’s really not a huge source of fermentable extract,” says Eric Greene, the head brewer at Dragoon Brewing Company. Although Greene has used unmalted grain to provide “haze, body, and f lavor”—their Ojo Blanco is 30 percent unmalted White Sonora wheat—“there’s only so much we can do with flaked wheat,” he says. “It’s just not appropriate for everything. Malted barley is the bread and butter for beer.” Malting is the reason that BKW hen

barley sat in their storeroom for over a year—the reason locally grown grain isn’t yet widely used at local breweries.

In the early days of Hamilton Distillers, Paul and his head distiller, Nathan Thompson-Avelino, malted barley by submersing it in water two or three times over the same number of days. They’d drain, dry, and clean the grain before spreading it across a cool, clean floor to let it germinate. After watching the grain for four or five days—watching for when the seeds would sprout a thin, green tendril three-quarters the length of the seed—they would stop the process by smoking the barley, inserting trays of grain into a meat smoker powered by smoldering mesquite.

But as demand for Whiskey del Bac grew, Paul decided to scale up—and realized that he’d have to get serious about malting. In late 2014, he moved their production into an 8,000-square foot warehouse space near Grant and I-10, installed a grain silo capable of holding 60,000 pounds of seed barley, and purchased a 500-gallon still. And he started to look beyond the buckets.

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A grain malts by way of germination, as the seed sprouts a thin, green tendril—known as an acrospire—about three-quarters of its length.

At this point, the enzymes required to convert the grain’s starches to sugar have been created, and the grain is dried to stop further sprouting.

“I saw a tank-based malting system built in Germany that looked appealing but it was small,” says Paul. “So I was looking for fabricators, I was on the trail of augers, and it was totally all over my head.”

He’d already been working with Guinevere de Amblia, the president of Portland’s Global Stainless Systems, to install the bigger still and fermentation tanks. When Paul mentioned malting, de Amblia told him she was working with another small-scale maltster on a horizontal tank-based malting system, one that turned on rollers to aerate and move the grain. “So we got serious,” says Paul.

Paul decided he wanted a vertical tank-based system for “efficiency, space, and control,” he says. “I wanted something you could look into. We still have to feel the grain, look at it, take apart the grain, look at the acrospire. I wanted easy access.”

Basically, what they needed was a way to soak the grain and move it around while it was soaking; a way to drain, dry, and clean the grain; and a space for it to germinate, aerate, and finall smoke. Easy enough.

“We ran into a lot of issues with manufacturing and installation,” says de Amblia. The augers—four vertical screw conveyors—weren’t strong enough to mix the grain. “We’re on

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the phone saying, ‘We’ve got metal bending over here,’” says Thompson-Avelino.

What made the build-out so tricky was that they were basically making it up as they went along—there are, as far as de Amblia knows, no other tank-based malting systems of a similar scale in the United States. “There was no one to copy,” she says. “We were working with lots of new equipment and lots of unknowns.”

“With our old setup, when we were malting 20 pounds of grain, you stir it with your hand,” says Thompson-Avelino. “How do you stir two and a half tons of grain? How much drag does a four-foot auger have? A lot of the process of scaling up has been learning how the machinery reacts and responds under the pressure of so much wet grain.”

As they scaled up, both Paul and Thompson-Avelino worried that they’d sacrifice the quality they’d worked so hard to hone with their small batch process. “Think of it like soup,” says Thompson-Avelino. “If you find out how to make an awesome soup in a five-gallon pot and then do simple multiplication to make it for 100 people, it’s not going to taste the same. I did as many calculations as I could. And I was like, I got this. The first day, it’s like—no you don’t.” But he tried and tweaked, tasted and tuned.

And in November of 2015, Paul and Thompson-Avelino picked up their firs 5,000-pound load of grain from BKW Farms.

Ron Wong wasn’t stressed about the delay. Properly stored, grain stays good for decades. “I hate to say it, but it’s not a contributor to our bottom line,” he says.

“Between the organic grain and the barley, we grew probably 200,000 pounds in 2015.

While that sounds like a lot of grain, our normal commercial grain production on the farm is about six to seven million pounds a year. I guess the term ‘drop in the bucket’ applies here.”

So far, Paul and Thompson-Avelino have found that the locally grown Conlon grain doesn’t malt quite as well as the Scarlett barley they’d been sourcing from a grower in Alamosa, Colorado. “We don’t really know why,” says Thompson-Avelino. “It’s just not giving us as much sugar.” And at the end of the pipeline, more sugar means more alcohol. So they’ll keep experimenting—Paul is working with the Conlon barley in smaller batches, and will meet with Wong to talk about other varieties they might grow. At Paul’s request, Wong has already planted seven acres of Scarlett barley, although by early April, it had only just started to form seed heads—too late for a good harvest.

“Why would a person want to be malting their own grain?” asks de Amblia. “I don’t know how many huge malting companies there are in the United States, but there aren’t very many of them.

You don’t know where your grain is coming from. You don’t have a lot of control over it and it’s certainly not local. [By malting] all of a sudden you have control in an area where you don’t really have any right now.”

More importantly, malting is a link. Malting links growers with makers and makers with drinkers. Malting is the process of converting crops to consumables.

Paul started malting barley because he had to malt barley in order to smoke it to make mesquite-smoked whiskey. But then it became something bigger. “Selling malt wasn’t part of the original business plan, but I think it’s going to become a part of the business plan,” he says. As Paul figures out how to malt efficientl with the Conlon barley, suddenly, making beer with local grains becomes a viable option for many of Tucson’s brewers.

“When we started subbing White Sonora wheat into a few beers, it really improved the quality of those beers,” says Dragoon’s Greene. “We’re excited to have a local ingredient we can use in a lot of different ways. We want to use more ingredients that come from our community, and that also give us a really high quality final product.” Ten Fifty-Five Brewing and Pueblo Vida Brewing Company have also expressed interest in buying Hamilton Distiller’s malt.

“The community aspect of this has been really rewarding—everyone wants to help. It’s been broadening,” Paul says. Whiskey del Bac is aged in white oak barrels; after one or two fills, Paul sells the barrels to brewers, chocolatiers, or barbeque sauce makers—anyone who wants a whiff of whiskey in their aged product. Spent grain goes to Rod Miller at Tucson’s E&R Pork—and Miller, in turn, gifts half-hogs back to the team at Hamilton Distillers, which includes Paul’s daughter, Amanda Paul, who manages marketing, assistant distiller Ramon Olivas, and administrative assistant Ellery Thomas.

“We love our relationships,” says Paul.

And people love their whiskey. In March, at the 2016 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Whiskey del Bac’s Dorado Single Malt took home a double gold medal.

Their classic and clear single malt took home silver and bronze medals, respectively. “This is partly due to making great malt,” says Paul.

“There’s that mystique of the mesquite,” he says. “People are drawn to it. As far as the furniture goes, it was this wildness. It’s almost untamable. I don’t know if that translates to the whiskey—the cracks, the knots, the wormholes.”

But the flavor is more than the mesquite—more than the malt. “It’s an additive process,” says Thompson-Avelino. “What determines our flavor profile has to do with the type of grain we’re using, the quality of malt we’re making, the mash bill, the recipe, the fermentation temperatures, the cuts we make, when we make our cuts from heads to hearts and hearts to tails, the barrel program, the bottling.”

It’s all connected. And it all begins with a seed in the ground. ✜

Malting is a link.

Malting links growers with makers and makers with drinkers. Malting is the process of converting crops to that which we consume.

Hamilton Distillers. HamiltonDistillers.com.

Megan Kimble is the editor of Edible Baja Arizona and the author of Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food (William Morrow 2015).

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Q&A: Rediscovering The Lost Restaurants of Tucson Interview by Edie Jarolim Arcadia Publishing, 2015

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ull disclosure : I have shared many a meal with the Lost Restaurants of Tucson author Rita Connelly—though not, I’m pretty sure, at any of the now-shuttered spots that are the subject of her new book. But it’s with only a slight bit of favoritism that I declare this book a must-read for those who have lived and dined in Tucson as well as for newcomers who want a taste of the town’s culinary history.

How did this book come about?

Editors at the History Press had seen my food writing in the Tucson Weekly and, early in 2015, asked if I would contribute to their “Lost” series. I moved to Tucson in the early 1970s and worked in many restaurants that no longer exist, so I jumped at the chance.

This book preserves specific family stories as well as general trends in the way people dined and operated restaurants. Do you think things have changed dramatically or are the people and stories just variations on a universal theme?

Both. One thing that’s really changed is the loss of family restaurants. We’ve got lots of great young chefs, but restaurants today are more about individuals or teams—the cocktail team, the pastry chef team …

Most of the stories in the book are about immigrants who came to Tucson from other countries or moved here from bigger cities. Even at the higher-end restaurants like Palomino, everyone in the Gekas family got involved; the mother was at the front of the house, the kids worked every station so they could fill in if someone didn’t show up. I don’t know if that kind of involvement is going to be part of the way we eat anymore. Parents are no longer pressuring their kids to go into the family business, and the kids aren’t interested. I love what’s going on now, the passion, but I sort of miss the family feeling.

One thing that’s the same, or at least that has come around again: A lot of the chefs would go to the market in the morning; they were into fresh and local before that was a thing.

I’m interested in the balance of library research versus interviews and anecdotal research. How did you spend most of your time?

It was about evenly divided. I spent a lot of time at the Arizona Historical Society, which has a great library and well-organized restaurant files, but I really loved the personal touch that you got from the interviews. I heard a lot of stories you would never find in a newspape .

What was the restaurant you felt saddest about when it was gone and why?

Araneta’s Mexico Inn. I worked there fiv days a week for lunch and dinner—and ate both those meals there—and I knew the family. It’s the restaurant I measure all Mexican food by. Their enchilada sauce was outstanding and their green corn tamales were better than any I’ve had since. They were wonderful to the staff; they treated us like daughters There’s a continuity from the past in lots of places. Doug Levy of Feast, for example, still has recipes from Boccata and The Dish, and Cosmo Ali of DaVinci’s still does the pastry for his daughter’s restaurant, Trattoria Pina. With Araneta’s, the daughters didn’t want to open a restaurant. When it went, all the recipes went with it.

What was the biggest surprise your research uncovered for you?

One was how gorgeous many of the menus were, like Rossi’s menu from around 1890. It was huge—it had separate sections for pork, chicken, beef, fish, you name it—and it was illustrated. You learn a lot from the menus, how society ate; it was amazing what you could get for a quarter. Now, with menus changing daily, monthly, or seasonally, you can’t have that kind of menu.

The other [surprise] was sadder. Very often when families sold their restaurants … it would go out of business within two years.

The new owners bought it as a money making proposition, but they didn’t know how to run it and they weren’t attached to it. What made the original restaurants was their soul. You can’t buy that.

Edie Jarolim is a freelance writer who is completing a Kickstarter-funded memoir, Getting Naked For Money: An Accidental Travel Writer Reveals All.

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Review: Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production

By Sarah Bowen

University of California Press, 2015

Review by Maya L. Kapoor

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for sure whether the first mezcals were poured before or after Spanish colonization of Mexico, but the drink has been around for centuries. Mezcal, a Mexican spirit, is made from roasted agaves. The agaves can be anywhere from eight years to multiple decades in age. Made from many species of agaves, in many communities, using a variety of methods, containers, and recipes, mezcals vary in their flavors, colors, and qualities. Tequila is just one kind of mezcal, named after its region of origin: Tequila, Mexico.

Sarah Bowen spent more than 10 years researching tequila production, and Divided Spirits reflects the thoroughness of her work. This is an academic work, not a first-person nonfiction adventure story, but if someone were to write a first-person nonfiction adventure story about working to understand the politics of tequila production, she would do well to start with Bowen’s book.

The first half of Divided Spirits details a top-down approach by the Mexican government to regulating tequila production using Denominations of Origin. DOs were created to protect regional food traditions in globalizing markets. Bowen’s example of DOs done right is French cheesemaking.

But tequila producers in Mexico use DOs essentially to preserve their production monopolies. Meanwhile, shady labeling laws can mislead—that Cuervo you’re mixing might already be mixto, or made with only 51 percent agave sugars (the rest would be other sugars). According to Bowen, DOs in Mexico are about market growth above all else—regardless of local economics, cultural preservation, or environmental protection.

Reading Divided Spirits, I found myself searching for a phrase to explain the phenomena that Bowen outlines. I wanted something along the lines of greenwashing—the idea of marketing a product to appear more environmentally friendly that it actually is—but from a social justice perspective. A phrase that signaled how the marketing of products like tequila make them seem more equitable—for every pair of hands that tended fields of agave plants or drove import trucks north—than they really are.

In the second part of Divided Spirits, Bowen contrasts Mexico’s tequila production with its growing mezcal market. She speaks to the desire of the conscious consumer hoping to change the world through shopping choices (as I scratch my head over organic pasta choices or recycled paper-towel brands). Mezcal is surging in the o one k nows

United States, and mezcal fans appreciate its artisanal roots. Here, Bowen poses uncomfortable questions about being a conscious consumer in a market of many untraceable links.

Bowen contends that making a difference in a national or international economy requires more than the correct type of shopping receipt. “While it is clear there is a market for justice,” Bowen writes, “the market is not just.” She points out how many farmers (though not all) are paid quite poorly for the agaves they grow, even while the idea of the humble mezcalero is used by American producers to sell mezcal. Bowen writes that many mezcaleros don’t understand the extent to which they are cheated because they cannot fathom the true worth of their mezcal to an American market. The owner of a Mexican mezcal bar tells her that some producers pay mezcaleros 30 pesos (about $1.74) per liter of mezcal that they sell for $200 per bottle.

When consumers vote with their dollars, their choices can be disquieting.

Bowen’s work illustrates how the values of wealthy buyers don’t always match the values of struggling producers: Affluent consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products, but are not willing to pay more in order to address social injustice.

And yet the combined political efforts of the entire chain of mezcal production and consumption—from agave growers in Mexico to bartenders and consumers on both sides of the border—have helped small-scale mezcaleros resist pressure to industrialize and homogenize mezcal. In 2011, large-scale producers tried to ban producers outside the DO from using the word agave in mezcal labels (they already are banned from using the word mezcal). They also tried to legalize using up to 49 percent generic sugars (instead of agave) in mezcal production—while banning agave sugar percentage labels.

A massive political response that included American bartenders, retailers, and consumers along with Mexican producers, bartenders, retailers, and consumers killed those proposals and helped to protect small-scale Mexican producers, for now. Bowen writes that this international political action focused on the rights of the consumer.

In the long run, Bowen suggests real change calls for political action at the state governance level—in Mexico and for Mexico—not only purchase by purchase.

Maya L. Kapoor lives in Tucson and writes about the environment.

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Excerpt: The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide Edited by Eric Magrane and Christopher Cokinos Illustrations by Paul Mirocha UA Press, 2016

Desert Ironwood Monologue (Olneya tesota)

By Jeevan Narney Come human, you half-angel, half-monkey, Come gather, come grind, come saw, Come dislocate that which you will relocate in elegy.

Come cut and gather what you will fail to return, For I am not loved, but I am needed.

Sell my hard temple to make a chair out of me So that you can sit and look out at the pink-eyed sky, Thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to sit against me and Listen to the arid dialogue of doves wishing They were bulletproof in my branches, which is A wish as public as the sky dropping seeds of light Quietly on my branches growing pink clusters.

Habitat: “Almost always at desert washes where water is more available,” writes Stan Tekiela.

Description: Growing to about thirty feet, but perhaps more typically between fifteen and twenty-five feet, the ironwood divides near its base into many branches and has a “round irregular crown.” It has blue-gray-green leaves with curved thorns at their base. Flowers in late spring or early summer are lavender to pink to white. The bark is gray.

Life History: There’s a national monument named after this tree and for good reason. It is long-lived (up to a thousand years) and hefty—the wood is so dense that “one cubic foot weighs 66 pounds,” according to A Field Guide to the Plants of America. It “is one of the heaviest woods in the world.” So the name is apt. This gravitas means the ironwood (1) does not float on water; (2) makes long-burning firewood and coals; and (3) is used by the Seri to make figurines and tools and by knife-makers to craft handles. The seeds of the ironwood are not well coated, so they sprout as soon as it rains, carpeting its understory in green. The foliage is thick enough that it can be much cooler within the world of the ironwood, attracting species needing a break from the doldrums of summer. Bees and hummers love the flowers for the week or so when they are out. The tree is browsed by deer, cattle, and bighorn sheep. It is the only species in its genus. ✜

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The Cooking Class from Hell

By Virginia Biggers Selby | Edited by Kate Selby

For 15 years, my grandmother Virginia Selby ran The Tasting Spoon, a Tucson cooking school taught by a variety of local chefs and home cooks. Virginia’s exemplary hospitality and flawless presentation were as familiar to her guests as her passion for cooking and conversation, but even Nana’s best-laid plans could go awry. In this piece, my grandmother describes one such occasion, an event we call “The Day of the Pig” (watch for a cameo appearance by yours truly). I share this bit of family folklore in her memory. —Kate Selby

B

y mid - summer , it was a done deal. My son, Rob, had asked if we could have a luau class in the fall, complete with suckling pig. I had finally found a meat distributor that promised they could have a pig in mid-October.

The day before the class, when I picked up the pig, I was presented with not a cute little pink pig, but an adolescent with legs about as long as mine! When I voiced my concern as to where I could keep such a large animal overnight, the butcher replied, “No problem, just put it in a bed roll.” The average October temperature in Tucson is usually in the high 80s.

Later at the market, I was complaining to anyone who would listen. Thank goodness, the manager heard my wailing, and offered to keep the pig overnight in their walk-in refrigerator.

After I hung my “friend” by one leg on a hook, they rolled it away and I took off for home.

We planned to roast the pig in the pit dug behind my house.

Pit barbeque takes an extraordinary amount of preparation ... lots of mesquite, lots of time. We set the logs in the pit to burn all night.

Next morning, the coals were just right, with lettuce leaves laid down and the pig resting on them. Suddenly, I saw Rob shake his hand and tear off his heavy work glove. “I think I’ve been bitten by a spider,” he exclaimed. He had seen a spider fall from the glove, and he scooped it up in a jar. We were looking at a genuine black widow. With his hand in a bag of ice cubes, he and his wife Pam left for the emergency room. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be back in time for the class.”

The next four hours were hideous. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I worried about Rob, and I worried about the class. Meanwhile, the pig was doing who knows what—I had no idea how long it was supposed to cook, nor did I have any intention of taking it out. At about 3:30, Rob and Pam came rushing in, Rob looking white as a sheet. As people started arriving, I’d tell them, “Good news and bad: we’re having a class but it may be late. Our teacher was bitten by a black widow.”

Finally the class began, Rob still dreadfully pale and teaching with his hand in a container of ice water.

Every so often, I’d see him lean up against something as if to keep from collapsing. Eventually, the entire class went out to watch the “unveiling of the pig.” Out of the pit came this animal that had been in way too long, with most of its hindquarters cooked away. If Rob was distressed, he didn’t show it. We brought it into the kitchen and stuck an apple in its mouth and cranberries in its eyes and hung a carnation lei around its neck. It looked terrific! As for all the meat that was burned away, we still had piles of pork to eat.

It was a beautiful night and everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. Pam’s mother, Helen, decided to bring out eight-month-old baby Kate. As Helen walked across the patio, she tripped over a water faucet handle. The baby practically flew out of her arms, and there was an audible gasp from the students. She lurched, catching Kate, but twisted her ankle—and the water pipe turned into a five-foot waterspout As people started to leave, I walked to the door with one couple, first-time students. “You know,” I said, “our classes are always fun, but we don’t usually have this much excitement. I hope you’ll come back.” As I said this, the screen door fell off in my hands. They took one last look and scurried away. I’ve never seen them again. It had been the cooking class from hell! ✜ This piece has been edited for length. The full version is online at EdibleBajaArizona.com/cooking-class-from-hell.

Kate Selby is the online editor of Edible Baja Arizona.

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