Edible Baja Arizona - January/February 2017

January/February 2017 • Issue No. 22

Celebrating the gastronomy of Tucson and the borderlands.

DIGGING IN No. 22 January/February 2017

Four Generations of Flores • A Tale of Two Walls Antidotes to Despair • Cider Revival

Features

Contents

6 COYOTE TALKING

9 ARTIST’S STATEMENT William Lesch discusses the cover

10 VOICES We asked members of Watershed Management Group’s co-op: Why do you harvest rainwater?

18 EDITORIAL Antidotes to despair.

20 GLEANINGS Nations Creations Food Truck; Sonoran Mushroom Company; The Beet Lady.

26 CALENDAR 30 BAJA EATS 40 THE PLATE 46 EDIBLE INTERVIEW The brothers behind Ermanos Craft Beer & Wine Bar are building their business from the barrel up.

76 THE CHAPTERS OF EL CHARRO Beginning in 1922 and spanning three generations, the story of El Charro is a story of Tucson.

50 PROFILE John Slattery is an herbalist and educator committed to the plants of the Sonoran Desert.

62 MEET YOUR FARMER Dana Helfer and Paul Buseck are settling in at Rattlebox Farm, building a future for farming in the desert.

116 ESSAY Recalling Boy the Cowboy.

125 HOMESTEAD Putting down roots in the garden. Growing your soil, Part 3. Visiting Watershed Management Group.

136 FARM REPORT 140 SONORAN SKILLET Citrus is winter’s best gift.

147 BAJA BREWS A beer’s final taste emerges from an endless permutation of variable options. How do brewers find the right flavors?

162 BUZZ Arizona’s Cider Revival.

170 A DAY IN BAJA ARIZONA Exploring Sierra Vista.

94 A TALE OF TWO WALLS Along a remote stretch of the U.S.Mexico border, two visions for the climate-changed future are unfolding.

172 INK Reviews of Southwest Foraging; The Reason For Flowers; The Color of Food.

178 LAST BITE Alison Hawthorne Deming considers the desert.

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“EATING IS A POLITICAL ACT.” —MICHAEL POLLAN

COYOTE TALKING

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about food and drink and place. That’s our niche, and it’s the basic lens we use to ponder, celebrate, and explore Baja Arizona and the people, landscapes, and systems that comprise its foodshed.

At its foundation, that foodshed is dependent on the intertwining of agriculture, politics, economics, history, and biotic communities. So, we would assert that choosing the glass of beer you enjoy in a local brewery or the fresh produce you carefully pack home from the farmers’ market, or selecting that loaf of artisan bread baked with locally grown heritage grains are all, in poignant ways, “political acts,” as the journalist Michael Pollan said, containing within them the myriad choices we must make about where and how our food is produced. We can’t extricate our appetites from serious inquiry into environmental, economic, and political matters, regardless of where we consider ourselves on the ideological spectrum.

Our continued sustenance depends on such a quest, now more than ever. his is a m agazine

ONLINE twitter.com/EdibleBajaAZ

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ccompanied by the outstanding photography of Jeff Smith, journalist Todd Miller’s story about a borderlands ecological restoration project is especially timely given recent events. He takes us to the San Bernardino Ranch, 12 miles east of Agua Prieta/Douglas, where a landscape’s transformation over the last 20 years is both a miracle to behold and a powerful juxtaposition of paradigms. He writes: “Both border militarization and ecological restoration are two distinct responses to the most challenging crisis of our time: climate change.

In this microcosm along a remote area of border, these two contrasting visions might just embody the future struggles of the world.” Indeed.

Longtime Tucson journalist Margaret Regan tells the nearly 95-yearold tale of Tucson’s famed El Charro, a family saga that epitomizes Tucson gastronomic lore at its best. Headed by the irrepressible matriarch, Carlotta Flores—who is seemingly everywhere, all the time—the family’s expanding empire, writes Regan, has grown to an army of 500 workers, with different incarnations of the family’s culinary creativity springing up in Tucson and elsewhere. Steven Meckler’s photographs capture the four generations of the family, as Regan foretells the beginning of yet another chapter in the El Charro story.

There are two members of the Edible Baja Arizona team who receive little attention and no bylines, but who make a defining qualitative difference in the magazine we produce. The inestimable Ford Burkhart has, among many other adventures, been a journalist since 1964, including an 11-year run at the New York Times, where he had a long stint on the Foreign Desk’s late slot, “closing the pages at 3 a.m.” That, friends, is hardcore copy desk cred. Now a professor emeritus at the UA School of Journalism, we are incredibly fortunate to have his eyes on every word that makes it into the magazine, serving as our copy editor par excellence. Thanks, Ford! And a nearly final version of magazine proofs is pored over by proofreader Charity Whiting, whose propensity for the picking of nits on our pages ensures that any other errors we’ve managed to make are rectified before we make 25,000 copies of them. Charity has an M.A. in education from the University of Southern California, but her sharp eye for typographic sloppiness seems to be an inherent talent. Thanks, Charity!

We’ll see you around the table, where all are welcome. ¡Salud!

—Douglas Biggers, editor and publisher

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We’re dreaming of #lunch at The Little Cafe Poca Cosa. facebook.com/ediblebajaarizona

Learn about the science of brewing in the latest Baja Brews video.

An exclusive recipe for Soft Meyer Lemon Cookies. (Taste-tested and approved by the eBA staff!)

Editor and Publisher Douglas Biggers Editor

Megan Kimble

Art Director

Steve McMackin

Advertising Sales Director John Hankinson Business Coordinator Kate Kretschmann Online Editor

Shelby Thompson

Senior Contributing Editor Gary Paul Nabhan Copy Editor

Ford Burkhart

Proofreader

Charity Whiting

Designer

Chloé Tarvin

Contributors

Luke Anable, Craig Baker, Amy Belk, Zotero Citlacoatl, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Autumn Giles, Marguerite Happe, Gwendoline Hernandez, Maya Kapoor, Todd Miller, Lisa O’Neill, Margaret Regan, Kate Selby, John Washington, Rachel Wehr, Debbie Weingarten, Suzanne Wright

On the cover: The Earth Remains Forever.

Photographers & Artists Adela Antoinette, Rand Carlson, Julie DeMarre, Eric + Casia Fletcher, Tim Fuller, Autumn Giles, Liora K, Molly Kiely, Steven Meckler, Erica Montgomery, Bridget Shanahan, Jeff Smith, William Lesch

Photo by William Lesch

Above: Smashed citrus.

Photo by William Lesch

Interns

Maya Holzman, Elena Gonzalez, Tessa Patterson, Ben Sisco

Distribution

Royce Davenport, Gil Mejias, Shiloh Walkosak-Mejias, Steve and Anne Bell Anderson

We’d love to hear from you

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

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The Earth Remains Forever Artist’s Statement by William Lesch

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erhaps you are wondering why Edible Baja Arizona has a cover photo with moldy fruit, bones, and ashes. I am wondering why as well, and I took the photograph. Like much of my work, it was strange to me at first, evolving on its own accord. Edible Baja Arizona’s publisher, Doug Biggers, called me in mid-November, wondering if I might want to take a photo of citrus fruit for the cover of this issue. I was in free-fall at the time; I was in recovery from back surgery a month before, and the direction our country chose on Nov. 8 had me reeling. Doug’s call was like a lifeline, work I could throw myself into, and I did.

The place of artists in a world such as the one I saw coming haunted my dreams. If ever there was a time art was needed, this was it.

Resistance was going to take everyone pulling together, doing what they do best, and what I do best is make pictures. I best get off my ass.

Food photography is not a genre I work in often, but there were still-life paintings with food from my art history education that immediately jumped to mind. I am not sure where I first saw a work done in the Vanitas style, but I recalled the force of it quite clearly, sending chills up my spine, like all work that speaks truth. I didn’t even know the name of the specific style or artists; I just knew I had seen several of them over the years, and it was a style that had struck a chord. So I researched it.

The art genre known as vanitas developed in 16th century Europe, mainly in the Netherlands.

It sprang up during the Baroque, a time of great change in Europe, as the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church was slipping away.

The word “vanitas” derives from a passage in Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity … a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.”

Vanitas paintings were still lifes, often including citrus, flowers, and other symbols of life contrasted with objects symbolic of death and transience, such as skulls and rotting food. The paintings were meant to remind viewers of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death.

In a world where borders and divisions between people are gaining ground, it seemed that something with more teeth than glowing citrus was required. Sparkling fresh didn’t make sense, just as a wall across an ecosystem like the Sonoran Desert makes no sense. You can’t wall off a watershed, just as you can’t breathe only your air.

Everything affects everything else; life and death, water and ashes, flesh and bones are different sides of the same coin. To think we can consume riches while our neighbors starve just over the wall is insanity, and will lead us all to ashes.

Perhaps art can act as catharsis, allowing us to flush the toxic thoughts around us, after which we can begin to build on the ruins. Growing our own food, communicating about ways to care for the land, best grazing practices, best nurturing of the soil: these are some of the ways we build and will lead us to the ways we heal. Good work will see us through. Let’s get on with it.

William Lesch is a Tucson-based photographer. He has worked in the Sonoran desert since 1974, and has lived with his family in downtown Tucson since 1980.

(Above) The Pantry by Adriaen van Utrecht, painted in 1642.

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VOICES

We asked members of Watershed Management Group’s co-op: Why do you harvest rainwater?

Photography by Julie DeMarre

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is small (just over 1,000 square feet) in the middle of the city and we had a sorry patch of dirt in the front. Now we have plants inside and around our yard that are watered from our tank. The part that I love the most is the backyard, which is watered from our laundry. We have three young fruit trees that we water completely from the loads of laundry we do. We also supplement that with rinse ur house

10 January/February 2017

water from doing our dishes. We harvest rainwater with a tank and through a contoured landscape that captures the water.

We chose to harvest rainwater to feed our plants because it’s one way we are sustaining life in the desert—both the abundance of plants and our own ability to continue thriving by not tapping into our fresh water supply.

Mark and Nancy Siner

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harvest r ain water with cisterns and passive earthworks, and some of the rainwater is used two or three times though shower, laundry, and kitchen graywater directed to food plants. One hundred percent of the water consumed here by humans, garden, and native plants comes from the rain—no CAP or City of Tucson water. Why? Rainwater harvesting creates an abundance of native plants that nurture wildlife and our community without consuming energy-intensive,

treated water pumped from the Colorado River or the Tucson aquifer. I host public and private tours, including the WMG Homescape Harvest Tour and Tucson Audubon Habitat at Home, to educate and inspire community members to harvest rainwater. Leading by example is the best way to show folks how to use the rain in their lives and community.

David Stevenson

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Watershed Management Group about rainwater harvesting because of flooding issues I was having on my back porch every time it rained. While I don’t have a cistern to collect and store water, I harvest rainwater in my front and backyard through gutters on my house, which drain directly into basins. These basins have been created in such a way that one feeds water into the next.

Native plantings throughout the front and backyard will require minimal City of Tucson water once they are established contacted

12  January/February 2017

in about two years. Also, in my backyard, I installed a laundry-to-landscape graywater system to supplement four trees with every load of laundry I do.

In my front yard, three street-side basins were installed to harvest the water runoff from Camino Seco. The plants and trees in these basins get the benefit from the huge amount of water collected, and the excess water in the basins soaks directly into our aquifer instead of evaporating in the street.

Connie Carder

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two years ago with the goal to meet Tucson’s water needs—to buy an existing house and retrofit with rain gardens, rain tanks, and solar. The mostly native plantings are new—barely a year old, and fit well within the limited but mature landscaping already existing, but by no means is the landscape mature. I harvest rainwater by channeling roof runoff into two rain tanks. I can moved her e

14 January/February 2017

only capture half of my roof. The other side of my roof is also channeled with six-inch gutter and directed by basins to the plantings.

I water predominately with rainwater instead of City of Tucson water as the wisest ecological use of the very limited water supply available for the growing population of Tucson.

Joan Lisi

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that the Sonoran Desert is the lushest desert in the world and with the help of Watershed Management Group, I knew that we could make our front yard look beautiful with desert grasses, plants, and trees through passive water harvesting. By capturing and directing water run-off from the street and our roof we are growing gardens that attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. k now

Lisa McDaniel-Hutchings

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and I were fortunate to have Watershed Management Group help us design our backyard in September of 2015. We’ve installed a cistern and passive collection basins. We have basins for passive collection, we have laundry-to-landscape installed, and we collect our rainwater from the roof into two 550-gallon cisterns. Why? Harvesting rainwater is an inexpensive way to water and keep our plants alive. y husband

Kathleen Marron

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EDITORIAL

Antidotes to Despair By the Editors | Illustration by Rand Carlson

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hen we launched this magazine in June of 2013, we promised you that we would celebrate the food cultures of Tucson and the borderlands. We called our magazine Edible Baja Arizona because we believed that the borderlands—the region we call Baja Arizona—was a place unlike anywhere else in the world, a place we wanted to celebrate, explore, and protect.

We are doubling down on that commitment.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan wrote: “‘Eating is an agricultural act,’ as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too.

Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it.”

Regular readers of this magazine know that we agree with Pollan and others that the food we consume every day is inextricably linked to a complex web of economic and political realities. This awareness demands our attention if we care about economic justice, environmental quality, and the essential diversity that keeps both societies and bioregions healthy. We explore those critical linkages in many of the stories we publish, and that sensibility will continue to inform the journalism in Edible Baja Arizona.

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In that context, the events that have unfolded following the presidential election have us deeply concerned. As we go to press, the president-elect has threatened the cultural diversity that exemplifies the borderlands and enriches our community’s way of life; his rhetoric and promised actions seek to diminish the vibrant pulse that beats through this region, resonating back and forth across a border, deep in our soil, and wide across our water. That sentiment, which comes from a place of fear and scarcity, is one that we reject.

We would humbly suggest that there are concrete and positive steps we can take right here in Baja Arizona to help build a stronger, more sustainable, more just and inclusive food system that benefits us all. Doing everything in our power as conscious consumers to think local, support local, eat local, and spend local strengthens our community. Taken together, the accumulation of our daily actions will be a positive and counterbalancing force to what may emanate from Washington, D.C. during a period that may challenge our conceptions of what community—and its importance—really means.

Consider each of these suggestions a potential act of regeneration, an antidote to despair. We’re digging in, here in Baja Arizona. Let’s get to work. 

Do one of these things today. Do three this week. Do nine this month.

Allocate a set amount from your weekly food budget to spend at a farmers’ market. (See our list of farmers’ markets on Page 27.) Get to know the people growing and selling your food.

Join a Community Supported Agriculture program. CSAs put money directly into the pockets of our local farmers. Divest from the global economy, and invest locally.

Support the education and training of young people who want to become farmers, gleaners, chefs, or school cooks and teachers.

Plant a garden or edible landscape with deeprooted perennials. Save food scraps and create a compost pile. Plant flowers for pollinators.

Sequester rather than squander carbon.

Join or support local organizations that are working to improve food security, access, and justice; to protect the biodiversity, watersheds, and wild ecosystems of Baja Arizona; and to advocate for immigrant and worker rights.

“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

—Gary Snyder Buy value-added Arizona-made products, from wines to moles, salsas to paletas, flours to legumes, that create jobs in our community for those who need them most. Support local and independent businesses whenever you can.

Join the YWCA’s We Stand Together network to stand against hate crimes and to protect immigrants as well as natives and their sacred lands.

Show up at local political meetings and ask to speak about issues you care about.

Find the Tucson City Council schedule online, as well as the schedule for the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Tucson Unified School District school board.

Get outside and connect with the wilds.

Notice the beauty of the borderlands, of its food, culture, geography, language, music, and people.

Express that beauty to those who cannot experience it directly.

We live in a magical place. Protect it.

Read and support quality local journalism. Subscribe to this magazine.

Eat in community—at a table where all are welcome.

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gleanings

Former Amity student-turned-employee Steven James runs Nations Creations Food Truck.

Indigenous Deliciousness

Nations Creations Food Truck serves healthy Native American cuisine.

Text and photography by Shelby Thompson

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and laughter emerge from Nations Creations food truck. Inside, manager Steven James and his continually rotating staff make fresh juice blends and reimagined versions of Indian fry bread, piled high with black beans, pico de gallo, and avocado slices.

The people behind the truck know how to make healthy food taste good. They also know that they’re working to serve more than food—they’re serving the Tucson community.

Nations Creations food truck is a part of Amity Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides rehabilitation and support to those impacted by addiction, trauma, incarceration, racism, violence, and homelessness. Circle Tree Ranch, Amity’s East Tucson campus, houses dozens of people and offers them rehabilitation through a school-like setting. Students take classes and learn by participating in hands-on work like gardening and cooking; together they work to create a community that fosters support and restoration.

Six years ago, Pamela Jay and Naya Arbiter, who have both been working with Amity Foundation for more than 20 years, overhauled the food at Circle Tree Ranch. Their goal? To use food as a healing mechanism. Chips, candy, and fast food were banned from campus. Soda machines were replaced with juicers.

Meals became centered on plants while meats and processed food made their way off the menu. “The results were astounding,” Jay said. Students lost weight, began choosing better food to feed their children, and had more success with their recovery.

Having experienced positive change from healthy food, the students at Amity’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship devised a way to bring their community to the rest of Tucson—a food he sound of a whirling blender

20 January/February 2017

truck. None of the students or staff had ever run a food truck before, but they were confident that their passion and desire to publicize the benefits of healthy food would be enough to make it a success.

Deciding what kind of food to serve was easy. “Seventy percent of our students are indigenous peoples,” Jay said. They quickly decided to serve healthy Native American cuisine and finessed their slogan: Indigenous Deliciousness. The truck features three vegetarian Indian fry breads, like the Grilled Red Chili Mushroom Asada, and several freshly squeezed juices and smoothies.

Former Amity student-turned-employee Steven James stepped up to run the truck. After James’ life was transformed

by Amity’s program in Los Angeles, he began working for the foundation to help others improve their own lives. James moved to Tucson in 2014 to be a counselor at Circle Tree Ranch. After a year of helping students progress through the Amity school, James was ready for something new. “I like to stop doing a job when it’s going really well … end things on a good note,” James said. Running Nations Creations has indeed been a new challenge, from finding a working truck, finding the right place to park it, and managing a team of student cooks. Despite the steep learning curve, James and the students behind Nations Creations are in it for the long haul: they’re getting the truck painted and wrapped, making appearances at events like The Loft Film Fest, and working with the chefs at Circle Tree Ranch to create healthy food that is not only delicious but visually appealing. Nations Creations food truck doesn’t have a regular schedule, so check their Facebook page to find out where they’re headed next.

Facebook.com/NativeCreationsAmity.

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Sonoran Mushroom Company owner John Jacobs plans to expand production from 1,000 to 10,000 pounds a month.

Fruiting Fungus

Sonoran Mushroom Company is growing mushrooms for Arizona.

Text and photography by Shelby Thompson

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ushrooms are a family affair at Sonoran Mushroom Company, where owner John Jacobs works with his wife, Kay; son, John; and daughter-in-law, Danielle, to grow and sell more than a few varieties of mushrooms. And each person adds something important to the business. John grows the mushrooms, Kay creates special mushroom-based spice blends, John Jr. handles the social media, and Danielle does the books.

Together they have one goal: to become the largest provider of mushrooms in Arizona.

Raised on a wheat and alfalfa farm in Washington, John and Kay came to Tucson in 1968. After years of entrepreneurial and sales jobs, John wanted to get back to his roots as a farmer—and in 2015, he found a way to utilize his five-acre property on Tucson’s eastside by building a mushroom farm.

John and John Jr. had been dreaming up a mushroom business for years. After seeing that only a few of the thousands of varieties of available mushrooms were being sold locally, they set out to introduce people to more flavorful and nutritious varieties. In the beginning of 2016, John began growing an assortment of nutritious mushrooms such as blue oysters and Italian oysters, and the variety getting the attention of more than a few people in Tucson: bacon mushrooms.

These mushrooms grow indoors to simulate wild conditions: cool weather and moist air. The mushrooms grow out from a

22 January/February 2017

plastic bag filled with straw and can take up to three months to develop fully. However, a controlled environment doesn’t ensure ease. “When mushrooms are ready, they’re ready,” John said, requiring him to harvest at least two times each day.

The Jacobs family knows the value of buying locally grown mushrooms. “When you ship mushrooms, they sit in their own moisture and grow other things,” he said. “They aren’t fresh.”

When the mushrooms from Sonoran Mushroom Company are harvested, they’re quickly packaged and delivered to local stores like Time Market and Rincon Market, and to local restaurants such as Feast, Wild Garlic Grill, Reilly, and Casino Del Sol. Sonoran Mushroom Company has big plans to expand. The company’s current production capacity is about 1,000 pounds of mushrooms per month. The new grow building they plan to build later this year will allow them to produce up to 10,000 pounds per month. “We’re going to do what we can to grow mushrooms for Arizona,” John said.

John attributes the company’s growing success in part to the customers he meets at St. Philip’s Plaza Farmers’ Market. The market has enabled him to connect with restaurant buyers and with home cooks. The customers “are the main focus,” he said. “Meeting with them face to face each week reminds me why I do this.”

SonoranMushrooms.com

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g

Sweet, dense, and versatile, beets are the perfect tomato substitute in foods like ketchup.

A New Beet

Karen Dame became The Beet Lady after seeking food to heal her son.

Text and photography by Shelby Thompson

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ine years ago , Karen Dame couldn’t have predicted that she would one day be known as The Beet Lady.

Dame’s inspiration for her blossoming beet ketchup and marinara sauce business? Her son, Cullen.

In 2007, Cullen suddenly developed a severe illness that, among other things, left him unable to process many of the foods he had always eaten. As doctors and specialists attempted to pinpoint the culprit of Cullen’s acute sickness, Dame struggled to find foods that her son’s body wouldn’t reject. Dozens of digestive health books and four holistic nutrition certifications later, she came to one conclusion: nightshades were out. Produce such as bell peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes that Dame had been cooking with for years now made her son violently ill.

Dame began to re-create Cullen’s favorite foods in hopes that she might return to her son some of the normalcy he had so quickly lost. She began with ketchup and marinara sauce, two family staples, and started at the root: beets. “Beets are anti-inflammatory, high in vitamins A, B and C, rich in potassium, iron, folate, and manganese,” Dame said. Sweet, dense, and versatile, they also happen to be the perfect substitute for tomatoes.

Tomatoes aren’t the only thing missing from Dame’s ketchup and marinara sauce. The recipes call for coconut sugar in place of highly processed corn syrup, real onions and garlic rather than the more common dehydrated variety, and absolutely no “natural flavors.”

(She lists “love” as the first ingredient in each of her products.)

As she learned more about holistic nutrition, joining

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communities on the Internet, Dame began to share her recipes with others who missed the simple pleasure of dipping a French fry in some good ketchup. “I’m very grateful to be able to share this with people who need it,” she said.

After years of tests and treatments, Cullen was diagnosed with Lyme disease and is now able to undergo disease-specific treatments—at a high cost. And so, Dame and her son packed up their beets and headed to the commercial kitchen at Mercado San Agustín hoping that The Beet Lady products might help to pay for Cullen’s expensive medical treatments. “Cullen is my business partner,” Dame said.

Thirteen months after starting The Beet Lady, Dame is amazed by how successful it’s been. While her original business plan was to sell directly to customers, Dame has been filling huge orders thanks to companies like One Stop Paleo Shop; she sells to more than 40 stores across the country. “I am of the philosophy that whatever opportunity comes my way … I will never say no,” she said.

Still, the basis of The Beet Lady business model remains the same. Dame continues to hand-deliver her products to local customers to support their healing processes. “The business is coming full circle,” Dame said, “because Cullen inspired these recipes and now they’re helping to pay for his treatment.” That’s a beet everyone can tune to.  TheBeetLady.com.

Shelby Thompson is the online editor of Edible Baja Arizona.

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JANUARY Wednesday, January 9

Wine Enrichment Series

CALENDAR

5-7 p.m.

Sierra Bonita Vineyards 6720 E. Camino Principal Suite 101

Sunday, January 22

Wednesday, February 8

Saturday, January 14

Citrus Jubilee

Wine Enrichment Series

Living Lab and Learning Center Free Tour

10-11:30 a.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Tucson Japanese Festival 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Pima Community College Downtown Campus 1255 N. Stone Ave.

24 Hours in the Old Pueblo Bike-In 2-7 p.m.

Tucson Hop Shop 3230 N. Dodge Blvd.

Wednesday, January 18

Star Party & Food Truck Roundup

6-8 p.m.

Green Fields School 6000 N. Camino de la Tierra

Thursday, January 19

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Graywater

4-6 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Twig Stove Making with Desert Harvesters

3-6 p.m.

Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market 100 S. Avenida del Convento

Saturday, January 21

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Rainwater Harvesting 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Annual Rose Seminar 10-11:30 Rillito Nursery 6303 N. La Cholla Blvd.

9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park 4502 N. 1st Ave.

5-7 p.m.

Sierra Bonita Vineyards 6720 E Camino Principal Suite 101

Thursday, January 26

Friday, February 10Sunday, February 12

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Rainwater Harvesting

Wickenburg Gold Rush Days & Rodeo

3-6 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Friday, January 27

Kitchens of Nogales: La Zona Gastronomica 2:30-8:30 p.m.

Border Community Alliance 47 N. Sonoita Ave., Nogales

Saturday, January 28

Chocolate: 1,000 Years and Counting

10 a.m.-1 p.m.

Tubac Presidio State Historic Park 1 Burruel Street, Tubac

History on Tap

5-8 p.m.

Arizona History Museum 949 E. Second St.

FEBRUARY Saturday, February 4

Garden Basics 101

9-11 a.m.

Community Food Bank Garden 3003 S. Country Club

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Rainwater Harvesting 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

9 a.m.-5 p.m.

160 N. Valentine St., Wickenburg

Saturday, February 11

Wormania

9-11 a.m.

Community Food Bank Garden 3003 S. Country Club

Living Lab and Learning Center Free Tour

10-11:30 a.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Thursday, February 16

Friday, February 24

Fruit Tree 101

9-11 a.m.

Community Food Bank Garden 3003 S. Country Club

Happy Hour Hobble 5:30-8 p.m.

Tucson Hop Shop 3230 N. Dodge Blvd.

Saturday, February 25

Sustainable Design Part I

9-11 a.m.

Community Food Bank Garden 3003 S. Country Club

Tuesday, February 28

Field Studies: Composting Toilets and Humanure 5-7 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

MARCH Saturday, March 4

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Rainwater Harvesting 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Greenhouse Seedlings

9-11 a.m.

Las Milpitas de Cottonwood 2405 S. Cottonwood Lane

R E P E AT I N G Thursdays

Winter Greens with Desert Harvesters

Twilight Thursdays

3-6 p.m.

Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market 100 S. Avenida del Convento

4:30-8 p.m.

Tucson Botanical Gardens 2150 N. Alvernon Way

Thursday, February 23

Saturdays

Tucson Water Rebate Class: Rainwater Harvesting

Saturday Courtyard Music

3-6 p.m.

Watershed Management Group 1137 N. Dodge Blvd.

Fermented Foods with Desert Harvesters

3-6 p.m.

Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market 100 S. Avenida del Convento

6-9 p.m.

Mercado San Agustín 100 S. Avenida del Convento

Second Saturdays at Steam Pump Ranch

9 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Oro Valley Farmers’ Market 10901 N. Oracle Rd. Runs through April.

SEND US YOUR EVENTS!

EdibleBajaArizona.com/events 26 January/February 2017

FARMERS’ MARKETS

Saturdays

Sundays

Thursdays

Heirloom Farmers’ Market

Heirloom Farmers’ Market

Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market

Sierra Vista Farmers’ Market

9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Steam Pump Ranch, Oro Valley 10901 N. Oracle Road

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Plaza Palomino

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

St. Philip’s Plaza

Rincon Valley Farmers’ Market 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

12500 E. Old Spanish Trail

Bisbee Farmers’ Market 8 a.m.-12 p.m.

Vista Park, Bisbee

St. David Farmers’ Market 8 a.m.-12 p.m.

70 E. Patton St., St. David

Shorey Family Farms

11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Mirage & Bird Botanicals, 10 Plaza Road, Tubac

Authentically Ajo Farmers’ Market 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

15 W. Plaza, Ajo

9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Rillito Park Food Pavilion 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

St. Philip’s Plaza

Santa Fe Square Farmers’ Market 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Santa Fe Square Shopping Center

Mondays

FoodInRoot Twilight Farmers’ Market 5-8 p.m.

Maynards Market & Kitchen

El Pueblo Farm Stand

3-6 p.m.

Mercado San Agustín

10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Veterans’ Memorial Park 3105 E Fry Blvd., Sierra Vista

Authentically Ajo Farmers’ Market 4-7 p.m.

15 W. Plaza, Ajo

Fridays

Heirloom Farmers’ Market 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Trail Dust Town

3-5 p.m.

Irvington Rd & S. Sixth Ave.

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market

Tuesdays

77 North Marketplace Farmers’ Market

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

First and Third Tuesdays Northwest Medical Center

Wednesdays

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market 4:30-7:30 p.m.

St. Philip’s Plaza

Shorey Family Farms

11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Mirage & Bird Botanicals, 10 Plaza Road, Tubac

10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Banner-UMC

9 a.m.-1 p.m.

16733 N. Oracle Road, Catalina

El Presidio Mercado

9 a.m.-2 p.m.

Corner of Church and Alameda

Sycamore Park Twilight Farmers’ Market 4:30-7:30 p.m.

First Fridays Sycamore Park

FoodInRoot Farmers’ Market

4:30-7:30 p.m.

Rancho Sahuarita. Runs third Fridays.

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f you ’ ve dr i ven past the old Chaffin’s Family Dining location at Broadway and Euclid after 5 p.m. any day since Oct. 4, you might have noticed things are looking a little different. The parking lot is full. The mid-century modern building has recently been renovated and is sporting blue, green, and pink neon stripes along the decorative roof. The previously easy-to-miss restaurant space just outside of Tucson’s downtown is looking rather … welcoming.

Welcome Diner’s name comes from the restaurant’s diner origins—the first location is in Phoenix, in a nine-seat “Valentine” diner from the ‘40s—though the food at both locations aims to be anything but typical diner fare. “We’re the un-diner,” says owner and chef Michael Babcock. The menu is derived from his love for the cuisine of the American South, particularly that of New Orleans and Nashville, and is rooted in the beginnings of the company as a southern food truck. From the start, Babcock says, Welcome has done things “the long, hard, stupid way,” putting a strong focus on ingredients and preparation in order to accomplish their unique take on locally inspired cuisine.

On a recent Sunday night, we scooted into a powder-blue booth and started things off with drinks: the Sleepy Little Rivertown ($9); the Del Bac Date ($12), a date-infused slug of Whiskey Del Bac; and a house-made

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Welcome Diner’s Pork Posole Rojo.

ginger beer ($4). To make the Sleepy Little Rivertown, bar manager Connor Mansager adds salt-preserved limes to a blend of rums, grapefruit, and honey. For those who prefer to skip the mixers, the Del Bac Date has all the bite and smoky mesquite flavor of Whiskey Del Bac, yet is transformed and sweetened by the infusion of the dates into an entirely different experience. The ginger beer offers a sweet and fizzy alcohol-free option, with enough heat on the side of your tongue to let you know you’re drinking something made from the real stuff.

Our small plates arrived, beautifully arranged and piled with a surprisingly large amount of food for something described as “small”—Babcock characterizes them as “diner tapas,” capable of standing alone. The Chicanoyaki ($13), a Southwestern and seafood-inspired take on hushpuppies,

featured octopus and came garnished with chunks of fresh avocado and slivered raw jicama that removed the dish from the realm of traditional fried fare. The Mac ‘n’ Cheese ($6) was creamy and smoky, rich enough to stand on its own yet with plenty of room for any of the suggested add-ins: Brussels sprouts, Andouille sausage, chorizo, or bacon ($2 each). Our third small plate, the Pima Grits ($9), utilized a perfectly cooked over-easy egg, coarsely ground cornmeal, green chili compote, and jalapeños to bring a regional flavor profile to a classic Southern dish, and the roasted okra served on the side was beautifully charred.

Then our entrees showed up. The Bumblebee ($10) featured one piece of fried chicken topped with house-made mustard, bread and butter pickles, and drizzled with local honey, all stuffed between two halves of a biscuit. The meat was juicy and flavorful, brined and sugared before being fried in a Southernstyle buttermilk dredge batter to crispy perfection. The mustard and the bread and butter pickle played off delightfully against the honey, and the light texture of the biscuit created the perfect backdrop for the sweet, salty, and sour result.

There are four burgers on the menu at Welcome: the No Way José ($13) is undoubtedly the one with the most bite, thanks to the jalapeño relish and chipotle ranch dressing that crowns the six-ounce cheeseburger. The smoked Gouda and Muenster cheeses add a

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richness to the final flavor, as does the arugula, but do little to cool the overall heat. If you’re seeking a spicy burger that actually lives up to its name, the José is right up your alley.

One of general manager Corey Greenhill’s favorite plates is the Pork Posole Rojo ($12); he cites the depth of flavor that the soup gains when the mole black pudding garnish is stirred into the soup itself. I tried it both ways; while the posole is good on its own, it excelled with the addition of the pudding, which enriched the broth and completely changed the texture. Served with some of Welcome’s flatbread instead of the traditional tortilla, the hearty soup brings a good level of heat, and promises to be an excellent option for warming up on cool winter nights.

Finally, I may have found my new favorite vegetarian entrée in Tucson: Welcome’s Vegetable Cassoulet ($12).

Consisting of a rich stew of vegetables and tepary beans served over hand fire bread and topped with smoked pumpkin and crème fraiche, the variety of textures and flavors in this dish make it intensely satisfying. The bread soaked up the juices of the stew without losing any of its body, adding a chewiness that balanced the lighter mouthfeel of the vegetables, while the sweetness of the pumpkin complemented the savory stew and kept my taste buds at attention.

For dessert, we tried both the Lemon Chess Pie ($6) and the Tepary Bean Tart ($6). The lemon pie arrived garnished with fresh blackberries and candied pistachios. The crust was one of the best I’ve had, very light, with a crackly feeling reminiscent of puff pastry, and just the right amount of salt. The tepary tart, meanwhile, set itself apart thanks to the ingenious use of Corn Nuts (yes, those Corn Nuts) as a salty garnish that contrasted with the lightly sweet filling. The filling’s flavor reminded me of a cross between pumpkin pie and sweet red bean paste, and the tart’s whole wheat crust brought a nuttiness to the overall flavor profile.

Welcome Diner is open from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day, with a “soft close” between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. during which drinks and a limited menu are available.

Welcome Diner. 902 E. Broadway Blvd.

520.622.5100. WelcomeDiner.net.

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Zona 78’s Rigatoni Bolognese.

A

at Zona 78, the dining room is filled with people of all ages taking their ease. Conversations are not so loud as to be intrusive, but they’re not too quiet either. Zona 78 has become a destination spot for upscale family dining thanks to the small balls of egg-free pizza dough offered free of charge; the resulting dough creations can be baked while kids eat. Chef Keith Parker credits this innovation with why Zona 78 is one of the top places in town to take children out to dinner: “If kids want to go to Zona and play with some dough, that’s where the parents are taking them.”

Zona 78’s menu focuses on familiar favorites crafted with high-quality ingredients, many from local purveyors: house-cured meats on their antipasti appetizer, handmade pizzas with house-made cheeses, bread from local bakeries, and entrées large enough to feed two. A personal favorite is the grilled cheese sandwich special ($14 full, $10.50 half) from the lunch menu: the sandwich’s ingredients change daily, and each incarnation pairs perfectly with Zona 78’s cry-worthy tomato basil soup.

Dinner kicked off with the Local Tomato and Mozzarella Bruschetta appetizer ($9.50), made with tomatoes from Sleeping Frog Farms in Benson.

A night out after a long day called for drinks: we split the Smoke and Spice cocktail ($9), a lightly sweet whiskey cocktail featuring High West Rye Whiskey, Smoked Whiskey Del Bac, Serrano pepper, and smoked ice that lived up to its name for heat. Looking to stretch your dining dollars? On Tuesdays, all wine bottles are half off.

For dinner, pasta won out over pizza, and our plates arrived hot and t dinner hour

fragrant. The crust on the Chicken Parmigiana ($17.50) was a gorgeous golden brown, topped with gooey melted mozzarella and a vibrant marinara sauce served over penne pasta. The chicken breast was tender and juicy, and the penne, tossed in garlic and butter, was flavorful without distracting from the main event.

The Rigatoni Bolognese ($17) featured a generous helping of savory sausage and ground beef-packed sauce ladled over al dente pasta. The crowning glory of the dish, however, is the light and delicious house-made ricotta cheese on top, made with only four ingredients: whole milk, heavy cream, lemon juice, and salt. The secret? Chef Parker says the key is maintaining the correct temperature and not stirring the cheese. While it mixes in beautifully with the pasta, this cheese is good enough to eat straight.

Despite packing up half of our entrées with an eye toward lunch the next day, we still ran out of room before eating dessert. This is a mistake I recommend you avoid; Zona 78’s desserts are a satisfying way to top off a meal, and their Warm Chocolate Brownie ($6), topped with ice cream, fresh berries, crumbles of almond granola, and salted caramel sauce, is particularly good.

If you find yourself at Zona 78 for happy hour, Chef Parker points to two new additions to the menu as “must try”: the Arancini and Pesto, and the Meatball Sliders ($6 during happy hour).

Parker anticipates hosting another all-locally sourced dinner in the spring, as they’ve done previously as part of Zona 78’s monthly wine dinner series.

Zona 78. 7301 E. Tanque Verde Road. 520.296.7878. Zona78.com

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J

ust because you’re not lucky enough to live in Bisbee doesn’t mean you can’t eat as if you do.

Bisbee Breakfast Club brought their “Bit of Bisbee” to their new Tucson location, which opened on Halloween inside the Broadway Village Shopping Center. Once a couple weeks had passed, we figured we might be able to get a table without too long a wait, and headed their way.

Coffee, orange juice, and the BBC Bloody Mary ($8.49) were our breakfast beverage picks. The coffee was a hit with the coffee drinkers at the table: The beans are roasted by Ombre Coffee, a sister company to Bisbee Breakfast Club that is headquartered at the BBC Ina location in Tucson, where they roast coffee for Bisbee Breakfast Club’s five locations.

Their first location opened in Bisbee in 2005; another is in Mesa, and the other three are in Tucson. Co-owner Terry Kyte tells me that the back of the new BBC Broadway location will eventually function as both the flagship retail store for Ombre and a stand-alone coffee shop, with later hours than the restaurant.

The orange juice was sweet and fresh, and Bisbee Breakfast Club’s premium take on the Bloody Mary, made with Grey Goose vodka, arrived artfully garnished with a pickled green bean and a chunk of sharp white cheddar in addition to the requisite celery, olive, and lemon wedge, with a dry spice mix on the rim. While the menu cautions that the BBC Bloody Mary packs a fair amount of heat, I personally found that I wanted still more spice, and once I’d added some Tabasco and the juice from my lemon wedge, the flavor was just about right. While the booze menu is a recent addition and currently restricted to Bloody Marys and Mimosas, Kyte says they’re working on adding more drinks as they go.

Our food arrived quickly despite the full dining room. The Eggs Zorba ($8.49) was a zesty vegetarian affair,

Bloody Mary at Bisbee Breakfast Club.

with spinach, black olives, red onions, tomatoes, and feta cheese crumbles mixed in with two scrambled eggs, and came with a side of home fries and a biscuit. The home fries were truly outstanding: fluffy on the inside, crisp and savory on the outside. While Kyte wouldn’t reveal exactly what spice blend BBC uses on their potatoes (they make all their spice mixes in-house), he says the predominant spice is paprika.

He adds, “And salt. I love salt.”

Continuing Bisbee Breakfast Club’s tradition of excellence in potatoes, Kyte tells me that D’s Potato Cakes ($8.79) “stem from the oldest days of the original BBC.” What started as a Saturday special turned

out to be so popular they put it on the regular menu, and after one bite, I could see why. The ingredients are simple: shredded potato, flour, egg, onion, a blend of spices, salt, and pepper, all grilled to a crisp golden brown. The result is a potato pancake with a creamy interior and lots of flavor that can stand up to the applesauce and sour cream toppings. It’s served with two handformed sausage patties with just the right amount of spice, as well as a giant biscuit both light and moist in texture.

The Huevos Rancheros ($8.49) catered to the avocado and bean-loving diner at our table, served over two crisp corn tortillas with two small flour tortillas on the side. Vegetarians and non-bacon-eaters beware: the refried beans in this dish have been doctored up with bacon fat and cheese. That said, if you do eat bacon, the beans are a rich and filling complement to the eggs, and the generous helping of guacamole with whole chunks of avocado mixed in make this a decadent take on the southwestern morning dish.

Bisbee Breakfast Club’s employee uniform is a BBC T-shirt, which displays the restaurant’s logo on the front, and a series of quotes from negative online reviews on the back. The shirt that caught my eye read: “‘45 minutes for eggs is unacceptable.’ –Some Guy on the Internet.” Why give visibility to negative reviews? Kyte explains: “The shirts are an inside joke for whoever gets it, I guess. A futile attempt at taking a small slice of power back from the anonymity of the internet.” There are several versions with different quotes. Now that regulars threaten to leave bad reviews just to make their way onto a future T-shirt, Kyte says they might put some positive reviews on some of the shirts in the future. For now, I enjoyed being in on the joke, along with eggs that took significantly less time than 45 minutes.

Bisbee Breakfast Club.

2936 E. Broadway Blvd. 520.327.0029.

BisbeeBreakfastClub.com.

Bisbee Breakfast Club’s D’s Potato Cakes.

34 January/February 2017

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T ucsonan , you’ve probably heard of Tanque Verde Ranch. You may have even attended a wedding out at the functioning cattle ranch—the oldest operating business in Tucson (since 1868). What you may not know is that with the introduction of executive chef Justin Macy, TVR has amped up its dining offerings, and they’re not just thinking of the European dude-ranch crowd anymore. The ranch’s Doghouse Saloon offers a range of small bites and bar food staples, and they recently overhauled their cocktail menu to feature drinks that would look perfectly at home in downtown Tucson’s trendy nightspots.

I attended a Chef’s Table event at Tanque Verde Ranch. Chef’s Tables are arranged on a by-reservation basis, with a per person cost of $50 for guests who are staying at the ranch, and $100 for guests not staying with the ranch (those affectionately nicknamed “townies”).

We started in the Doghouse Saloon.

I ordered the Gila Monster cocktail ($11.50), which turned out to be an herby, not-too-sweet bourbon drink, with a bit of TVR’s house-made prickly pear syrup mixed in to turn it a purplishpink. Chef Macy soon covered our table in a variety of luscious small plates: Prime Rib Sliders ($7), the Grand Lasso Pretzel ($8), Fried Brussels Sprouts ($8), and the Three-Way Filet platter ($15). Of these, the Brussels are my top pick: lightly smoky and crisp on the outside without being greasy from frying, and the bacon, balsamic vinegar, and other seasonings were just enough to add new flavors to the dish without overpowering the vegetable. f you ’ r e a longtime

As we moved to the main dining hall of the ranch, we passed through a room in which the original owner of the ranch, Don Emilio Carrillo, survived being hanged from the rafters by bandits back in 1904. History immerses visitors to the ranch, and everywhere you turn, there’s a story waiting to be told: the beam Carillo was hanged from is still in place.

Six courses, here we come. The amuse course was a piece of butterpoached lobster, microgreens, and pomegranate caviar, served on a spoon. As Chef Macy introduced the dish, he expressed his preference for working without a menu, especially for the chef’s dinner, because it allows him the greatest creative freedom.

He says that he does his best work “off the cuff and spur of the moment.

I feel like when I plan, it doesn’t turn out the way I wanted.”

The personal pizzas served as the appetizer course incorporated the unlikely component of a quail egg cracked over tomatoes, onions, arugula, and manchego cheese, and I had to remember that there were four more courses coming in order to talk

myself out of finishing all the crusts.

The salad was a delicate and artfully arranged deconstructed baby beet salad, with goat cheese coulis and candied walnuts, and the effect was so lovely it seemed a shame to eat it, but somehow we all managed.

After the intermezzo, a spoonful of tangy lemon ice with a chili burn, the entrée course arrived: beautifully prepared pistachio crusted lamb, served over a cauliflower purée with roasted baby vegetables.

To cap off our meal, Chef Macy presented mercifully small desserts: a vanilla bean flan, a cherry Bavarian cream, and the tiniest molten lava cake I’ve ever seen. Each was delicious: the chocolate cake melting in my mouth, the cherry compote adding a nice tartness to the Bavarian cream, but my favorite was the flan. Incredibly light and delicate, I will never be able to look at other flans the same way again.

Tanque Verde Ranch’s chef’s tables include wine pairings with each course, and I left the table one happy hour and six courses later quite satiated—and grateful to have a room waiting for me at the ranch. My recommendation: plan a weekend getaway, reserve one night at Chef Macy’s table, and spend the rest of your time enjoying the complimentary horseback rides, nature walks, and tennis lessons.

Tanque Verde Guest Ranch. 14301 E. Speedway Blvd. 520.296.6275.

TanqueVerdeRanch.com.

Tanque Verde Ranch’s Prime Rib Sliders.

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F

Polish Cottage’s sauerkraut is worth I’ve been a special mention: its not-too-intense meaning to try Polish Cottage, flavor indicated it was prepared but always failed to make it “correctly” and rinsed prior to through the door. Now, I’ve being cooked, making the end added it to my short list of result a cabbage capable of restaurants serving up winning new converts. hearty comfort food Our final entrée was and a richly satisfying the Polish Combo Plate dining experience. ($17.95 serves one person, My companions $34 serves two), which had eaten there featured a stuffed cabbage before, and fearlessly roll, more pierogi, smoked ordered a cup of the Polish sausage, a roll of strange-sounding pickle bread, and a bowl of Hunter’s soup, or zupa ogórkowa, Stew. For the variety alone, I ($3.50 cup, $4.85 bowl). found this to be a great deal.

Any suspicions I had melted The cabbage roll was stuffed away once the beefy broth passed with a juicy pork and rice filling, and the my lips. The saltiness of the soup, the rich red tomato sauce ladled over the top added vinegar notes from the pickled vegetables, and a bright burst of flavor that left me wishing Polish the fresh dill made this soup irresistible—we had to Cottage sold jars I could take home. For this round of order a second cup to allow everyone to get their fill. pierogi, we tried the Sweet Farmer’s Cheese variety, We also ordered a small bowl of Polish Vegetable which comes sprinkled with powdered sugar and a Salad, which turned out to be similar to mustard dollop of sour cream. Our server described it as more potato salad, with the addition of diced apples, of a “dessert” pierogi. The smoked sausage was crisped which gave it a lighter texture and sweeter taste. from the pan and went well with the sauerkraut.

Another first for me was the Beef Stew with The roll was chewy and yeasty with a glossy, Potato Pancake ($13.95). The pancake is firm crust, and was ideal for sopping up folded around a hearty helping of beef and the juice from my favorite element of vegetable stew, like a dinner plate-sized For more Baja Eats coverage, visit the Combo Plate, the Hunter’s Stew.

Polish taco. The stew had a consistency EdibleBajaArizona.com.

Made from a variety of meats combined similar to shredded beef and tasted of Know a restaurant we shouldn’t miss? with shredded cabbage, this stew was red wine and onions. Any extra liquid Email Kate@EdibleBajaArizona.com rich, juicy and tender, with just the right was soaked up into the creamy interior or the last few years ,

of the gorgeously crisped and golden brown potato pancake, and sour cream was generously drizzled across the top.

One dish on the menu I was familiar with, at least: pierogi ($8.99 for eight, $10.95 for 10, $12.90 for 12).

We chose both the potato and cheese pierogi and the sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi, with sauerkraut and bacon on the side for mixing in (additional toppings $1). Our decisions turned out to be good ones. The pierogi themselves were firm but not undercooked, and the flavorful fillings were complemented by the bacon and sauerkraut.

The sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi was my favorite of the two, with a slight tang and a rich mushroom flavor.

(Above) Pickle Soup at Polish Cottage.

(Right) Pierogi Plate.

38 January/February 2017

amount of salt and an intriguing tang.

We finished our meal with Polish Cottage’s Polish Apple Cake, or szarlotka. We had been warned that it was less sweet than “normal” cake, but for me, it was, as Goldilocks once said, “just right.”

Served warm, it was moist and dense; the thinly sliced apples in the middle make the overall experience more reminiscent of pie. This is a good thing, in my opinion, and I opted to take a second piece home for breakfast.  Polish Cottage Restaurant. 4520 E. Broadway Blvd. 520.777.5407 polishcottageaz.com Kate Selby is a local living enthusiast and craft cocktail chaser in Tucson. She received her bachelor’s in creative writing from the University of Arizona.

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1

2

The Plate Plate the

4

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The one thing they should never take off the menu.

1234 Photography by Shelby Thompson

Tacos de Coliflor Tanias 33 Head to Tanias for the meatiest of the veggie tacos: spicy deep fried cauliflower, cabbage, and jalapeños in a soft corn tortilla. $6 for two tacos 614 N. Grande Ave.

40 January/February 2017

Tofu Tacos Goodness Juice Bar & Fresh Food Pan-seared tofu, cheddar-jack cheese, cabbage slaw, and roasted red peppers are piled onto a local whole wheat tortilla and topped with cilantro cream, avocado, and crunchy pepitas. $3 per taco 2502 N. Campbell Ave.

Calabacitas Tacos Seis Kitchen and Catering Sautéed squash and zucchini and crunchy cabbage in a fresh corn tortilla, topped with creamy guacamole, red onion, cilantro, and queso fresco. $2 per taco 130 S. Avenida del Convento No. 100

Nopales and Rajas Tacos Penca Nopales come with grilled prickly pear cactus, onion, cilantro and queso fresco in a handmade corn tortilla. Rajas are filled with roasted poblano, onion, corn, and epasote in a handmade corn tortilla, topped with pickled onion and avocado and chipotle crema. $3.75 per taco 50 E. Broadway Blvd.

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EDIBLE INTERVIEW

The Erman Hermanos Since 2014, the brothers behind Ermanos Craft Beer & Wine Bar have built their business from the barrel up.

Interview by Marguerite Happe | Photography by Erica Montgomery

Your name incorporates your last name, Erman, and plays on the Spanish word hermanos, which translates as brothers. How did you decide to open a business together as co-owners, and what are your backgrounds?

Eric Erman: I’m a commercial brewer by trade. I’ve been following my passion for brewing beer for the last seven years. I started out in Detroit and worked in Denver, Oregon, and now here. I moved to Tucson in the planning phase for this restaurant back in 2014. Mark had been living in Tucson before me for several years.

Mark Erman: Before we opened Ermanos, I was an environmental lawyer in Detroit, where we’re both from. When I was in law school, Eric and I began home brewing together and we became obsessed with the hobby. We devoured instructional books, went through the phase where our kitchen was covered in sticky wort after we exploded some brewing experiments, and finally realized that we could make a really good beer. So, we always talked about having some sort of beer-focused venture.

So, our first idea was to have a beer-focused space, and the rest evolved from there. While we didn’t consciously know it during the design, we created a space that is a combination of our favorite hangouts from where we grew up in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

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How long has Ermanos been open? Are you a bar or a restaurant?

Mark: In 2013, I started looking for spaces that would ensure we were part of the downtown community.

This isn’t a sexy or romantic story, but we just knew that the authenticity, independence, and history of local business on Fourth Avenue was something we wanted to be part of.

Eric: One of the cool aspects of this space is that there’s so much history here. We’re in the historic Tophoy building, and our space has been an ice cream shop in the early 1900s, a machine shop, and a showroom for a distillery and furniture maker at different points over the last 90 years. When we moved in, we completely transformed it. We ripped away the walls and ceiling, but ultimately ended up reusing quite a lot of that material that was produced from the demolition to build our bar tops, tables, and wood walls. So, the place actually utilizes reclaimed wood throughout the entire area.

Mark: It’s difficult to categorize us as a bar or as a restaurant, but I think that was the point. We wanted to take the free-flowing experience that people love about bars and the full-service experience of a restaurant and combine the best of both. Our staff really makes that happen. Also I think people appreciate the comfort and variety of hideaways within Ermanos like the front nooks, tasting room and patio.

(Left) The ahi tuna salad comes tossed in miso viniagrette, with house-made kimchi.

(Above) After pursuing their careers independently, Eric (right) and Mark Erman opened Ermanos in an historic building on Fourth Avenue in 2014.

Mark (left) and Eric Erman opened Ermanos on Fourth Avenue near Ninth Street because they wanted to be a part of “the authenticity, independence, and history of local business on Fourth Avenue,” says Mark.

Ermanos features a creative menu, along with a significant wine program and beer list. Since the idea began as a beer-focused venture, how did you develop the rest of the business accordingly?

Mark: Originally, the idea was to be more bar-focused, but we felt that we wanted to deliver a more complete experience. It didn’t make sense for someone to drink the best beer they’ve ever had but leave hungry. So we made some adjustments to our little scratch kitchen to match the beer and wine bar experience. It became clear that we had to adapt some of our initial ideas so that the food and wine didn’t play second fiddle to the beer list.

Eric: We work very closely with our chefs to make approachable comfort food that goes hand-in-hand with the beer and wine experience. We put so much thought into creating our menu, making food from scratch, and serving dishes that take time to create. We cure our own bacon. And for example, I really love fermentation, and I’ve had an opportunity to build a fermenting cave to ferment kimchi. This is a process that takes two to three weeks, and I think that type of effort sets the stage for the other foods that we serve.

Mark: Everything we do creates value for our customers. We do happy hour every day, and not just during certain little time frames of the week. On Tuesdays, we infuse tacos with special beers, and our $2 tacos are some of the best in Tucson. Our customers are legitimately our friends, you know? So, everything from our Tucson Wine Club to our specials exists to make our customers’ lives better.

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What inspires you about being business owners in the Tucson food and beverage community?

Eric: First, I really love brewing beer, and it’s been an awesome thing to be part of this business with my brother and really dive into the community. We’ve had some cool collaborations, like our recent one with 1912 Brewery where we transformed our kimchi into a beer called Funk Seoul Brother. It’s a very tight-knit community, but people really intentionally choose collaboration and supporting one another over any sort of antagonism.

Mark: Along those lines, being downtown is pretty special for us. Everyone’s happy to be on this street.

Eric: We’re happy to rise in this together and share success.

There’s been a real emergence of chefs getting together to brainstorm outside of work, and brewers from different breweries that get together to share ideas. We’re always making improvements here, and we’re always evolving. It’s not always easy, which makes both of us really appreciate the success that we’ve had. Mark and I both got our work ethic from being raised in the Midwest, where you learn to push forward and keep hustling. We’ve taken that to heart. We come from a line of makers who love building, and we really believe that our project is never done—that’s one of the things that keep it exciting to own our own business.  Ermanos Craft Beer & Wine Bar. 220 N. Fourth Ave. 520.445.6625. ErmanosBrew.com.

Marguerite Happe is a writer, English teacher, and editor.

Follow her on Instagram @margueritehappe.

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PROFILE

Healing in Place John Slattery is an herbalist and educator committed to the plants of the Sonoran Desert.

By Lisa O’Neill | Photography by Casia + Eric Fletcher

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n an autum n Tucson day, herbalist John Slattery sits in the backyard of Desert Tortoise Botanicals. The sun shines warm as butterflies flit around herbs growing in planters and birds come to rest on branches of a mesquite.

Slattery never thought Tucson would be home.

Slattery didn’t grow up with knowledge of plants, but when he was in his late 20s, he took a trip that forever changed his life, his perspective, and led him to the work he does today: making herbal products, foraging from the wild food forest, and helping others gain knowledge of the bioregion’s offerings.

Slattery’s first experience with the medicinal properties of herbs was in his early 20s when a friend in New York City recommended yucca root to help with his knee pain; Slattery noticed the difference almost immediately. His interest in plants was piqued. By his late 20s, Slattery wanted to let go of everything unnecessary, to make room for his life’s purpose to be revealed.

He says, “I needed to empty myself out. My intention was to leave [the United States] forever.” He gave away his car and almost all his belongings, picked up a backpack, and began a year of travel throughout the Americas—beginning by stepping over the border in Nogales.

“That trip helped solidify something I was dabbling in,” he says. That something was his commitment to and desire to work with plants and healing.

In his travels, he crossed paths with herbalists and healers of the Rarámuri of Copper Canyon, of the Mixtec in Oaxaca, of the Tzeltal & Tzotzil in Chiapas, with Cakchiquel in Guatemala.

This time, he says, was marked by “being available to what caught my attention and listening to an internal voice and developing a feeling sense.” The city of Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, is shaped like a phoenix, he says; in its north wing, he connected with a community of indigenous herbalists and healers that became like family. He says, “I recognized what I was meant to do.”

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After six months of living on a Brazilian farm, Slattery woke up four mornings in a row having dreamed of Tucson. “I tried to shake it off and eventually I knew I couldn’t,” he says. “The following day, I booked a ticket.”

That began his second growing up, he says. “In some ways, I feel like I’m from here now, the relationship I developed with the place and all the life forms around here. The people have been intrinsic in developing relation to the place,” Slattery says. When he felt compelled to return to Tucson, he had no idea that the region including Baja Arizona and Sonora was one of the most botanically diverse places in North America.

He sought someone with experience with folk herbalism and a relationship to local plants but was unable to find anyone in Tucson teaching in the field rather than in a classroom.

He studied with Michael Moore at the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine in Bisbee, but he also spent time educating himself by going on hikes in local mountain ranges and exploring the plants that grew there.

Slattery says, “Being out there and available to what caught my attention was a big part of it—not having preconceived ideas of ‘I’ll go to this place cause there are hackberries there.’ That was too rigid. I had learned in that year of traveling being available to what’s there, which you can’t predict.”

When he returned from Brazil in 2003, Slattery says there were perhaps 10 herbal medicine programs in the country. Today, he says, there’s a new one every week. “Most people that work with herbs in Tucson are of a Chinese or Ayurvedic heritage and don’t know much about local plants,” Slattery says. “There’s a schism and disconnect. They’re intrinsically limited by having a relationship with a bottle on a shelf or a bag of herbs that comes John Slattery is an herbalist and educator who focuses on the offerings of the Sonoran Desert.

from thousands of miles away.” Slattery calls his method bioregional herbalism and says, “My lineage or heritage is through indigenous tradition, awareness of place and plants.”

In the years following his return, Slattery began to develop relationships with indigenous healers in Sonora. One such healer is Doña Olga Ruíz, who is now 75 and began gathering herbs when she was just 9. He calls her his Mexican mom; they met when Slattery volunteered at an orphanage in Imuris, Sonora, and heard of a woman who was knowledgeable about plants; a girl at the orphanage brought him to meet her.

Doña Olga represents a cultural subset of Sonora known as los pajareros, or “bird people”; they are traditionally seminomadic, moving with the seasons to gather wild foods like acorn and cactus fruits; hunt squirrels, rabbits, turtles, and deer; and barter for fish or shrimp to sell inland. Slattery also studied with an elder named Hortensia and her daughter Maria Luisa Molino Martinez, both of whom are Seri, or Comcáac.

Because of what he has learned from indigenous healers, particularly those he has a close relationship with in Sonora, Slattery tries to honor their work in several ways. He purchases plants they gather to use in products sold through Desert Tortoise Botanicals, the company he founded in 2005. He’s brought apprentices down to Sonora to learn from them. Slattery has tried to provide a cultural bridge: “We occupy the same bioregion but two different ways of life.”

People from Tucson who visit these indigenous herbalists “are touched at the heart level and have emotional healing, and for the hosts, it is also healing to get recognition for their work,” Slattery says.

“They have a relationship with the place and the plants, and I feel like they’re still guided by inner voice, not thinking about the price per pound. Part of the idea was to help support them to be able to continue to do that.”

Slattery started Desert Tortoise Botanicals in 2005 to provide people in need of healing access to herbal remedies. He started a booth at the Santa Cruz Farmers’ Market. Today, local stores like Alfonso Gourmet Olive Oil & Balsamics, 5 Points

Slattery procures and sources raw and wild products for Desert Tortoise Botanicals, including this bounty of acorns.

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(Left) Slattery calls Doña Olga Ruíz, a healer in Sonora, his “Mexican mom.” Photo courtesy of John Slattery.

(Above) Desert Tortoise Botanicals herbal extracts.

Market and Restaurant, Native SEEDS/Search, Good Oak Bar, Exo Roast Co, and Boyce Thompson Arboretum carry products.

Through the online store, products are sold to people all over the world.

After 11 years in business, in late 2016, Slattery brought on a business partner for Desert Tortoise Botanicals, and will transfer all production to Utah in early 2017. In this new iteration of DTB, Slattery will be a part-owner and chief herbalist, and will continue to develop new products and source raw materials from the Sonoran Desert.

“I’m excited to take the company to the next level,” he says.

With the Sonoran Herbalist Apprenticeship on hiatus for 2017, Slattery plans to hone his skills as an herbalist, educator, and forager. He also hopes to open a community clinic. “I’ve managed to see and help hundreds of people in Tucson at the farmers’ markets for 11 years, but I could only rarely go in-depth with them. With a community clinic, we can see more people, spend more time with them, and put our wide array of local medicinal plants to work on the population,” he says.

Slattery believes that the growing interest in herbalism over the last decade began as a slow shift in consciousness since the 1960s.

He says this paradigm shift is represented as well in movements like the water protectors at Standing Rock. “I feel like those at Standing Rock have a recognition, something Europeans have lost touch with,” he says. “The concept of connection to and relationship with place that they are showing there. They’re not saying, ‘We’ll 54 January/February 2017

go somewhere else when it gets bad,’ but ‘This is the place where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going to be, and we want to make sure it stays … It’s not a resource, it’s a relationship.”

In addition to making and selling products, Slattery leads workshops on herbal medicine and foraging local foods, and guides apprenticeships. He hosted a monthly series at the Southern Arizona Work Space on seasonal foraging in the Sonoran Desert following the publication of his book Southwest Foraging.

Slattery would love to see more local farms growing herbs.

He tries to buy chamomile, holy basil, calendula, and oats locally.

These herbs grow well in the Sonoran desert, but when they aren’t available, he must import them from Egypt or Hungary.

He says, “If more local farmers or neighborhood growers were trained on this, I’d be willing to pay more for something local.”

He’s also writing a book on bioregional herbalism. “The point is to help people develop a feeling in working with plants, and not just analytical and reductive. Empowering aspects in opening up like that, understanding through relationship,” he says. “That’s the undercurrent of what I receive from all indigenous people: wholly present, largely unspoken.”  Desert Tortoise Botanicals. DesertTortoiseBotanicals.com.

Lisa O’Neill is a freelance writer living in Tucson. Her work focuses on intersections of social justice issues including sustainability and food security. Visit Lisamoneill.com.

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MEET YOUR FARMER

The Dream Farm Notebook On the southeast edge of Tucson, Dana Helfer and Paul Buseck are settling in at Rattlebox Farm, building a future for farming in the desert.

By Debbie Weingarten | Photography by Julie DeMarre

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n four and a h alf acr es along the Pantano Wash, between stretches of housing developments, Dana Helfer and Paul Buseck are quietly sinking roots at Rattlebox Farm. In their third year on the property, they’ve begun to settle into seasonal routines. With summer comes the scaling back on harvesting and sales. Come September, a return to CSA shares and the farmers’ market.

November means cooler mornings and row cover unrolled to cocoon the crops.

Buseck and Helfer met in 2001 during graduate school, working on the student farm at the University of California, Davis. Helfer grew up in suburban Colorado and had wanted to farm since high school. While her parents were supportive, they couldn’t fully understand what she meant. “No one, including me, had context of how to become a farmer,” she says. “It was before this movement of school gardens and before organic food was a global industry.”

Buseck was introduced to farming during a Peace Corps assignment in Cameroon as an agroforestry extension agent, where he spent two years working alongside farmers. “I learned to farm with a machete and a hoe,” he says, recalling that

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when he came back to the United States, he showed up for his first day of work at a California farm with his machete.

By the time Buseck met Helfer, he was considering farming for a living. During his second year of the Peace Corps, he had been given a small plot of land to farm on his own. He planted true yams and amaranth, corn, egusi melon. Just before leaving to return to the United States, he harvested enough to supply all the yams for the send-off party hosted by his village.

It was a good feeling, one that stayed with him for many years.

But there were other experiences that caused Buseck to doubt a future in farming. Every week, he visited a pineapple farm owned by a farmer in his late 50s, Samuel Eyong, widely known by the nickname Grumble. “He was the most hardworking person I had ever met and a great farmer,” says Buseck.

Once, while setting rodent traps around the farm, a trap snapped, cutting off part of Grumble’s finger. “We couldn’t find the finger, so he wrapped it in cloth and we walked into town and drank Paul Buseck and Dana Helfer co-own Rattlebox Farm.

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Helfer and Buseck have long been interested in permaculture principles and growing food in ways that replicate and support natural systems.

beers,” says Buseck. Such experiences—witnessing firsthand the physical risks inherent in agriculture, seeing the exhaustion in the faces of the farmers—helped Buseck to develop a healthy fear of farming.

In high school, Helfer gravitated toward “all things sustainable development.” She read books and attended workshops about permaculture, green building, composting, and integrated pest management. During her senior year, she grew a large vegetable garden with a friend. In college, Helfer began pursuing her interest in farming, studying abroad at an agricultural university in Honduras. It was her first immersion into growing crops at scale and working with livestock. “I realized how much I loved it,” she says, “But I wasn’t quite sure how to make it happen …

How would I make a living? How would I ever buy my own land?

It all seemed so far away.”

When Helfer moved to California to establish residency before graduate school, she worked with farmers and ranchers through the Natural Resource Conservation Districts. “I 64 January/February 2017

started to understand the interconnection between farming, ranching, and environmentalism,” she says. “I was exposed to this whole other world. I started to see farmers and ranchers as real people—not just these idealized people in my head. And I thought, I could do this.”

As part of his graduate degree, Buseck returned to his home state of Arizona, and spent two summers interning with Sellsbased Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA) as they began to re-establish a traditional floodwater farm and to recreate a local food system to help alleviate the diabetes epidemic within the community. This experience, and the relationships that emerged, played a role in Helfer and Buseck’s decision to move to Tucson. Buseck spent seven years working at Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC), helping to develop agriculture and natural resources degree and extension programs. Helfer worked for the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona for five years, starting the home gardening program and the 10-acre Marana Heritage Farm.

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“W

e always k new we wanted

to try farming together,” s a ys H el fer. “ Bu t the questions were where and when and how big.” In 2008, they began the process of striking out on their own. Helfer quit her job and began expanding the garden in the backyard of their Menlo Park home. It was the beginning of a multiplot urban farm called Menlo Farms, spread throughout a handful of backyards and vacant lots in Tucson’s westside neighborhoods. In 2010, three months after their first child, Hazel, was born, Buseck quit his job and joined Menlo Farms fulltime. A year later, they began looking for a larger property.

They looked for two years, scouring listings in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, visiting properties multiple times in the Verde Valley and near Albuquerque, before refocusing on the Tucson area. They labeled a notebook The Dream Farm Notebook and filled it with thoughts for their future operation. “Our biggest priority was reliable clean water,” says Helfer, which meant they needed a well with grandfathered water rights. The land needed to be flat, already disturbed, and not planted with Bermuda grass. They also desired access to community, which ruled out more isolated locations.

Looking for land was frustrating, but ultimately, Helfer says it was an incredibly useful process. “We discovered that our dream farm was a fantasy. Everything was way too expensive, too isolated, or there wasn’t a house—there was always some significant drawback.”

Eventually they discovered the well records kept by the Department of Water Resources. They researched and mapped the Tucson properties with grandfathered wells. And then they sent a f lyer—which described their operation and interest in purchasing a property for expansion—to 30 property owners.

In June 2013, a property owner responded. He was interested in selling his late parents’ 4.5-acre property on Tucson’s eastside. “It was great for what we were trying to do, and to be able to make a living,” says Helfer. They closed on the property in the fall of 2013, just before their son Levi was born.

Rattlebox Farm is a true family farm. Helfer and Buseck raise their two children on the farm’s 4.5 acres located on the southeastern edge of Tucson.

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h o u g h t h e y h av e a lwa y s

primarily been a CSA farm, relying on their customers to prepurchase vegetable subscriptions for income, each year Buseck and Helfer have changed their structure. “At the beginning of Menlo Farms, we had a refrigerator under our carport, and our CSA members would come pick up their orders,” says Helfer. While the CSA now amounts to 70 percent of sales, Rattlebox Farm produce is now sold to restaurants and at a full retail booth and CSA pick-up at the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market. They grow 45 different crops, a mix of vegetables, melons, herbs, and flowers.

The farm has grown incrementally, and both are quick to say that it’s been a constant, humbling process of planning, learning, and improving year after year. Buseck says Helfer has always been ahead of him—that it was her vision and readiness to make the leap into full-time farming that started what would become Rattlebox Farm. But they’ve managed to strike a balance in their energy and focus. “I’m always forward moving,” says Helfer, “But Paul will say ‘We’re not there yet.’ Because of that, we are propelled forward, but we do it with a check.”

Both Helfer and Buseck have long been interested in permaculture principles and growing food in ways that replicate and support natural systems.

In addition to being Certified Naturally Grown, a peer-reviewed alternative to Certified Organic, they use drip irrigation and practice minimal tillage, relying entirely on hand tools and a walking tractor to mow and till in crop residue and to prepare new beds. Buseck says they use only five to 10 gallons of gas per year for all of their farming activities.

Additionally, they work to increase diversity among their vegetable crops, and to plant native plants around the perimeter of the farm.

“We still haven’t figured out the potential of this acre,” says Buseck, referring to the one acre planted with vegetables. “But our focus is incrementally working to maximize that space, which means doing it in a way that takes care of the soil and water. We want to find the balance between productivity and stewardship.”

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Their agricultural philosophies have been inspired by living and working in southern Arizona for so many years. “Even though we primarily grow non-native plants, our orientation is informed by the work that Paul did with TOCA, and by volunteering for years with Desert Harvesters,” Helfer says. “It’s been informed by place and by the broader community of people in Tucson who have taught us how to be good desert dwellers.

Over time, we are trying to modify and adapt our farm to work best within that system, while still keeping it productive and viable as a business.”

At the heart of Rattlebox Farm has always been a deep love for community. Both Buseck and Helfer say that the mentors, friends, and colleagues who have surrounded them as they have grown—as a farm, as a family— have been invaluable to their success. In turn, both farmers are committed to giving back. They want to host interns for educational programming through the Farm Education Resource Network (FERN). “We keep thinking, How do we use this place as a tool?”

Helfer says. “We’re on a scale where people who are interested in farming could see what we’re doing and get ideas for that entry point into farming. Maybe it won’t feel so far away for them, like it did for us.”

“I’m just so grateful and indebted,” says Buseck. “And thankful that we’ve had all of these people come through our lives that value farming and see the importance of it on creating healthy families and communities.”  RattleboxFarm.com.

520.240.6230.

Debbie Weingarten is a freelance writer and a co-founder of the Farm Education 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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The Chapters of El Charro

Beginning in 1922 and spanning three generations, the story of El Charro is a story of Tucson.

By Margaret Regan • Photography by Steven Meckler edible Baja Arizona

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E

ven at night you can see the carne seca drying in wire cages above the roof at El Charro Café.

Carlotta Flores, the restaurant’s owner and executive chef, insists on it: Each batch of the shredded beef, marinated in a bath of garlic and lemon, must undergo the ritual drying-out, in sunlight by day and in starlight by night.

That’s the way El Charro’s carne seca has been prepared ever since 1922, when the legendary Monica Flin—or Tía Monica, as Flores calls her—founded the restaurant.

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“My aunt had drying places for her carne seca, in the back of her old building on Broadway,” Flores says. “As I child I would see it.” And when Flores took over her aunt’s business in 1971, she made sure the tradition continued. “We hang it in the wire cages for 24 to 48 hours.”

Flores’s husband, Raymond, has a different explanation for the custom. The garlic, he says, keeps bad spirits away from the meat.

For years, neighbors of the Mexican restaurant in the historic El Presidio neighborhood downtown have rhapsodized about the

The Flores family’s latest venture is Charro Steak, a glamorous downtown steakhouse with a decidedly Mexican twist.

aroma emanating from the rooftop. And customers likewise rave about the finished dish, which Gourmet magazine once praised as a taste explosion. After the meat’s brought back inside, it’s grilled with green chile, tomato, and onions and served up with guacamole, salsa, calabacitas, rice, and beans.

“People love it,” Carlotta declares. “Some things will always be on the menu. Beef tacos, enchiladas Sonorenses—and carne seca.”

Tucsonans have been flocking to El Charro for those traditional tastes for almost 95 years.

On a warm night last autumn, in a dark corner of downtown, a swarm of hungry diners lined up outside the historic house on 311 N. Court Ave., waiting to get a seat at Tucson’s best-known Mexican restaurant. El Charro is blocks away from the restaurant renaissance on Congress, but it lights up an entire city street. The main Café, ornamented with Mexican hats and calendars and paintings, is in the old Flin family home, a rambling bungalow dating to 1900. An adjoining row of Sonoran adobes house the bar Toma and a charming interior patio.

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(Above) A taste of Tucson: A Tamale Temptation plate with a Prickly Pear Margarita. (Below) The legendary Monica Flin founded El Charro in 1922; she is memorialized in an exhibit in the Tucson Children’s Museum.

The hungry customers on the sidewalk chatted convivially as they waited for their shot at Tia’s Topopo Salad (greens enhanced with grilled shrimp or carne seca) or Carlotta’s Reynosa Chicken (grilled breast with cremosa chipotle).

Suddenly Carlotta herself turned up to greet her guests. Dressed in a bright yellow cooking coat, and with her hair hygienically tucked inside a sparkly ball cap, she looked every inch a chef.

“She’s the cooker,” her admiring husband says. “That’s what our kids used to call her.”

Flores, age 70, is the cooker and a lot more in the expanding El Charro empire, where she commands a small army of 500 workers. The latest venture, Charro Steak, is a glamorous downtown steakhouse with a decidedly Mexican twist. Sir Veza’s Taco Garage, a gastropub outside the Tucson Mall, has plenty of TVs and a hybrid menu.

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Think beer and tequila, burgers with guacamole, and pizza Mexican-style.

Hecho en Vegas, in the distant gambling capital, is a partnership with the MGM hotel and casino. Closer to home are restaurants in Oro Valley and the Tucson Foothills, and a café in Sahuarita. Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport has a quick-grab Sir Veza’s, and before long El Charro plans a triumphant return to Tucson International Airport.

Then there’s the catering business and a food commissary, a humming commercial kitchen with U.S. Department of Agriculture accreditation. Sourcing foods through Shamrock distributors, the kitchen does food prep for nearly all the Charro operations.

No wonder Flores is on the go 16 or 17 hours a day. In two weeks of chasing after Flores, I found her one afternoon at Sir Veza’s with her son, Raymon Flores, taste testing possible new carnitas dishes. Days later she

Jules Flin, a skilled stonemason, built a home for his family at 311 N. Court Ave. in the 1900s.

Examples of his skilled stonework are still visible in the restaurant.

greeted El Charro customers deep into a weekend night. And on a weekday lunchtime, she was racing between her commissary, “my cocina grande” as she calls it, and Charro Steak.

Above all else, Carlotta concerns herself with food. El Charro continues to serve up the classic Mexican comida of Sonora and Tucson, but she’s always tweaking the dishes to satisfy contemporary tastes.

“All the recipes I do are gluten-free, and all my roux are gluten-free, made with rice flour instead of wheat,” she says, though customers can opt for wheat tortillas. “We use no antibiotics and no hormones. I got rid of all fructose.”

Up-to-date selections include non-Tía Monica-like offerings like vegan tamales and enchiladas stuffed with veggies.

“The food has to taste good,” Carlotta says. “I’m testing all the time. This is my home.

I’m going to eat here. My family, my friends, my customers are going to eat here.”

Raymon, the oldest of the Flores’s three children, calls himself third-generation El Charro. Proud that the business has been run for nearly a century by two women in succession, he and his siblings donated an interactive Mexican food exhibition to the Tucson Children’s Museum. A black-and-white portrait of Monica Flores in her prime, surrounded by paper flowers, presides over the toy foods and grills.

“There are three chapters to the El Charro story,” he says. “First, Monica. It’s a grand story about a single woman who was the pioneer.

Second, when Carlotta took over. This is when the business prospered.”

And the third chapter?

“We’ve been there. We’ve done that.

The question has to be about the test of time.

Where are we going next?”

El Charro’s greatest boast is that it gave birth to the chimichanga.

Carlotta Flores insists she was present at the delivery.

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C harro ’ s greatest boast is that it gave birth to the chimichanga. Carlotta Flores insists she was present at the delivery.

She was about 7 years old at the time, spending the night with her cousins at an all-girl slumber party at Tía Monica’s.

Flin had no children of her own but was devoted to her nieces and nephews. “She was our great-aunt but she was like a grandmother,” Carlotta says. “She was a real Auntie Mame.”

At the party “we were all hungry and she was making ground beef burritos.

She had a deep fryer and one of the burritos fell in the oil.”

Flin was angry but, so the story goes, refrained from muttering the Mexican expletive chingada in front of the kids. Instead she blurted out a variant: chimichanga.

The hungry girls ate the culinary mistake and loved it, and the newly named fried dish immediately made it onto Flin’s menu. “To this day, the chimi is one of my most popular items,” her great-niece says.

The roots of El Charro go even further back in Tucson’s history than this fateful pajama party. The tale begins with a Frenchman, Jules Flin, a skilled stonemason brought to town

by Bishop Jean-Baptiste Salpointe.

Salpointe was building Tucson’s first Catholic cathedral in the old Plaza de la Mesilla, current site of La Placita, and Flin carved its elegant Romanesque façade and spectacular circular rose window. Flin finished the job in 1883, but the church was demolished in 1936.

Flin’s masterpiece was rescued. Today, his portal, rebuilt stone by stone, graces the exterior of the Arizona Historical Society on Second Street.

Flin married a Mexican-born woman of French-Mexican descent, Carlota Brunet (namesake of Carlotta Flores), and the two had a family of eight children. In 1900, Flin built a home for this flock at 311 N. Court Ave. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the house boasts a fine example of Flin’s stonework at the base of the front porch: a foundation of black volcanic basalt rock, quarried from “A” Mountain. l

Steven G. Robles, a server at El Charro, serves up a Topopo Salad.

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Monica, the eldest child, born in 1887, spoke a linguistic potpourri of French, Spanish, and English and grew up with a similarly eclectic blend of foods. Living in Mexico for a time, she became an expert in Mexican cuisine.

Widowed or divorced (the record is unclear), she returned to Tucson a single woman and supported herself by doing what she knew best: cooking.

She opened her first restaurant in 1922, naming it for the precision horse riders of the borderlands.

One early location was on Fourth Avenue, another inside the Temple of Music and Art. Eventually Flin moved the operation to the center of town, to the two-story house on Broadway where the chimichanga was birthed—not far from her father’s old cathedral. Her menu was not strictly Mexican during her heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s.

“She was across the street from the Greyhound Bus Station,” Carlotta says.

“Travelers went over to the restaurant, and she had roast beef, lamb, liver and onion, and pies on the menus.”

The kids would go along with Tía Monica as she bought produce from the Chinese grocers who raised crops in the fields along the Santa Cruz River and shopped for gourmet items at the Grand Central Market downtown. There was even a farmers’ market, Carlotta says, behind Jacomé’s department store.

Flin’s good days ended with the urban renewal of the late 1960s. The wrecking balls swung into downtown and smashed more than 260 buildings, destroying historic homes, both grand and humble, stores, restaurants, and even a theater. Flin’s building was spared—it still stands within La Placita—but she was evicted in 1966.

She took refuge in her parents’ old family home on Court Avenue and re-established her restaurant there.

But it didn’t thrive. She was old by this time, 79 going on 80. “People took advantage of her,” Carlotta says.

It was time for Chapter 2.

The El Charro empire includes Sir Veza’s Taco Garage, a gastropub outside the Tucson Mall with plenty of TVs and a hybrid menu.

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The next generation in the Flores family starts learning how to run a restaurant early, in an interactive Mexican food exhibition at the Tucson Children’s Museum donated by the family. From left: Marques Flores Jr., 8, Sofia Flores, 6, Alisandra Flores, 5, Alex Carrillo, 4, and Raymon Flores Jr., 7.

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ar lot ta was bor n in 1946, the daughter of Monica’s niece Zarina and William Dunn, a Mexican-born Irishman. By the time Monica’s world had started to crumble, Carlotta was already married, the mother of two baby boys, and living in Los Angeles.

Having grown up around food, Carlotta was doing a little catering—deli meat platters and lasagnas—and her husband was building an electrical engineering business. But family matters called, and she came back home to Tucson in 1971 to get El Charro ready to put on the market.

“When I walked in and saw it, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sell it,” she says, shaking her head. Instead of selling El Charro, Carlotta took it over. The family returned to Tucson, and Carlotta hired two cooks who had worked for her aunt, who died soon after the transition. At first, Tucsonans were anxious that Carlotta continue Flin’s exact menu, asking for burgers and fried chicken, but she eventually made a purely Mexican menu.

A daughter was born shortly after the move, and the young family juggled running the restaurant with raising three little children.

“I would open the restaurant at 6 in the morning. Ray would take the kids. I’d get them after school. Then Ray had the night shift,” Carlotta says. The Flores offspring grew up in the restaurant, helping out at an early age by wiping the tables (“They thought it was a game,” their father says).

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Carlotta’s husband, now 80, says he “had no interest in the restaurant business,” but nevertheless turned his attention to El Charro’s restaurant equipment. He did have one food skill.

He’d grown up eating “fabulous” Mexican meals prepared by his mother, and he became the in-house food critic. “I was always a finicky guy,” he says.

By 1980, Carlotta’s careful attention to quality and Raymond’s proselytizing for his wife’s food paid off. El Charro Café began developing a national reputation. One day a reporter with The Los Angeles Times dropped by for a meal, and after eating Carlotta’s food and hearing Raymond’s spiel, he wrote that Tucson was “the Mexican food capital of the world.”

The story went viral before viral was a thing.

“It got syndicated,” says son Ray. “Every Tribune paper in the world ran it.” El Charro quickly began appearing on Top Ten lists throughout the country.

“Now, fast forward, the city has adopted a slogan, ‘The best 23 miles of Mexican food,’” Ray notes. “We said it before everyone else. And we were downtown before everyone else.”

The city center is hopping now, relishing its UNESCO designation as a City of Gastronomy. But the good times follow decades of a downtown downturn, when businesses fled en masse.

El Charro Café kept the lights on during the dark years.

“Downtown became desolate,” Carlotta says. “It was a difficult time. We were off the beaten path but we stayed. I stuck it out.”

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As El Charro nears its 95th anniversary, Carlotta Flores, who is 70, attributes the company’s forwardlooking attitude in part to her children, the third generation of the restaurant clan.

Tucsonans repaid the family’s loyalty by making El Charro Café a special occasion restaurant, where they celebrated engagements and mourned loved ones. One recent funeral luncheon, Carlotta says, memorialized an elderly man who had long ago proposed to his wife over an El Charro Sonoran meal.

Once their kids grew up, the Floreses began expanding their food empire. Ray readily admits he lacks his mother’s passion for cooking, but he’s tuned in to current trends. He developed the bar Toma, with 100 varieties of tequila.

There’ve been some setbacks. An early stab at a fast casual eatery, Charro Grille, misfired, Ray says, an idea ahead of its time.

A popular eastside El Charro lost its lease when it was leveled to make way for a new CVS. And in the age of Yelp, Ray says, a restaurant can stagger if an angry diner spreads his or her rage far and wide online.

Despite the ramp-up in scale since the time of Tía Monica, Ray says, “Our product is still made the way it was 100 years ago, by hand.”

The family has high hopes for the new Charro Steak, in the heart of Tucson’s restaurant district. The décor is Mexican modern, with sheets of hammered copper on the walls, and the 90 January/February 2017

menu is contemporary. At lunchtime diners can choose their own mixtas to go with their steak—kale salad, for one, or nopalitos mixed in with classic creamed spinach for another.

For the first time ever, Carlotta has ceded her chef title and hired another chef to run the place. (At her other properties she still retains the title chef.) For Charro Steak she went with veteran chef Gary Hickey. “They have to be great steaks,” Carlotta says, nodding approval of the über-tender skirt cut chosen by Hickey for the lunchtime carne asada.

The new venture’s “story,” says Ray, is the contemporary mantra of “ranch to table.” But the trick is to balance the new ideas in food with the venerable reputation of the mother restaurant.

The name of the new place, after all, is Charro Steak, Ray says.

As El Charro nears its 95th anniversary, Carlotta attributes the company’s forward-looking attitude in part to the third generation of the restaurant clan. All three of Carlotta’s children work in the business, Ray as president, brother Marques as the downtown manager, and sister Candace as head of catering, through the family-owned Stillwell House.

“I’m 70 and my husband is 80,” Carlotta says. “The younger members of the family are the force behind us to stay current.”

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Ray Flores is forward looking, tuned in to new trends. The new Charro Steak is based on a “ranch to table” concept.

And it looks like a fourth generation is following the example of the third. On the day that Ray and Carlotta were sampling carnitas at Sir Veza’s, Ray’s wife, Sasha, hurried in with their two kids, Raymon, 7, and Alisandra, 5. Sasha works in real estate but she’d been called in to sub on a missing server’s shift at Sir Veza’s. She left the kids with their dad and they settled into a banquette with a practiced air.

The older child already seemed clued in to his place in the El Charro succession. Extending his hand, he introduced himself.

“I’m Ray,” he said, “And I’m the third one.”  92 January/February 2017

El Charro Café. 311 N. Court Ave. 520.622.1922. ElCharroCafe.com.

Charro Steak. 188 E. Broadway Blvd.

520.485.1922. CharroSteak.com Longtime Tucson Weekly art critic Margaret Regan has often written about Tucson’s history. She is the author of two award-winning books on immigration, Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire and The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands.

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A tal e f Two O Walls

Along a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, two visions for the climate-changed future are unfolding.

By Todd Miller ¡ Photography by Jeff Smith

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T

he U.S. B or der P at rol agent was positioned behind a rust-colored vehicle barrier, on the other side of the international boundary line. He stopped when he saw me, bent down and taking a picture of grass. I was examining a tuft of sacaton, one of the several varieties of native grasses brought back to life by one of the largest ecological restoration projects on the U.S.-Mexico border, at the San Bernardino Ranch, located about 12 miles east of Agua Prieta/Douglas.

Juan Manuel Perez, dressed in jeans and a white cowboy hat, wasn’t fazed. Perez, who is originally from Chihuahua, is the foreman of the organization Cuenca Los Ojos (CLO) and in charge of 45,000 acres of restoration projects spread throughout the region. We walked away from the vehicle and into a nearby wash, called Silver Creek, where Perez showed me what was at the heart of Cuenca Los Ojos (which means “watershed of springs”

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in English) restoration on San Bernardino: an ancient technique of strategically piling rocks to slow down the flow of water across land. After years of mechanized farming, cattle production, and now drought, this once parched and barren landscape could begin to drink again—could again absorb this precious water.

Since the 1990s, the restoration project has embedded galvanized wire cages, called gabions, on the banks and beds of washes. These gabions are filled to the brim with rocks and go as far as 18 feet deep into the ground. At first glance, they have the striking appearance of an intricate stone wall, a contrast to the border barrier just 100 yards away. But instead of keeping people out, they were built to be sponges shaped to the contour of the streambed and riverbank, slowing the water and replenishing the soil with life. Before they were built, rushing water from monsoon storms would take topsoil and leave cutting erosion. Now, there is water year-round.

(Previous page) Juan Manuel Perez, the foreman of the organization Cuenca Los Ojos, walks along a rock gabion wall. (Above) Thanks in part to restoration work done by CLO, the water table around San Bernardino Ranch has risen 30 feet even during a punishing drought.

Perez gestured to the reviving landscape around him, to the 7,000 acres we could not see. It was not only what was on the surface—the native grasses and sprouting desert willows and cottonwoods—that was so remarkable. It was also what was below: a water table that had risen 30 feet in the middle of a brutal 15-year drought that everywhere else was sucking the land dry. All throughout the borderlands and Arizona, after years of hotter weather and less precipitation, the grass had withered, the earth had cracked, and the animals had died. Yet, water was recharging even 10 to 15 miles downstream from Rancho San Bernardino into Mexico, to places where people hadn’t seen it for decades. From brown to green, from completely dry to lush: to me, it seemed like a miracle.

As Perez and his CLO colleague David Hodges explained this, the Border Patrol agent backed his F-150 truck into the

wash where he continued to keep an eye on us. This suspicion is only the most palpable tension between cross-border ecological restoration and one of the most militarized borders on the face of the earth. When sharing resources or doing measurements, what should be a five-minute walk to your neighbors turned into a 50-mile drive through a distant port of entry.

Both border militarization and ecological restoration are two distinct responses to the most challenging ecological crisis of our time: the changing climate. In this microcosm along a remote area of border, these two contrasting visions might just embody the future struggles of the world. As the Trump administration takes office with promises of hyper-racialized border building, you could say what I saw that day on this ranch was a tale of two walls—one about restoration, and the other about exclusion.

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B

The ejido 18 de Agosto is a community of 29 families nine miles downstream from the restoration area. y the time you read this , 2016 will have been deemed

the hottest year in historical record. Globally, the warmest 15 years have all occurred in the 2000s. The planet, according to 97 percent of scientists, is heating up due to human activity. The earth is on track to hit an average temperature increase of 6.3 degrees (3.5 degrees centigrade) by 2100—well above what has been deemed safe by scientists.

The desert borderlands of both the U.S. Southwest and the Mexican north are in the crosshairs of these climate cataclysms.

“In apocalyptic visions of global climate change, the North American Southwest makes an easy protagonist,” wrote William deBuys in A Great Aridness, “the geographical equivalent of a stalled car on railroad tracks. Its aridity exposes it to shocks of all kinds.”

Indeed, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are where the front lines of climate change collide with the front lines of border militarization. And with a climate denier at the helm of the United States—Trump has claimed that climate change is a “hoax” that originated from China—who has pledged to ramp up the border build-up, tensions are poised to sharpen considerably.

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A

T er an is from the ejido 18 de Agosto, a small community of 29 families nine miles downstream from the restoration. Teran started working for Cuenca Los Ojos six years ago, piling the rocks in the galvanized wire cages of the gabions. Now he’s in charge of the agricultural projects—including the distribution of seeds of native grasses and the harvest of pistachio trees, among other things—on the ranch. When in 1976 Teran started farming in 18 de Agosto, it was dry. “We had very little water,” he says. They had to dig wells in the parched land, but it was difficult to get water they needed for harvest and animals. Because of this, when the CLO projects began, the community was dead-set against it, thinking, as Teran put it, “that the gabion dams were going to leave us without water.”

Almost all U.S. national security assessments indicated that water shortages, among other climate shocks, could propel mass migrations of people to the United States from places like 18 de Agosto. A 2003 Pentagon-commissioned report gave one of the first crude glimpses of how U.S. security officials were viewing future scenarios of climate cataclysms and massive lberto

Juan Manuel Perez is in charge of 45,000 acres of restoration projects spread throughout the region about 12 miles east of Agua Prieta/Douglas.

displacements: “The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries because they have the resources and reserves to achieve self-sufficiency.

Borders will be strengthened around the country to hold back unwanted starving immigrants from the Caribbean islands, Mexico, and South America.”

This report came out during the largest border enforcement build-up ever in the United States, one that started with operations in the 1990s, and accelerated in the post-9/11 era. Billions of dollars have pumped up an unprecedented enforcement and surveillance regime. The apparatus of border infrastructure includes almost 700 miles of walls and a network of surveillance cameras, motion sensors, radars, and drones run by the country’s largest federal law enforcement agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Border Patrol, a self-described paramilitary agency under CBP, has increased its ranks five-fold since the early 1990s. And now the tripartite mission of counterterrorism, immigration enforcement, and drug interdiction has accepted the vision of a future world made chaotic by climate change.

Yet, just across the line on the Mexican side, CLO and other restoration efforts are trying to create an entirely distinct future not only by restoring habitats, but also by supporting parched 100 January/February 2017

communities like 18 de Agosto. Much of this restoration work relies on the simplicity of strategically placed rock piles—in the case of CLO, 40,000 trincheras (smaller rock pile dams) and 50 gabion dams. At Silver Creek, the CLO’s David Hodges kept saying, with the cottonwoods taking hold throughout the area and the spread of native grasses—seven species have returned—that “we have passed the tipping point.” The wording struck me. In climate change literature, tipping points almost always refer to catastrophic points of no return: the ice sheets disintegrating, the violent super storms, the endless droughts.

The tipping points here meant that the trees and grasses were not only growing back, they had also reached a point where they were doing it on their own.

For this restoration to happen, cross-border cooperation was essential. As Louise Misztal, the executive director of the Sky Island Alliance—another one of many organizations involved in cross-border restoration—said, “rivers, wildlife, and ecosystems do not recognize international borders.” Misztal said people on both sides of the divide were excited about the “unity building” needed for ecological restoration work. Sky Island Alliance has set up cross-border exchange programs pairing experts with students to fuel their projects. Yet the border apparatus is constantly inhibiting such work.

W

hen ,

in 2008, Homeland Security bulldozers began to blade the border in front of Rancho San Bernardino to create a road and construct vehicle barriers, they cut through a migratory wildlife corridor. Valer Austin, originally an artist from New York and one of the founders of Cuenca Los Ojos, said that this type of border militarization was “impeding the flow of nature.” The blading not only impacted water flows and courses, the new road brought significant Homeland Security vehicle traffic, leaving a permanent indenture in the middle of an otherwise rising streambed full

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of new life and water, and cutting into the harvesting work of the gabions.

When the border security bulldozers blazed their path through the San Bernardino wildlife refuge, they did it without any consultation. DHS waived 37 environmental and cultural heritage laws to build the walls, barriers, and roads along the border, all in the name of national security. Once, a bulldozer toppled into a restoring wetland and wasn’t extracted for two days. There has been so much environmental destruction along the international divide—by not only the massive wall and

In response to border militarization programs, artists have painted colorful murals on the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Douglas.

barrier construction but also by Border Patrol four-wheel-drive trucks that have created roads by trampling thousands of miles of pristine and protected areas in places like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge—that the Sierra Club formed a borderlands program to oppose and mitigate any further expansion.

In 2010, the United States declared climate change a top national security threat. In 2012 and 2014, DHS incorporated the “climate threat” into its mission with a climate adaptation plan and its quadrennial review. In these documents, DHS

conveyed the possibility of potential upheavals in Mexico and Latin America due to climate change. Perhaps in the halls of the U.S. Congress—and in our Oval Office—there still is a debate about climate change, but in the halls of the military there are no such illusions. Homeland Security, which has been described as a “standing army on U.S. soil,” has stated directly the need to prepare U.S. borders for “more frequent, short-term, disaster-driven migration, such as mass migration.” There is no mention, however, of what might be a much more effective solution—cross-boundary ecological restoration.

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Restoration work on the San Bernardino Ranch has brought year-round water flow back to a landscape that had been parched and barren.

restoration project began in the late 1990s on the San Bernardino Ranch, the people of 18 de Agosto were dead-set against it. Who could blame them? Mexico had just entered the NAFTA era; the country’s natural resources were put up for sale to the highest bidder and the Mexican government was cutting subsidies and credit to small farmers like Teran. In fact, Teran told me that “it was impossible” to grow a crop like corn to sell profitably, saying, “We can’t compete.” Add to this the aridity of climate change, the drying out of water sources needed to grow the wheat the community had collectively farmed until the 1990s, and you had what sociologist Christian Parenti called the “catastrophic convergence” of political, economic, and ecological issues. Such a convergence often results in the displacement of people; this hen the water

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was the case in 18 de Agosto. The elementary and secondary schools were shut down in the 1990s. People began to leave, Teran’s four children included. Now one of his daughters lives in Agua Prieta and has low-wage work at a maquiladora, or factory.

Another daughter is in Oklahoma.

As I stood again with Alberto Teran in the same place where the Border Patrol agent in the idling vehicle had eyed us months before, he spotted a flattened backpack and plastic bottle with condensed water droplets under a knotty mesquite tree. Someone had crossed the border, and not too long ago. As we walked toward Silver Creek and the gabions, Teran told me that in his community, several years ago, water started to appear in places it had never appeared before. He told me that the river began to run again year-round. He told me again that in the middle of

Coaxing water back into a landscape benefits wildlife as well as humans.

the drought the water table in the San Bernardino Valley began to rise, while everywhere else they were depleting.

The drying up of the Mexican north has led many researchers to predict that people—perhaps thousands of people—would be on the move as a direct result of climate change. But the restoration project, Teran told me later as we stood in front of the running stream, “is benefiting us, not only there on the ranch San Bernardino, but here, 12 kilometers downstream.”

Now people in 18 de Agosto are expanding the restoration work, and have embedded gabions along the river. Teran told me they are thinking about irrigating the plot of farmland where 106 January/February 2017

they grow sorghum and alfalfa. There is still a lot of work to do, but now there is a trickle of hope. In this small area, a drought is being reversed.

Indeed, the very sound of the water passing behind Teran as he talked was a testament to the importance of cross-border restoration work as we advance further into a warming 21st century predicted to be fraught with upheavals. A rebounding watershed could not only revive habitat, it could also support sustenance agriculture for people like Teran and his children. If done on a large scale, the very thousands predicted to migrate to the United States might choose to stay in places like 18 de Agosto.

W

Gabions are rock walls, some as tall as 18 feet, built to be sponges shaped to the contour of the streambed and riverbank, slowing the water and replenishing the soil with life.

hen A lberto T er an and I visited the gabions in Silver Creek four months later, I could see a newly erected surveillance tower, a tower equipped with radar and cameras with night vision and thermal energy capabilities. In 2014, CBP awarded the company Elbit Systems of America a contract to build 52 such towers across southern Arizona to the tune of almost $1 billion. The purpose of the tower was simply to do surveillance. It provided no water to 18 de Agosto, supported no new vegetation, offered no solution to the climate crisis.

In a conversation with Valer Austin, I asked her, given the success of the restoration at San Bernardino, what could

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CLO and other restoration groups in the borderlands do with the $19.5 billion designated to border and immigration enforcement each year? When she heard that number, she, like many others, said, “Oh, my God.” Then quickly, “That money could be put to better use.”

From the high-society of New York City’s Upper West Side, Austin came to Arizona in the early ‘80s with her husband, Josiah. They bought a ranch and began to revive the landscape by piling up thousands of small rock dam trincheras. After dazzling success, they expanded and eventually cofounded the foundation Cuenca Los Ojos.

Austin said that CLO had invested millions, much from her own family inheritance, in the restoration projects in the borderlands—most prominently San Bernardino—that have restored a big swath of flora and fauna, including the return of wildlife to an area with the largest diversity of bees in the world. “But what if you had 100 times that [money]? You would 110 January/February 2017

get a whole river system to run. It would expand like ripples out and out and out. It would touch people for miles on either side of this river.

“With that kind of money,” Austin said, referring again to the combined budgets of CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “we can restore a lot of streams that on the

The earth is on track to hit an average temperature increase of 6.5 degrees by 2100; scientists also predict more severe and more frequent droughts across the Southwest.

ground would alter climate change in the region. It would make a huge difference. It would change the economics [of the region]. It would change the health. It would change everything on the border.

“It would make all the difference between life and death.” 

CuencaLosOjos.org.

Todd Miller is a journalist based in Tucson and the author of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security and the forthcoming book Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security.

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ESSAY

Boy the Cowboy

By Gwendoline Hernandez | Illustrations by Molly Kiely

I

t ’ s 1959. Americans rush to the movie theater to watch Marilyn Monroe. Elvis Presley sings on the radio. Hawaii is about to be admitted to the United States; Fidel Castro will take power in Cuba. Life goes on in Mexico with Adolfo Lopez Mateos as the new president, and in Nogales, Sonora, there is a little restaurant called The Sonora Sinaloa.

A cowboy sits at his usual corner table, where he sits every time he’s on business at the border. The waitress asks for his order; he asks for a recommendation.

“Que tal unos chiles en nogada?” The señorita comes back to his table and places the white and indigo talavera plate holding a dark chile poblano smothered in a creamy sauce. It looks like a

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snow-capped little mountain, decorated with chopped parsley and tiny red seeds that remind the cowboy of Christmas. Velvety to the touch, it is sweet, sour, and spicy. There must be nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper. The cowboy senses all that richness, a complication of flavors. He signals for the waitress to come to his table.

“Is there a problem sir?”

“Who’s dun’ it?” He points to the clean plate.

Josefa is in the kitchen. She’s been up since the sky turned gray, even before the roosters announce to the sun that it is time to rise. She’s toasted the coffee beans, seasoned the pork to be milled for fresh chorizo, roasted the chiles, and gone to the mercado to order the produce.

Josefa walks out of the kitchen, approaches the cowboy’s table. “¿Todo bien, señor?” Everything all right? She wipes her hands on her apron.

“Boyd’s the name. You can call me Boyd.”

“El boy? El boy como cauboi?”

“No se dice boy! Se dice, Boyd! B.O.Y.D. I have a ranch north of Tucson. I tend the cattle and my land. I have acres and acres of Sonoran Desert, a stream runnin’ by, lotta work to do, lotta cowboys to feed, and my wife could use all the help she can get.

I’ve been coming here a while and I need to hire a good cook like yerself.”

“Un rancho?” asks Josefa.

For a moment, Josefa remembers her family’s ranch down in Navolato, Sinaloa—the ranch that was taken away by the government, a consequence of the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution. It was her father’s land and she knew how to work it. She used to run through those cornfields; used to long for the mango trees to be in season, to eat their fruit with sticky hands and a drippy chin.

Josefa does not speak English but she’s quick and understands that the offer is about working at a ranch for the family. She says, “No tengo papeles, Boy. ¡Solo tengo mi pasaporte!”

“No problemo! I’ll get yer papers for ’ya!”

“No se dice ‘no problemo’, se dice ‘no hay problema,’” she jokes back.

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Josefa will leave her young daughter in care of a relative. She asks herself if she’s risking too much. What if this vaquero has other intentions? Will her daughter resent this? Will she belong in this new place?

A few weeks later, in 1959, Mr. Boyd and Josefa are at the Nogales Port of Entry. There’s a portrait of President Eisenhower on the wall. Josefa is holding a small suitcase. She hands over her Mexican passport.

“American citizen,” says the cowboy. The officer jots something on a ledger and says, “Welcome back.” Boyd the cowboy tips his hat.

“Gracias,” says Josefa, and she enters the country as if entering her neighbor’s house.

At Boyd’s ranch, Josefa faces a long table that stretches under a covered pavilion. The table is full of hungry cowboys.

She places plates heaped high with pancakes at strategic points and gestures the cowboys to begin their breakfast.

“Listen, ‘ere, Josefa, I don’t mean to superintend ya, don’t make us no pancakes no more, cook up some good ol’ Mexican food. That’s why I hired ya for.”

“Esta bien, patrón!”

For the next days, the next months, the next years, the cowboys eat huevos rancheros, divorciados, chilaquiles, chorizo, frijoles, café de olla, tortillas, chicharrones, and nopalitos.

Oh! How many nopalitos!

And that’s just for breakfast.

For dinner, the fine meals are served under the purple sky and white stars. There are calabacitas, gorditas, chalupas, albondigas, enchiladas, enfrijoladas, entomatadas, frijoles charros, huaraches, burritos, tostadas, menudo, mole, pozole, rajas con crema, sopes, tacos, birria, caldo de queso, cazuela, cocido, asado. Desserts are delicately prepared. Atole champurrado, arroz con leche, tapiocas, merengues, torrejas, camote enmielado, empanadas, sweet gorditas, dulce de leche. Christmas is ready with batches and batches of tamales, and Lent wouldn’t be Lent without a pot of capirotada.

It takes many hours to prep the meals, only to watch the vaqueros gobble it all up in less than 10 minutes. Josefa is grateful to get up every day to do what she loves, to see the Boyd family and watch the cowboys eat with gusto. And they thank her for every meal. She tells them she cooks with love—that’s why the food tastes so good.

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But there is no rest for Josefa. Her back pain intensifies at night. Her feet are sore. She longs to be with her family. She asks herself if she is still doing the right thing. Is this pain in her heart and in her body worth it? How many more months must they wait for the papers to arrive? It’s the only way she can have her daughter with her.

She also misses the little things—the radio novelas and the music of Pedro Vargas and Pedro Infante. Instead, she listens to a country station that Mrs. Boyd plays on the Admiral.

It is 1964. American servicemen are dying in Vietnam. Despite the Civil Rights Act, the violence continues. The Beatles take the world by storm, and Josefa and her daughter are at the Immigration Office accepting their new status as legal residents.

Boy el Cowboy delivered on his promise. Josefa goes back to cooking gallina pinta for the cowboys with her daughter close by.

Josefa continued to work at Mr. Boyd’s ranch until her body couldn’t do it anymore. She moved to Tucson and made the best tamales and butter gorditas in the Old Pueblo. Josefa watched her family grow one Sunday supper at a time. She became a citizen of the United States. She participated in her community and watched her family sprout: two of her grandchildren went off to the service, and she prayed for two of her great-grandchildren who served in Iraq.

One day, I sat with Josefa, my grandmother, out on the porch. We watched the garden in the gentle breeze of the spring morning. A hummingbird flitted from flower to flower. The vague murmur of the kitchen radio could be heard. She’d tuned to a classic country station and I was puzzled by her choice in music.

She was humming to Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.”

“Abuelita, how do you know this song?”

“La tocaban en el rancho del Boy.” They used to play it at Boy’s ranch.  Gwendoline Hernandez, a Tucson native, is an information technology engineer who now dedicates her time to her family, writing, and producing MiTucsonRadio.com. Her favorite Mexican dishes are Pozole al Estilo Sinaloa and Marlin en Escabeche.

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Homestead

Skills for self-sufficient living & eating

Putting Down Roots

By Amy Belk | Illustrations by Adela Antoinette

I

remember being surprised when I learned that okra isn’t a

vegetable. Because it’s a seed-bearing product of fertilization, okra is botanically defined as a fruit. The same is true of other popular “veggies” like peppers, cucumber, squash, corn, and eggplant. Unless you’re a botanist, the botanical differences between a fruit and a vegetable probably aren’t all that fascinating, but when it comes to gardening, there are a couple of differences worth noting.

In Baja Arizona, true veggies rule the winter garden, as they often require cooler temperatures to develop good flavor, or bolt too quickly in high temperatures. Rather than being the result of a pollinator’s hard work, real vegetables come from the vegetative parts of a plant such as roots, stems, leaves, or buds. Fruit, on the other hand, often needs heat to develop good flavor, and many types of fruit won’t develop at all in the absence of pollinators. It makes sense that fruit is more abundant in summertime.

Fruit is generally designed to be plucked from the plant (or to fall to the ground if it goes unplucked), so harvesting repeatedly from the same plant doesn’t usually cause it much distress. When we harvest a vegetable, however, we’re removing parts of the plant that it uses to produce, store, or transport nutrients or water. Some of the leafy veggies can be plucked repeatedly, but most of our root veggies can only be harvested once.

Luckily, we can begin sowing root veggies just after monsoons in August or in early fall. Starting this early takes advantage of warm days that can help speed up germination, and then cooling temperatures as roots begin to develop. If you didn’t start early, there’s still time to get a harvest or two out of crops like carrots, beets, and radishes before it gets too warm, especially if you choose bolt-resistant or heat-tolerant varieties. Plant another batch every two to three weeks through March or April to extend the harvesting window through winter and into early summer if you live at higher elevations or if the weather is kind. Planting successively allows you to harvest just what you and your family can use each time.

Direct seeding in the garden is the recommended method for starting root veggies, since they’re notoriously difficult to transplant. However, the seeds can be very tiny and difficult for some of us to handle or manage. Arranging seeds on seed tape can be a helpful tool in planting easy rows of tiny seeds with less seed waste and less need for thinning later on. Seed tape is something that you can “glue” seeds to and then plant in the ground in strips.

Good seed tape decomposes as the seeds sprout and grow. You can sit down at the kitchen table and glue the seeds down on strips of cheap, 1-ply toilet paper with a weak flour/water paste at whatever spacing they need, then plant the strips of tape for straight rows that require less thinning than seedlings that were planted by the pinch.

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Consider planting in a raised bed or in planters that can be protected if rabbits are a problem in your garden.

Even the deep-rooted veggies like carrots can grow in containers that are at least 10 to 12 inches deep and wide.

Some gardeners prefer growing root veggies in raised beds or planters because it’s easier to create the ideal loose and obstruction-free soil that they grow best in. Patches of caliche, rocks, or hard clay are common causes of misshapen carrots, parsnips, and other deeply-rooted veggies.

I think most gardeners would agree that the long wait for results is the most difficult part of growing root crops.

A few radish varieties germinate in about a week and are ready to eat in as few as 24 days (in the case of Cherry Belle). Other root vegetables can take two or three weeks to germinate, and it can be more than 70 days until they’re ready for the table. Parsnips are particularly slow, some needing as long as 110 days before they’re ready to harvest.

In general, the faster a root crop matures, the later into the season you can plant it.

Once they’ve germinated and are going strong with enough top growth, it’s time to thin your veggies to the proper distance to give each plant plenty of space. There’s no need to bother with thinning if you happen to be growing a root crop solely for its greens, but if you want those nice, large roots, they need room to grow. Overcrowding is another common cause of stunted or deformed root crops.

It’s usually recommended to thin with a pair of snips to diminish root damage to the plants you’d like to keep, but I love to pull at least a few of the small, sweet carrots. I always feel a bit crummy about removing a seedling that I planted, but snipped baby greens and tiny carrots in my salads make this chore a little less heartbreaking.

Fertilize carefully as your crops grow. Root veggies are generally light feeders, and too much nitrogen can motivate them to favor leafy growth over root development. This is fine if you’re growing them for their greens, but it can cause roots to be stunted and less flavorful. It’s a good idea to work these light feeders into a spot where there were heavier feeders like summer squash or melons the previous season. Radish is one of the heaviest feeders of the root crops, which might have something to do with how fast it grows.

Check on the size of the roots just under the surface as you get closer to the harvest date. Dig up a tester from time to time, and harvest when the flavor is just to your liking.

Younger root veggies often taste milder and sweeter, while those left in the ground for too long can get woody and develop a bitter flavor.

Seed packets are pretty good about telling you what to do with their contents, but the information isn’t always printed for our region. Here’s a quick guide to growing some of the most popular root veggies here in Baja Arizona.

Amy Belk is a garden writer and photographer, a certified arborist, and a certified nursery professional who has been learning from her garden for 15 years. She and her husband homestead on a little piece of the desert in the heart of Tucson.

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Brassica Root Crops are in the same family as cabbage and broccoli, so they’re susceptible to many of the same pests and ailments. Put some distance between these crops and others from the same family to help slow the spread of potential problems.

Rutabaga is a natural cross between cabbage and turnip. It’s larger than a turnip, and takes longer to mature, but has a milder flavor. Sow from late August to early March, or from mid-September until early February at the lowest elevations. Plant two or three seeds around ¼-inch deep at six-inch intervals. Pick the strongest seedlings and thin down to one plant every six inches when they’re around four inches tall. The greens are edible, and young leaves are the tastiest, but try to take only a few leaves (no more than 25 percent) per plant to keep root development going strong.

Begin sowing turnip seed around mid-August, or in mid-September at lower elevations. Plant them about ¼-inch deep every ½ inch, or at closer intervals if you only want the greens. Sow more every two to three weeks. When seedlings are about ½-inch tall they should be thinned down to two- to six-inch spacing, depending on the size of the variety. Some people enjoy turnip green thinnings more than the notoriously bitter mature greens that are a southern comfort food staple.

Beets are planted from late September until March at lower elevations, and from early August until April in Tucson. Sow among winter vegetables with shallow roots like kohlrabi or lettuce to save some space. Soak the seeds for four to 12 hours, and plant them ¼-inch deep at 1 inch spacing. Plant more every three weeks for continuous harvesting. Thin them once the seedlings are five inches tall to one plant every four to six inches, and add the thinnings to your salads. You can continue to take up to ⅓ of the greens at a time as the remaining roots continue to grow.

Carrots enjoy a long, continuous growing season through the winter across much of Baja Arizona. Seeds can be sown from late August until early March at Tucson’s elevation. Most are planted at ¼ inch depth with about a ½- to one-inch spacing. When seedlings are an inch tall, they can be thinned according to their size, which is variable. Smaller varieties can be thinned down to one plant every inch, while larger ones do better with one plant every three inches or so. Color is also variable; check out a rainbow blend of seeds for colorful surprises around harvest time. Long stretches of hot weather and too much nitrogen can ruin their flavor.

Parsnip has one of the shortest planting windows because it takes the longest to mature. Much of Baja Arizona can sow from early September until mid-January. Their flavor is said to be enhanced by a light frost. Plant three seeds ½ inch deep every three inches, and thin to one plant every three inches once they have put on a couple of inches of growth.

Most varieties of radish mature fairly quickly, so they can be planted from August until May in Tucson. Their sizes vary, so follow the spacing, depth, and thinning recommendations on the seed packet.

Sow every two weeks for continuous harvesting.

Sunroot (Jerusalem artichoke) is a perennial relative of the sunflower that is sometimes grown for its tuberous root. Plant them three to four inches deep in spring or fall. Harvesting can begin after the first killing frost and can continue through the winter and into spring.

Sunroot’s flavor is improved by chilly weather, so the sweetest ones are harvested at the end of winter. 

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Homestead

Grow Your Soil Part 3 in a series.

By Zotero Citlalcoatl | Illustrations by Adela Antoinette

L

ast issue , we learned how to build a worm bin using

five-gallon buckets or storage totes. Worms, worm bins, and compost tea are critical pieces in my repertoire for building regenerative soil. This issue, we’ll cover basic worm bin maintenance and how to harvest the worm castings. Worms are super easy. As caretakers, we’re responsible for keeping the worm bedding moist, feeding our worms, and switching out the worm bedding when it’s fully converted to castings.

One of my secrets to raising worms successfully in our desert environment is using coconut husk as part of my bedding material, because it retains water very well. Moist bedding is critical for keeping worms alive. If, for whatever reason, your worm bin does dry out, don’t freak out. It doesn’t mean that all is lost. It doesn’t even mean you have to buy new worms. Worms will begin to reproduce if they sense that the worm bedding is going to dry out.

It’s a survival mechanism and many commercial worm operations utilize semidry worm bedding to trigger this breeding behavior.

Let’s say that you’ve left town for a week and when you come back the worm bedding has dried out. Simply rehydrate the bedding and you’ll start to see baby worms within two weeks.

Why are my worms escaping? If you have a worm mutiny on your hands, where they are literally crawling their way out, it could mean several things. If the food we’re using to feed them is too acidic, they will try to escape the bin. If this is the case, remove the acidic food from the bin. Worms will also escape if the bedding is too wet,

if you’re overfeeding your worms, or there isn’t enough ventilation.

Mold will begin to grow if the worm bin isn’t getting enough oxygen—and it will stink. Luckily, these are easy fixes. Simply drill more holes into the lid, add fresh, unmoistened bedding to the top to soak up the excess moisture, and avoid acidic foods.

How do I know when my worm castings are ready to use? I look for four clear signs that let me know my worm castings are ready for harvesting. The first sign is a deep, dark brown-to-light black color. A very dark black tone is a red flag. Because the worms’ manure is toxic to them, it can kill them off. I have killed thousands of worms by letting the castings cure for too long. The second sign I look for is worm population and how they are breeding. In the beginning of the cycle, when you have new bedding in your worm bin, the worms will explode in number very rapidly. It will seem like your worms breed with every feeding. As the bedding turns into castings, the worms will begin to stop breeding. It is important to notice when this shift happens in your worm bin. At a certain point you’ll start to see less mature egg sacs and worms in the worm bin.

Harvest the castings before the worms start to die off, at first signs of their numbers dwindling. Third, if the worms begin to decrease in size, harvest. Too much manure in the bin will stunt their growth.

Finally, does the top of the worm bin look like the surface of a billiard table? It may sound crazy, but this is the best way I can describe it: It really looks like a felt surface. I’ve found this to be a good indicator that the worm bin is ready to harvest.

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If you’re seeing two or three of these at the same time, it could mean that the worm castings are past their microbial “prime.” It’s important to harvest the castings when they’re the most microbially active—this is healthier for the worms and soil.

Now that you know when to harvest your worm castings, let’s learn how to harvest them.

The most common way to harvest worm castings is using the migration strategy. This is my favorite way to harvest worm castings, because it requires minimal labor on my part. Simply bury a regular feeding in one corner of the bin, wait for the worms to move in to eat it, and then scoop out the other side of the worm bin. Of course not all the worms will migrate, but that’s O.K. The worms that don’t migrate will be planted in the garden.

The photosensitivity method is for folks that don’t want to touch worms. You simply form worm castings into a loose cone shape and shine a light on it. Why? Worms don’t like light and will “run away” from it. You’ll need a table that can get dirty. Scoop a good pile of your finished worm castings on the table, forming them into a loose cone shape. Then shine a very bright light on the pile; as they try to escape from the edges, shine the light on them guiding the worms to the base of the cone. After you move the worms down to the base, scoop the top of the cone for wormless worm castings.

What I like to call the “quick and dirty” is sifting worms by hand.

Make sure the worms have completely finished their last feeding.

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Dump the entire contents of the worm bin on a tarp, or a surface that can get dirty, and start removing the worms by hand. Before I start, I prepare fresh worm bedding, so that I can fill my worm bin right after dumping the finished castings. This way my worms aren’t sitting in a cup, or bucket, outside while I’m going through all the castings. I only bother saving the bigger worms, because these are more likely to lay eggs. By focusing on saving worms that are better for breeding, the process goes pretty fast. I look for large worms with a visible band.

Raising worms is perfect for small children, renters, hobby gardeners, and even the pros. According to the City of Tucson, 80 percent of the materials we send to the landfill can be composted, recycled, or reused. We are throwing away valuable resources that we can use to heal our landscape. It’s critical that we take an honest look at all the food we throw away, whether it’s food scraps from the dinner table or rotten food from the fridge.  To learn how to make a compost tea brewer, including a video and step-by-step instructions, visit EdibleBajaArizona.com.

Zotero Citlalcoatl is a permaculture designer and herbalist of the Sonoran Desert. Follow him on Instagram @the_sonoran_desert_grower.

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Watershed Management Group Helps Harvest Rain Want to learn how to conserve, harness, or harvest rainwater?

Call Watershed Management Group.

By Craig S. Baker | Photography by Steve McMackin

W

ater. Here in the arid Sonoran Desert, it’s something

of a loaded word. Tucson sees about 11 inches of rainfall every year, almost half of which comes all at once during the end-of-summer monsoon. And though the vast majority of that water is channeled through the streets and into gutters before being fed into the dry beds of our city’s three historic perennial rivers (the Rillito, the Pantano, and the Santa Cruz), many would-be homesteaders in the Tucson area have managed to find a way not only to harness that renewable water source but also to thrive using rain as their only source of fresh water.

Watershed Management Group is a Tucson-based nonprofit dedicated to educating the community about water conservation issues, including rainwater harvesting, and to helping local citizens implement those programs and systems on their own private and commercial properties. According to research by WMG, more rain falls on Tucson in a year than is used annually in the municipal water supply. WMG is working to create a water budget for the entire Tucson basin that shows that Tucson can meet its water needs with only local, renewable water including annual groundwater recharge, reclaimed water, and harvested water.

WMG’s executive director, Lisa Shipek, says that “although traditional thinking is that green infrastructure at the site scale is not going to have an impact,” research done by WMG suggests that a single rain garden in Tucson can capture as much as 12,000 gallons of fresh water each year. One such garden can thereby 132 January/February 2017

provide $2,600 or more in annual benefit to the community while also contributing an additional 4,000 gallons of recharge to the local water table. And, for us, that means a free renewable source for drinking, bathing, and washing, and especially for irrigating our landscapes and food-producing plants. In fact, WMG estimates that the average household could reduce its water usage by 40 percent simply by switching over to rainwater for the purposes of irrigating landscapes.

But transitioning your home to make efficient use of rainwater harvesting or graywater systems can seem daunting, conjuring up images of storage tanks and other complex and costly equipment.

But Shipek says that for basic earthworks and raingarden installation projects, “all you need is a shovel.”

Using more advanced systems, WMG has completely eliminated its dependence on municipal water at its Speedway and Dodge headquarters. WMG also offers twice-monthly classes on the basics of both passive and active rainwater harvesting methods, which, once completed, qualify you for Tucson Water Incentives of between $500 and $2,000 to offset project costs. Tucson Water offers an additional $1,000 incentive for projects that make use of graywater; WMG offers free classes on that subject, too.

WMG’s executive director, Lisa Shipek, says that the nonprofit has completely eliminated its dependence on municipal water at its Speedway and Dodge headquarters.

Homestead

For those who are willing to get their hands dirty for the sake of their green infrastructure education, WMG hosts 30 to 50 free workshops every year through its Green Living Co-op program. Shipek says that it operates under a “barn-raising model.”

Through the co-op, neighbors join up and “complete a project together,” which both gets it done more efficiently and provides ample opportunity for volunteers to learn more about the processes involved with the installation of green infrastructure. Interested parties can register for projects like earthworks, raingarden construction, and cistern installations online, then show up for a few hours of hands-on learning that has been optimized both as a workshop and as a worksite. “That way,” Shipek says, “people can come out and participate in a half-day workshop and actually help install a raingarden [or a graywater system or a tank], and learn the techniques” firsthand. There is a small fee associated with hosting a workshop on a site of your choosing, but participation in four workshops as a volunteer earns you a discount.

As you continue to increase your knowledge of green infrastructure and rainwater harvesting through WMG’s free programs—or if you already feel fairly well versed in the subject—you might find yourself interested in the advanced workshops and field studies offered by WMG both on- and off-site. For newcomers to the concept of rainwater harvesting, Shipek says the best entry point is probably a tour of WMG’s Living Lab and Learning Center. Tours are free on the second Saturday of each month and they include demonstrations of the Lab’s passive systems (such as earthworks and raingardens that support a native food forest) as well as their active systems (including above-ground and underground tanks for storage, composting toilets, outdoor showers, and systems for collecting and distributing graywater). Shipek says that people are often surprised that an office or household in the Arizona desert could ever meet all of its water needs using rain as their primary—or even only—water source, “But here at the Living Lab, it’s enough to meet our demands,” she says, adding that she hopes “more people will see that this is possible by visiting.” No doubt that’s a great place to start.  For more information on Watershed Management Group, its research, the Living Lab and Learning Center, or ways that you can get involved with its green infrastructure efforts in and around Tucson, visit WatershedMG.org or call 520.396.3266.

Craig S. Baker is a local freelance writer. You can see more of his work at CraigSBaker.com.

Tours of WMG’s Living Lab and Learning Center are free on the second Saturday of each month.

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Farm Report

By Rachel Wehr | Photography by Liora K

La Oesta Gardens collard greens.

W

B aja A r i zo na is full of life. While many farms in the North and Midwest regions are facing frozen topsoil, lack of sunlight, and temperatures too low to grow, Baja Arizona is buzzing.

During January and February, Don and Cris Breckenfeld of Breckenfeld Family Growers in Tucson are harvesting from the first ripe winter beds and planting a second round of winter vegetables. This way, the season is expanded from one to two harvests of winter crops. Hardy greens, herbs, and root vegetables are characteristic of the season.

The winter is also a time for cover crops to regenerate soil nutrients and create a fertile bed in which spring’s seeds will flourish. “Maintaining consistent soil fertility is key,” says Cris Breckenfeld. Previous fields are tilled, leaving the spent plants inter in

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to compost underground. Winter rains help feed the compost, which will return enhanced levels of nitrogen to the soil.

The Breckenfelds use this time to plan crop rotation, important to balancing soil health and controlling pests.

Aphids and other harmful bugs tend to not follow a certain crop if it is planted in one location for less than two years.

While temperatures in Tucson may not be reaching below 40 degrees at night, frost can settle in quite easily in higher elevations. Garlic that was planted in November, for example, will be utilizing the cold ground to stimulate growth of large bulbs. Other young, vulnerable starts of arugula and carrot lie under fabric row cover to protect from frost and birds. Once the plants reach just under a foot tall, the cover is removed to allow a healthy insect and worm population.

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Sleeping Frog Farm carrots.

“By December, we’ll have onions and leeks in the ground,” says Don. By the end of January, green bulbing onions, known for their use in carne asada, are harvestable. Other harvestable crops include multiple varieties of beets, carrots, spinach, arugula, shallots, cilantro, and chard.

Breckenfeld Family Growers sells each Thursday evening at Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market. The farm’s produce is available at many local restaurants, including 5 Points Market & Restaurant, with the help of Pivot Produce, Baja Arizona’s up-and-coming food hub.

Top Knot Farms, a poultry producer, faces cooler temperatures and higher production during the holiday season. Located in Benson, the farm is on average five to seven degrees cooler than metropolitan Tucson. In January and February, fragile young birds are kept warm under the protection of small domes warmed with heat lamps.

“Daily duties on the farm include feeding and checking on the bedding of young birds, composting litter, and maintaining water pumps and reservoirs,” says Michael Muthart of Top Knot Farms. The farm will continue to receive two deliveries of 200 day-old chicks per month, which must be kept at a constant, warm temperature in a brooder until the birds grow feathers.

Muthart also processes older birds weekly to bring to market, selling everything from livers and hearts to full birds.

Top Knot will sell fresh—never frozen—broiler chickens, broad-breasted turkeys, and geese at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito River Park throughout the winter season.

For those growing indoors, winter weather is not nearly as great a challenge. Indoor aquaponics offers the advantage of a 138 January/February 2017

temperature-controlled environment. “We grow any product at any time of the year,” says Chaz Shelton, founder of Merchant’s Garden. “As it gets colder and we don’t need cooling, our utility bills will shrink dramatically.”

The operation’s 10,000-square-foot greenhouse, full of large tanks of tilapia fish and greens, is warmed during the peak of winter. “At colder temperatures, fish don’t eat as much,” says Shelton. “They don’t produce as much waste to feed plants.”

The high heat capacity of water means it is able to maintain a stable temperature better than air. Therefore, the cost of heating the water tanks falls below that of maintaining a growing room.

Within 35 days, seeds are sprouted under artificial light and grown to full size in a deep-water system. This system involves plant roots suspended over nutrient-rich, oxygenated water, fed by fish waste. “We’ll have our hands full with turning over lots of leafy greens,” says Shelton. “We’ll be producing 800 to 1,000 heads of lettuce a day for distribution.”

Merchant’s Garden produces about five varieties of leafy greens and head lettuce, three varieties of basil, and edible flowers, like marigolds. Nearly 5,000 pounds of tilapia will be ready to harvest in mid-February, which Merchant’s Garden will most likely sell directly to restaurants or a distributor.

Merchant’s Garden is also selling to many local restaurants including Ermanos, Agustín Kitchen, and La Cocina. Greens are sold on the shelf in three in-town locations: Rincon Market, Time Market, and the Food Conspiracy Co-op.  Rachel Wehr is a Tucson-based freelance journalist. She spends her free time in nature among cactus and pines.

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A Citrus Winter

By Autumn Giles

I

in Arizona for two and a half years now and the magic of fresh citrus still isn’t lost on me. For the first 30 years of my life, I lived in really cold places.

Logically, I knew that lemons grew on trees, but actually seeing it happen remains a special sort of sorcery. Not only do they grow on trees, but they do it so well that folks have so many lemons that they don’t know what to do with them all. What a beautiful problem! My first winter here, when shopping bags full of oranges, lemons, and grapefruits started showing up on my doorstep, I was truly beside myself.

Citrus is so widely landscaped and grows so well in Baja Arizona that it’s a resource worth mastering. Unsprayed backyard citrus is really a two-in-one deal because you can utilize both the juice or flesh and the skin. When I’m juicing backyard citrus or planning to eat the flesh, I always try to zest it first. (You can expect that supermarket citrus is waxed and/or sprayed, which can make using the skin a lot less appealing.) I either rub the zest into an equal amount of kosher or sea salt and let it dry on a plate on the counter or spread it in a thin layer on a parchment-lined pan in the oven h av e li v ed

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overnight. Citrus salt is great as a finishing salt on things like popcorn, roasted vegetables, or brownies. Plain-dried zest can be used as a flavoring agent in all of your cooking and baking.

Try stirring lime zest into your favorite banana bread recipe or adding a bit of lemon zest to your lentil soup.

What follows are both sweet and savory everyday recipes to put citrus at the center of your table this winter. However, I’d urge you to play and figure out what you like to do with what you have. Try preserving Meyer lemons in salt. It’s incredibly satisfying and almost impossible to mess up.

Make a batch of lime curd and freeze it for the months to come. Experiment with making your own cocktail bitters with orange rind or infuse gin or vodka with thin slices of mandarinquats or kumquats. After freeing the pomelo fruit from its thick layer of pith, a friend of mine puts the pomelo skin in her bath. If you use vinegar for cleaning, infuse your citrus skins in vinegar rather than throwing them away. Having access to local citrus is such a rare luxury that it deserves some serious nose-to-tail tactics to use up every last bit.

Lemon Cornmeal Financiers Financiers are tiny, buttery almond cakes that get their name from the fact that they’re traditionally baked in small, rectangular molds that resemble gold bars.

Mini muffin pans make a more practical stand-in for the specialty pan. The cakes are rich, but not too sweet and the bright lemon flavor provides the perfect counterpoint for the nutty brown butter.

One of my ultimate kitchen pet peeves is leftover egg whites. I think egg white omelets are an egregious culinary crime, so when I make something like lemon curd that calls for a number of yolks, it’s nice to have a recipe like this to easily and deliciously use up the whites. These little cakes are leavened by the egg whites and baking soda, but the whites don’t have to be whipped, just whisked together until incorporated and foamy.

Instructions: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Stir together almond flour, powdered sugar, salt, cornmeal, and baking powder in a large bowl.

Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan. It will crackle and pop. It’s done when golden flecks just begin to appear on the bottom of the pan. As it heats it will get foam on the surface, so you may need to tilt and swirl the pan slightly to see the bottom.

Remove the butter from the heat and pour into the dry ingredients, using a spatula to scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the lemon zest and vanilla, stirring until fully combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites just until foamy. They don’t need to be white or whipped, just whisked together.

Finally, stir the egg whites into the batter.

Spoon the batter into lined mini muffin tins to fill ¾ of the way. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until just golden brown.

Ingredients:

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, browned 1 cup almond flour (Bob’s Red Mill is a widely available brand) ½ cup powdered sugar ¼ teaspoon kosher salt 2 tablespoons cornmeal 1 teaspoon baking powder 3 scant tablespoons lemon zest (from 3 lemons) 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 3 egg whites

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Lemon Curd At least once a winter, I make lemon curd and have big plans for it. I figure I’ll put it on toast or maybe ice cream. Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially ambitious, I think I might make a tart.

What inevitably happens each time is that I eat it all directly from the jar with a spoon. This recipe is meant to be a companion to the financiers. They make an ideal pairing, but most important this uses the three yolks that the financiers leave behind.

Many lemon curd recipes use a double boiler. If you want to be extra cautious you can, but I find it isn’t absolutely necessary. With a relatively heavy-bottomed pan over low heat, you shouldn’t have a problem. I still strain the finished product through a fine mesh strainer to ensure a super smooth final texture. If you use Meyer lemons for this, it’s likely you’ll want to reduce the amount of sugar. If that’s the case, mix together the juice and about half the amount of sugar to start out with, adding more to taste, then whisking in the egg yolks.

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Ingredients:

½ ½ 3 4

cup fresh lemon juice cup sugar egg yolks tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into roughly tablespoon-size pieces

Instructions:

Off the heat, whisk together the lemon juice, sugar, and egg yolks until smooth. Place the saucepan over low heat, whisk the butter into the mixture one piece at a time, until each piece is melted.

Once the butter is melted, turn the burner up to about medium low and keep whisking constantly. Cook until the curd has noticeably thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. It will continue to thicken to a spreadable consistency as it cools. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and refrigerate until ready to use.

Lime, Cardamom, and Rosewater Posset Possets have all of the criteria that help a treat earn a spot in my regular rotation. First, possets (originally a hot drink dating from the Middle Ages) have an adorable name. They’re British! Second, they have an element of mad science. There are three ingredients—lime juice, sugar, and cream—that somehow turn into a tart, rich custard with the dreamiest texture. The simplified version of why the cream thickens perfectly instead of curdling is that the higher fat content inhibits the milk proteins from forming curds. Heating the cream helps bolster the set.

The third and most important criterion is that they couldn’t be easier to make.

If rosewater and cardamom aren’t your thing, consider dressing these up with vanilla extract or letting the bright lime flavor shine all on its own. I always recommend folks add rosewater to taste because a little goes a long way. In my opinion, you have just the right amount of rosewater when you can definitely smell it and just barely taste it. If you’re looking for the good stuff, my favorite brand of rosewater is Nielsen Massey.

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream ⅔ cup granulated sugar ⅓ cup lime juice (from about 4 limes) ½ teaspoon ground cardamom Rosewater to taste (less than ¼ teaspoon)

Instructions:

Bring the cream and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan.

Choose a pan that’s slightly larger than you think you’ll need because the cream is apt to boil over. Boil for 5 minutes, adjusting the heat as needed to prevent it from boiling over. This is a stand-at the-stove-and-watch situation.

Remove from heat and stir in the lime juice, cardamom, and rosewater. Let cool for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

You’ll begin to notice the mixture thicken. Divide evenly between six small bowls and refrigerate until set.

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Sour Orange Carnitas

Adapted from Diana Kennedy I have been loyal to Diana Kennedy’s carnitas recipe for a number of years now. It’s hands-off, simple, and stunningly good. I’ve made her recipe, which allows the pork to braise, then brown, in its own fat, to the letter probably 20 times, but I finally decided to tinker a bit and the results were fantastic.

The juice from sour oranges, which are widely landscaped in Tucson, make a great marinade for any type of meat. If you don’t have sour oranges in your yard or a friend who does they can be difficult to source commercially, but a combination of orange and lime juice makes a suitable stand-in.

Whisking up this citrusy, garlicky marinade for the pork makes a good thing even better. On practical note, I tend not to trim any fat off my pork butt unless it has a particularly large and thick layer because it will almost all end up rendering out.

However, if you prefer to trim it a bit that’s fine, just keep in mind that you’re not adding any additional oil, so the meat needs its own fat to cook in.

Ingredients:

5 cloves garlic, smashed into a paste or chopped very fine 2 teaspoons kosher salt ½ cup sour orange juice (or ¼ cup fresh orange juice and ¼ cup fresh lime juice) 3 pounds boneless pork butt, cut into about 2-3 inch pieces 1 bay leaf 1 stick cinnamon Water

Instructions: Put the garlic, salt, and juice in a gallon Ziploc bag. Add the cut pork, seal the bag, and tilt the bag to evenly distribute the marinade. Place the bag flat on a dish or plate and refrigerate to marinate at least four hours or up to overnight.

Add one cinnamon stick and one bay leaf to a large, wide pot. Pour the contents of the bag into the pot and just barely cover with water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a steady simmer.

Depending on the size and shape of your pan, after about two hours, most of the liquid will be evaporated and a thin layer of fat will have rendered off of the pork. Lower the heat slightly and allow the pork to continue to cook in its own fat until brown. As the meat is browning, turn the pieces until they’re evenly browned on all sides, about an hour more.

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Grapefruit Salsa I can be a little skeptical of fruit salsas, but I think there’s a case to be made for grapefruit salsa. Like tomatoes, red grapefruits have sweetness, acidity, and ample juice.

Plus, deep in the tomato off-season, it makes a lot of sense to try a salsa made of something that’s at its seasonal peak. It’s a little meticulous, but worthwhile to peel the thin membrane from the outside of the grapefruit sections. Not only will your final product be prettier, but the texture will also be much more similar to salsa. Although this tastes great as soon as you make it, letting it sit for a few hours in the fridge gives the flavors time to meld. Finish this off with a generous pinch of dried ground chipotle powder to add a bit of heat and smoke. If you happen to get a grapefruit that isn’t as juicy as you had hoped, add a squeeze of lime juice.

Ingredients:

2 large pink grapefruit, membranes removed, cut into ¼-inch chunks 2 garlic cloves mashed into a paste or very finely chopped 1/2 cup very finely chopped red onion (about half of one large) 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro Salt and chipotle powder, to taste

Instructions:

Combine the grapefruit, garlic, onion, and cilantro in a medium bowl, tossing to combine. Add salt and chipotle to taste and refrigerate until ready to serve.  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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f o L o h c c al Hoppin r a e S ni ess The Baja Brews pro

ject is a year-long collaboration between the region's craft brewers and Edible Ba ja Arizona.

Explore, celebrate, and taste Baja Arizona's extra ordinary craft beer in this six-part series. Drink loc al!

Tasting events will feature local breweries using a different indigenous ingredient to create a special small batch. Drink beer and help benefit innovative nonprofit organizations working for food security.

The next event is January 26th. See p. 161 for more information.

Sponsored by VISIT TUCSON and the ARIZONA CRAFT BREWERS GUILD

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VariAtionS on FeRmenteD baRley wateR (From left) Catalina Brewing Company’s Steven Peterson, Hank Rowe, and Eric Fairfield experiment with ingredients like mesquite—and chocolate.

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enturies ago, beer drinkers drank beer because it added calories to unstable diets and because beer was more reliably sanitary than water from creeks or wells. The world has since changed. For much of the last century many Americans watered their lawns with fluoridated water, and most of us need to watch calories, not add them. Thus, and for a long time, Americans drank beer because it was cold, or because it helped wash down the pretzels, or because beer commercials promised bawdy glory, athletic prowess, and nearly nirvanic refreshment.

These days, many Americans drink beer because it’s delicious. The craft beer boom has introduced new and widely varying flavors: oozy malts, tangy grapefruit, milky oats. But how do brewers highlight, balance, and introduce these f lavors— intricacies such as sweetly warm mesquite, piney hops, or creamy coffeeness? How do they bring out the wondrous depths of malted grains or let yeasts sparkle a citric blast into our mouths? What subtle balancing of barley types, timed pitchings of yeast, temperature modulations, or Bill Nye-ish laboratory concoctions lead to the drinkable, surprising, wonderful beers increasingly common in Baja Arizona?

A beer’s final taste emerges from an endless permutation of variable options. How do brewers find the right flavors?

By John Washington | Photography by Jeff Smith

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Public Brewhouse’s Mike Gura says his brewing philosophy is to “respect the yeast.”

o lear n mor e about the curation, addition, and distillation of ingredients, I started by talking with Cody Van Haren and Mike Gura of Public Brewhouse. We zoned in on their Exposé IPA. Van Haren told me he wanted to brew a “fallish IPA,” with a darker color and slightly toastier hops than you’d find in a standard American IPA. (This color twist is typical for Public—their Saison Noir is one of only a few black saison beers in the country, and—smoky, hoppy, and slightly caramelly sweet—is one of the most original and delicious beers in town.)

To achieve that autumnal taste-vision, Van Haren used six types of malt (the germinated-and-toasted barley grain that’s the base of most beers): Pilsner, Maris Otter, Dark Munich, Crystal Rye, Vienna, and Acid. I asked him how deliberate his selection was. To explain, or to begin explaining, he showed me Public’s mill, which they use to mill their malt. The idea is to crush the grain in a specific way to keep the husk partially intact while exposing a desired degree of surface area of the grain so that enzymes, dancing in the mash tun, convert the starch from the barley grain into sugar, which will be food for the yeast, which excretes, basically, alcohol. If the husk of the malt remains too intact after milling, brewing will release more tannins than sugar.

A touch of tannin is a good thing, but too much and your beer will taste like steeped shoe-leather.

And the complications are only beginning: there are hundreds of varieties and subvarieties of malts, with tens of thousands of possible combinations. Van Haren defended his

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choice of the six malts: the Pilsner was a nice, everyday base.

The Maris Otter was “darker-kilned, from English winter barley, with a lot of English character, including nut and biscuit notes.” The Vienna malt added more darkness, with breadier/ toastier notes. “We wanted its richness.” And the Crystal Rye malt is “hot-kilned,” adding “a touch of sweetness.” After the malts come the hops: Public selected Magnum, 07270, and Denali (which Van Haren described as smelling like “a bag of weed with blueberries in it”).

The goal is to conduct all the million little variables into a catchy, beautiful melody that plays in your mouth. “My brewing philosophy,” Gura explained to me, “is to respect the yeast.

They’re the ones who make the beer.” Yeast responds to the baton of temperature, density, and pressure to “give off different fermentation characteristics.” Even the fermentation vessel affects the flavor profile: a rounded fermentation tank more uniformly distributes the yeast, whereas a square tank creates pockets with varying degrees of yeastiness. The number of variables in terms of ingredient selection, I was finding, is nearly overwhelmed by how many ways there are to cook, cool, mix, and ferment the ingredients. (Not to mention the ways to bottle, store, pour, and drink the end product.)

Wonderfully, alchemically, the end result of Exposé IPA was a beautiful amber (pine-sappy brown), with a foamy, slightly off-white head, and a toasted pine, sweetish, nutty, biscuity taste, with a politely bitter finish. Damned delicious, and, as Van Haren had hoped, very “fallish.”

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ublic was toying with the four standard ingredients in beer: barley, hops, water, and yeast.

If they were based in Germany, that would be all they would legally be allowed to add to their beer. The 500-year-old Reinheitsgebot, better known as the purity law, limits German brewers to using four, and only four, ingredients to make beer. German brewers, of course, can add in grapefruit or coffee or chiltepins, or whatever they want, but they wouldn’t be able to call their end product beer. And “fermented barley water” doesn’t have quite the Pavlovian ring to it that Bier does.

In the United States—a liberal bastion, liquidly speaking, compared with Germany— beers come flavored with everything from tangerines to tarragon, though there are a few standard ingredient complements, such as chocolate, raspberry, or coffee.

To learn how Ten 55 Brewing selects its coffee beans to add into its popular XOXO Coffee Stout, I attended a coffee cupping with Ten 55’s JP Vyborny and Exo Coffee’s Doug Smith. In Exo’s new Southern Arizona Work Space, Smith guided us through five distinct coffee types, nudging us to sniff bowls of ground beans, slurp coffee off a spoon—aspirating it into the back of our throats—and pick out the notes of mushroom, tobacco, lemon, and black tea.

(Vyborny and Smith were much more flavor-attuned than I was.) But careful bean selection, along with deliberate blending, and subtle roasting, isn’t all that makes Ten 55’s stout stand out. Ten 55’s stout is lower in alcohol volume, so it tastes nearly like drinking a cold brew coffee, and yet has a sweet, zippy, slightly hoppy finish.

To make their own toddy, Ten 55’s brewers steep five pounds of coffee (coarse ground and preselected by Exo’s Smith) in cool water for 24 hours.

Vyborny told me that the coffee toddy is so good they usually sneak off a glass or two to enjoy for themselves. Each final pint of the stout has enough caffeine to equal about one-eighth of a cup of coffee.

As Vyborny and I sipped one of his stouts, I asked him to explain what I was tasting. “First and foremost,” Vyborny said, “is the cold coffee. Followed by roastiness and toast. Then there’s an umami meatiness, the crunch of carbonation, then residual bitterness.

The finish is hoppy, then the lingering lactose sweetness.”

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Chris Squires is the co-owner of Ten 55 Brewing; their XOXO Coffee Stout is made with Exo’s cold brew coffee.

Kyle Ratcliff (left) and Allan Conger, 1912’s owner and brewer, say they like to experiment with the complexity of sour beers.

Smith told me that he often selects for Ten 55 a coffee from the Huila region of southern Colombia, one of his “favorite coffees to source.” It’s a co-op run coffee project, which puts money into social and educational infrastructure. The coffee is “round-bodied,” as Smith described it, “with a good chocolate note.” He explained that brewers want coffee beans with “enough brawn to get through the beer, but which are still delicate.”

I recently tried an XOXO Coffee Stout at Prep and Pastry, where you can order it as a pint or, my recommendation, served as a beerback to Prep and Pastry’s Bloody Mary. The mustard and spice of the Bloody Mary are soothed by the cool coffee of the stout, with the hops complementing the pickle.

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The match is so flavorsome, so roundly taste satisfying, that a few sips seem to sate my hunger, making brunch an almost gratuitous afterthought.

Although sometimes roasted locally, coffee doesn’t grow anywhere near Baja Arizona. The standard beer ingredients, however, can be found in these parts, though hops are rare, and even the most important ingredient—water—is definitionally scarce (this is a desert, people—turn off your faucets). And yet, last year Ten 55 made probably the first ever all-Arizona beer, sourcing hops from Sonoita and grains from Marana. It was a one-off, and currently it’s not practical for long-term brewing. Arizona, however, is bounteous in potential beer flavoring additives.

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ata l i n a B r e w i n g C o m pa n y is one brewery benefiting from distinctly Sonoran ingredients.

If you cruise the loop, you probably want to swing up to Catalina Brewing Company, nestled in an industrial pocket just south of Ina, to try the Twin Pole Porter, which is made with local mesquite f lour harvested by La Madera Mesquite. It’s a balanced, slightly chocolatey, smooth dark porter,

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with the terroir earthy-sweetness of the mesquite rounding out the hops and lingering on the back of your tongue. The beer has been years in the making. Hank Rowe, Catalina’s owner and brewer, started working mesquite into his home-brewed beers about five years ago. He first produced a light amber Mesquite Agave. After numerous batches, and once he’d found out how best to bring out the distinctively sweet desert notes, he started

Beer begins with barley, hops, water, and yeast, but brewers experiment with other ingredients. (Clockwise from top left): Ten 55’s XOXO Coffee Stout; 1912’s Naughty Naranja; A flight of beers behind a glass of hops at Public Brewhouse; Catalina Brewing Company’s La Rosa Prickly Pear Cream Ale.

putting the flour into his porter. For Edible Baja Arizona’s second Baja Brews event, in late September, he dry-hopped some chiltepin into the beer, which complemented the sweetness in the back of the throat.

The other local ingredient Catalina loves to use is prickly pear. Their La Rosa Prickly Pear Cream Ale might be the most beautiful beer in town, a pinkish-yellow blush when held

to the light—a sunset settling in Saguaro West—with tiny bubbles lacing all the way up from the bottom of the glass. It’s a sweet beer, but not cloying, and the cream (not from actual milk cream, but rather from rice shavings, which add to the body and mouthfeel of the beer) delays your want to swallow, so you linger and enjoy the Champagne-y bubbles and let the tiny sting of hops crest up through the prickly pear.

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At 1912, blood orange purée is added to a brew of Naughty Naranja Blood Orange Imperial Gose.

original and surprising ingredients you’ll find in local beers are bubbling away in the back of 1912 Brewing. Allan Conger, 1912’s owner and brewer, likes to experiment, and his specialty—sour beers—lends itself to weird flavors. 1912’s Demonic Chocolate, for example, is a rare dark sour beer. Conger used a Honey Vanilla Yogurt culture to give a sour edge to the darker, chocolate-noted malts. He also added Mexican vanilla bean, resulting in a concoction he described as tasting like a “wine-infused chocolate cherry,” with a pleasant sting of sour from the yogurt.

The modulations that go into sour beers reach another level of complexity. For 1912’s Naughty Naranja, Conger used the house strain of sour culture (a family secret, but which comes in part from wild yeasts), which already has citrusy notes, and then mixed in salt, coriander, and blood oranges. This is a high ABV sour, with unmalted wheat from Marana’s BKW Farms, which adds to the texture, without increasing alcohol content.

1912 also produces its own coffee, Mescalero Stout, using Presta coffee beans, as well as adding Oaxacan cacao nibs, salt, and piloncillo. Instead of making and adding a cold brew, Conger dry-hops whole coffee beans into the beer (adding after fermentation). The result is a thicker stout than Ten 55’s, higher

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ome of the most

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in ABV, and much more chocolate-forward: delicious, complex, and more like a meal replacement than a quick-sipper.

1912’s weirdest beer (and they pour some of the wackiest and most daring in town) is their Funk Seoul Brother, which is brewed with a Kimchi culture made by Eric Erman from Ermanos.

Any reader who has read this far, and I hope you’ve cracked a beer by now, I want you to slow your guzzle, look down into your glass, and think about the love and the sweat and the science that has gone into that beer—the calculations, the time, and yes, the ingredients. Beer is basically yeast eating grains steeped in water, with hops and maybe one other ingredient adding flavor.

It’s simple, but it’s also not simple, and brewers learn, experiment, and toil to feed the yeast, to bring out flavors, body, head, and color—and to lighten up your day a little bit, to quench your thirst, to impress your palate. Or, at least, to give you a sanitary alternative to creek water. We can all drink to that.  My recs from this article: 1912’s Naughty Naranja, Ten 55’s XOXO Coffee Stout, and Catalina’s beautiful La Rosa Cream Ale. John Washington is a writer and translator.

Visit JBlackburnWashington.com or find him on Twitter @EndDeportations.

BUZZ

Cider Revival Fresh and hard ciders are coming into their own in Baja Arizona.

By Luke Anable | Photography by Tim Fuller

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ider —perishable, pastoral, autumnal—represents a point in the process of food refinement that Americans rarely experience. Ripe apples, crushed and pushed through a rough filter such as burlap, yield the opaque, spicy, full-bodied juice we know as apple cider. Soft or sweet at this stage, it will, left to its own devices, ferment into hard cider as natural yeasts consume the now-exposed sugars. As the juice ferments it becomes drier, more alcoholic, and, if in a closed vessel, bubbly.

Soft cider is not considered to be stable—its inclination to ferment means it has a very short shelf life and needs constant refrigeration. Once sterilized, you get shelf-stable apple juice, which is just soft cider that has been filtered, pasteurized, pressurized, and often treated with sulfur dioxide. Apple juice is ubiquitous throughout the United States, while fresh cider remains seasonal and regional. Hard cider can be made from either fresh soft cider or filtered apple juice, which is more available but has less character and can require more additives.

Happily, we are in a hard cider renaissance both nationally and, if you look for it, in southern Arizona. This renaissance is in part motivated by dietary concerns surrounding gluten—cider is gluten-free, unlike beer—and in part because Americans have begun to shift from thinking of hard cider as a subcategory of beer to recognizing it more as a sibling of wine. This shift is important because it implies a rethinking of the methods of production. Cider made in the style of industrial-scale American macrobrews is produced from sterilized apple juice and is force-carbonated, producing a style of cider that, while drinkable, tends towards sweet and insipid.

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Cider made in the style of wine is different. The cider maker considers variables such as the types of apple varieties (cultivars) to use and whether to age the product. Barrel aging can coax out nascent complexity, but only in tiny batches. In the end, this shift makes sense; cider, like wine, is a fermentation of fruit.

This reconsideration of cider and its pedigree has inspired a handful of Arizonans to begin fermenting their own ciders from our state’s orchards. In doing so, they are finding a new medium through which to express our local terroir. As there is almost no incentive for Arizona orchards to grow the bitter apples used in traditional French and English cider, Arizonans must rely on cooking apples to form the base of their ferment. Although some cider makers complain about the relative plainness of these apples, it is this quality that allows them to communicate terroir so well. In the absence of a strong fruit character, an apple’s character is determined more by the tree’s environment—soil composition, elevation, and weather patterns. The blank-slate aspect of cider’s building blocks results in two distinct approaches—either the adding of flavor with other fruits and sugars, or the opposite: a hands-off approach which allows the variables of the harvest to add subtlety to the ferment.

James Callahan of Rune Winery made his first cider two years ago: a barrel-fermented and aged cider made from James Callahan, of Rune Winery, made his first cider, called Ten Ten, from apples grown in Willcox.

Willcox apples using the facilities at Arizona Hops and Vines, up the road. The process came relatively easily to Callahan, who employed winemaking strategies borrowed from the Champagne region of France: bottle-conditioning and extended lees contact. The lees, or spent yeast, settle at the bottom of the barrel during fermentation and lend a certain nutty or bready flavor to the final product. Bottle conditioning, allowing the cider to re-ferment and carbonate in the bottle, complements this aging as it yields a more delicate fizziness. Callahan has been happy with the reception of the cider, which he calls Ten Ten, and plans to make another batch in the next year or two.

Ten Ten is available at niche retailers in Tucson and should age well in the bottle over the coming months and, hopefully, years.

Callahan is working on opening an off-the-grid winery in Sonoita, where a more rustic style of cider making should come naturally. For Callahan, cider’s relationship to terroir is about exploration and potential. “With Arizona wine there is definite terroir. I taste it, but I haven’t tried enough ciders from around the state to know what elements of terroir show up. There isn’t enough clean, honest cider out there—people add sugar, CO2, acid—and don’t realize they’re putting up all these roadblocks to expressing terroir.”

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ow n the road from Rune’s new winery is one of the few other Sonoita cider producers, newcomers Mel and Tom Pyle of Copper Hop Ranch. Although Copper Hop Ranch has been open to the public for only five months, it already feels like an institution.

“We get a good mix here,” says Mel. “The hippies from Patagonia appreciate what we’re doing, farming organically and being all local; the ranchers love what we do too because they can ride their horses here—we have tie ups for them around back—and have a beer whenever.” From the bungalow where Tom pours beer and cider flights for tourists and locals alike, a patio extends into the trellised hop yards where they grow 12 species of hops. One will eventually flavor a dry-hopped dry cider, complementing the current rotation that includes pear- and mango-flavored varieties.

“This is the Napa Valley of the Southwest,” Mel says. “Tom and I could have lived anywhere. We looked all over the world, but I’ll tell you there’s something special about this place.”

Mel and Tom became interested in brewing beer while living in Julian, a small town outside of San Diego, where neighbors owned a microbrewery. Surprised at the rarity and expense of hops—their friends were bidding on hops futures 10 years

Mel and Tom Pyle of Copper Hop Ranch call Sonoita “the Napa Valley of the Southwest.”

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out—they decided to look for a place where they could grow their own, settling, eventually, on Sonoita. “This place is perfect for hops,” says Tom: “Long daylight hours, great altitude, benign weather.” Tom makes the beer and Mel makes cider, mostly from her neighbors’ apples. Mel appreciates the “flare and intuition” that guide her process, as opposed to the more scientific and exacting process of brewing beer.

After two years, Mel continues to be surprised by the Sonoran landscape and its seasonality. The farm is on a butterfly migration corridor and is inundated for four months every year. Guests come to watch the migratory scene and drink beer on the patio, alive with color and movement. Mel recently began brainstorming what a butterfly brew would mean—could they isolate a wild yeast strain from the pollen carried on the insects’ proboscises? “It’s a special thing about this place, so I want to get it into our cider,” says Mel, who is also planting native trees and herbs that will one day augment their beer and ciders. With the exception of a few popular fruits blended into the apple cider, the couple’s goal is to grow everything they use on their farm.

Cider offers a taste of the desert. For wine makers like Callahan, cider’s relationship to terroir is about exploration and potential.

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are only three ciders being produced for commercial consumption in a state awash with microbreweries speaks to cider’s relative unpopularity. That one of the three, a cider called Blueberry Spaceship Box, is ranked at the top in its category on RateBeer, a beverage rating service, speaks to Arizonans’ impatience with mediocrity, regardless of relative popular demand.

Jeff and Jen Herbert have been making barrel-fermented ciders in Prescott since 2012, when they opened Superstition Meadery. Although the focus has always been on the namesake honey wine, the couple has never been able to make enough cider to satisfy demand. Superstition Meadery has quickly outgrown its home in downtown Prescott, and the Herberts are anxious to open their new facility a few blocks uptown in early 2017.

The new facility will allow them to both increase production of their popular staples and also continue to explore new projects, such as installing an onsite apiary to support estate-made meads.

Most of their ciders are blended with other fruit juices, sometimes before and sometimes after fermentation, which gives a particular seasonality and dynamism to their product. The h at ther e

Herberts rely on the subtlety of barrel-aging to give their ciders depth and complexity. “Barrel aging elevates things,” Jeff says.

“The slow oxidation process adds a depth of flavor that is hard to describe. Barrel-aging can also remove flavors you don’t want, blending and integrating the rough edges of the compounds produced in fermentation over time.”

This integrated, well-rounded character is evident in all of their products, from ciders to mead. The French call this process élevage, or the maturing of raw, fermented materials into something more than the sum of its parts—a coming-into-itself. Here, it is obvious that the language and methods of viticulture are best suited to cider production. When working with Arizona apple juice, Herbert sources soft cider from Dwight English, a fifth generation orchardist in Willcox.

Although there are small orchards in the Verde Valley, Willcox is the heart of Arizona apple country. Here the orchards are large enough to support a commercial cider operation.

English’s orchard has been certified organic since 1988, a few years after he moved to Arizona from New Mexico, where his grandfather’s orchards were. “I had put on the suits and

sprayed things I didn’t want to spray back then, and I knew as soon as I owned my own land I wouldn’t do that anymore,” English recalls. English believes that organic practices make better fruit and are especially suited to the dry climate of Baja Arizona where trees mostly don’t suffer from the diseases of humid regions. It is this climate, furthermore, that stresses the trees. While this may decrease their yield, the apples themselves are widely regarded as superior. “Any wine guy will tell you that the vines which work the hardest make the best grapes,” English says.

The soft cider that English makes for Superstition Meadery is flash pasteurized, a lighter sterilization method that protects the enzymes essential to fermentation. Although this makes the juice more stable, it remains a nearly raw product and must arrive fresh at the Herbert’s facility. Ideally, the batches of fresh cider are consistent in terms of the ratio of sugar to acid—the foundation of any cider. To achieve this consistency, English blends the cider from an array of apple cultivars, which ripen at different points during the long apple season, balancing sweeter cultivars with more tart ones.

Dwight English of English Family Orchards is a fifth-generation orchardist in Willcox. His apple cider is a soft cider that is sold “nearly raw.”

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S char f has been interested in cider for most of his life. Drinking apple juice as a child, he remembers being fascinated by its particular stickiness. Later, as a home brewer, he would come to understand that the stickiness of juice was evidence of its natural sugars and of its potential for robust fermentation. Now, having made his first large batch of bottle-conditioned Arizona cider with business partner Stephanie Hunter, that potential has been realized on a meaningfully local scale.

Scharf and Hunter plan to start selling cider in late 2017 under the label BEKO, a name borrowed from Hunter’s grandfather, who owned a business of the same name. The apples for the first batch were purchased from Pivot Produce and came from a large orchard in Willcox. Although he used a commercial yeast strain for his first batch, Scharf looks forward to experimenting with local, ambient yeasts in the future. “What I love about fermentation is that you can’t actually ferment anything. You can only allow fermentation to happen,” he says.

Scharf, a longtime home brewer, says that he likes cider because it is easier to make than beer. What ease means, here, is not so much a lack of hard work (Scharf recently returned from Willcox hauling 400 pounds of apples to crush in his backyard) but rather a lack of singular will. Scharf would rather act as the steward for a process that occurs naturally than create the sterile conditions necessary to work outside, or in spite, of his environmental context.

The same might be said of John Slattery, an herbalist and local food advocate. Slattery has no commercial ambitions for av id

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his cider making, allowing him more exploratory license and an unapologetically process-driven approach. Slattery echoes Sharf’s assertion that, for all the technology surrounding modern fermentation, the process itself is elemental and can be as simple as getting out of the way. “The idea of fermentation had seemed unreachable to me in terms of gear and equipment—but to realize that all I had to do was put a sugary substance on the counter and let microbes take over, that was really fascinating,” he says. “So I started to dabble more, make more mistakes and see what came of it.” These “mistakes” eventually led to his embrace of wild ferments and their singular expression of localness.

Slattery’s latest ferment is a bright pink, bottle conditioned apple cider fermented with ambient yeast. The apples came from a stand of feral trees on Mount Lemmon. Crushing these apples with Scharf’s help, Slattery allowed the cider to spontaneously ferment with prickly pear juice and finished it with manzanita berries. The cider was bright with unmistakable prickly pear funk and tart berry notes from the manzanita. Bone dry and acidic, the cider was more invigorating than gulpable, a testament to Slattery’s interest in a more experiential mode of consumption rather than the simple sating of appetite.

“For the concept of terroir to really mean something, there has to be a melding between us and our place,” he says. “I don’t think we have that yet … and I think that such simple things like this, local cider, can help us tap into that knowledge.”  Luke Anable is a Tucson transplant, natural wine protagonist, and beverage consultant for independent restaurants.

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A Day in

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Sierra Vista Text by Suzanne Wright | Photography by Maya Holzman and Benjamin Sisco

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efore I visited, I’d heard Sierra Vista’s food scene dismissed as consisting of mostly fast food joints. It’s not true. In fact, half the city’s restaurants are ethnic eateries.

The theory is that there’s a demand for culinary diversity because of the large population of well-traveled military personnel, both active and retired, that call Sierra Vista home, along with the many international visitors who flock to the region for its unparalleled bird watching.

Located at a four-season elevation above 4,600 feet, Sierra Vista is 75 miles southeast of Tucson in Cochise County with a population of 45,000. Ringed by the rugged Huachuca, Dragoon, Mule, and Whetstone mountains, Sierra Vista’s Spanish translation, “mountain view,” is apt. The San Pedro River runs just east of town.

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Fort Huachuca, an active Army base and the area’s largest employer, is important to the city’s rich history. Back in 1877 the raiding Chiricahua Apaches were terrorizing the region. Samuel M. Whitside and Company B of the Sixth U.S. Cavalry were dispatched to provide protection to the settlers in the area, setting up a permanent U.S. Army post. Fort Huachuca became legendary as the headquarters for the nation’s campaign against Geronimo and home of the first black soldiers, dubbed Buffalo Soldiers, who battled Pancho Villa.

The Fort remains an important center for communication and plays a central role in intelligence training and unmanned aerial system operations. A free visit to either the Historical Museum or military museums requires a background check to obtain an access badge

(done at the Visitor Control Center), but the red tape is worthwhile. Artifacts include a large fragment of the Berlin Wall, which, being so close to the U.S.-Mexico border, seems like a meaningful metaphor for our times.

The community that grew outside of the base has had a number of names since 1956, when Sierra Vista was adopted.

Some old-timers know Sierra Vista by its former names: Buena, Overton, Garden Canyon, and Fry. What’s less known is its food. And the “Hummingbird Capital of the World” offers some great eats.

For starters, there’s the terrific shaking beef at Indochine (1299 E. Fry Blvd.), which is tucked into a modest strip mall. The tender cubed beef tenderloin is marinated and sautéed, served with rice, a tossed green salad, and lemon pepper sauce. I had a hankering for lemongrass,

so I inquired if the kitchen could accommodate that into a starter. Voila! Refreshing tofu vegan rolls plump with colorful, shredded vegetables transparent through the springy rice membrane wrapper. That’s when the charismatic chef/ owner Tony Pham came out to meet me. Turns out he grows some of his own produce and teaches cooking classes and demos. He also makes something I have never had: date tea. He guards the recipe, but it includes ginger and it’s delicious iced and deliciously addictive. Before I left, we huddled together over his computer, looking at pictures of his beautiful homeland’s landscapes and temples.

Pizzeria Mimosa (4755 E. Neapolitan Way in neighboring Hereford) is the kind of impressive place you expect to find in Scottsdale: all warm Tuscan-inspired brick and wood ambiance

5

4 with an exhibition kitchen.

I sampled some excellent dishes, including fermented black garlic pasta and the generously sized Monumento Pizza, named for the 2011 fire that blazed through town. Crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, Calabrian chile, roasted red peppers, garlic, and peppered salami atop a perfectly charred crust was so tempting my vegan friend had to have a bite, declaring it worth falling off the meat-free wagon.

The gnocchi alla Tirolese with Gorgonzola cream, prosciutto, and wood-roasted mushrooms is an outstanding option for those who are more disciplined about their consumption. As if on cue, a couple from the next table stepped over to congratulate us on our excellent choices; turns out they are retired Army personnel and regulars.

There’s also a gourmet shop

6

7 stocked with imported sauces, pastas, spices, and wines.

Another place that earns high marks for authenticity— not to mention huge portions—is The German Café (1805 Paseo San Luis).

It’s a bit off the beaten path, but you still might have to wait; the place is a bit cramped and quite popular. If you fancy a dark brew, though, you’ll have to visit the pub next door; the café doesn’t pour alcohol. But you might not miss it after getting your fill of schnitzel and spätzle (egg noodles), potato pancakes and sauerkraut and bock-, brat-, and currywursts.

After indulging, I craved some exercise.

Sierra Vista offers outdoor opportunities to work off the calories you consume.

The Ramsey Canyon Preserve (27 E. Ramsey Canyon Road) is a lush and varied riparian ecosystem of semidesert grasslands and

pine-fir forests, one of the most biologically diverse in the country. Here I spied wild turkey, deer, pygmy owls, and black bear. Well, only scat, but still, that was kind of thrilling.

The adjacent Arizona Folklore Preserve (56 E. Folklore Road) often has musical performances, including Dolan Ellis, Arizona’s official state balladeer.

I also enjoyed visiting the museums on Fort Huachuca, which feature collections of the Post’s history from the Indian Wars through the Cold War. But perhaps my favorite place was the beautiful Our Lady of the Sierras Shrine (10310 S. Twin Oaks Road).

It’s a steep winding road to the top, but the reward is sweet. I don’t identify as a religious person, but I’m deeply spiritual. And this site is very moving, with the 75-foot Celtic cross and the 31-foot tall Virgin Mary—which, miraculously survived the

8 devastating 2011 Monument Fire. I wandered the Stations of the Cross, my hair whipping in the wind. I gawked at the 360-degree panorama of sky islands. I snapped a picture for a Mexican family. I vowed to return.

In Sierra Vista, there’s nourishment for both body and soul.  Suzanne Wright is a frequent contributor to Edible Baja Arizona, along with regional and national publications including AAA Highroads Arizona, Go Escape, Hispanic Living, Modern Woman, and Phoenix Magazine.

1 A view of Fort Huachuca.

2 Ramsey Canyon offers lush and varied flora and fauna.

3 Our Lady of the Sierras Shrine.

4 Fermented black garlic pasta at Pizzeria Mimosa. 5 Refuel at The German Café . 6 Pizzeria Mimosa head chef Kelli Stutzman.

7 Shaking beef at Indochine.

8 Fort Huachuca Museum.

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INK

Exploring the Wild Southwest Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano (Timber Press 2016)

By John Slattery Review by Suzanne Wright

J

S lattery is deeply embedded in Tucson’s food and education communities as a respected lecturer and the founder of Desert Tortoise Botanicals. He also leads frequent plant walks, workshops, and immersive regional travel experiences, along with an apprenticeship program.

His new book, Southwest Foraging: 117 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Barrel Cactus to Wild Oregano, is a beautiful tome: hefty, printed on glossy, high-quality paper, featuring beautiful photography. It’s clear this was a passion project—the quality and the comprehensiveness shows.

Many of us know that the Sonoran Desert is ripe with indigenous edibles that have supported ancient and modern people for thousands of years. Eating nature’s bounty is not new, but there’s a growing interest in these foodstuffs.

I’ve seen pods ripen, burst, and wither and wondered what to do with even a small harvest. I’ve noted seeds in the ruby-colored scat of coyotes on hiking trails. In my larder, I have chiltepins, cholla buds, mesquite jelly, mescal, sage.

I’ve gathered and processed both prickly pears and saguaro fruit. (P.s., it’s hard work).

The book is helpfully arranged by habitat and by season, alphabetically by plant and by region, including Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas. Every entry features tips on where and when to gather, how to gather and how to use, along with brief commentary called “future harvests”—seed dispersion—and notes of caution related to possible sensitivities to certain species. There’s also a discussion of foraging tools and safety, preservation, and storage. Excellent color photographs accompany the copy, making for easy identification.

Slattery’s prose is straightforward, with a minimum of botanical jargon, yet vivid in description. To wit, “Unmistakable ocotillo is a woody shrub armed with stout spines along ohn

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its sap-covered, leathery barked, upright branches. The emergence of the brilliant red flowers creates an image of the hills ablaze.”

But you may choose to dispense with the practicalities as I did, and linger over the listings themselves, which include plant identification and uses. Those of you who enjoy reading cookbooks (even if not actually cooking) will find much here to fascinate.

As someone who suffers from seasonal allergies, I appreciate knowing that Mormon tea, for example, may provide relief. Or that miner’s lettuce, in addition to having a pleasant flavor, was once used to treat scurvy. Or that roasted sotol seeds possess a peanut butter-like flavor. Or that the sugary globules called honeydews of the Mexican palo verde can be plucked and eaten raw. Or that sun-dried wolfberries make an excellent addition to trail mix. Or that desert willow makes a delicious, delicate sun tea.

Then there were things I’d never heard of: capita, horseweed, pigweed, saya. I’ll attempt familiarity with these plants in the future.

Back in the days when encyclopedias were sold door-to-door and every family bought a set (paying over time as it was an expensive investment), my father, a self-taught man who only completed his college education after I graduated, used to select a letter, settle into his wellworn La-Z-Boy, open the book at random and read until he was satisfied, then replacing it carefully on the shelf.

That’s how I’m reading Slattery’s book: at leisure, for enjoyment and for reference. I expect to return to it time and time again.

Calling foraging both a birthright and a responsibility, this book is an invitation to all of us to “discover the culinary riches that abound in the deserts, plains, forest and mountains of the Southwest,” a love letter and an encouragement to engage more deeply—to quite literally be nourished—by the landscape in which we live.

And while most of us will never aspire to Slattery’s level of knowledge (or even forage on our own) his volume deserves a place on any Arizonan’s bookshelf.

Suzanne Wright is a frequent contributor to Edible Baja Arizona and other publications including AAA Arizona Highroads, Go Escape, Hispanic Living, Modern Woman, and Phoenix Magazine.

Flowers Are the Reason for Us

Digging Up Diversity in America’s Farming Communities

The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives (Scribner 2015)

The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience, and Farming (New Society Publishers 2015)

By Stephen Buchmann Review by Maya L. Kapoor

By Natasha Bowens Review by Maya L. Kapoor

F

or hundr eds of millions of years, a succession of green life forms has spread across the earth: first, low-growing mats of early plants; later, forests of monstrously tall mosses and horsetails, followed by a time when gymnosperms—ancestors of modern-day conifers and ginkgoes—dominated the landscape.

Then flowers happened. For the past 125-130 million years, angiosperms—flowering plants—have speciated and spread across the planet, carpeting the world, evolving at speeds bewildering to Darwin. When Homo sapiens appeared just 200,000 years ago, flowers were ubiquitous. As Stephen Buchmann writes in The Reason for Flowers, angiosperms “come in just about every life-form imaginable, from tiny floating duckweed to the tallest rain-forest emergent trees, from columnar cacti to prostrate shrubs.” What’s more, flowering plants provide the environments and materials that other organisms, including humans, need to survive. Humans exist—a world where we can exist, exists—because of flowering plants.

That’s just the start of Buchmann’s absorbing look into the evolution and cultural importance of flowers.

Buchmann, a pollination ecologist who is based at the University of Arizona, wrote The Reason for Flowers after already writing several popular books about flower pollinators. The Reason for Flowers begins with the basics—what are flowers, anyway, and where did they come from?—and builds from there. From flowers, readers learn about nonhuman pollinators, then human pollinators, and then—as the intertwined world of plant and primate explodes—the fun really begins. Buchmann explores topics such as the history of ornamental gardens, the international trade in cut roses, and the evidence of the first use of flowers in burial practices by early humans. Throughout the book, Buchmann’s examples and digressions enrich botany for any reader, a true feat considering that for most people flowers are merely the decorations to important things in life.

In Chapter 8, Buchmann introduces modern cooking with flowers. (Those pretty nasturtium-flower salads aren’t as unique as you might think. A surprising variety of “vegetables” people consume, including cauliflower, artichoke, and capers, are flowers.) This section is worth the wait. The entire book builds, chapter by chapter, balancing what could be dense scientific information with accessible writing and a charming voice. (What do you call the scents that male orchid bees gather from flowers and later use to attract female bees?

Aphrobesiacs!) In later chapters, as The Reason for Flowers delves into flowers in food, art, scientific research, and medicine, the reader has a solid foundation from which to draw on the biological and cultural relationships between flowers and people.

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ata s h a B ow e n s didn’t set out to uncover a long history of racial inequity when she first dug into soil on a community farm in West Virginia. “All I wanted to do when this all started … was grow food, know exactly where my food was coming from, and live more in tune with the Earth,” Bowens writes in the prologue to The Color of Food. But for Bowens—a biracial author and community activist whose mother’s European-American ancestors owned her father’s African-American ancestors—race and agriculture in America are complicated and interconnected topics. When she noticed a distinct lack of human diversity among the veggies at the community farm she joined outside of Washington, D.C., Bowens realized the topic wasn’t easy for other Americans of color, either. And so began the multimedia project that developed into The Color of Food.

Over the course of five months, Bowens traveled the continental United States in her truck, named Lucille, on a crowd-funded road trip to record the stories of farmers and food activists of color from North Carolina to Washington state, Louisiana to California.

As Bowens explains in the prologue, The Color of Food’s main purpose is to celebrate the untold stories of America’s farmers of color. Along the way, Bowens reveals the dispiriting history and reality faced by farmers of color in the United States—and the inspiring resilience her subjects harbor.

Family farms of all kinds across the United States are disappearing at an alarming rate. But vulnerability to loss of land is not evenly spread; farmers of color lose their land in America at three times the rate of white farmers. This problem has existed throughout our country’s history. Bowens reports that the routine denial of farm loans to black farmers by the USDA resulted in a 98 percent decline in the number of black farmers in America by the early 1990s. Other farmers of color

too have histories of being systematically removed from their land, such as Native Americans and Japanese Americans, stories that Bowens touches upon in her exploration of farmer diversity in the United States.

The Color of Food is at its best when researching how farmers and people Bowens loosely describes as “food activists” of color have persisted despite the particular challenges they face. The lack of diversity at the ownership level of farms, at the administrative level of community food resource centers, in farming associations, or at farmers’ markets is evidence of deeper systemic problems that keep marginalized communities away from agriculture at every step, from production to consumption. And some challenges are internalized into personal or cultural aversions to work associated with disempowerment and vulnerability. For all these external and internal pressures, Bowens finds farmers and food activists across the country who are breaking conventional expectations and doing good work.

One example comes from members of the Southeastern African American Farmers’ Organic Network, who help each other achieve organic certification for their crops. This stamp of approval is important, because at farmers’ markets shoppers struggle to trust black farmers who say that their produce is organic without the added certification to prove it.

In other places, Bowens describes how for some people of color in the United States, working in agriculture can feel like a step in the wrong direction. For many Americans of color, farming historically connects with disempowerment and marginalization. Bowens finds farmers and food activists who are moving beyond that association to find empowerment through food sovereignty. In northwest Washington, a former migrant farmworker showed Bowens Viva Farms, an incubator farm—a space where farmers can rent out plots and use equipment for a fee to grow their own commercial crops.

At Viva Farms, one woman began growing her own chemical-free crops after her son developed leukemia.

Since then, she’s developed a successful business selling crops, tortillas, and fresh quesadillas at farmers’ markets.

Edible Baja Arizona readers may be disappointed by the lack of representation from our region—after all, ours is the longest continuously farmed region of the United States, with a unique history that’s apparent in our food culture; the Tohono O’odham Nation is renowned for its work in preserving and promoting native food resilience at the San Xavier Co-op Farm, for example. There are many other examples of diverse community members in the Baja Arizona region overcoming the odds to cultivate change—and amazing food. The Color of Food’s website does have a map feature where farmers and food activists of color can make themselves known in our region and beyond.

The Color of Food does what it sets out to: offer an introduction to farmers doing good, and often uncelebrated, work. Where to go next with these stories—in terms of supporting farmers of color through systemic and cultural change—is up to the reader to investigate. Still, for readers interested in complicating any preconceptions they might hold about who owns farms in America, whose work the history of agriculture in this country includes, and whose vision can contribute to healthy change in American food systems, The Color of Food offers a refreshing perspective.  Maya L. Kapoor writes about nature in the urbanizing West. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona and a master’s degree in biology from Arizona State University. She is an associate editor with High Country News.

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LAST BITE

What the Desert Is Thinking

By Alison Hawthorne Deming

We know the desert has consciousness because the saguaros stand up and speak as one about the heat.

They tell the Gila woodpeckers to come in out of the sun.

They tell a man or woman lost without water to lie in the column of shade they make out of their kindness.

The saguaros all hum together like Tibetan or Gregorian monks one green chord that people hear when they drive through Gates Pass and come to the place where they gasp.

Beauty does that though the nihilist will make an ironic joke about the note of surprise that has escaped from his or her loneliness. The smile from the joke will cover for the smile for joy. That’s okay. Consciousness is like the saguaro’s decision to wait half a century to come up with arms though arms were in its mind all along.



Alison Hawthorne Deming is the Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice and professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. She was the recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim fellowship. Deming is the author of numerous books of nonfiction and poetry, including Stairway to Heaven (Penguin Poets 2016) and Death Valley: Painted Light (George F. Thomson Publishing 2016), a collaboration with photographer Stephen Strom. She lives in Tucson and Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada.

Excerpt from Stairway to Heaven: Poems by Alison Hawthorne Deming, copyright ©  by Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a divsion of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

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