Native Flavor

Before writing about the heritage and traditional foods of Southern
Arizona, I decided to first try my hand at making some of these
foods—to savor the flavors and experience the smells
firsthand.

I already have some knowledge from my experiences as a foodie, food
writer and chef in Tucson restaurants, where I was fortunate to work
under many different chefs who utilized and understood the importance
of these ingredients.

I started out my journey by heading down to the Native Seeds/SEARCH
store on Fourth Avenue. I picked up some tepary beans ($4 per pound)
and agave nectar ($5.75 for an 11.75-ounce bottle). Then I walked down
the street to the Food Conspiracy Co-op for mesquite flour ($19.99 per
pound) and found some dried Tohono O’odham peas ($4.79 per pound). In
my pantry, I had some native chiles from the Tucson CSA (Community
Supported Agriculture) group from which I get my produce each week; in
my freezer, I had some jackrabbit from a family member’s hunt.

I crushed up the chiles in a molcajete and used them as seasoning on
the rabbit, which I dry-seared in a big-cast iron pot. I cooked the
beans and peas, added the seared rabbit and then reduced the leftover
water, letting it all cook down to a chili-like consistency. I combined
the mesquite flour with rendered animal fat, agave nectar and water,
and then formed the mixture into flat cakes before baking them, as a
sweet accompaniment.

The chili turned out to be hearty, savory and incredibly filling.
The beans and peas were creamy and mild; the rabbit was tender and rich
but not gamy; and the chiles lent a deep, subtle savory flavor with
just a touch of heat. The mesquite biscuits had a distinct, sweet,
gingerbread-molasses flavor to them and were a great complement to the
slight heat of the chili.

I was a little surprised at how easy the ingredients were to come
by—although, with the exception of the rabbit, they were not
exactly inexpensive.

Of course, there are cheaper ways to get heritage foods. One is to
grow them, just as people have been doing for generations. They require
little to no water beyond rainfall, and they are genetically suited to
survive in this sometimes-harsh desert environment—they will
certainly do better than non-native plants, which can also be invasive
and threatening to native plants. There’s also hunting and harvesting,
which are inexpensive, but should always be done in a responsible and
sustainable manner.

The heritage-foods movement has been slowly gaining momentum over
the last decade or so, along with the more highly publicized organic
and locavore movements. Southern Arizona happens to be the perfect
breeding ground for the heritage-foods movement, as it affects our
people, cultures and arid desert environment in a particularly unique
way.

There are several organizations in Southern Arizona dedicated to
preserving and utilizing these native plants and foods, including
Native Seeds/SEARCH; the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance; Desert
Harvesters; the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society (TCSS); Sabores Sin
Fronteras/Flavors Without Borders; and Tohono O’odham Community Action
(TOCA). We also are lucky to have an abundance of chefs who use these
special foods in different types of cuisine.

Southern Arizona’s heritage foods are defined as “locally produced
foods tied to the region’s history and cultural identity,” according to
the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance. These foods include tepary
beans; mesquite pods; cactus fruit, buds and pads; chiltepin peppers;
various species of drought-resistant corn, peas, squash and melons;
javelina; jackrabbit; and various native birds.

Janos Wilder, chef and owner of Janos and J-BAR in Tucson, has been
a supporter of using local and heritage foods for years. His menus
often feature the flavors of cholla buds (when in season), which taste
to some like mild asparagus (though to me, they taste more like fresh
caper-flower buds); nopales (pads of the prickly pear cactus), which
have a distinctly mucilaginous texture and a mild, fresh flavor, almost
like a bell pepper; chiltepin peppers, a fiery-hot pearl-sized pepper;
quail; and many other heritage ingredients.

“From a culinary standpoint, you have foods with a sense of place,”
Wilder says. “When cooking them, you are speaking about where you come
from and where you are.”

Wilder’s menus feature traditional foods prepared in unique, modern,
nontraditional ways. “To use traditional foods and cook them with an
eye to the future, we’re using food to talk about what’s possible. It’s
an optimistic sort of thing.”

But he is also quick to point out that the foods cannot stand alone:
They are inextricably intertwined with the culture, the history and the
traditions of the people they came from.

“You (can) lose important things, not only food, but the culture and
traditions that revolve around the planting, the harvesting and the
eating of the foods,” Wilder says. “If we stop cooking with the foods,
then we start losing the culture. And who knows which came first: Are
we losing the culture because we’re not cooking the foods, or are we
losing the foods because we start losing the culture?”

Native Seeds/SEARCH, an organization that Wilder has worked closely
with through the years, is dedicated to conserving the heritage seeds
of Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States, many of which
are edible or food-bearing. Their secondary mission is promoting the
use of the plants.

“The whole idea is biodiversity,” says Suzanne Nelson, Native
Seeds/SEARCH’s director of conservation. “Cultures were able to survive
here for thousands of years, because they had crops that were suited to
the extreme environment.”

Clearly, these foods were important for more than the unique,
delicious flavors they can impart. A 2003 study by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s Research Innovation and Development Grants in
Economics Project found that these heritage foods play an important
role in the genetic makeup of the people who traditionally consumed
these foods.

Their study focused on the Tohono O’odham Nation, just west of
Tucson. Researchers found that the tribe had, at that time, the highest
rate of diabetes among Native American tribes, with 50 percent of the
adults having adult-onset diabetes. (The rate of adult-onset diabetes
in the overall U.S. population in 2003 was 4 to 6 percent.) The study
concluded that heritage foods, including tepary beans, cholla-cactus
buds and wild greens, traditionally kept the Tohono O’odham people
healthier.

“These traditional foods help to regulate blood-sugar levels,
prevent diabetes and reduce diabetes in the community,” says Tristan
Reader, co-director of Tohono O’odham Community Action. “In the 1960s,
(diabetes) was virtually unknown in this community.”

In 2007, TOCA opened the Desert Rain Café in Sells, about a
two hour drive southwest of Tucson. Each dish includes at least one
heritage food—sometimes prepared in a traditional manner, and
sometimes introduced into a more-modern dish or preparation. The
café uses agave syrup as a sweetener and mesquite flour in baked
goods. The food is fantastic and flavorful, as well as affordable, with
prices on the current menu ranging from $1.95 to $7.95.

“It’s a great place for people to come and try these things that
they may have seen growing in the desert,” Reader says. “It’s a
culinary experience.”

Heritage foods are not only a culinary experience; they’re also an
important cultural and economic part of life. The Tohono O’odham
culture is deeply tied to both culinary traditions and Mother Nature,
says Reader. For instance, traditional rain ceremonies and songs start
the monsoon season, which brings the rain to grow crops.

The café is also bringing jobs to the community—all of
the workers at the Desert Rain Café were unemployed prior to the
café’s opening, says Reader.

“It’s very much about health: These are the foods that keep us
healthy,” he says. “It’s also about culture: These are the foods that
are tied to our traditions, and it’s about economic opportunity as
well.”

The economics of heritage food is a topic that greatly interests Gary
Nabhan, a self-described writer, lecturer, food and farming advocate,
rural-lifeways folklorist and conservationist. He works with Sabores
Sin Fronteras/Flavors Without Borders, a joint venture of the
University of Arizona’s Southwest Center and the Santa Cruz Valley
Heritage Alliance.

“Like it or not, we are nourished by a binational food system: Most
of what is eaten in Tucson in the winter comes from south of the
border,” says Nabhan. “The question being asked by the Flavors Without
Borders food alliance is this: How can our buying power support the
right kind of sustainable agriculture that keeps farmers, farm workers
and the land on both sides of the borderline healthier than it has been
in the past?”

Nabhan has spent his career working with and studying heritage
foods, and he says that across the continent, farmers and ranchers make
up just 1 1/2 percent of the population, compared with about 50 percent
in the past. Fewer farms and fewer lands are being dedicated to diverse
crops, which has led to the loss of nearly 1,200 types of fruit,
vegetables, grains and meats; this can only be reversed if urban
consumers are willing to support ranchers and farmers who grow a
greater diversity of crops.

“If anyone is to make a living off growing heritage foods, first, it
should be those in the original communities of stewards who have kept
them alive all along,” he says. “And because many (of these foods) are
nutritious, they should be used to support the nutritional well-being
and food security of at-risk communities now vulnerable to rising food
prices and advertising of junk foods.”

Sabores Sin Fronteras’ mission is to document, celebrate and
conserve farming and food folkways along the U.S./Mexico border.

“Some heritage foods have multicultural legacies, like prickly pear
or mission figs, while others have been unique to a single community,
culture or region,” Nabhan says. “The Southwest borderlands have both,
but each should be treated appropriately.”

Many of these heritage foods grow in abundance here, without any
help from people, and are free for the taking (with permission, of
course). For example, the Santa Cruz River Valley is one of the longest
continually cultivated and most diverse agricultural areas in the
United States, with an agricultural history dating back nearly 4,000
years.

The area is diverse because the seeds have to adapt to the harsh and
changing climates, Wilder says.

“Rather than change the environment to adapt to the seeds, which is
what Monsanto does, or change the seeds to adapt to the environment,
which is what we’re doing with genetic modification, the way that
nature works is through Darwinian selection: (The plants) adapt to the
environment they’re in, and in that way are stronger and resistant to
disease, naturally,” Wilder says.

Nabhan explains that maintaining biological diversity is important,
especially in a culture where, if a farmer can’t figure out how to
market, say, 120 kinds of apples, he will eventually only grow the few
types that sell.

“That’s where early adopters like Chef Janos Wilder come in,” Nabhan
says, “to help farmers figure out the distinctive uses of some of their
apples or vegetables that can’t be matched by conventional
varieties.”

One traditional native plant that’s adapted well locally is the
mesquite tree. There are several varieties that have pods that can be
harvested and ground into sweet, nutty flour. The Community Food Bank
recommends that you harvest the pods when they turn yellow or
yellowish-red and are dry enough to snap. The mesquite-pod season
typically begins in June and continues through October.

Desert Harvesters, a nonprofit, volunteer-run organization that
facilitates the planting of native food-bearing shade trees, grinds the
harvested mesquite pods into flour and has some great pointers on how
to harvest and process mesquite pods on their Web site. They run a
mobile hammer mill that allows people to grind their harvested mesquite
beans for a nominal cost—only $3 to $5 for the first three
gallons of pods, and $1 for every gallon after that, up to a 15-gallon
maximum. The mill is driven around neighborhoods in Tucson during
October and November—when the dew point and humidity are lower,
so that the flour doesn’t clog up the mill, says Brad Lancaster,
co-founder of Desert Harvesters. He estimates that if you harvest,
clean and dry your own mesquite pods, and then bring them to the mill,
you can get several pounds of mesquite flour for just a few dollars per
pound, compared to nearly $20 per pound in stores.

“Mesquite was a staple in the diet of all early Tucsonans—the
Tohono O’odham people, the cowboys and ranchers,” says Lancaster. “We
realized the missing piece in modern-day Tucson is that people are
choosing the convenient option rather than the local one. If we make
the local food more convenient, it will be more of a priority.”

Lancaster also points out that the importance of these heritage
foods goes beyond just the culinary aspect.

“We are trying to re-instill in people an appreciation of the
Sonoran Desert ecosystem,” he says.

Mesquite-pod milling is just a small part of the
picture—Lancaster says Desert Harvesters is trying to encourage
people to plant native food-bearing trees and cacti in their backyards,
neighborhoods, schools and along roadways. They not only provide
healthy, sustainable, delicious food, he says; they also beautify our
streets, neighborhoods and roadways, provide shade and prevent against
flooding and erosion.

Mesquite pods, peanut-flavored ironwood-tree seeds, and the edible
seeds and flowers of the blue and foothills palo verde trees aren’t the
only desert bounty out there for the picking, says Lancaster. There
are, of course, other obvious choices for harvesting: prickly pear
pads; saguaro and prickly pear fruit; and cholla buds. The Tucson
Cactus and Succulent Society has a great tutorial for harvesting these
goodies on their Web site, as well as a few delicious-looking prickly
pear recipes. The group has been working to preserve and protect these
spiny delicacies for 50 years.

The society, which now boasts more than 1,100 members, works with
land developers and mines to legally, and carefully, remove valuable
desert plants from the project sites. The plants are then relocated and
sold at reasonable prices, with proceeds going to such causes as grants
for K-12 education about cacti, succulents and the Sonoran Desert, says
Dick Wiedhopf, the society’s president.

“We have a new kind of people coming to Tucson,” he says. “In the
’60s, when people would retire and come here looking for a warm, cheap,
beautiful place to live, they would bring their lawns, trees, grass and
rosebushes. But the new people coming into Tucson are interested in the
desert environment and are saying that we need to preserve the Sonoran
Desert and protect these native plants.”

Wiedhopf estimates that the society has rescued and relocated more
than 45,000 plants since 1999. In the past, the society has organized
trips to the Tohono O’odham Nation during the harvest season for
saguaro fruit.

“We would take a group of about 20 each morning during the harvest
season to watch and participate in harvesting the (saguaro) fruit,” he
says. “At first, it looks easy, but when you’re standing right next to
that 20-foot-tall saguaro, trying to maneuver a pole to gather the
fruit, it’s not quite so easy. It was a really great experience,
working with the Tohono O’odham people and experiencing their
tradition. It was an important memory for a lot of people.”

(Remember that it is illegal to harvest fruit, seeds, plants and
plant parts from public roadways, and federal, state, county, city and
privately owned lands without written consent. Also, when harvesting,
be considerate of the natural ecosystem, and the animals and insects
that the plant may support. Don’t strip the plant bare—be sure to
leave some for the critters!)

According to the most recent statistics available from the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 67 percent of
non-institutionalized adults 20 years of age and older were overweight
or obese in 2005-2006. Compare this to 44 percent in 1960-1962.

Along with the rise in obesity, we’ve seen a rise in diabetes and
other diseases. The CDC reports that the number of Americans with
diabetes tripled from 1980 to 2006, from 5.6 million to 16.8 million.
This is, of course, due not only to changes in our diet, but also
changes in our habits, environments and other factors.

Perhaps a small step backward in our eating habits—making a
point to include healthy, regional and seasonal foods that our
great-great-great-great-great grandparents would recognize—would
be a step in the right direction.

For More Information

• Desert Harvesters: www.desertharvesters.org

• Native Seeds/SEARCH: www.nativeseeds.org

• Sabores Sin Fronteras/Flavors WithoutBorders: swctr.web.arizona.edu/folklore/sabores/

• Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance: www.santacruzheritage.org

• Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society: www.tucsoncactus.org

This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.