Edible Baja Arizona - May/June 2015

edible

May/June 2015 • Issue No. 12 • GR ATIS

BAJA A RIZONA

APIS NEVER SHRUGS No. 12 May/June 2015

Kids Cloning Trees • The Bee's Knees • Sharing Seeds Love at La Cocina • Tucson Firefighters Eat Local

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Features

Contents 6 COYOTE TALKING 8 VOICES We asked farmers: What do you do to maintain soil fertility?

14 GLEANINGS 20 THE HUNGRIEST FOODIE 25 THE PLATE 31 KIDS’ MENU Haile’s Healthy Swaps 35 EDIBLE HOMESTEAD

114 LOVE: IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER From Bentley’s to La Cocina, Jo Schneider has been nurturing a cared-for community in Tucson for more than 30 years.

46 KITCHEN 101 50 GARDEN Q&A 52 FARM REPORT 60 IN THE BUSINESS Ari Shapiro, owner of Sparkroot, Falora, and Sidecar, is the conductor at the podium, orchestrating an unplugged eating experience.

66 KIDS’ MENU Myles Walker, 11, and his brother, Daniel, 9, visit their favorite pizza joints along the modern streetcar route.

76 YOUTH Educator Landon Walls sees the future through local food at Hiaki High School.

86 YOUTH With help from Mission Gardens, TUSD students are learning how to graft heritage fruit trees—and connecting past to present.

128 SEED SAVIORS Check out a package of seeds at a public library to get a glimpse of a gardener’s past—and into a community’s future.

96 MEET YOUR FARMER Rancher Sidney Spencer comes full circle, back to her grass-fed roots.

106 PURVEYORS Noel Patterson has the restaurant community in Tucson abuzz with his hosted hive concept.

154 BUZZ With the popularity of dive bars on the rise, we explore the depths of five of the most beloved dives of the Old Pueblo.

164 BOOZE NEWS 172 SABORES DE SONORA Visit Alamos to find where desert meets tropics, in cuisine and crops.

186 ESSAY Good keepers make bichicoris.

188 INK

140 FIRING LOCALLY Tucson’s firefighters are making the case for going local first on food.

191 SOURCE GUIDE 202 LAST BITE Jefferson Carter’s Squab

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“THE KEEPING OF BEES IS LIKE THE DIRECTION OF SUNBEAMS.” — THOREAU

COYOTE TALKING

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O YOU EVER PONDER , while enjoying a slice of toast from your favorite local artisan baker, slathered with delicious honey from a local apiary, that it’s only because of the emergence of flowering plants, known as angiosperms, some 130 million years ago—and the resulting coevolution of a vast number of pollinating insects and other organisms—that you’re able to enjoy such a treat, or, for that matter, actually be alive to have such a thought in the first place?

Our existence is dependent on the success of pollinators to fulfill their role as connectors between plants so the reproductive process works and seeds are generated. Think about this: domestic honey bees (Apis mellifera) shoulder the burden of pollinating more than 80 percent of all food crops in this country. Our survival as a species depends on the “intricate dance of codependency” between plants and their pollinators, in the words of Richard Brusca, executive director emeritus of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

That necessity of connection is a theme that resonates throughout this issue. If you’re a regular reader, you know we celebrate the notion of locality as a core part of our mission. That’s because we know that a strong and sustainable economy is based on the connections we make. In Megan Kimble’s story about Tucson Fire Department Station Number 4’s commitment to source their food locally, she quotes a study by the Knight Foundation that showed that connection to place was, in fact, the single leading indicator for a community’s prosperity. Find out how this firehouse did it and you might think about incremental transformations in your own household.

In 2012, Pima County Library’s Justine Hernandez, along with several local nonprofits, created the first network of 19 seed libraries. As Ken Lamberton reports, last year, more than 16,000 packets of seeds went out to local gardeners.

Gardeners return seeds from harvested plants to help maintain a resilient and sustainable collection of plant varieties adapted to our hot and dry climate. And in the process, these seed libraries are building community and creating connections B A J A A RI RIZ ZON A between Tucson gardeners.

Kati Standefer tells the story of one of Tucson’s Queen Bees: Jo Schneider—the co-founder of the iconic Bentley’s House of Coffee and Tea and the force behind Downtown’s La Cocina—has nurtured scores of employees and created something truly special: trust, meaning, and connection for the large tribe of customers at both businesses. (A bit of trivia: Bentley’s was the very first advertiser in the Tucson Weekly, the newspaper I cofounded in 1984.)

We’re excited to welcome Kate Selby to our team as our Digital Content Manager. It’s her job as a writer, editor, and social media maven to maintain our connection with our community of readers and advertisers on a daily basis. For the past four years, she’s run her own graphic and web design business, and lives with her husband, Chad, and baby girl, Ada. Welcome, Kate!

Kids Cloning Trees • The Bee's Knees • Shar ing Seeds Edible Baja Arizona is a free magazine, and it’s going to stay Love at La Cocina • Tucs on Firefighters Eat Loca l that way, but that bar code in the mockup above is the start of a new way to pick up the magazine. One of the most gratifying things about putting this magazine out every two months is how quickly it disappears, but that leaves the problem of where our 90,000 readers can find one of 26,000 copies even a few weeks after publication. Our amazing advertisers foot the bill for those 26,000 magazines, and they will continue to provide free copies—please patronize them!

Additionally, you’ll be able to purchase a copy at all Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Natural Grocers locations in Tucson for $4.99, starting in July. You can also subscribe, and have it delivered to your door for $36 per year, plus we’ll send you a VIP Sustainer card, entitling you to discounts from our advertisers that will more than pay for your subscription.

Get the details on our website. Thanks for supporting our mission.

We’ll see you around the table. ¡Salud!

edibllee

May/June 2015 • Issue No. 12 • $499

—Douglas Biggers, editor and publisher 6 May - June 2015

Editor and Publisher Douglas Biggers Associate Publisher Jared R. McKinley Managing Editor Megan Kimble Art Director Steve McMackin Digital Content Manager Kate Selby Senior Contributing Editor Gary Paul Nabhan Designer Lyric Peate Copy Editor Ford Burkhart Proofreader Charity Whiting Account Manager Katy Gierlach Advertising Consultants Dhyana Wasson, Kenny Stewart Interns Elizabeth Eaton, Bradford Hill Contributors Wayne Blankenship, Jon D’Auria, Lili DeBarbieri, Bryan Eichhorst, Emily Gindlesparger, Sara Jones, Molly Kincaid, Shelley Littin, Lorin Michel, Molly Patrick, Linda Ray, Kati Standefer, Bill Steen, Haile Thomas, Myles Walker, Daniel Walker, Suzanne Wright Photographers & Artists Jackie Alpers, Dominic AZ Bonuccelli, Michael Falconer, Krysta Jabczenski, Liora K, Robert J Long, Danny Martin, Steven Meckler, Paul Mirocha, Joe Pagac, Molly Patrick, Bridget Shanahan, Jeff Smith, Bill Steen Distribution Carson Davenport, Royce Davenport, Mel Meijas, Shiloh Thread-Waist Walkosak, Steve and Anne Bell Anderson We’d love to hear from you.

307 S. Convent Ave., Barrio Viejo Tucson, Arizona 85701 520.373.5196 info@edibleBajaArizona.com EdibleBajaArizona.com Say hello on social media facebook.com/EdibleBajaArizona youtube.com/EdibleBajaArizona twitter.com/EdibleBajaAZ flickr.com/ediblebajaarizona instagram.com/ediblebajaaz pinterest.com/edibleba

On the cover and detail above: Apis Shrugged by Robert J. Long, NearsightGraphite.com

V OLUME 2, I SSUE 6.

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

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

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VOICES

Photography by Jeff Smith

The foundation for maintaining healthy soil is well-balanced compost that has transmuted into a humus-like state.

The consistent seasonal application of the compost to the soil builds humus which, due to its colloidal structure, holds the nutrients for slow release through the action of a diverse population of beneficial fungi and bacteria which make the nutrients available to the plants.

Jon McNamara, River Road Farm

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We use a product called Bactifeed; they are living organisms that we brew in a solution and then we distribute it in our water and out to our fields. I’m one of the Arizona distributors, because it’s great for our small-scale farms. It is a shotgun approach to [introducing] microorganisms.

Twelve different strands go out into the soil. Water stays in the soil longer; it breaks down compost; it buffers the salt.

Michael McKenzie, Lucky Nickel Ranch

We have plenty of chickens and goats, which means we can make great quality compost here on the farm. That, in addition to proper crop rotation and the recent implementation of a no-till system, helps us grow our beautiful crops. We are also hoping to start a worm operation soon for even better soil fertility and water retention.

Sofia Forier-Montes, Felicia’s Farm

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We believe the key to creating and maintaining fertile soil is in organic matter. We try to maximize organic matter by utilizing crop rotation and cover crops. Additionally, we periodically inject a number of microbial inoculants through our drip irrigation system.

Aaron Cardona, Arevalo’s Farm

At SouthWinds Farm, we maintain soil fertility through applications of compost and the use of cover crops to increase soil nutrients and organic content. We also rotate our crops.

Since we are growing year round, we have to pay very close attention to our soil conditions.

Joe Marlow, SouthWinds Farm

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gleanings

The Fire Engine Dogs dream team. (From left) Victor Soto, Eileen Roether, and Kyle King.

Bombero Hot Dogs

A food truck. A fire engine. A really fine dog.

By Shelley Littin | Photography by Krysta Jabczenski

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S OTO started his mobile Fire Engine Dogs food truck almost accidentally. “In January of 2012 a friend had put a hot dog cart on Craigslist and Facebook,” Soto said. “I told him it would never sell because it looked like a fire truck.”

Three years later, Fire Engine Dogs is in full swing, as Soto renders up hot dog services to rescue empty stomachs all over town. “My friend made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Soto said, laughing.

“I never thought I’d get into the food business,” he said.

Working full-time at Raytheon, Soto had enough on his plate before he started piling it high with hot dogs for the Tucson community. He operates the food truck weekends along with his wife, Eileen Roether, and their oldest daughter, as well as Kyle King, a family friend.

The fire engine food truck turned out to be so popular that it wasn’t long before Soto upgraded its appearance. “I’ll have had this new truck for one year this May,” he said. “People are very impressed with the look of it. I get a lot of compliments.”

Soto, who has never worked with the fire department himself, sought the advice of former firefighter Jim Watts to decorate the truck. “Watts gave me tips on how to make it look more like a real fire truck,” Soto said. “He suggested I put up flags on the back to blow in the wind, and images of hoses and pressure gauges.”

ICTOR

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“The biggest surprise was putting the light bar on the roof,” he added. “At night we’ll turn that on, and kids love it.”

But as far as food goes, Soto said, “we cater not just to kids.”

Soto serves up six specialty hot dogs, fresh cut fries, nachos with chili cheese or rib eye steak and tomatoes, and is considering adding sausages and other items to the menu. Soto’s version of a Sonoran hot dog is his Granite Mountain Hotshots Bombero Dog. “The name is to honor the 19 firefighters who died at Yarnell,” Soto said. “Any man or woman who serves, police, firemen, military, I always try to thank them for their service.”

Look for Soto’s red truck and flashing lights at events throughout Tucson, especially those where children can be found. “I’ve gotten referrals from other food trucks to do a lot of these,” he said. “The fire truck is very kid friendly.”

“The most satisfaction I get is serving a hot dog out the window and someone comes back and thanks us for giving him a good meal,” Soto said. “Whenever someone comes back to compliment the taste and quality, that’s the best.”

An accidental food vendor, Soto now plans to continue serving up his hot dogs “as long as I can last. It’s a labor of love,” he said.

Visit Fire Engine Dogs’ Facebook page at facebook.com⁄FireEngineDog for the truck’s whereabouts.

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Gluten-free gets colorful: Gourmet Girls’ chef Mary Steiger (left) and co-owner Susan Fulton show off their signature desert dessert.

Dessert or Desert?

A night of native nourishment.

By Shelley Littin | Photography by Krysta Jabczenski

Y

more local fare than the edible native flowers, herbs, and shrubs of Baja Arizona, showcased splendidly at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum’s Desert Delectables Night.

An evening of music, merriment, education, and sumptuous sampling will unfold when the Desert Museum holds its second food-tasting event, challenging chefs to prepare their creations featuring native Sonoran desert ingredients.

This year’s lineup will include some 15 local restaurants serving up their best sweet and savory creations, said Marie Long, associate director of conservation education and science at the Desert Museum.

“We’re really showcasing native food,” Long said. “The chefs are tasked with using a native food ingredient and incorporating that into their dessert or savory.” Guests will also have an opportunity to learn more about how native plants are used for food and beverages at docent stations.

The Sonoran Desert flora can offer surprisingly multinational flavors: Ghini’s French Caffe, one featured restaurant, will show how to use desert ingredients to prepare French cuisine.

“Ghini’s has been a big proponent of supporting local, farm-to-table fare since our inception in 1992,” said owner and chef Coralie Satta. “It’s important to use local products and produce. The items are fresher, and you keep the money OU CAN ’ T FIND

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in your own community, supporting your local farmers and growers.”

Another Tucson restaurant will highlight the naturally gluten-free qualities of the desert’s wild side. Gourmet Girls Gluten Free Bakery⁄Bistro is preparing a signature dessert for the occasion: “A meringue shell stuffed with a lemon prickly pear curd, topped with lavender cream,” said Susan Fulton, a co-owner and general manager of Gourmet Girls. “It’s featuring prickly pear and desert lavender.”

Gourmet Girls, southern Arizona’s only certified gluten-free kitchen, uses native Sonoran plants in a variety of their regular dishes, including a lavender shortbread Christmas cookie, lavender ice cream, and a prickly pear reduction sauce served with several dishes.

“The Desert Museum is an absolutely wonderful Tucson landmark,” Fulton said. “It’s a really unique museum, and it’s wonderful to be able to support it in this way.”

During the evening, the Desert Museum’s Sonoran Supermarket presentation will inform guests about the use of native plants for food, fibers, and medicines. Local musical artists including the Beth Daunis Trio, Reno del Mar, and Gabriel Francisco will perform throughout the evening.

Desert Delectables Night is May 30, 6-9 p.m. Admission is $35 for members and $40 for the general public. Tickets are available at desertmuseum.org.

g

We B Jamin’s Barbara Carr calls canning “a dying art.”

Jamin’ in the Sun Bringing back the art of canning.

By Shelley Littin | Photography by Krysta Jabczenski

F

A LASK AN HOMESTEAD to a western family farm, Barbara Carr has brought her passion for living off the land’s natural bounty—and her fresh fruit jam—to the desert Southwest.

“We chased the sun across the world,” she said. “We decided we liked Arizona best. I love knowing I can go outside and the sun will be shining.” Carr bought a parcel of land west of Tucson and settled there with her son. Used to living off whatever plants she could grow, she wondered what to do in Arizona.

“We thought, let’s grow cactus!” she said. And just like a homestead expanding each year with new add-ons, a field of prickly pears turned into a greenhouse full of cucumbers, beets, and corn, and then two greenhouses, and finally a flourishing desert farm.

For 10 years now, Carr has harvested, prepared, and sold her homemade wares from her We B Jamin Farm, including mesquite jellies, rubs, and sauces, and prickly pear jellies, syrups, sauces, juices, and nectar for medicinal uses.

Her specialty is jam. “I find the best product I can make is jams,” she said. “My father-in-law in Alaska grows rhubarb and ships it to me, and we have a great source of organic berries. I try to make sure if people are going to buy jam, they’re going to buy my jam.” With one jar labeled Tequila Sunrise, made from prickly pear jelly and Arizona oranges, it’s no wonder that people do.

“We do all our own harvesting in the fall, with the help of neighbors,” she said. “We feel it’s important that we pick the ROM AN

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proper fruits to make the products.” If it’s not the best ingredient, it’s not used, she said.

“Canning is a dying art,” said Carr, a woman raised storing vegetables and fruits for long-term in the family root cellar.

“Jellies, jams, tomatoes, corn. You name it, my mother put it in a jar,” she said. “Most people now don’t know how to make a jar of jam.”

For Carr, “it was my second nature, especially when I thought about starting a business.” Prickly pear, she added, is an excellent source of calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc, and it may help regulate blood sugar, appetite, and alleviate joint inflammation. And, she said, all of her products are gluten-free.

Including one of her more offbeat creations: carrot cake.

In a jar. Fruits, carrots, and spices, Carr said, and “you’d think you’re having a slice of carrot cake.”

Carr’s products can be found at most Tucson farmers’ markets, including the St. Philip’s Plaza Farmers’ Market on Sundays and the Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Oro Valley Steam Pump Ranch on Saturdays. “Every week I make what’s needed, and it tastes like your grandmother just made it. It’s the best jam you’ll ever eat,” Carr said. ✜ Visit JamDiva.com.

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

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Food Is Love

Great food isn’t just about the skillful assembly of ingredients.

It is about the energy around the food and the energy you put into it. I know this sounds woo-woo but I really believe food tastes better when love is involved. And I think that’s why Little Café Poca Cosa (151 N. Stone Ave.) is one of the best restaurants in Baja Arizona.

The Plato I always get the chef’s choice, the Plato, and it’s never disappointed me. On a recent visit, Sandra Davila, the gregarious owner, rushed over to the stereo and turned the music up really loud, yelling, “If you say that you don’t love Neil Diamond, you are a LIAR!” The love in this place is brimming. You get hugged when you come in. You probably get hugged again when you leave. What they do under that roof is not just gastronomical, it is medicinal.

New in Baja Arizona

The restaurant renaissance shows no sign of simmering down in Tucson. The new Ermanos (220 N. Fourth Ave.) is a craft beer and wine bar—but the food is brilliant. Dishes are perfectly proportioned and easy to eat with a beer. This isn’t standard bar food. At the soft opening, I had the Grilled Shishito Peppers and the Gnocchi & Cheese, Gnocchi & Cheese which comes with poblano chiles and herbs, served in a tiny cast iron pot. Ermanos is also doing a fair amount of local sourcing, including beef from Double Check Ranch.

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Breakfast Pizza

The upswing in the food scene is not limited to new restaurants. Renee’s Organic Oven (7065 E. Tanque Verde Road), an old Tucson favorite, is now offering weekday breakfast. The menu balances creative use of ingredients and reinterpretations of breakfast standards with the expected comfort of breakfast. There are also several breakfast cocktails to take the edge off any hungry body angst you might have.

Bodega Kitchen & Wine at St. Philip’s Plaza (4340 N. Campbell Ave.), closed in late February of this year, and almost immediately Amalour Revival Lounge sprung up in its place. The food and drink menu is totally new and sources many ingredients locally—as local as a few doors down (Flying Leap and Alfonso Gourmet Olive Oil & Balsamics reside in the same plaza). My girlfriend, Katy, and I shared the Cheddar & Pear Bruschetta and the Apple, Beet, & Blue Salad. Ingredients are fresh and paired nicely with our midday Sazerac and Old Fashioned. The patio looks like an amazing place to spend some pleasant hours winding down with the sunset.

Cheddar & Pear Bruschetta and Apple, Beet, & Blue Salad

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Rustic Food Classic Drinks Shaded Patio Chef’s Choice Sushi Lunch • Dinner • Brunch

Music Often Extremely Persuasive Happy Hour Weekdays 3-6

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Reminiscing about the Sea I was born in Astoria, Oregon. My grandmother owned a fish cannery—I have a need in my heart for fresh fish. And the fish that satisfies this need more than any other is salmon.

Like Golem of Lord of the Rings, I prefer my fish raw, so you can find me hunting for sashimi at sushi places about Tucson.

Salmon has such a wonderful flavor and texture that you don’t need much else besides the tiniest bit of soy sauce. An early dinner recently brought Katy and me to Kazoku Sushi & Japanese Cuisine (4210 E. Speedway Blvd). Luckily, Katy prefers tuna sashimi so I get to eat most of the salmon and nobody has to get hurt. Nothing pairs with sushi like Sapporo, a Japanese rice lager that even non-beer lovers can appreciate.

As a lover of the ocean, it does weigh heavy on my heart that we are overfishing and polluting the oceans so that the ability to enjoy seafood may soon become a thing of the past. One restaurant that is trying to source its seafood from sustainable sources is Fini’s Landing (5689 N. Swan Road).

They only sell fish from recognized sustainable fisheries, following guidelines from the likes of Marine Stewardship

Fish Tacos

UNDIVIDED ATTENTION

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Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, and Green Chefs, Blue Ocean. We ate a mess of tacos (and some hot wings) and our wallets were not considerably taxed by a somewhat less guilt-ridden seafood indulgence.

Botanical Explorations

I am a botanist; my favorite places to hunt for species I don’t know are import markets in Tucson. I had been writing about garbanzo beans when I came across a darker, wild sister: the Bengal gram. I found this more protein-rich bean at Nur Market (3565 E. Speedway Blvd.) I loaded up on spices like curry, turmeric, and cardamom (they didn’t have asafetida, which I got at the Food Conspiracy Cooperative, 412 N. Fourth Ave). My aim on this day was to make a black chickpea curry. After soaking the beans overnight with a bit of baking soda (to soften them up), I pressure-cooked them for about 25 minutes and made a curry sauce in a medium of tomatoes. Nothing makes the house smell as good as cooking curry—minus the brief moment before the asafetida joins the other flavors; if you haven’t used asafetida before, it stinks horribly on its own but somehow magically adds a depth of umami. It is a great substitute for onion or garlic in any dish but is a spice you want to make sure is in a well-sealed container. The cuisines of the Middle East, Africa, and India have a lot in common with our own: the prominence of legumes and chili peppers, the use of flatbreads (like tortillas, naan, or injera), and the not-so-subtle use of spices. Many great chefs are starting to play with cross-pollinating these cuisines and I very much enjoy doing the same.

Find my recipe (albeit amateur) for black chickpea curry at EdibleBajaArizona.com. ✜

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Jared R. McKinley is the associate publisher of Edible Baja Arizona.

Chickpea Curry ingredients: Bengal gram, onion, and cardamom

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The Plate Plate the

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That one thing they should never take off the menu.

1234 Photography by Michael Falconer

Enchiladas Bandera Mi Casa The holy trio of enchiladas: steak, chicken, and cheese, each topped with one of Mi Casa’s signature sauces. Served with rice and beans ... and a little bit of flare in the center. $8.99 732 W. Fourth St., Benson

Ravioli al Ciccolato Pizzeria Mimosa Filled with Italian dark chocolate cream and floating in a buttery frangelico sauce, these chocolate ravioli pillows are the definition of dreamy.

Topped with fresh whipped cream, toasted hazelnuts, and red sea salt $15 4755 E. Neapolitan Way, Hereford

Catfish Rodney’s Down Home Cooking This dish lives up to the “down home” name—simple, comforting, filling. The lightly flowered and fried catfish comes with a side of seasoned green beans, dirty rice, and spiced beans. $7.95 Railroad Ave., Willcox

Kalbi-gui SV Home Korean Restaurant They’re sort of like grilled short ribs, but so much better.

These beef ribs come marinated in homemade Korean barbeque sauce. Served with steamed rice and an array of traditional side dishes. $10.99 45 S. Garden Ave., Sierra Vista

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KIDS’ MENU

Haile’s Healthy Swaps

by Haile Thomas | Photography by Jackie Alpers

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T ’ S NEAR LY SUMMER and I’m feeling grateful to live here in Arizona and enjoy beautiful sunny skies and warm weather. The birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and my creativity in the kitchen is blossoming. I’ve been busy, as usual, coming up with delicious and nutritious dishes for my family to enjoy, and to share with all of you!

So, once again, I’ve got three new healthy swaps that are light, fresh, delicious, flavorful, and guaranteed to get you excited and ready to spring into the kitchen and make them for your family.

The first healthy swap is my Sweet Potato BBQ Tortizza.

This recipe is so much fun to make. Popular with kids and adults alike, it replaces your average pizza by using tortillas and nutrient-packed sweet potato as the crust elements, then is topped with delicious BBQ sauce and veggies. (I had the awe-

BBQ Sweet Potato Tortizza with Mushrooms and Bell Peppers Ingredients: 2 large tortillas (I used a sun-dried tomato and basil tortilla) 2 medium-large sized sweet potatoes 1 cup BBQ sauce (I used Organicville brand) 1 cup sliced red onions 1 cup sliced red bell peppers 1 cup clamshell gourmet mushrooms (or use your favorite mushroom) chopped cilantro (as much or little as you like, or not at all if you don’t like cilantro) Instructions:

Roast sweet potatoes—depending on size, 2040 minutes. Mash sweet potatoes and spread mashed sweet potatoes on one tortilla, then top with the second. Spread BBQ sauce all over the top of the tortilla (making sure to coat the edges so they don’t curl up when baking later).

Add red onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, and cilantro. Bake at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes until pizza is heated through.

some opportunity to make this recipe on the Home & Family Show on the Hallmark Channel, so it’s a bit famous.)

The second healthy swap is my Beet Ribbon Salad with Sweet Dijon Vinaigrette. For this recipe I used a Spiralizer tool to make my beet ribbons, which is so much fun to do. It replaces your average lettuce and heavy dressing-based salads by incorporating nutritious ingredients and bold flavors to create a delicious dish.

The last healthy swap is my Crispy Potato Nachos. This recipe replaces your typical nachos by adding some extra health benefits from my yummy cashew cream sauce, as well as knockyour-socks-off flavor.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and our almost-summery weather, and of course don’t forget to follow me online for more yummy eats at YouTube.com⁄HaileTeenVegan.

Beet Ribbons with Cream Cashew and Sweet Dijon Vinaigrette Salad Ingredients: 2 medium red beets ⅓ cup chopped mint Vinaigrette Ingredients: 3 teaspoons agave syrup 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 teaspoon cinnamon Cream Cashew Ingredients: ⅓ cup cashew, soaked, drained and rinsed, plus 2 tablespoons dry cashews 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1½ tablespoons olive oil 4 tablespoons water ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon everyday seasoning

32 May - June 2015

Instructions:

To make Cream Cashew, preheat oven to 350°. Blend all ingredients together in a food processor for 5 minutes. Pour the mixture into an oiled ramekin and bake for 15 minutes, or until it is firm on top and golden. Remove from the oven and allow the mixture to cool completely in the fridge. To make beet ribbons, spiralize the beets and chop the mint. Whisk all vinaigrette ingredients together and toss into the beet and mint in a large bowl. Cut Cream Cashew into inch pieces and serve with salad.

Crispy Potato Nachos Ingredients: 3 cups diced potatoes 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 teaspoon cumin ⅓ cup cashews, soaked at least two hours ½ orange bell pepper, roughly chopped ¼ cup dairy-free milk (I used flax milk but unsweetened almond or soy milk works) 1 teaspoon chili powder 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast ¼ teaspoon garlic powder salt and pepper, to taste 1 cup cooked black beans (if canned, rinsed and drained) ½ cup pico de gallo 1 red pepper, finely chopped ½ red onion, thinly sliced 1 jalapeño, thinly sliced guacamole Instructions:

Heat pan on medium-high heat for a few minutes until very hot. Add oil and heat for 30 seconds. Add potatoes to the sizzling pan and sprinkle with cumin and salt and pepper. Cook, flipping occasionally, until crispy on all sides, about 15 minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking, make the cashew cream sauce. Place the cashews, orange pepper, flax milk, chili powder, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste in a blender. Purée until very, very smooth, about 2-5 minutes depending on the blender. Briefly heat sauce on the stove.

Layer the nachos: potatoes, cashew cream sauce, black beans, pico de gallo, chopped red pepper, sliced red onions, sliced jalapeños, and guacamole.

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

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[E DIBLE H OMESTEAD ]

Monarda fistulosa, beebalm

Why Bother Growing What You Can Buy?

By Jared R. McKinley | Illustrations by Danny Martin

A

t the beginning of the year, I moved into a new

home. I’ve been a homeowner, but now I rent, and I admit it takes a special sort of landlord to open up their home to me. I don’t see the yard as just some place where one occasionally fires up a grill. I’ve already dug up and have begun cultivating several garden beds and brought in many chickens and a colony of bees. I am fighting the urge to get a peacock because I know that would probably try my neighbors’ patience (so far, they’ve been appreciative of the eccentricity of the neighborhood farmer).

Some years ago, I had a less tolerant landlord who started to get uncomfortable when I brought in a colony of bees, asking: “Why don’t you just buy honey from the market?” At the time, I scoffed at this question, but after I thought about

it, I realized: It is a fair question. Why, indeed, should I go through all the trouble of gardening and raising animals and bees? One might say I was ignoring the progress made by technology and streamlined processing by reverting back to farm chores.

I have a few answers to that question. First of all, when you get everything you eat from the grocery store, you are limited to what the supermarket buyers will allow on the shelf, and that usually has to do with the convenience of that product: its shelf life and its marketability. When you grow some of your own food, the variety suddenly opens up to whatever you can grow in your backyard. I love cardoon, but I have almost never seen cardoon for sale in Tucson. And then there’s taste—we all know the difference between a homegrown tomato and

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[E.H.]

one that’s store-bought. The varieties available for you to grow in your garden are selected for taste, not for shelf life. Some of them must be eaten the day they are picked. That is not convenient for a business.

Yes, there is work involved, not just in the gardening itself, but also in managing the garden’s bounty. I have to not only grow the stuff, but also try to make sure I don’t waste it.

You never just get one little squash at a time; you get 14 at a time. This has forced me to research preservation methods, and guess what else it’s taught me? Amazing recipes! Who knew that dehydrated summer squash could be so savory and delicious? Who knew that dill flowers had their own flavor (apart from the seeds or the leaves), or that you can preserve them in vinegar? Who knew there were so many other exotic, stimulating flavors native to our own region that thrive in our gardens? When we lived closer to our foods, we knew how to make the most of what we had, and how to be creative and do without. When we put the job of managing our dietary needs into the hands of others, we are at their mercy, subject to consume what they put in front of us.

Certainly, the rise of farmers’ markets and small, local markets is helping improve the diversity of food on the shelves. Even national chains like Sprouts and Whole Foods have responded to the rise in a desire for diversity. But when you grow for yourself, you are subject to your own devices and a wider range of deliciousness that wares sourced at markets can only add to.

I also love going out each morning and seeing how my

36 May - June 2015

younger chickens are growing, or watching bee balm flowers develop on a variety I haven’t grown before. Every morning I spend just a little bit of time watching the laws of nature. Some days, I find a plant that has been decimated by harvester ants. Sometimes, I find that a plant I had tried to grow just isn’t going to grow in Tucson. But every day I learn more.

If you can look past the work, and the occasional failures, you come to find that when you nurture whatever tiny plot of land you might have at your disposal, you nurture yourself and the people in your life. The cliché that gardening heals isn’t just a feel-good sentiment. It’s true.

The Unrelenting Sun I know: It’s hot. The early summer has extinguished even the most enthusiastic gardeners’ zeal. The spring was so magical. You felt like you could grow anything. Then that first week with several days of triple digit temperatures arrives and wreaks havoc on your garden. Your efforts suddenly triple, and the end results are sometimes survival, at best.

Many tomatoes and even peppers will slow down production or cease altogether. Leaves of many crops yellow and burn on the edges. Plants are wilted in the afternoon, not being able to draw water quickly enough from the ground to stay turgid.

There are some things you can do to help your garden survive:

Nourish and Protect Your Soil The sun may be intense, but believe it or not, most plants actually love it. The amount of light is not what makes plants suffer; it is the dry heat that challenges them. Prepare your soil by mixing in a good amount of organic material in the upper layers, and finish with a layer of top dressing (we call it mulch) around the base of each plant. In my garden, I use compost to enrich the soil, and a few inches of straw as the top layer. When you vary the texture of the soil, it slows down evaporation. Plant roots can develop better and thus be equipped to draw water fast enough to enable cooling—plants cool themselves by letting water run through their stems and evaporating out the leaves. The compost also enriches the soil; plants that are better nourished perform better. The compost should be dark brown like the color of bittersweet chocolate; it’s available at most local plant nurseries and local hardware stores, or can be made in your own backyard. The top dressing or mulch can technically be compost too, but it should be somewhat coarser. I use straw because it eventually breaks down and can be incorporated into your soil, and it is fairly easy to get from your local feed store.

Silverbell Nursery

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

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520.622.3894

Efficient Irrigation If you are still watering by hand, you should save yourself time and energy and invest in an irrigation system. Hose watering is inefficient. Even if you shape the beds so that they fill nicely, water comes out of a hose too fast. A slow drip soaks the ground thoroughly and evenly. Even if you don’t have a lot of money, you can get a timer that runs on a battery and that easily attaches to your hose bib. You can run tubing to the garden and add emitter tubing where the water goes. It really isn’t difficult—if you can manage playing with Legos you can handle assembling drip irrigation. Let one of the local irrigation companies help you get all the parts you need. The efficiency of watering will improve, your valuable time will be preserved, and you can spend the time outside enjoying happy plants rather than desperately trying to get water into the ground.

Shading Many great gardeners cast a light shade over some of their garden during the summer. I myself do not, finding that mulching really fixes most problems caused by the sun. But this isn’t to say it’s a bad idea. A little bit of shade can take the edge off the blaze that hammers our gardens.

However, I advise being careful to not to cast too much shade on most of your edible plants. While plants might brighten up just a bit with some break from our intense sun, too much shade can cause weak plant growth and make them susceptible to insect infestation. Aphids and whitefly, in particular, love to suckle upon the soft, tender foliage caused by over-shading. One shading practice I do love is shading roots. This is especially useful for vining plants like winter squash, melon, or cucumber. If roots are shaded but the rest of the plant is free to collect sunlight, plants can show great vigor even during the hottest part of the day.

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[E.H.]

HIRE AN A SSASSIN , OR AN A SSASSIN B UG Zelus renardii

Nymph form

I

J U S T D I S C OV E R E D a new beneficial insect: the assassin bug. It feeds upon many insects— aphids, young caterpillars, mealybug, thrips, whitefly, and others. In the garden I am fond of the generalist defenders.

And I enjoy introducing more biology to the garden to keep pests in check.

Assassin bugs tend to hang out as long as there are bugs to eat (and in any garden, if things are right and you haven’t been bombing your beds with pesticides, there are always bugs to eat). They ambush, capture, and kill prey by piercing them and injecting a digestive enzyme, which means they can take on insects larger than you would expect. Assassin bugs arrive as eggs, and it may take a week to 10 days before they hatch. They eat as nymphs and adults, and at their second instar (after they have shed their exoskeletons twice), they develop a sticky resin on their legs that entraps small pests. Visit Arbico Organics (Arbico-Organics.com).

Adult form

38 May - June 2015

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[E.H.]

Dried pod and seeds of okra

PLANT N OW

C ROP F EATURE Guarijio “Nescafe” okra Abelmoschus esculentus

O

kra is a misunderstood vegetable. Well, technically it’s a fruit. All too often people lament the intolerable mucilaginous texture of okra. I would argue that their experience is related to improperly prepared fruits. There are a bazillion methods that you can find online, but one simple way to enjoy a nonslimy okra is to cut the tops off, slice fruits in half lengthwise, brush with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe even some chile powder, and roast in a 375-degree oven for about 35 minutes. They will come out crispy and delicious.

Okra is a sturdy plant. Plants aren’t picky about soil—regular old garden soil is great—and are generally not needy. When you can almost hear the laments of all other plants in the garden, cursing you for making them carry on through summer, okra just keeps growing like it’s still spring.

The Guarijio “Nescafe” variety is special. The fruits, used conventionally, should be picked when they are young and tender. Plants grow large and by the end of the growing season, may tower with matured, dry fruits, almost resembling the persistent pods you see on a yucca plant. The dried fruits are decorative, and the seeds can be roasted and ground up into a powder as a coffee substitute or additive similar to chicory. You can find seed for this variety at Native Seeds/SEARCH at NativeSeeds.org.

Visit their retail shop in Tucson at 3061 N. Campbell Ave. ✜

Jared R. McKinley is the associate publisher of Edible Baja Arizona.

Arizona

40 May - June 2015

During the dry part of the summer, plant: cantaloupe, melon, Armenian cucumber, watermelon, basil, okra, gourds, sweet potatoes, devil’s claw, tobacco, amaranth, and potatoes.

When the monsoon rains arrive, it is a great time to plant seeds of tepary, pole bean, corn, panic grass, epazote, squash (excluding the long-season varieties), pumpkin, cowpea, sunflower, and cucumber. You can also set out plants of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant for a second flush of fruits.

You can plant almost any perennial herb, fruit tree, or vine. Just make sure you keep new plants well-watered, daily when you first plant them.

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[E.H.]

Backyard Quail

By Wayne Blankenship | Illustrations by Danny Martin

I

came to quail egg farming from my volunteer work at

a wildlife rehabilitation facility. We work with injured hawks, falcons, owls, and even water birds, often entangled in someone’s discarded fishing line. Sometimes we find ourselves with lost or injured domestic birds that can’t be released into the wild—which is how I ended up volunteering to provide a good home for a few domestic quail.

My favorite female Japanese quail came to me this way.

She is usually gentle and alert and will eat pill bugs and other treats right out of my hand. I purchased a slightly younger male and they seem to get along fine and have recently produced perfect little speckled eggs. In spring, early summer, and fall, my quail pair produce one egg a day, from which I’ve made potato salads and tasty spicy pickled eggs. Like all birds, quail behave like the tiny dinosaurs they are, sometimes calm and sometimes fierce and explosive. The commercial varieties of quail jump better than they fly, but some can fly fairly well for short bursts.

It’s important to note that local wild Gambel’s, scaled, and Montezuma are all protected native species and cannot be caught or kept. However, other nonnatives can be farmed for meat or for eggs. These include varieties like the small coturnix quail (also called Japanese quail), and the hybrid-

42 May - June 2015

ized white Texas A&M quail, developed by Texas A&M University as a calm domestic breed. The much smaller buttonquail could also be easily raised in an urban backyard, but the eggs are very small. Local feed stores carry or can order quail.

Though much smaller and quieter than chickens, coturnix, or Japanese, quail mature and can begin laying at six to seven weeks. For meat production, this early maturation increases their desirability. Compared to chickens, they eat less and take up less space. They are ground dwellers, and don’t need a perch or a night roost.

Instead, I use driftwood in an inverted wood box for shelter. Japanese quail will produce small brown speckled eggs like those in the finest Japanese restaurants.

Pens can be adapted from chicken coop designs, as long as the wire is strong enough to protect from feral cats or from dogs who may jump at them and spook them. Wood shavings or straw make a good

ground cover. Most quail are more cold tolerant than chickens, but I keep a heat lamp handy for freezing nights.

In southern Arizona, it’s more likely that your birds will be at risk from overheating in the summer. Build their pen in a shady area; run an electric fan during the heat of the day. Chicken or rabbit water dispensers work great for quail. Make sure the water is clean and plentiful, especially in hot weather.

Experts will suggest three females per male, but I prefer one male and one female. Females can produce infertile eggs without a male present, though at least one male in a group may calm the females. Quail have their own personalities and sometimes don’t get along. If you do opt for multiple females, introduce new birds after dark, to ease tensions. They can be fed chicken scratch or a more protein-rich game bird developer when laying. They love additional treats like apples, grated carrots, broccoli florets, earthworms, grubs, and pill bugs. A pan of dirt for a dust bath seems to be about the most fun a quail could imagine.

Eggs can be collected one at a time and kept in the fridge until you have a half dozen or so. They should be slowly boiled, soaked in vinegar for an hour before peeling off the shell and the membrane below, then placed in a pickling solution. I often use leftover liquids from a jar of pickles or Italian peperoncinos, or make my own blend from apple cider vinegar, hot peppers, and herbs. If you’re not sure if an egg is too old to use, place it in a bowl of water; if it floats, it’s probably dried up and unusable.

Even if you don’t make jars of pickled eggs as I have, quail are elegant additions to your backyard. They are just wild enough to keep me fascinated by their quirky behavior. Some days their reptilian bird brains take over and they chase each other and run from each other and hold each other fiercely by their feather top knots. Some days they just sit together and look beautiful—or maybe stand in the corner and lay an egg. ✜ Wayne Blankenship is a licensed bodyworker, bonsai enthusiast, and gardener who has volunteered with local wildlife rehabilitation and education projects.

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[E.H.]

A Few Foresummer Reminders Get excited about mesquite, not depressed about the heat.

By Kati Standefer | Photography by Liora K

I

n the shimmering heat of June, saguaro fruits ripen and split.

Mesquite, ironwood, and palo verde beans dry on the tree. All of Baja Arizona is preparing for the monsoon.

It’s a waiting time, sure. But it’s also a delicious time. As native plants ready their seeds for a soaking, many become ripe for harvesting by humans. They’re ready for cooking or for planting. Wait until after the summer rains break, though, and many become host to a dangerous mold called aflatoxin.

That’s why Desert Harvesters has shifted its programming to June, before the rains arrive. This June, Desert Harvesters will offer a number of workshops—from native-tree harvesting to mesquite milling—to help Baja Arizonans take advantage of the season.

The most famous of our local harvests might be mesquite, but Brad Lancaster of Desert Harvesters cautions us not to overlook all the other nutritious and tasty foods growing right out the back door.

“It’s not just mesquite,” he says. “Mesquite is just the gateway food.” A native tree harvesting class leaving the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market on Thursday, June 18—on foot at 5 p.m. and by bike at 6 p.m.—will teach Tucsonans to pick not only mesquite pods, but also palo verde, ironwood, and canyon hackberry.

Harvesting mesquite —and planting your own If this is the season you’ve decided to tackle mesquite harvesting, don’t forget: Not all pods are created equal. Be sure to taste the pod before you start harvesting from a given tree—bad pod will mean foul-tasting product. You don’t need to shell the mesquite beans; simply pluck the pod from the tree and place it in your mouth, perhaps lightly chewing or sucking to fully taste the flavor. (Never

44 May - June 2015

harvest mesquite beans from the ground, as they could be contaminated.) Any chalkiness, bitterness, or a drying or slight burning sensation in your mouth or throat should be a red flag. “If it has any of those to any degree, it’s a bad tree,” says Lancaster.

Chalky-tasting mesquites are usually not native to the area; the landscape industry often plants non-native South American mesquites (or hybrids) in Sonoran yards. Desert Harvesters recommends harvesting from the native velvet mesquite variety, as well as the screwbean and honey mesquite varieties.

If you find a good tree, Lancaster suggests, mark it on a map for next season. Or, even better, plant some of its seeds for the coming years. “Plant the seed directly where you want the tree to grow,” Lancaster says. “This will be the fastest growth, and it’s free.”

“We want this to be core,” Lancaster says. “Desert Harvesters is not about going out into the desert and harvesting. We’re about planting the best plants in the places we live, along our streets, at our homes, so that we are daily reunited with the flora and fauna of the desert and what makes this place so rich.”

If you’re planting native seeds, you’ll want to spend the weeks leading up to the monsoon preparing a water-harvesting structure, to capture rains from the monsoon when it finally arrives.

Lancaster calls this “planting the rain.” Compared with the Mojave and the Chihuahua, he says, the Sonoran is “barely a desert. We have two rainy seasons instead of one. That’s why we always push, ‘Plant the rain first.’” ✜ Visit DesertHarvesters.org.

Kati Standefer writes from Exo Roast Company and teaches community writing classes from her kitchen table in Tucson.

N

O NE OTHER THING: othing beats the heat like a little

community. This summer, the 13th Annual Mesquite Milling and Fiesta will be hosted by the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market, located at the Mercado San Agustín, on Thursday, June 25, 4-7 p.m. Desert Harvesters is looking for volunteers for the event; those interested might come by the Market on Thursday, June 18, for demonstrations of processing beans from native trees, or sign up for a two-day workshop on Saturday, June 20 (pod tasting, inspection, and ticketing) and Sunday, June 21 (hammermill operation and safety).

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Kitchen 101

Text & Photography by Molly Patrick

HOW TO M AKE S OBA N OODLES

S

oba is the Japanese word for buckwheat; soba noodles are traditionally made out of buckwheat flour and water. Buckwheat flour is gluten-free, although some soba noodles have regular flour added for elasticity. If you’re gluten intolerant, look for 100 percent buckwheat noodles.

Soba noodles have a strong nutty flavor and they can be eaten in hot or cold dishes. They are easy to find at Asian grocery stores and at most health food stores.

46 May - June 2015

Boil your noodles according to the directions on the package. Drain and rinse with cold water and place them in a mixing bowl. Drizzle with sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce and then add some thinly sliced carrot, chopped cucumber, and sliced green onion. Mix everything together and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

HOW TO S EASON A W OK

A

well-seasoned wok is a handy tool to add to any kitchen. Woks

make stir-frying super easy because the heat gets evenly distributed and the sides are high enough that you’ll never make a mess.

Cleaning and seasoning your wok is a must before you start cooking in it.

Seasoning a wok is an ongoing process, and like wine, it just gets better with time. You’ll know when your wok is perfectly seasoned when you can cook an omelet in it without using oil. There are several different ways to season your new kitchen toy; here’s one of the easiest and most efficient.

Wash Unseasoned woks are coated with oil to keep them from rusting before they’re sold. It’s important to get this coating off before you season your wok. To do this, thoroughly wash your wok inside and out with hot soapy water and a steel scrubbing pad.

Dry After your wok is thoroughly washed, dry it completely. You can use a paper towel or a clean kitchen towel, let the wok air dry, or put the wok over very low heat for several minutes. Just make sure that it is 100 percent dry before you start the seasoning process.

Season Place your wok over medium high heat for one minute and add a couple tablespoons of vegetable or peanut oil (don’t use olive oil). With a pair of kitchen tongs, take some paper towels and spread the oil all around the wok and up the sides. You want the entire surface of the inside of your wok covered with oil. The color will change from shiny gray to a yellowish blue color and then to black.

Once the oil is evenly distributed, turn down the heat to low and leave the wok over low heat for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and cool. Once it is cool enough to handle, pour out any remaining oil, rinse with hot water (no soap), and dry with a paper towel.

Once wok is dry, place over medium heat and add another couple of tablespoons of oil. After about a minute, add a few handfuls of Chinese chives or green onions that have been cut two inches or so in length. With your spatula or wooden spoon, spread the aromatics all over the wok and up the sides. Cook for about 10 minutes or until the chives or green onions look burnt. This will take any metallic taste out of the wok. If the mixture starts to get dry, add more oil. Remove the wok from the heat and let cool. When totally cool, remove the green onions or chives and then rinse the wok with hot water and dry with a paper towel.

Your wok is now ready for use and will continue to get seasoned the more you use it.

Remember: Never wash your wok with soap or a metal scrubber (apart from the very first time).

Use hot water and a bamboo or plastic scrubber and always thoroughly dry it with a paper towel or cloth so that it won’t rust.

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E ASY R ICE B OWLS Once you have a perfectly cooked pot of rice, throwing together a rice bowl is a great way to make an easy dinner with endless possibilities.

First you need to cook your rice. There are many varieties of rice; basmati, jasmine, long grain, and short grain are the most common. Brown rice is more nutritious than white rice because it hasn’t been refined. During the refining process, the nutrient dense bran and the hull are stripped from the rice. If you’ve found brown rice to be dry, make this stovetop method for perfectly moist brown rice every single time.

Soak 2 cups of brown rice in water for a couple of hours, up to overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly and place in a pot along with 4 cups of water, a handful of chopped cilantro, and a touch of olive oil.

Bring to a boil, stir once, and then turn the heat to very low and cover the pot with a lid. Cook for 25 minutes and then check the progress. If all the liquid has been absorbed, it’s done. If there is still some liquid in the pan, tilt the lid and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes until the liquid is absorbed. Turn off the heat and transfer the rice to a large mixing bowl.

Cool completely before you store it in the fridge.

After your rice is cooked, you can throw together whatever veggies, protein, and extras you have in your fridge. Here are three ideas to help get you started.

Asian-inspired rice bowl Place a portion of rice in the bottom of a large bowl and top with sautéed tofu cubes (sauté with sliced green onions and soy sauce), grated carrot, steamed broccoli, a mixture of sautéed red onion, red cabbage, and baby bok choy. Top with sesame seeds, a drizzle of sesame oil, a touch of soy sauce, and a shake of red pepper flakes.

Taco-inspired rice bowl Place a portion of rice in the bottom of a large bowl and top with pinto or black beans, sautéed red onion slices, sautéed summer squash rounds, avocado slices, and chopped tomato. Top with salsa, cilantro, and a squeeze of fresh lime.

Detox rice bowl Place a portion of rice in the bottom of a large bowl and top with grated beet and sautéed kale with ginger and mushrooms. Top with fresh parsley, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some raw sunflower seeds. ✜ Molly Patrick blogs at CleanFoodDirtyGirl.com. She received a certificate in plant-based nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutritional Studies.

48 May - June 2015

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Gardener Q&A: Martha Retallick V ICTORY G ARDEN ON A S HOESTRING

By Ford Burkhart | Photography by Stephen Eginoire

E

ating well on a thin And seeds? budget with just a small She acquires seeds from plot of land can call for the Pima County Library seed some artistry. stock and the seed exchange Martha Retallick has run by Tucson Backyard Garachieved just that, for a decade, dening, or TBG, a group of on a small property on Seneca more than 4,000 locals. Last Street that offered a lot of caliMay, TBG members offered che, room for one large mesquite her a variety of workable pots tree, and not much else. She along with seeds that included had to be creative, and frugal, red Russian kale. at every step. In a garden strip And water? barely bigger than a sidewalk, Martha designed her front she clips a leaf of lettuce or two, yard as a collecting area. She a near-perfect head of broccoli, invited in a Watershed Mana cherry tomato. Enough. agement Group team to advise If something is keeping you her on the water catchment from doing likewise, listen to design for the mesquite, which Martha talk solutions for a few was supplied by Trees for Tucminutes. son, at $5.

Soil problems?

Martha’s five-gallon mesWhen Martha first looked quite soon became a giant, tall at the thick layer of caliche in as her house, yielding pods that her yard in El Cortez Heights, can be ground into gallons of just east of Mansfield Park, mesquite flour. “Now it’s my she knew she needed to bring number one food producer,” in richer soil. But there was says Retallick, who is a freeanother challenge. lance scientific and technical No car? copywriter.

The modern victory gardener, Martha Retallick.

Martha lives without one.

Even the soul of Martha’s So she hitched a tiny trailer to garden seems recycled, from her black mountain bike and hauled in the soil from a friend a great-grandmother, who was also a Martha, also a Celtic who had bought way too much. woman of hearty West Cornwall stock, who gardened so proNo space? ductively in her World War 2 Victory Garden in Buffalo that Martha found a strip west of her house 28 feet long and 9 she fed eight people from it. feet wide that catches the afternoon sun. Just enough herbs So did many Americans in those days, in window boxes, and veggies to supply her soups and stir fries. along railroad tracks, in cans on rooftops. The war left No containers? millions of Americans short of rationed food and suddenly Martha looked along the streets, and found plenty of needing to garden where they could; collectively, 20 million planters of all descriptions. Boxes, cans, pottery. A request gardens were producing tons of fruit and vegetables from 1943 posted on Craigslist turned up a Mexican strawberry pot, to the war’s end in 1945, in amounts said to equal commercial ideal for herbs like cilantro and mustard.

U.S. production.

Her Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce is growing in a reclaimed What Martha Retallick has accomplished is nothing short wooden grape crate. “It’s got great drainage,” Retallick says. of a modern Victory Garden, and a way of life, the simple life.

She spotted it at one of recycling sites run by the city’s Brush The harvest is just a leaf here, a cherry tomato there. A bit and Bulky Program. “It’s a treasure trove,” she says. of Swiss chard.

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In just over 10 years, she’s become a serious urban gardener.

“I get three jugs of flour a year from the mesquite,” she says. That’s about three gallons, enough for a lot of mesquite bread, her favorite, and a few batches of cookies.

At one end of her strip garden, rosemary bushes are woven in among the ocotillo. In season, when the ocotillo flowers open, their mild nectar flavors a delicate ocotillo punch.

Among the prickly pear grow tall, skinny chiltepins and a few scraggly okra that looked all but lost to the hard winter freeze. But we looked closer. There were fresh sprigs beginning to poke out along the thin green stems. Like Retallick, this okra is proving itself a survivor in this big field of caliche.

The chiltepins, from her batch of 2012 seeds, are now up to four feet tall. “And they are murderously hot,” she says, looking affectionately at her source of the tiny round chiles.

“Put a little of that in your stir fry, or in the scrambled eggs.

But just a little.”

Nearby, a collection of tiny pots reclaimed from the streets hold some of her young cherry tomatoes, still getting started the day we visited.

Carrots and beets grow under a network of sticks and branches that let in the sunlight but keep out the interloping cats.

“My carrots have impressive tails,” she said, sighing, “but the carrot you’re going to get is like this,” she said, holding up a little finger. “It’s still great in a stir fry. It keeps me going.”

The day we visited, Retallick was making a fresh stock of mesquite granola. She blogs entertainingly, sometimes dramatically, about her gardening at westernskycommunications.com, with messages about, and sometimes for, the plants.

When she bought the house in 2004, a friend looked at the empty, barren yard and told Martha, “This is your palette.”

And that, she says, is exactly what it has turned out to be.

Visit WesternSkyCommunications.com.

Ford Burkhart has called Tucson home for going on 70 years; his 1917 bungalow has a tree he planted in 1947.

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[E.H.]

Farm Report W HAT’S IN SEASON IN B AJA A RIZONA

By Sara Jones | Photography by Liora K

M

ay and June are the

months for flowering plants to flourish. Many crops are flowering and setting fruits that will slowly swell and ripen with the summer heat to become succulent and mouthwatering fruits and vegetables. Leafy green crops and root vegetables also start to flower (or bolt) during this warm season and many of these vegetables will begin disappearing from the market as they go to seed.

In this time of seasonal overlap, heartier cool weather crops are just hanging on and summer produce has yet to hit its peak. It can be a lean time on many farms, but the changing season can offer a great variety of produce at markets.

Farms located at higher elevations or along river valleys will continue to bring cooler weather crops to the market, while farms that are at lower elevations and those in the heat islands of the city will start bringing summer crops to the market.

Tomatoes, squash, and green beans start trickling into the farmers’ markets and CSA shares sometime in May or June.

At the beginning of the season these veggies are precious and bright. Along with some green garlic or green onions, they are perfect just barely cooked in a quick and easy pasta primavera. Arugula and chard are two greens that are more heat tolerant, and they are usually available into the summer months. Warmer weather tends to intensify plant flavors, and these stronger tasting greens are delicious simmered with tomatoes and garlic.

During this season of flowering plants, you may come across some edible flowers at market. Artichokes (really a flower bud) are a rare but special treat. Delicate squash blossoms are great finds, too. Usually only the male blossoms are harvest-

52 May - June 2015

ed, as the female blossoms will turn into fruit once pollinated.

Squash blossoms make an excellent addition to cooked or raw dishes and are commonly stuffed with a mild cheese and fried. Many greens also produce edible flowers that add a touch of color to braising mixes during this season. Also, keep an eye out for decorative flowers like sunflowers, bachelor’s buttons, and cosmos. Bringing flowers to market is one way local farmers are trying to diversify crops and offer customers something extra.

As the weather turns hotter, there will still be some root vegetables available at market, including the fantastic daikon radishes grown at Forever Yong Farm. When I asked John Rueb why their daikons are so good, he said, “We have a great property, bottomland along the Papalote Wash with rich soil.” He explained that their success is as much about care and timing as Artichokes from Larry’s Veggies it is about the rich soil. Planting at the right time for germination, thinning out the crop so the roots have room to grow, and watering at the right times so the roots get big and juicy are all things they have learned in the 18 years they have been farming the property. They usually plant the squat Alpine variety of daikon that is similar to the daikon that Yong, who grew up in Korea, is familiar with. Once peeled, the radishes are sweet and mild and great stewed or eaten fresh in salads.

Another spring crop sold by Forever Yong Farm is garlic scapes. “Garlic scapes are a wonderful once-a-year treat, like asparagus,” says Rueb. Scapes are the flower stalks from hard neck garlic, which is one of the farm’s main crops. The unruly stalk, along with the seed head full of tiny garlic bulbils, is harvested to redirect growth back into the underground bulb.

The stalks have a milder garlic flavor than the roots, are great

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[E.H.] stir-fried, and are a good accompaniment to daikon, either cooked or fermented in a kimchi. Chefs like this crop because it is both visually striking and delicious.

If you can’t find garlic scapes, green garlic should be available at many markets and will have a flavor similar to the garlic scapes.

Nopales, or prickly pear cactus pads, are a real local treat and are showing up more frequently at markets. For the best place to find them, head to the Thursday Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market where they are frequently available at the Community Food Bank’s consignment table. On Thursday, May 14, Amy Schwemm from Desert Harvesters will be at the market offering a cooking demo to teach shoppers how to prepare this regional vegetable.

Apricots, the diminuitive cousin of peaches, are among the first fruits that appear at markets in summer. Buy them while you can because they won’t be available long. These two-or-three-bite treats are great for eating raw, but they are even better cooked, baked into desserts, or added to oatmeal. If you plan on preparing a batch of apricot jam consider adding a cracked apricot pit or two to infuse your preserves with an almond flavor.

C HOPPED S ALAD This dish is like a very chunky gazpacho, full of whatever veggies you find at the market. This is a great way to use the first tomatoes and squash of the season. For the best flavor and texture, you need to dice the vegetables into small ¼-inch pieces. As a shortcut you could pulse the vegetables in separate batches in a food processor or use a grater to shred them. For extra flavor, add fresh herbs.

4 1 ¼ 2 2

cups mixed veggies (carrots, radishes, fennel, green beans, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, greens), finely chopped tablespoon minced green garlic or garlic scapes cup finely diced onion tablespoons olive oil tablespoons lemon juice Salt to taste Toasted bread crumbs or crushed croutons

Mix together all ingredients except croutons and let sit at least one hour to allow flavors to meld. Taste and add more salt, if needed. Serve in individual bowls, drizzle with additional olive oil, and sprinkle with croutons.

Sara Jones is a longtime employee of the Tucson CSA.

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(From Top:) Grammy’s garlic, Larry’s Veggies tomatoes, Super Natural Organics squash.

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Discover

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

Every Thursday - Weekly Meditation Group Every Tuesday - Hiking/Yoga Class May 13-15 - Frontier Printing Press Demostrations May 14-16 - Beautiful You - A Body Love Retreat May 15 & 29 - Living History: Spanish Colonial Foods June 1st - Art Exhibit - The Arizona Cavalcade of History June 5th - Friday Nightfall on Tubac Road

Stay in Tubac

Dine in Tubac

Explore Tubac USA Today Travel named Tubac 1 of 10 Best Places to Escape the Cold

Conde Nast Traveler Named Tubac 1 of 14 Up-and-Coming,

Must See Destinations in 2014

IN THE BUSINESS

Analog Eating Ari Shapiro, owner of Sparkroot, Falora, and Sidecar, is the conductor at the podium, orchestrating an unplugged eating experience.

By Lorin Michel | Photography by Liora K

You have a coffee shop, a pizza place, and a neighborhood bar where everybody knows everybody’s name. How did you get into such diverse businesses?

Originally I was going to pursue a career in music, to satisfy my creative side. Then I was going to study law, for my intellectual side. But what I really loved was food, and the way it creates meaningful experiences on a personal level. When I first moved to Tucson, I started Xoom Juice and really enjoyed the food aspect even though the menu was limited. I also loved the personal interaction it provided me.

But I was itching for something more. A developer friend had this great space on Fifth and Congress with 25-foot ceilings. That space became Sparkroot Coffee Bar. With Falora, it was all about Italy. I was always going to retire somewhere in a small town and cook pizzas for the rest of my life. I had the opportunity to grab a space in Broadway Village where the arched brick and windows actually reminded me of the mouth of an oven.

Sidecar bar happened because I loved what was happening on the west side of Broadway Village. There are five historic, beautiful neighborhoods with multiple generations of Tucsonans that live in that area. Sidecar is a place where they can gather and enjoy each other.

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Tell me about the menus.

For Sparkroot, I brought Blue Bottle coffee in from San Francisco … they’re such pioneers in organic and sustainable trade farming.

We went with a pretty strong food program, too. I’m a vegetarian but I love cheese. Instead of meats, I thought: Let’s do really interesting cheeses for sandwiches. We bring in cheeses from all over the world like Welsh cheddar and smoked Galician from Spain.

Falora’s hand-made pizzas are baked at 750 degrees in a handbuilt Napoli brick oven fueled only with wood. The crusts are made with Caputo 00 flour that’s lower in gluten than most. And then there are the incredible salads crafted by my wife, Kerry Lane.

She’s a vegan chef, trained at Tree of Life in Patagonia. What she can do with vegetables always amazes me, and our customers. It’s an incredible palette of creativity.

What are your biggest food influences?

I’ve been to Italy four times and the way they eat has always appealed to me. They think of food as high art, but in a more humble way. It’s very tactile, analog. My greatest memories are of grabbing a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a bottle of Chianti. Or a slice of pizza in New York.

To make wood-fired pizza, first you need wood. The pizzas at Falora, owned by Ari Shapiro, are baked at 750 degrees.

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that’s interesting–75 acres. Every week they send us a list of what they have, we choose what we want, and we create a pizza and salad off of those ingredients.

People really respond to that.

Sparkroot cheeses come from all over and the coffee comes from California.

Real pleasure comes from eating simply and eating simple foods. All you need to live are grains and greens. And cheese.

That’s my food philosophy.

How does each location contribute to its distinctive success?

With Sparkroot, it’s very tied into the location. I’ve been asked to open more stores in other parts of town, but downtown is what makes it work. I love when I walk in and it’s been taken over by students and business people. There’s such creativity downtown. It’s so transparent, with windows everywhere. Wherever you are, you can see Congress and Fifth. You can touch the Hotel Congress sign.

With Falora and Sidecar, as much as I love downtown, I also think it’s important that central Tucson has cool, hip spots as well. And as a cycling nut, everything midtown has to be pedal-accessible.

How involved are you in choosing the menus for your restaurants?

I do what I call executive chef-ing. I have the overarching vision. But the people who are in charge have the creative control. I’m like the conductor at the podium.

How involved is your wife in the menus?

Very. Before she was my wife, she was instrumental in helping me develop the greens program for Falora. She originally applied to be a service person at Sparkroot. I told her she was way over-qualified but that I was also opening this wood-fired pizza place. I asked her to develop the greens program. The whole city talks about her salads. The pizzas are amazing but the salads even more so.

What foods do you source locally?

It’s important to us to be local, using foods that come from Mexico, California, and especially Arizona. We have a strong relationship with Sleeping Frog Farms. They’re doing particularly great things with a size 62 May - June 2015

Southern Arizona, like all of the Southwest, is in the midst of a drought. How do your businesses help keep the environment healthy?

(Above) Shapiro often pitches in to help behind the scenes at Falora. (Below) Shapiro fell in love with the high ceilings in the space that’s now Sparkroot Café, located on Fifth and Congress.

I think the biggest potential calamities the world faces are limited resources, like water and food. It’s exaggerated here. But we can all leave smaller footprints. We encourage cycling with our staff and with our customers. If you bike or walk to Sparkroot or Falora, we give you a coupon for your next visit. Having restaurants that are vegetarian is also very important. The water table and the water supply is being sucked dry by the cattle industry. America’s obsession with meat is causing a great deal of damage.

And we don’t encourage people to be gluttons. We don’t try to up-sell food. Our philosophy is simple: Come in and eat what feels good.

I hear you have something new brewing. Can you tell me about that?

Well, I could tell but then … well you know the rest. Suffice it to say that when my wife and I were hiking last summer, I had the strangest craving for a burger and fries. And I’m vegetarian! But that sparked some ideas. We did some research and we think we might have something very unique. Look for it at the end of this year. ✜ Sparkroot Coffee Bar + Fare. 245 E. Congress St. 520.623.4477. Sparkroot.com Falora Pizza.

3000 E. Broadway Blvd.

520.325.9988. Falora.com Sidecar. 139 S. Eastbourne Ave. 520.795.1819. BarSidecar.com Lorin Michel is a freelance writer, relatively new to Tucson, who plans to spend a great deal of time indulging her love of pizza, coffee, and cocktails.

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64 May - June 2015

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KIDS’ MENU

Two Hungry Brothers Myles Walker, 11, and his brother, Daniel, 9, visit their favorite pizza joints along the modern streetcar route.

By Myles and Daniel Walker | Edited by Kimi Eisele Photography by Dominic Az Bonucelli

W

E AR E TWO HUNGRY BROTHERS .

Like most kids, we love pizza because it’s quick, you eat it with your hands, and if it’s well-made it’s really tasty. We love picking our own toppings.

We live in the Menlo Park neighborhood, and we can walk to the modern streetcar from our house. The first time we rode the streetcar, we counted at least 10 pizza places along the route. That day we stopped to get a slice at Brooklyn Pizza Company, which at the time was (and still is) our favorite.

We decided to try out some of the other pizza joints (not in one day, of course!) and see how they differ and what each one has to offer.

No Anchovies 870 E. University Blvd.

Good place to get a quick slice near the University. If you’re wearing a backpack, you’ll fit in here.

Ambience: This place has good outdoor seating with a bar inside. There are lots of images of fish skeletons everywhere (are they dead anchovies?). Everything is metal or painted gray. The day we were there, classic rock played on the radio, complete with electric guitar solos.

The front porch offers great views of people texting.

Food: This is your basic New York-style thin crispy crust. It’s insanely quick because you can order from a wide variety in pre-made pies. We noticed that the bright lights in the display case give the pizzas a strange glow.

Price: $2.50-$3.75 per slice. Whole pies are $16.50.

Bonus features: Fun to spin on the stools!

Streetcar stop: University Boulevard and Tyndall Avenue.

When sharing a slice of delicious No Anchovies pizza, always wear a helmet.

66 May - June 2015

Los Olivos

No Anchovies

Time Market Fired Pie

1702

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Myles (left) and his brother, Daniel, share a slice at 1702.

1702

1702 (named for its address) is the farthest pizza place on the streetcar line from where we live. The day we went, we rode our bikes from Davis Bilingual 1702 E. Speedway Blvd.

Elementary, where we’re in third and fifth grade. It’s an easy bike ride along the bike lane on University Boulevard. Afterward, we took the streetcar with our bikes all the way back to Menlo Park, the Mercado stop at the other end of the line.

We got out of school early that Tuesday so we went at lunch hour. It was busy, but they sat us right away. The waiter came at least three or four times to offer root beer or water and to make sure everything was O.K. Ambience: Though it was hot outside, it was cool inside.

The restrooms are super cool with sinks like beer kegs: you pull on the taps to get water. There are T-shirts of beer companies all over the walls—half of the beer company logos are of bears.

You can sit at bar tables or booths, and everything is red and 68 May - June 2015

blue and white. Large windows let in sunlight. It’s lively and fun with unlimited root beer!

Food: We ordered the Roman, the Meata, and the Italia. You can also make your own pizza. We’ve had good pizza, but this is really, really good. You know how sometimes kids won’t eat the crust? Here they’ll want to! It’s crispy and then you get into this baguette kind of thing. Nice garlic undertones on the Italia. Juicy sausage! And there are tons of topping on every slice.

Price: $8.25 per slice. It’s basically a whole meal in one slice.

They even give you a pizza slicer. We took our leftovers home for our dad.

Bonus features: Good beer for parents! They also have salads and root beer. The slices are humongous. Come here when you’re starving to death. Or split one.

Streetcar stop: Warren Avenue and Helen Street. Last stop on the streetcar. A two-minute walk south under the Speedway underpass.

Los Olivos 937 W. Congress St.

This is our new neighborhood pizzeria, a block from the last streetcar stop. We go here once a month. It’s close and cheap.

When we met the owner, Walter Sempual, he told us making good pizza is simple: “You just need fresh ingredients and love.”

Ambience: Los Olivos is a small old casita turned into a restaurant right on Congress Street. Mostly it’s a take-out place, though there are a few indoor and outdoor tables.

Food: You can order 14-inch or 18-inch pies here, always sliced party-style, which lets you eat more slices than usual (so you can later brag to your friends!). We always order the specialty pie, Los Olivos, which is called that for a reason: lots of green olives! Plus sliced tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and fresh basil. The sauce has a little spice to it. They also have basic pepperoni, cheese, sausage, and veggie pies.

Price: 14-inch pizza for $8.95-$15.95, 18-inch for $11.95$15.95.

Bonus features: True to the neighborhood, one of the pizzas is La Mexicana, featuring chorizo, bacon, jalapeños, tomato, and onions. You can get a raspado right next door for dessert on your way back to the streetcar.

Streetcar stop: Convento and Congress Street.

Time Market 444 E. University Blvd.

Talk about convenience! The streetcar stops right in front of Time Market.

Ambience: This is a hip place with a lot of rusted metal countertops. Aside from pizza, it also serves coffee and produce.

If you need wine, hot sauce, chocolate, crackers, or toothbrushes, you can get those here, too. They use a wood-burning oven and you can watch the pizza makers twirl and toss the dough above their heads. We met the owner, Peter Wilke, and he told us they let the dough set for a long time so it can stretch really thin.

Food: They offer two special slices of the day, plus cheese and pepperoni, and a variety of special pies. We ordered the Calabrese and couldn’t believe it came in 10 minutes, even though there was a crowd. The sauce was warm and liquidy and the salami was juicy, tender, and flavorful. We loved the thin, chewy crust. Our mom and our friend Kimi both had the kale salad and loved it.

Price: Slices are between $3-$4 and whole pies run up to $21.

Bonus features: They have a big selection of juices, sodas, and other drinks. If your parents want a glass of wine or beer, they have a bar.

Streetcar stop: University Boulevard and Third Avenue.

Fired Pie

This is the newest place on the streetcar route, near Hotel Congress. It’s a small chain that started in Phoenix. It’s now one of our 350 E. Congress St. favorites because you get to individualize your own pie.

Ambience: It looks like a small warehouse with windows that slide open like garage doors. It’s bright with UA graffiti-like painting on the walls—Bear Down! This is the place to have a pizza birthday party. All your friends can fit at the large tables.

Food: You step up to a long counter where all the toppings are visible like at a salad bar. You go along and pick your sauce, meat, cheese, and vegetables. There’s lots of variety in unlimited quantities. After you top your pie, it goes into a gas oven and is ready in two to three minutes! The crust is thin and crispy, and because you’ve chosen all your toppings it’s hard to be let down.

Price: $8 per pie.

Bonus features: For dessert, they have cookies baked to order in the pizza oven and topped with vanilla ice cream. Super bueno!

Streetcar stop: Centro Parking Garage

Also located along or very near the streetcar line are these pizzerias: Empire Pizza and Pub. 37 E. Congress St. Pizzeria Bianco. 272 E. Congress St. Reilly Craft Pizza and Drink. 101 E. Pennington St. Brooklyn Pizza Company. 534 N. Fourth Ave. Magpie’s Gourmet Pizza. 605 N. Fourth Ave.

R

is a fun way to get around town.

In the summertime, we like to ride our bikes then take the streetcar home once we’re full of food and we’re too hot to ride. But we always have to finish our food before we head home. Even though bikes are allowed on the streetcar, eating is not. ✜ IDING THE STR EETCAR

Myles and Daniel Walker are students at Davis Bilingual Elementary Magnet School. When they are not eating pizza, Myles plays guitar in the Davis mariachi band and rides with El Grupito and Daniel plays piano and soccer. Kimi Eisele is a writer and artist who rides her bike most places. She has known Myles and Daniel since before they were born.

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stay in

Historic photos courtesy of the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum

bisbee, arizona

Bisbee,AZ An unusual art town built in a deep canyon...

UPCOMING EVENTS IN BISBEE

● Every Second Saturday Bisbee After 5 ArtWalk ● Every Saturday Bisbee Farmers Market ● May 16th, 13th Annual Copper Classic Car Show ● June 19-21, 11th Annual Bisbee Pride! ● July 4th, Celebrate the Fourth of July in Bisbee

EXPLORE

BISBEE

eat & drink in bisbee

Historic photos courtesy of the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum

eat & drink in bisbee

YOUTH

One Student at a Time Educator Landon Walls sees the future through local food at Hiaki High School.

By Linda Ray | Photography by Liora K

L

ANDON W ALLS , curbing his passion barely this side of a cartwheel, proudly flips through a slide presentation: “We have our own chickens—We work with a local farm in South Tucson, so kids are out there actually practicing—We do a lot of cooking demonstrations—We cook a lot from our own food—That’s us introducing the aquaponic system—This is our trip to Willcox. I’ve never seen high-schoolers enjoy apples the way they did there!—Our own watermelon. Our own corn—We’re transplanting kale and parsley there—We’re juicing. Juicing is unbelievable. Kids love it!”

Half Hopi, registered Onondaga Iroquois through his grandmother, and a graduate of Arizona State University’s American Indian Studies program, Walls projects the budding roots of his vision in PowerPoint on a classroom wall, with the restless burble of the aquaponic system for a soundtrack.

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These dreams barely had shape four years ago when he took over the Community-Based Education (CBE) program at Hiaki High School. The school is operated by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe on reservation land in collaboration with Chicanos por La Causa’s (CPLC) Community Schools.

Walls says, “I wanted to work with Indian youth. My skills and my energy—I wanted to direct [them] toward a nation, a reservation, or tribal communities.”

He soon found inspiration in a gardening program at Hiaki’s sister school, CPLC’s Toltecalli High School in southwest Tucson. It was run by Oscar Medina, a young teacher with similar energy and goals who’s since joined the staff of the Western Institute for Leadership Development. Both men Landon Walls runs the Community-Based Education program at Hiaki High School; he’s passionate about teaching students self-sufficiency skills like gardening, cooking, tending chickens, and water harvesting.

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Students learn about how fresh produce can influence the health of their families and community.

From left: Samuel Alvarez, Veronica Patino, Georgina Flores, and Marlene Silvas

saw that teaching kids to grow food could lead to healthier living and even improved career readiness. Over time, they believed, what their students learned might even inspire a long-term community-wide shift toward a more sustainable lifestyle, including healthy food choices, food safety, outdoor exercise, and respect for what resources our desert environment provides.

Medina rolled up his sleeves to help Walls get his garden started, and shared with him the contacts and resources that had helped the Toltecalli program flourish. “Every connection really is coming from Toltecalli,” says Walls. “Once I get the connection, they understand my passion and my knowledge, what I’m trying to do here.”

Claudio Rodriguez, a staffer at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, bought into Walls’ program early and often. “The Food Bank knows everybody in Tucson,” Walls says. They donated irrigation tools and compost. They provided all the construction materials and tools, and helped the students build a chicken coop. They donated chickens. They conducted workshops and supplied curricula. They’ve even run errands for supplies.

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Ace Charette, coordinator of the UA’s Early Academic Outreach Program, organized materials, installation, and curricula for aquaponics technology that offered students an opportunity for immediate, daily engagement while they seeded crops, started their chicken coops, and grew their trees.

Katie Gannon of Trees for Tucson provided 22 trees, including three kinds of palo verde and four varieties of mesquite. Native Seeds⁄SEARCH donates whatever seeds the program needs. The kids also learn to save seeds from the radish flower, and from inside their peppers, chiles, and tomatoes. They expect one day to return seeds from their surplus to their benefactor.

The program has even benefitted from an unexpected provider. “We had a parent one time come in with a huge bag,” Walls says. “She works at Fry’s, and so they had a bunch of seeds that weren’t selling any more—tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, stuff like that in little packets. And the student came in ‘Hey, Mr. Wall! Mr. Wall! I got these seeds for you!’”

Under the tutleage of Walls, students learn how to turn garden produce into healthy snacks.

Most of the school’s crops would be familiar to any home gardener, but two distinctly reflect Hiaki’s heritage: green corn—early-harvested, when it’s still “green”—and a variety of basil bearing the name the Pascua Yaqui call their people, Yoeme. Of the corn, Walls says, “It’s a special green corn from Magdalena, Mexico. So it’s nothing you could get in the grocery store.” The corn makes an impressive stand outside the classroom windows, he says. “The kids really missed it once we harvested.”

Because corn uses a lot of water, Walls plants this 90-day, green variety before the kids start school, in order to catch the free, clean monsoon rains. He teaches the class to dig and plant their crops in sunken beds to capture and hold as much water as possible. “Another step is to get water-harvesting cisterns,” Walls says.

“That’s down the road.”

For one afternoon each month, the students learn the science and business behind commercial farming when they visit the farm of Chris and Don Breckenfeld of Breckenfeld Family Growers. Chris, an educator, and Don, a soil specialist, inspire the students with sustainable, environmentally sound 80 May - June 2015

practices for producing food crops in enough quantity to sell at farmers’ markets. “We analyze where he seeds the heirloom and organic produce,” Walls says. “We look at pesticides and different growing and watering techniques.”

Inside the classroom, students learn about how their fresh produce might influence the health of their families and community. They learn to read labels and to understand how different kinds of fats and sugars affect their bodies. They learn about additives, preservatives, and processes. They watch Food, Inc., and Fed Up. Holly Bryant, a nurse for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Diabetes Prevention and Treatment Program across the street, drops by weekly to talk about prevention and care, and to give cooking demonstrations. All of the students have family members and neighbors affected by the disease. Awareness gives them options for avoiding it themselves.

“Here’s my mentality,” Walls says. “After working for a couple of years on this now, I want to grow food that kids are familiar with, that they’re going to eat and use, and take home to their families. That is chiles, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, but-

ternut squashes, acorn squashes—the families are going to eat that. They make stews. They have traditional soups. They use these certain vegetables.”

As for trying new things? “That’s where juicing comes in,” he says. “We did like a V-10, ten vegetables and fruits. My main base is apples. If you get apples in your juice, almost everything is going to turn out O.K.” Walls says he’s able to get plenty of apples left over from the cafeteria, but he also bases some juices on sweet and familiar beets and carrots the kids grow themselves. “Kids love carrots. It’s just amazing. I can’t grow enough carrots.” Then the juice might introduce a more exotic garden crop like Swiss chard. “Juicing really made the kids try it,” Walls says. “If they grow it, they’ll at least try it.”

“What we learn, we can teach to another generation. That way we can stay healthy and the kids can know what beautiful, good vegetables really are.”

— Student Gina Flores Teenagers are singular humans, full of themselves and thirsty for the world. A day in each life can go either way. Walls invests his hope in influencing one student at a time. “I want them to teach the next generation—their cousins, their children. I want gardens in people’s homes. This is what we’re trying to do with the school. We create a model here, and it’s really student-made. Imagine the impact.” ✜ Hiaki High School. 4747 W. Calle Vicam.

520.883.5051.

Linda Ray has written for the Tucson Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Reader. She and her valiant pup, Gozo, live in an unmanageable landscape in Central Tucson.

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The salad might be fresh from the garden, but it’s still being served at a high school, where students sometimes scribble on well-worn desks.

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YOUTH

Rise of the Clones Through a partnership between Mission Garden and TUSD, students are learning how to clone heritage fruit trees, connecting past to present.

By Lili DeBarbieri | Photography by Moses Thompson

W

HEN I AR R I VE at Roskruge Bilingual K-8’s spacious campus, Moses Thompson is tending the campus’s fruit trees—quince, fig, pomegranate, and grape.

The trees are clones—exact genetic copies—grafted from cuttings from Mission Garden, and they provide lush shade for the school’s vegetable garden and chicken coop.

This is ground zero for a new generation to learn and experience the history of the Sonoran Desert. Students are learning not only how non-native plants arrived in Baja Arizona, but also how to clone and plant fruit trees adapted to our desert climate.

Eventually, they’ll get to taste the fruits of their labor, trying the heritage breeds that grow from cloned trees.

Thompson works as a school garden and sustainability program coordinator, a joint appointment between the University of Arizona and Tucson Unified School District. After heading the pilot program for the Mission Garden fruit tree cloning project at TUSD’s Manzo Elementary, he took the trees to Roskruge.

“Little time machines” is what Thompson calls the trees, as every cultivar is a direct descendant from the oldest living cultivars from the Spanish Colonial period in the 18th century.

“It’s not just about preserving the genetic heritage of the trees; it’s really about preserving the heritage of a community,” says Thompson. Between Manzo and Roskruge, the students will clone 480 cuttings this year. A handful of the cuttings will be

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planted on school grounds, while some will go home with students to plant in their own backyards. The rest will be returned to Mission Garden to expand the orchards and vineyards of this cultural heritage park that demonstrates more than 4,000 years of agriculture in the Tucson Basin.

“The value is to tell the story behind the plants,” says Jesús Garcia, who works as an education specialist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and volunteers at Mission Garden. He calls the garden an “outdoor laboratory for children and adults to learn about their cultural heritage.”

Garcia says that his role in the TUSD-Mission Garden collaboration has been telling stories, “especially stories that span the border, to bring those traditions back, to bring what is happening south of the border, as a kind of cultural broker,” he says. “Across the border these traditions are still very much alive. We are trying to revive, reconstruct, what Tucson used to be 100 years ago … to pass it on over here.” Garcia is also collecting oral history stories about the heritage fruits, including recipes and information about how to prepare and store them.

The seed for the fruit project was planted in 2010, when Garcia paid a visit to Manzo Elementary to check out Thompson’s project cloning native shrubs for habitat restoration. As From stick to tree: student Maryna Borboa shows how, with a little TLC, a cutting becomes a clone of a heritage fruit tree.

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(Above) Mission Garden’s Jesús Garcia teaches a class of Roskruge students about the history of the garden and its plants.

(Below) From left: Ismael Ballesteros, Stephanie Moreno, Alexys Santa Maria, Cesar Galvez, and Maryna Borboa take a break from potting.

Mission Garden was being built, Garcia and Thompson began looking into a partnership between the school and garden.

In October of 2013, Mission Garden and Manzo Elementary formally collaborated to initiate the educational propagation program, focusing this time on food production.

Expanding the program to Roskruge necessitated finding an enthusiastic teacher and principal to support the project.

The principle was José Olivas; the teacher, Eric Flewelling, who teaches eighth grade science and sustainability. Through his sustainability class, students designed and built a school garden, implemented school-wide recycling, composting, and water harvesting, tended chickens, cultivated worms, and grew seedlings for the garden. Through data collection and research

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about the heirloom trees, teachers hope to get their students thinking scientifically. This is “a culturally relevant way to teach math and science,” says Thompson.

“The class is driven by natural cycles,” says Flewelling.

“The school year, the planting seasons, chicken living, rain … there’s lots of learning, but even more action.” As a result of their hands-on activities, they “develop a land ethic, understand the deep and broad interconnectedness of everything,” he says.

“They consider their waste, follow the path of ants, make food, dream, and build.”

To create a clone, fruit trees are pruned when dormant and the cuttings are potted in a coconut peat media, a sustainable alternative to peat moss; they’re then placed on a misting bench,

Thompson says that students are amazed when what seem like dead sticks sprout new roots and green growth. (Left) Xavier Santa Maria carries a tray of freshly potted cuttings. (Right) Cesar Galvez shows new root growth emerging from one of those “sticks” after a few months in a misting tray.

which keeps the cutting alive long enough to develop roots.

When the cuttings start producing new growth and foliage, it signals that root development is occurring and they are transplanted into potting soil.

Roskruge students have responded enthusiastically to the tree-cloning project, which began with a field trip to Mission Garden, where students learned how to clone trees and heard about the long history of agriculture along the Santa Cruz River. “The kids are pumped to take some of our clones home and plant them, particularly after a tasting session of all their fruits,” says Flewelling. “They’re also searching for heritage plants at home, in Nana’s yard, and in their historic neighborhoods.”

His eighth grade students say it best.

“The thing I learned and thought was cool is that you can simply cut a branch off and plant it and there is a possibility that it can grow. It really did surprise me. It was interesting and amazing knowing that roots can grow from a branch, and seeing flowers blossom from it. This completely blew my mind!” says Alexis.

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Izzy says, “I learned how the non-native trees got here. The Spaniards that came to Arizona not only brought new clothes and diseases but also brought new trees. One of the trees they brought was fig. They brought so many other exotic trees and plants. I also learned how to clone trees, which, in my opinion, was the coolest thing I learned.”

Dante adds, “I learned to get in touch with nature more and use social media less because nature might not be here for a long time and Facebook will.”

Material costs for the projects at Manzo and Roskruge are supported by Wilson Produce, a Nogales-based produce distributer. The heritage fruit tree project is about so much more than “simply propagating fruit trees,” says James Martin, a special projects manager at Wilson Produce. “We [as a fourth-generation family business] are looking to the future; as supporters of the Mission Garden fruit project, we aim to respect the past.”

“The program at Mission Garden has brought many children and their families into the garden to discover and

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New plant growth indicates that cuttings in the misting bench have devloped roots.

Students label all cuttings with metal tags so they can be traced to the original tree at Mission Garden.

recover a connection to our community and our shared heritage through learning about Tucson’s deep agricultural history and tasting some of the nearly forgotten fruits and recipes of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers,” says Mission Garden’s community outreach coordinator and garden supervisor, Dena Cowan. “Not only are they learning the basic science of plant growth and propagation, and how to carry out scientific experiments, they are doing this in a context that makes the learning meaningful and tangible. They are learning to become the stewards of a priceless legacy: the taste of history.”

Another student, Maryna, liked getting to “experience our culture and the traditions our ancestors had,” she says. “My grandfather has one of the fig trees and couldn’t believe there were more when I told him about the field trip. Being out in the Mission Garden was sort of like taking a step back in time.

I learned about my past and how my ancestors got to taste the true fruit and eat not just processed fruit gummies that say ‘100 percent fruit.’ I also liked that we got to be part of the experiment.”

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Apart from educating the children and their families about Tucson’s edible heritage, the program is contributing to a renaissance of these trees in local backyards, schoolyards, and community gardens, in Tucson as well as in neighboring communities like Ajo and Phoenix.

Thompson says he’d “love to grow the program into other schools—it’s culturally relevant, doesn’t require much space or permanent infrastructure, and it’s functional.”

He hopes to expand the project to Tucson High Magnet School, providing continuity for the students from Roskruge, many of whom attend high school at Tucson High.

Scattered in schools throughout the city, these heritage fruit trees can also create another kind of continuity—a continuity of culture, of shared history and a hope for a more delicious future. ✜ Mission Garden. Open Saturdays 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. or by appointment. 929 W. Mission Lane. 520.777.9270.

Lili DeBarbieri is a freelance writer based in Tucson.

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MEET YOUR FARMER

Return to Source From New York, New York to Patagonia, Arizona, rancher Sidney Spencer has come full circle, back to her grass-fed roots.

By Emily Gindlesparger | Photography by Jeff Smith

T

H E B AC K R OA D S out to the San Rafael Valley are the kind just lonely enough to be dotted with altars. In Patagonia you take a left on Third Street, another left on Harshaw Road, and then you’re on the last stretch of pavement for miles.

Heartbreaking bunches of bright flowers punctuate the curves to honor loved ones lost. Past a break of trees, the Santa Cruz carves a shadow of the wide swath where water used to run, now down to a rivulet that still feeds beautiful sweeping grasslands and the thick old sycamores, white like vibrant skeletons. Tucked back here, in the yellow grassland ringed by jagged cinnamon hills, is the property that called Sidney Spencer back home.

“You’re really close to creation and source out here,” she says.

Her voice is slow, soft-spoken, befitting of the kind of silent cowboys she grew up around. The land she holds now once belonged to her grandparents; she was raised just on the other side of the Canelo Hills, to the north of the Huachucas that now cut a purple skyline on her horizon. She lives by herself out here, making

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little documentaries of her horses and raising grass-fed cattle. Along with Forest Service allotments, her 6,000 acres support 200 head of cattle that are born, raised, and harvested in the San Rafael Valley.

“That’s enough for one girl,” she says, though with the sweeping vista it’s tempting to think you could watch them all from her front porch, wherever they wandered. The story of how Spencer made it back here as the lone proprietor of Lazy J2 Ranch travels from Chicago’s Union Stock Yard to the newborn trading networks in New York City, weaving in characters as illustrious as William Randolph Hearst and Jacques Cousteau.

Sidney Spencer is at heart a storyteller—perhaps every cowboy is—and she speaks in spirals; any question about her life and work ultimately loops back to bigger things: her ethics, her vision for the future, and her sense of duty to the present, all of which we cover over coffee at her kitchen table.

Sidney Spencer raises 200 head of cattle on 6,000 acres in the San Rafael Valley.

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(Above) The modest ranch house Spencer now calls home. (Below) “You’re really close to creation and source out here,” she says.

But, to begin at the beginning: As Spencer tells it, her great-grandfather was one of the originators of the Chicago stockyards. When hoof-and-mouth disease broke out, he became an advocate for animals in quarantine, helping to preserve bloodlines of cattle that had antibodies against the infection.

But when his own son fell sick with osteomyelitis, a kind of bone inflammation, doctors urged the family to take him to milder climes. It was from an airplane ride with William Randolph Hearst that Spencer’s great-grandfather had spotted the San Rafael Valley, and told his wife, “I’ve seen the place.”

They pieced together six ranches around the site where Spencer lives now, and they moved west.

“So that legacy of the San Rafael Valley is in my blood, too,” Spencer says.

In 1953, the ranch was sold by one of Spencer’s uncles, but her grandmother had a small ranch near the mountains, where Spencer remembers that during the monsoon season, “you had to be where you were going to be by 11 o’clock, because the wash became a river and you couldn’t cross.” Spencer split her childhood as a ranch hand in Arizona and a beach bunny in California, where she lived with her mother. In adulthood she made a career with MGM and Warner Bros. She worked with Jacques Cousteau and was influenced by his environmentalism.

And then she shipped off to New York, where she was involved

in building the first Internet trading systems.

But in 1992 she was in a severe automobile accident. “I wanted to go back to work, but I couldn’t get from A to B; C was impossible,” she says. “Anything that was complex I had to do it at night and unplug the phones. It was a struggle, and it was a struggle for a long time.”

It was then that she decided to buy back her grandparents’ ranch. “It was always a dream in the back of my mind—and I was saving money for it, too—but it wasn’t in the forefront. With the confusion and the difficulty in brain function that I was experiencing, it became forefront.”

And so, in 1995, she came back. “You make the transition easily,” she explains of going from the high-pressure urban life of New York to the waving expanse of grass she sits among now. “You knew it when you were a child; it’s in there.”

The grass rustling in this valley is the true heart of her operation. “It’s not, ‘Where’s the beef?’” Spencer says. “It’s, ‘Where’s the grass?’” Today, the standards by which cows are fed are as variable as the ranchers who raise them; many supplement their herd’s diet with grain. Spencer’s definition is simple to explain and difficult to achieve: her animals live year-round on the ranch and eat only native Arizona grass. This kind of operation is a rarity in Arizona, where ranchers often supplement their animals’ diets with purchased grass or grain.

“It’s not, ‘Where’s the beef?’ It’s, ‘Where’s the grass?’”

A thirsty desert dog: Spencer named her ranch dog Molacho, which means “toothless” in Spanish—even though the dog has teeth.

“T

HER E ’ S AN AT TITUDE DIFFER ENCE ,

and that’s really in the heart of the rancher. I don’t know ranchers who aren’t conservationists. I don’t know ranchers who aren’t kind, and caring,” she says. But the economics are stacked against them: Spencer calculates that it takes 30 acres per head to raise cattle on grass. Given the economics of ranching, she says, it takes 300 head of cattle to make a business of it, which suddenly makes those wide swaths of amber look small.

She works closely with the Natural Resources Conservation District to identify the methods that support the grass and the land. They study each species of grass to determine when a section should lie fallow, and when it’s the right time to let the cows clip it back.

“How you graze helps certain species get a foothold.

They’re here naturally, but sometimes for some reason there wasn’t enough rain or there wasn’t rain at the right time, or the cattle ate it when it was seed; once you see there are certain spots you would like to encourage, then you do your rotation for that encouragement. There are certain soil makeups that will never have a particular grass on them because the grass doesn’t like it there, and you have

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to acknowledge that. It’s education and intelligence that we don’t sweep things with broad brushes,” she says. Though she admits this broader truth: “Grass was made to be grazed, whether it’s a deer or buffalo or wooly mammoth—that’s how this earth works.

The grass is a living thing too; and we grow when we’re agitated.”

It’s here that Spencer pulls the conversation back to look at the clash between the broad needs of such a system and the economic pressure felt by anyone who has ever tried to manage it.

“I’m a steward of this land; I’m a steward of these animals; I’m a steward to the taxpayer—because my personal private money and time goes into taking care of the public land that I rent and care for.” And beyond that, her personal holdings and those of other ranchers keep large deeds of land together.

Increasingly ranchers find that their livelihoods are not lucrative, or they age with no one interested in taking on such backbreaking labor in their stead.

Large heritage tracts are splintered off and sold to developers. It happens slowly, but it’s still clear to Spencer that “there is a very clear, very logical, very apparent series of events that are disassembling our western open spaces.”

(Above) Spencer says she’s a steward of land as much as animals. (Below) Lazy J2 Ranch is a desert ranch, through and through.

She hopes that this friction in the industry will foster growth on the issue. “There has to be a growing up, and an intellectual honesty about the reality,” she says. “People in places of power are beginning to recognize that the rancher is their greatest supporter.”

“You don’t grow rich doing this, and it’s very difficult work. The only way you grow rich is to sell it to a developer. But you look at this valley and you do a full 360, and you realize that what you’re looking at is love. You’re looking at love of the life, love of the land, love of the animals; because nobody is doing this because it’s easy.”

Spencer has spent the last 20 years watching bulls sit under the sycamores with babies; she has seen pregnant cows wandering into the desert alone at their time, and then come back to babysit their calf among the others in the shaky first steps of motherhood. Spencer has help from a pair of brothers who come up from Mexico two days a week. When she broke her shoulder a few months back, one of the Valenzuela brothers built her a rig on a pulley system so she can saddle her horse with one hand. They built a solar water tower, pushed a prolapse back in to a suffering cow. “These are the kinds of men I grew up with,” Spencer says. “They put their hand to anything.”

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Otherwise, she’s alone—if one can be alone with hundreds of animals to look after. “I have another philosophy,” she says, “and that is that each one of us comes into this world with an intellect and a temperament and unique gifts. We can be molded and shaped by what we see around us.” Taking in the full panorama of the San Rafael Valley, it is easy to see how deeply it has shaped her. Someday she will have to sell the ranch, but she plans to stay on 160 acres of it and continue to distribute grass-fed beef from trusted ranchers, while also writing, filming documentaries, and working with her horses.

Looking back across the trickle of the Santa Cruz headwaters, I envision the coming cycles that will shape this land and the people on it, imagining days when you’d have to be on the right side of this river by noon, and appreciate everything that this land produces.

Find Lazy J2 Ranch grass-fed beef at the St. Philip’s Plaza Farmers’ Market, Heirloom Farmers’ Market at Rillito Park, and Trail Dust Town Farmers’ Market. ✜ Lazy J2 Ranch. SRVbeef.com. 520.394.0031.

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

PURVEYORS

King Honey Noel Patterson has the restaurant community in Tucson abuzz with his hosted hive concept.

By Suzanne Wright | Photography by Steven Meckler

I

when I pull up to beekeeper Noel Patterson’s bungalow located smack in the middle of downtown Tucson’s Pie Allen neighborhood. Patterson leads me through the house to his fenced backyard. There are some handsome chickens that are fed spent grain from Hamilton Distillers, a funky garden with table and chairs, and, scattered around the perimeter, several wooden hive boxes.

Patterson has pioneered an innovative business model of hosted hives, where he partners with local restaurants to place hive boxes on their properties. Patterson provides beekeeping acumen; the partners split the costs and honey crop. Patterson has branded his honey as Dos Manos Apiaries.

As the sun sets, tinting the sky with a pink glow, streetlights switch on and we can hear the muted conversations of pedestrians headed to nearby restaurants. Friday night is coming alive.

There’s still a chill in the air, so he hands me a quilt to wrap around my shoulders as we talk outside; his black and white border collie mix Tilly nuzzles me.

“There are five restaurants right here in the ’hood, within [bee] f lying distance from where we are right now,” says Patterson.

This is a heavily traveled urban area, with the whistle of trains, birdsong, planes overhead, people talking, and occasional jackhammering. I ask if all the activity agitates the bees.

“I was initially concerned because bees don’t enjoy being hassled,” he says. “But my fears turned out to be unfounded.

The bees aren’t bothered.” His in-town bees and those in other suburban Tucson locations are thriving.

Patterson says there a number of overlapping reasons why beekeeping has gone beyond the mere faddish: consumers are seeking authenticity in their food, a local connection, and a relationship with the person who produces it.

Though he’s been gardening most of his adult life—he’s 42—he only grew to love honey in the last few years. In fact, it was an ex-girlfriend who got him hooked on the liquid gold by gifting him with a hive on his 36th birthday.

“Making honey is a hobby that got out of control,” he says with a laugh.

T ’ S D US K

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Patterson has a day job as a sales rep for Quench Fine Wines, a Chandler based company that sells local and biodynamically produced wines. Patterson markets his honey to many of the same restaurants and resort clients he sells wine to.

When, I wonder, will we taste the stuff? As if on cue, Patterson heads inside and reappears wheeling a small black suitcase that he’s dubbed “his library.”

“Honey is a sensual experience,” he says, as he opens a Mason jar of buttercream-colored honey. The honeys range in color from straw gold to dark amber, labeled by year; he’s got two years’ worth in his collection. He sets down a plate of smoked almonds and assorted cheeses and cracks the seal on the first jar.

Patterson eschews crackers or bread; he says the best way to eat honey is right off the spoon.

Before I put my tongue to the viscous substance, he encourages me to smell it. It’s faint, but I can smell herbal notes. The taste? Creamy and light, buttery and delicious.

“It’s like the first time you taste garden-grown tomatoes or farm fresh eggs with orange yolks,” Patterson says of the sensory experience.

Turns out many of us have never tasted real honey; that stuff in the bear-shaped squeeze bottle doesn’t count, as it’s been heat-treated and filtered, which destroys f lavor and quality. Naturally processed honey is opaque and will crystallize at room temperature.

Patterson, who’s also worked as a sommelier, compares the terroir of honey to wine.

“Anything I’ve learned about wine applies to honey,” he says.

“Honey is an expression of place even more so than wine. Honey from different places tastes uniquely different.”

Patterson opens the next jar, which is tawny in color. We agree that the monsoon honey is the best by a tasty measure and the most complex: an explosion of butterscotch and citrus notes on my tongue. I audibly moan, which may or may not be professional.

Patterson strokes his beard. He seems pleased.

Honeycomb, bee’s home: During the spring, each hexagon fills with sweet desert nectar, sourced on the wings of bees.

Desert bees, desert honey: Patterson has about 25 hives scattered throughout Tucson—including a few in more remote desert outposts.

P

AT TERSON HARVESTS HIS HONEY in June and July. He has hives in locations throughout Tucson, including on private property in the Tucson Mountains, near Catalina State Park and at Miraval resort. Time Market, Café Passe, Nox, and Goodness all have hives in the residential backyards of their owners.

It works like this: The person who wishes to sponsor a hive kicks in $300 for the start-up costs, which include the bee colony and equipment; from there, Patterson takes care of the hives 100 percent. During the first year, there is no harvest; in year two there is a surplus. The hive host gets first dibs at honey, paying Patterson the wholesale price. In this way, he’s able to supply the growing demand for honey and create a sustainable economic model of production.

“It’s not a typical vendor⁄client relationship,” says Patterson. “My partners are part of a local food system.”

Peter Wilke is the owner of Time Market, The B Line, and Wilko; he’s known Patterson for more than a decade and was the first to sponsor a hive. They often discuss local agriculture, swapping stories on who’s producing what, from heirloom carrots to pasture-raised hogs. He says when Patterson starting keeping bees, the honey discussion was inevitable.

“I knew a few people with restaurants in San Francisco who kept hives in their

yards with spectacular results,” Wilke says. “Noel launched a pilot program where a participant—me—would purchase the hives and the colonies, and he would manage them. The honey would be split 50⁄50. At this time, the work that I do is limited to eating a bunch of delicious honey. But we are planning to place four more hives on my property so there will be plenty of work.”

Wilke adds that there have been other rewards.

“Honey production is like many things in life: when you take a deeper look it expands into a huge universe of wonder.

One seemingly insignificant benefit is the mere witnessing of a bee crawling around on a citrus blossom in your yard. It is truly astonishing to taste honey from different parts of the hive that represent different blooms in the spring, and, then again, after the summer monsoon. All of the honey tastes different due to the flowers that are in bloom at that time.”

Wilke likes playing a role in what he dubs “a miraculous process.” And he’s keen to share it with his customers.

“We have used the honey on various treats at Time Market, such as a housemade ricotta over toast with a drizzle of honey and fresh basil. Yum. With the increase in hives and production, we hope to offer the local honey in retail jars as well as in more menu items.”

“Honey production is like many things in life: when you take a deeper look it expands into a huge universe of wonder.”

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Patterson got into tending bees only six years ago, after receiving a hive as a gift for his 36th birthday.

I

T HASN ’ T BEEN HAR D to find like-minded folks like Wilke who share Patterson’s handcrafted-honey philosophy. In fact, potential hive hosts have reached out to him; word-ofmouth is the way he likes it. Partly because this is a part-time gig for him, he needs to keep the project manageable, and partly because he trusts that the folks who seek him out share his values.

“I’m working with people who get it,” he says. “They buy heirloom turnips and radishes and farm-raised meats.

They see the inherent value of high-quality ingredients. And they understand the environmental benefits.” Patterson says that without bees as pollinators there would be no coffee, no blueberries, no oranges. The growing realization of the importance of bees in food production is why, he says, bee activism has emerged.

As new people sponsor his hives, Patterson can grow—to a point. Of course, the sites need to be suitable, which means there has to be enough forage—flowers with sufficient nectar—for the bees to harvest.

“There’s an integrity in buying something directly from the person who produces it,” Patterson says. “I’m growing honey in a way that reflects our regionality, our provenance. There’s a lot of character in that.”

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An impressive list of eateries are supporters, including Pizzeria Bianco, Good Oak Bar, The Coronet, Exo Roast Company, Food for Ascension Café, Prep & Pastry, Renee’s Organic Oven, and Café Passe. And he’s got a waiting list.

Patterson is interested in creating monofloral honeys, which are comparable to a single varietal wine, which requires singling out enough of the bloom of one flower. It’s not as easy as it sounds to find one thing blooming at one time, especially in Tucson, where 300 species of plants could be blooming simultaneously.

He’s focusing on mesquite, creosote, and acacia.

“It’s a rare set of circumstances,” Patterson says. “I have to find a unique ecological site, like the east slope of the Chiricahuas and be there at a specific time to harvest it. But, like wine, it will be the most complex and best expression of place.”

Beyond the return on taste of beekeeping, there are other rewards.

“It gives me such satisfaction to have this kind of impact,” he says. “Producing and sharing food creates community.”

He pauses, then adds, “I wouldn’t mind being the honey king of southern Arizona.”

The crown may well be his. ✜ Facebook.com⁄DosManosApiary.

Suzanne Wright is a Cave Creek-based freelance writer.

quila e t l l a f half of

Monday: HALF PRICE MARGARITAS TUESDAY: HALF PRICE TEQUILA Sunday: BRUNCH 10AM-2PM EVERYDAY: HORA FELIZ 3-6PM / 9PM-CLOSE

//

Love

It’s What’s for Dinner

From Bentley’s to La Cocina, Jo Schneider has been nurturing a cared-for community in Tucson for more than 30 years.

By K at i S ta n d e f e r | P h oto g r a p h y by S t e v e n M e c k l e r

J

O S CHNEIDER does not sleep much. At La Cocina, the restaurant she owns in the El Presidio Historic District of downtown Tucson, she is everywhere. She wears her graying hair smartly cropped.

She’s effusive with praise for her employees. She somehow manages to look both amused and deadly serious at the same time. When she is hungry, she asks for smaller versions of menu items—a tiny GLBT on a ciabatta roll, a Mediterranean salad in a small white cup. Schneider is funny, emphatic, occasionally self-deprecating, with big, clear, blue eyes. In the summer, when temperatures climb past 100 degrees, she doesn’t turn on the air conditioning in her office out of solidarity for her servers. She works seven days a week, often up to 14 hours a day.

She has never worked in someone else’s restaurant—with the exception of half a day at Burger King, which she loves to talk about with a smirk: “I put on the uniform and then quit.” On Wednesdays during the school year, she runs a supper club for the children of her employees, feeding them, taking them to the park, launching dance parties to music videos. Around her neck, she wears a slender ball chain. It holds a small silver square, a pendant of Arizona with a heart in the downtown of Tucson.

Schneider is the owner and manager of La Cocina. She’s also the co-founder of 30-year-old Bentley’s House of Coffee & Tea, which she now owns with her sons. She credits the success of her businesses to the support of her community and an exceptional crew of employees. Her employees credit the success to her. “She’s probably the most caring person I’ve ever met,” says Jackie Lyle, who works with Schneider on a number of new La Cocina partnerships, including the recently acquired Art House Centro. “She’s like your boss, your mom, and a superhero wrapped into one. She’s community-oriented. There’s no one who works harder than her.

And she doesn’t begrudge it. She doesn’t carry a chip on her shoulder. It’s the life she built.”

Today, it takes more than low prices and tasty food to keep people coming through a restaurant’s door. What’s scarce now is trust and meaning, places we become our best selves, where we feel folded into the connection of a tribe. Trust, meaning, connection—these values can’t be schemed or forced or sold, only cultivated honestly, person to person.

The magic of La Cocina and Bentley’s isn’t so much the food and coffee—although they are good, too—so much as this connection, visible everywhere. The most radical act of a Schneider family business, it seems, is love.

“She’s like your boss, your mom, and a superhero wrapped into one.”

I

N 1978, in Cleveland, Ohio, a 25-year-old Jo Schneider pulled a map onto her bed, closed her eyes, and put down her pointer finger.

She was tired of winter. She was tired of moving her car for the snowplow, which she’d forgotten to do that morning, meaning it was now buried outside in a steely drift. She pledged to move wherever her finger landed. She opened her eyes: Casa Grande, Arizona.

She headed west on a scouting trip, and when she got to Tucson, she fell in love with it. Within the year, she’d moved. She worked for a camp, taught special education, and took a job in a state psychiatric hospital (“which is why I’m so good with people,” Schneider says).

After three and a half years, she moved back to Cleveland to be closer to family, but the place had left its mark.

La Cocina boasts live music almost every day of the week, including Sunday’s “funky brunch” with local musician Scott Kerr (pictured) and Mik Garrison.

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Schneider sits with her sons, Eli (left) and Ben Schneider (right), at Bentley’s, the place where it all began. Eli Scheider is now the coffee shop’s manager.

Not long after, she and then-partner Willow Bentley began scheming about opening a coffee shop in Tucson, San Diego, or North Carolina. These seemed to Schneider like places she could raise kids as an already-out lesbian. Since both Bentley and Schneider had lived in Tucson before—and Bentley still had family there—they felt like they’d have a leg up. Tucson won out.

The coffee shop wasn’t Schneider’s first business. In Cleveland, she’d opened a vintage clothing shop. The shop didn’t work out, she says, but the arrangement did. “I was not very good at retail,” Schneider says, “but I loved being my own boss.”

Schneider and Bentley based their coffee shop on a spot called Arabica where they hung out in Cleveland. “I was like, oh, this looks easy.” Schneider shakes her head. “Little did I know!”

On February 3, 1984, Bentley’s opened in its current location on Speedway, the first espresso bar of its kind in Tucson.

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“We were going over a million names,” Bentley says. “Finally we just decided. I was a little hesitant about it because it seemed kind of weird to have it be my name. But we didn’t think it could be Schneider’s—that would be a deli.” She laughs, hard.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” Schneider says. On the day Bentley’s opened, she ordered a hundred croissants from a local bakery called Ilsa’s. “In case a hundred people walked in and wanted croissants! Day one, like three people walked in, and no one ordered croissants.”

“We went into it blind, thinking—how hard can it be?”

Bentley says. The answer, it turned out, was pretty hard. “We wound up working nonstop, pretty much 80-hour weeks until we hired our first employee,” Bentley says. “We were just always open. We probably should have closed at midnight, and eventually we did, but we were open at 3 in the morning for a lot of years. We would get the after-bar crowd.” She

The bar at La Cocina is colorful and casual, offering a changing array of local beers on tap.

laughs. “What did we know? We were just staying open for the people.”

By the end of the first year, Bentley says, they had six employees. “Everyone told us we wouldn’t make it, but we did. It was pretty fun. It was exhausting and exhilarating.” Though the two began the coffee shop as romantic partners, they quickly transitioned to business partners only.

From the beginning, Bentley says, Schneider managed with love: “Constant attention to detail. Constant customer service, just loving what she’s doing, and wanting to always make it better, wanting to make it be more beautiful. Employees hung around forever until we made them leave. One guy worked at Bentley’s through his Ph.D., and when he graduated we had to say—come on! Time to go!”

In the early years, Bentley’s went through a number of incarnations. In 1988, the shop moved to the Geronimo Plaza on University. Just a year later, Bentley’s opened a second location

downtown on Congress—but by April of 1991, when Schneider was pregnant with her youngest son, Eli, this second location closed, and the remaining shop moved back to its original site on Speedway, where it remains today.

These were hard times, both say. “More places were opening up. Business wasn’t as good,” says Bentley. “It couldn’t really support both of us.”

“We decided we couldn’t run it anymore. We were sick of it.

I felt like I wasn’t making a difference,” Schneider says. In 1999, Bentley and Schneider made the difficult decision to put the coffee shop on the market, and secured a buyer. But with the new owners sitting across the table and the contract waiting, Schneider froze. “I thought, I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t turn this thing over that we created and loved. This was our baby.” And by then, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else, either.

So she bought Bentley out.

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Schneider’s impact in the Tucson community extends through those she’s mentored, including La Cocina bar manager Allie Baron (left) and Dusky Monk Pub’s Donald Murray (right).

T

HER E ’ S ANOTHER STORY beginning here, with Schneider’s first foray into sole proprietorship. It’s the story of a woman growing vup; it is Schneider learning that she works best when she is in charge. She’s the first to say it, and repeats it regularly: “It’s me! I’m a terrible partner. I’ve accepted that about myself.”

“I work with 43 very hardworking human beings,” Schneider says now. “They’re amazing.” She pauses for a moment, tilts her head. “I used to try to make everyone happy. If there was somebody that worked with me that didn’t like the way I did something, I tried to change. And I realized after a million years that really the truth is—if somebody isn’t happy with what I’m doing, they have to go.”

Her restaurants work not just because of who’s involved, but because of who’s not. Acts of streamlining are what make her staff so functional. Those who are present are nurtured, cultivated, given space to grow and become. Those who do not fit are released to find where they do fit, where they will better connect.

Willow Bentley, it turns out, was an important part of that picture. After a hiatus, she returned to work with Schneider— but this time to do the books. Schneider thrived with control of the reins.

“I was raised with the idea that if you’re a boss you work harder than everyone else,” Schneider says. “You have to lead by example, otherwise it’s unfair. My talent is my community.

My talent is knowing how to bring people together. I take this job personally. I think they would say I am neurotic, and that is true.” She looks over at the bar, and laughs.

“Make no mistake, she is the queen bee,” says Elizabeth Menke, who has worked the bar at La Cocina for four years.

“She is in charge. This is her dream, her responsibility. The way she fosters us under her is remarkable.”

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B ENTLEY ’ S in the aughts, the emergence of the Internet was changing everything for Schneider. It was the first coffee shop in the area to offer it to customers, and suddenly the Bentley’s “community that used to sit together and talk and share tables … became a study hall and an office.” Once people needed room for their laptops, “nobody was sharing anymore.”

Right about then, La Cocina appeared.

“Cocina sort of got placed on my lap. I wasn’t feeling happy, and I just wanted a new venture,” Schneider says. “The owners of La Cocina were getting older, and couldn’t keep up anymore.

I started coming in every day in the afternoon, just sitting there, watching, paying attention. I wanted to do something else. I wanted to be outdoors. I wanted community. I wanted away from the computers. I wanted to do service again. I wanted to do music. I wanted to do all the things that brought us into the business.”

She bought the restaurant on Aug. 5, 2010, partnering with Lori Ryder, a former employee from Bentley’s. This time, it took just nine months for her to buy Ryder out. “We had different visions,” Schneider says. “But really, had it not been for Lori, I never would have done it. I was way too afraid to do it on my own. She gave me the courage. I’m deeply grateful.”

One of her first moves at La Cocina was to hire Allie Baron, who had been working as a manager at Hotel Congress. “The history is long,” Baron says. “My sister worked for her, my brother did. That was always my joke, that she finally sunk her claws into me too.”

Schneider, Ryder, and Baron set to work restoring the historic property, unfolding their new vision from a blank slate. But they needed help. Schneider reached out to her community, including many Bentley’s customers: “I needed somebody to show up, and just help me paint, and bring this place back to life. To trim the trees,” she says, and even five years later, her eyes shine. “A hundred and fifty people showed up. And I fed them and drank them and was humbled by the fact that they showed up.”

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Bentley’s is experiencing something of a resurgence. When I arrive at 2:30 on a Tuesday, it’s quiet on the floor—most of the customers working on Macs, a few couples talking over mochas—but the line winds around the front of the counter. An auburn-haired man with a matching beard looks up cheerfully. “I’ll be right with you!” he says, nodding to the line. “In the meantime, would you like something to drink?”

This is Eli, Schneider’s youngest son, and the one everyone agrees has inherited her spirit. “He’s another little Jo,” Bentley says. “He’s really good.”

His mom’s style of business made a deep impression on Eli. He tries to know the names and orders of his regulars. He pays attention to when they come in and how long they stay. “What you need to run a successful business is love,” he says. “It’s not about you.”

He says his managerial style is deeply informed by her example, too. “When I was 16, I would get called in for an hour to do dishes,” he says. “I wanted more hours. Mom told me, ‘Once you start paying rent, I’ll give you more hours.’ [Now as a manager] when I see people ask for more hours … We need to make sure everyone’s o.k.”

“I’m super proud of Eli,” says his brother, Ben Schneider, who managed Bentley’s for several years after Jo Schneider moved on to La Cocina. He now works as a musician in town. “[Eli]’s 23, and he’s running a restaurant on his own. My heart’s not really in a coffee shop at this point, but his is. He’s totally enthralled by what he’s doing, and it makes me excited to see how the future will look.”

T

HESE DAYS ,

in Bentley’s with her sons, the complexity of La Cocina—two patios ringed by shops; an indoor bar; a European pub; lunch, dinner, and late night hours; an art gallery and market now under Schneider’s tutelage; and new partnerships in El Presidio— has Schneider’s plate full. “It’s a very hard place to run.

We seat about 250 people. There’s a lot of juggling,” Schneider says.

“Everyone here wants to help,” says Lyle, Schneider’s “Jackie of all trades” at La Cocina. “If someone has an issue, needs to go out of town, there’s someone else in the lineup to say, ‘How can I help? What do you need?” It’s a part of Schneider’s managerial style: she is in charge, delegating, but within that there is incredible room for autonomy and development. And she has hired the right kind of people to take advantage of this atmosphere.

“She basically gave [former employee Churchill Brauninger] and Allie the bar program to build as they saw fit,” Menke says. “She nurtured it that way and just stays out of it. Autonomy is one of the great offerings HOUGH SHE IS STILL OFFICIALLY A PARTNER

Stop by La Cocina and you’ll probably see Jo Schneider, serving customers or busing tables.

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Schneider calls the menu at La Cocina “considerate.” The quinoa bowl comes with braised spinach, roasted vegetables, Thai peanut sauce, and tofu.

for all of us, who are adults and have ideas and skills.” Under the tutelage of Menke, Brauninger, and Baron, the bar has been able to move into serving Arizona liquors, using fresher ingredients, taking risks. “Our cocktail menu is really a collaborative effort of our bar staff, and I think that absolutely speaks to what Jo has given us, the opportunity to build something we can stand behind and can believe in,” says Baron.

“Autonomy equals creative license, freedom to explore our own ideas and try certain things, trusting in us,” Menke agrees.

Menke and Brauninger are in the beginning stages of opening their own bar on the south side of downtown, which Schneider has invested in. “So in addition to keeping me safe and well-employed here, she understands when we need to move on and stretch our wings and follow our own dreams, and helps facilitate that. It’s such a gift. It’s so rare.”

The ethic of care is apparent even in the kitchen. “The kitchen here is run a lot different than the average kitchen,” says kitchen manager Christian Bidegain. “There’s a mutual respect with everyone here. It’s a team-oriented kitchen.”

There’s no executive chef. “I’ve fired 11 executive chefs,” says Schneider. “And it’s not their fault. It’s all my fault. Because really, I don’t want an executive chef. I really want a team. I respect so much the amazing chefs in this community. But it’s just not the kind of restaurant that I am. I’m more like a … tavern. With amazing space.”

Bidegain says he and his friends—mostly also kitchen workers—usually hang out at La Cocina when they get off work.

They love the place, even after a long day. “[Schneider] is totally willing to get her hands dirty,” Bidegain says. “That’s rare in an owner, in my experience. When a person above you is willing to step up to the plate, it makes you want to work harder, too.”

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A

ND SO both Schneider and her employees are right. The source of La Cocina and Bentley’s success is Schneider’s oversight, but it’s also the community of people she has gathered around her. The success is the way love itself multiplies, moving from person to person, doubling, then tripling; the way those who are appreciated and mentored have more to give to customers, remembering their names, sending them cards when their mothers are sick. Those whose talents are honored grow. The success is that this kind of love and connection is so rare these days that we all arrive hungry for it.

When Anthony Adams, who has been at Bentley’s since 1998, was estranged from his mother, “Jo got in contact with my mom and reconnected us,” he says.

“I just know how to bring people together,” she says. “The menu here … is considerate. We have something for everyone.

Is it brilliant? No. Is it off the charts? No. But it’s good. And I think the reason that it’s good is that we do it with love and consideration for our clients.”

Every morning, Lyle comes into La Cocina first and sits on the stage with a cup of coffee, listening to the birds, watching the light change. In the slow cool of morning, Schneider arrives next, and sits beside her. “Jo says, ‘Do you know how lucky we are to get to do this each day?’” Lyle says. “And she’s right.” ✜

La Cocina. 201 N. Court Ave. 520.622.0351.

LaCocinaTucson.com.

Bentley’s House of Coffee & Tea. 1730 E. Speedway Blvd.

520.795.0338. BentleysCoffeeHouse.com.

Kati Standefer writes from Exo Roast Company and teaches community writing classes from her kitchen table in Tucson.

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Lamberton, Ken. Seed Saviors; Illustrated by Paul Mirocha.

-- Tucson : Edible Baja Arizona, 2015.

11p.

ISSN 2374-345X 1. Check out a package of seeds at a public library to get a glimpse of a gardener’s past— and into a community’s future.

2. If you are walking along a trail and

you see a kernel of corn, pick it up. It is a lost story in need of an audience.

–Anonymous

Para leer este artículo en español, visite EdibleBajaArizona.com.

To read this story in Spanish, visit EdibleBajaArizona.com.

Y

EARS AGO , my daughter Jessica Moreno volunteered every Thursday at Native Seeds ⁄ SEARCH. Sitting around a big table in a cramped, unventilated room on Fourth Avenue, she cleaned seeds, sorting out wrinkled, bug-eaten, or mildewed ones, removing clods of dirt or small rocks, measuring, packaging, and labeling. “Chile days were interesting,” Jessica says, “because the powder would hang in the air and go up your nose and everyone’s eyes would water.”

She would return home with small envelopes—lemon basil from New Mexico, tomato from Punta Banda in Baja California, dipper gourd from southwest Arizona. I blistered my hands digging up her stony plot of desert. Jessica had learned that every gardener who plants these heirlooms not only becomes linked to our indigenous cultures but also shares in the preservation of them.

Native Seeds ⁄ SEARCH was responding to what tribal elders had made clear they needed: the seeds their grandparents grew, some of which were then only found south of the border.

A legacy of food. Jessica, in her own small way, was showing that seed diversity alone isn’t the answer. We also need diversity in the sizes of farms and garden plots, in the kinds of farmers and gardeners.

She realized that making agriculture sustainable means connecting seeds to people. This is what seed libraries are all about.

In 2012, Pima County Library’s Justine Hernandez, along with several local nonprofits, built Pima County’s first network of 19 seed libraries. Southern Arizona now has 12 percent of all the seed libraries in the country, and that number is growing.

Tucked among shelves heavy with volumes of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, repurposed card-catalogue drawers hold envelopes of heirloom seeds that gardeners can borrow and plant at home. From amaranth to White Sonora wheat and zinnia (and six varieties of tomato), up to six packets per month are available to anyone with a library card. The idea is that gardeners can check out seeds and then return them from harvested plants at a future date. In this way, the seed library maintains

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a picture of a green vine hung with oblong fruit. A luffa, from a resilient and sustainable collection of plant varieties a native Tucsonan who has saved her seeds since the 1960s. specifically adapted to our hot and dry climate.

“There’s a story there.”

I’m pleased to hear that there will be no fines for In the beginning, Hernandez wrote letters to companies unreturned seeds. for donations of naturally pollinated seeds. “We didn’t know On an 80-degree spring day in March, I meet with if there would be any interest, but that year the library loaned Justine Hernandez at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library out 6,432 packets. The next year, that number doubled. And, 40 in downtown Tucson. No horn-rimmed glasses and percent came from seeds people in the community had donatbun-tied gray hair here. Her long dark locks frame ed. We were utterly surprised.” her oval face and broad smile. Hernandez is the force Last year, more than 16,000 packets went out to local garbehind Baja Arizona’s seed libraries. In fact, last year deners. “Any particular kinds of seeds?” I ask.

Library Journal magazine named her a 2014 Mover & “Anything. The seeds that don’t succeed in the garden don’t Shaker, offering her national recognition for her come back. What works stays in work in creating the popular prothe library—that’s the beauty of gram. it. It quickly takes the shape of the “One of the things that energizes community.” me,” Hernandez says, her dark eyes At the card catalogue, I thumb brightening, “is the seed library’s through the bar-coded packets in a capacity for building community. It drawer marked T. I’m looking for gives people an opportunity to consomething for my garden. A voluntribute, people who might otherwise teer brings Hernandez a box full of feel faceless in their community.” seed packets. “Mostly tomato,” she She hands me a dried bottle Making says, passing it to her. gourd. agriculture “Oh, this is what you want,” “One of our first donations,” Hernandez tells me. She hands me she says. “We didn’t have the heart sustainable means one labeled, “Ciudad Victoria.” to break it open, so it’s become our connecting seeds After checking out, I browse mascot.” among the planters outside the I read the handwriting scrawled to people. This library, once mostly receptacles across its woody surface: “Ideal plant for trash. Hernandez reached out for arbor” and “Needs much H2O.” is what seed to the business community, food “We encourage people to let us libraries are bank, and master gardeners—all know how their plants grew,” Hervolunteers—to take over the nandez says. “How did they prepare all about. planters from the City of Tucson it and eat it? Usually they fill out a and put them to better use. Now, I donation form.” She lifts a Ziploc see cilantro and eggplant, kale and holding a slip of paper buried in radishes. Seed drawers C through dried leaves. I smell pungent basil.

R, spreading into the courtyard.

“We also have a Facebook page The garbanzo beans are particuwhere we invite people to share larly delicious. photos and stories.” She shows me 130 May - June 2015

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W

G R ATEFUL D EAD singing “Box of Rain” on the CD player, I pull into Portal, gateway to the Chiricahua Mountains. Acorn woodpeckers laugh with wacky squeaks from bare sycamore trees above the rush of water in Cave Creek. At the Myrtle Kraft Library, I find Kathleen Talbot and Karen Fasimpaur. Blonde and brunette. Both look too young for library science.

Around these parts, they call Talbot, “Kiddo.”

Fasimpaur had never grown anything before moving from Los Angeles to Portal six years ago. But because she likes fresh vegetables, and the nearest farmers’ market is 90 miles away in Bisbee, she started gardening.

Then she stumbled across the “mobile seed folks,” a traveling broadcasting station out of New Mexico called SeedBroadcast, which investigates food culture across the country. “It was like a big food truck that has a seed library and they also record stories. It was so neat!” she adds, and I see the excitement in her gray eyes. “They had a broadcast going, telling stories about seeds and seed libraries, and why this was important.”

ITH THE

Seeds don’t care if your soil is conservative or liberal.

I learn from Fasimpaur that through workshops, art installations, and dialogues, SeedBroadcast explores seed networks, urban and rural agriculture, and the environmental implications of food production. “These are our seed stories,” they say, giving voice to the people who are pushing back against corporate domination of our food.

It was SeedBroadcast that really got her thinking about starting a seed library in Portal two years ago. “I sent an email out on the community listserv, and people were really interested.”

They came to the idea from completely different places, she explains. Some wanted to get away from corporate control and GMOs. Some were more concerned about supplementing their diets. Others just wanted to garden.

So she approached Kathleen Talbot, Portal’s librarian, who agreed to host the seed library.

“I had just been to an Arizona Library Association meeting,” Talbot says, “and Pima County already had one.

When Karen contacted me, I said we’d be honored. It would make us cutting edge.”

“The biggest surprise is what’s come out of it—workshops and classes—learning from each other has become the primary focus, more than the seeds. And we get all kinds of people,” she adds, explaining that gardening draws together neighbors with diverse experiences and backgrounds—and that seeds don’t care if your soil is conservative or liberal. “You know people’s politics aren’t the same, but everybody needs to eat!”

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Sowing Circle

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M

Y LAST SEED LIBR ARY visit takes me to Patagonia, where librarian Abbie Zeltzer introduces me to Francesca Claverie, who’s maybe 25 years old. Yes, revolutions begin with the young.

Claverie lived in California until she went to Native Seeds ⁄ SEARCH’s seed school in Phoenix and decided she had to move to Patagonia. That was two years ago. Then she heard Andrew Mushita from Zimbabwe speak about his work with small-scale farmers throughout Southern Africa to establish local seed banks and seed trusts, and she became inspired to start a seed library.

Borderlands Restoration and Native Seeds ⁄ SEARCH gave them seeds, and they became involved with Mariposa Community Health Center in Nogales and Rio Rico. “They’re doing community garden work,” Claverie says. “We wanted the first

134 May - June 2015

presentations and the library accessible to the entire community—a lot of the people in Patagonia are Spanish-speaking only.”

Zeltzer shows me a seed donation form printed in Spanish.

This is a bilingual seed library.

Jars of seeds rest atop an oak card catalogue: tepary bean and sunflower, arugula and wheat. “This one is new,” Zeltzer says, lifting the small jar and unscrewing the lid. “Red⁄green chile from Sonoita where a gardener has grown it for 30 years.”

“We even have wheat seeds going back to Sonora,” Claverie adds. “People are losing the ability to save seeds,” she says. “No one thinks of doing that. Or they don’t know how. They’re forgetting their stories.”

When I ask where they see the future of the seed library, Zeltzer says she wants to let it evolve as it goes, “like the seeds themselves adapting to their local environment.”

Photo: Jade Beall Photography

yogaoasis.com

Jeniffer Zimmerman in Bound Angle Pose

downtown | central | east

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I

rather benign, if a bit countercultural. People sharing seeds and stories. But, unbelievably, seed libraries are being threatened.

Government inspectors have closed down five libraries in other states.

It began last year in a small-town public library outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Government officials with the state’s Department of Agriculture accused the libraries of violating the state’s seed act, designed to protect the quality of seed to commercial farmers. The law requires the proper testing of collected seeds, the officials said, which makes seed libraries “dangerous.” Commissioners argued that seeds could be incorrectly labeled and redistributed.

As one put it: “Agri-terrorism is a very, very real scenario.”

Since the library wasn’t prepared or equipped to plant tomato seeds and verify they don’t come up radishes, the DOA delivered a new protocol: Patrons can continue to check out seeds donated only from seed companies, and the library will no longer accept returns from home gardeners. Some see this as a corporate takeover of our food systems.

“The letter of the law killeth,” says an ancient sower of seed.

But it may be that officials simply don’t understand the role of seed libraries. They misinterpret a law—undeniably important to farmers and consumers—and confuse protections for a commercial industry with a public service to gardeners. And since there are now more than 340 seed libraries in 46 states, some fear that what happened in Pennsylvania will spread across the country, essentially plowing under the movement.

When I mentioned these developments to the seed librarians, the name Vavilov came up. Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist and geneticist, collected more seeds than anyone before him. He is considered the father of seed saving. Yet Vavilov, who wanted to end famine in the world, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for the failure of Stalin’s agricultural program.

In 1943, he died of starvation in his cell as the book-burners laid siege to Leningrad and his staff scientists gave their lives to protect his seed library, the largest on the planet.

Hernandez had told me that what happened in Pennsylvania is going on in Maryland, Minnesota, and Nebraska. “But nothing in Arizona,” she added, knocking on the tabletop.

To address these regulatory challenges, Pima County public libraries, Native Seeds⁄SEARCH, the UA Kellogg Program in Food and Water Security for the Borderlands, and Edible Baja Arizona will co-host the first national forum on seed libraries.

The event will also commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the Seed Banks Serving People Conference in Tucson when the seed-saving movement was born.

And, it will be a celebration of the rise of the seed library, of communities taking control of their food culture and their own irreplaceable heirloom stories. It will recognize that what was once a gleaning on the fringe is becoming a harvest among the rows.

T ALL SEEMS

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N THE SECOND DAY of spring, I pull out last summer’s desiccated tomato vines: Early Girl—a favorite of mine for many years until recently. During the writing of this article I discovered that the goliath Monsanto now owns the hybrid. I shovel worm-riddled compost into warm soil. From my Tucson library packet, I choose five smooth seeds and drop them into finger holes, feeling a pleasant stirring in the small subversive act.

Seeds are like books. They record a past read by those who love them, though so many have gone out of print. But those who cherish them will collect them, share them, plant them in new soil. It’s been this way for thousands of years, since the twin dawns of agriculture and writing. Seeds are that revolutionary. ✜

Pima County Public Library. 101 N. Stone Ave. 520.791.4010. Library.Pima.Gov. Portal Myrtle Craft Library. 2393 S. Rock House Road, Portal. 520.558.2468. Cochise.lib.az.us⁄portal.html.

Patagonia Public Library. 346 Duquesne, Patagonia.

520.394.2010. PatagoniaPublicLibrary.org.

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

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FIRING LOCALLY

Tucson’s firefighters are making the case for going local first on food.

By Megan Kimble . Photography by Jeff Smith

(Previous page:) From left: Ryan Gaudioso, Ray Contreras, Chad DeCastro, Dan Woods, Adam Bower, and Sloan Tamietti.

(Above:) Gaudioso, Woods, Tamietti, and DeCastro prep lunch at Station 4. If a call comes in while they’re cooking, they turn off the heat and go.

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T U E S DAY in March at Tucson Fire Department Station 4 is carne asada burritos. “It’s not all local stuff, but a lot of it is,” says firefighter Ryan Gaudioso as he preps the buffet line. The carne asada comes from the Super Carniceria El Herradero on St. Mary’s. The tortillas are from La Estrella Bakery; the tortilla chips are from Phoenix-based My Nana’s. The Fry’s supermarket down the street has started listing Arizona produce, so Gaudioso grabbed a cantaloupe from Maricopa’s Santa Rosa Farms.

As Brett Welander, Daniel Woods, and Chad DeCastro build their burritos, I ask if they’ve noticed a difference in their meals since Gaudioso started trying to source the station’s food locally.

DeCastro shrugs. “Ryan’s a good cook, so it’s always been pretty good.” He considers the question as we sit down to lunch and dig into our burritos. “I guess it’s nice knowing you’re eating local, fresh ingredients.”

Before he can finish his thought—before I can finish my bite—a loud voice flashes over the station intercom. “Engine 4 1600 W. Miracle Mile, unconscious person, respond on EMS 1.”

The four men stand up—it’s not abrupt, really, just efficient.

They stride to the door, still chewing. Within the minute, DeCastro is behind the wheel, driving the bright red engine down Grant, toward Miracle Mile, where someone has called 911 to report an unconscious woman on the side of the road. It turns out she is intoxicated, passed out but conscious. After the men revive her—after she proffers a slur of profanities—and they ensure that she’s not a danger to herself or others, they send her on her way, wobbly and walking down the freeway off-ramp.

Within 15 minutes, we’re back at the station, back at the table, back to our burritos.

UNCH ON A

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“But, yeah,” says Welander, resuming our conversation without missing a beat, “One thing I’ve really liked is the food boxes we get from Bountiful Baskets. They get you to make stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise.”

“Yeah, you’re suddenly sitting there with a rutabaga and you’ve got to figure out what to do with it,” says Gaudioso. “So, you know, you get some hits and some misses.”

Gaudioso looks like a firefighter—trim, composed, clear-eyed.

So do DeCastro, Woods, and Welander. They are professionally fit—they are exactly who you’d want to carry your overweight grandmother down a flight of stairs. They are not who you might imagine wrestling over a new recipe for rutabaga.

The road to rutabaga began five years ago, when Gaudioso was a newly elected union coordinator and decided his first project would be to create a reusable shopping bag for the stations to use on their daily trips to the grocery store. He got local school kids to design logos for their local station; when he presented the bags to each ward’s City Council member, he happened to hear a presentation by a representative from Local First Arizona, a statewide local business coalition. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’” he says.

At a time when the fire department was facing budget cuts and layoffs, the idea that spending money at a local business would help keep more money in the community was a revelation for Gaudioso. The Local First Arizona pitch he heard goes something like this: Spend money at a local business and that money will reverberate through your community, through consumer spending from increased employment, income and property taxes, and sales tax on business-to-business transactions.

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Gaudioso estimates that 85 percent of the calls that come in are medical. He says that new construction codes and building standards make for fewer fires.

And a more prosperous community has more money to allocate to core services—services like the fire department.

Although the firefighters avoided layoffs by taking furlough days, through attrition and retirement, the force has shrunk by more than a hundred, from 720 in 2009 to 615 today—even as the annual number of calls has increased from 79,000 to 82,000 annually.

“We’re getting to the point where the work is so intense that we’re burning people out,” says Gaudioso. So he approached Erika Mitnik-White, Local First Arizona’s Southern Arizona director, with a simple question. How could the firefighters spend more of their money locally? Because firefighters buy all their own food, Gaudioso realized that a small shift in their food dollars could help support their community’s tax base—and, thus, their own jobs.

“Each station is basically its own little family,” he says. They work 24-hour shifts, so they’re together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “We go to the store once a day. We cook most of our meals in house. We have members complain when we spend too 144 May - June 2015

much.” (The firefighters say they’ve all been stopped at the grocery store by citizens demanding to know what food extravagance their tax dollars are buying. So, again: The firefighters pay for their own food. From their own salaries. Just like you and me.)

Mitnik-White gathered information to help the firefighters source their food as local as possible. “We created a map. Here’s where the farmers’ markets are in relation to the firehouses.

If you can’t go directly to farmers, we said, buy from Arizona-owned stores,” she says. “That keeps the money in the tax base. If you can’t do that, buy Arizona-made products at the chain stores.

“Basically, it’s: find the local where you are,’” she says. “It’s a spectrum. And once people get on that spectrum, it gets them involved in thinking about where their money goes.”

Gaudioso says the menu hasn’t changed that drastically since they started the project. “It’s just more dynamic,” he says. “You have to do more than look at the Fry’s morning ads to see what’s on sale. You always get complainers, but enough of these guys see the bigger picture. They get why we’re doing this.”

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HE ONE THING I want people to understand is that what we’re trying to do is build a healthier Arizona economy that’s more diverse and resilient, one that creates more equity across a broad spectrum of people,” says Kimber Lanning, the founder and executive director of Local First Arizona. She’s sitting on a sagging brown couch pushed against a wall in Local First Arizona’s Phoenix office, which doubles as Modified Arts, the art gallery and performance space Lanning opened in 1999. “We as individual residents of Arizona are quietly voting with our dollars.”

Lanning founded Local First Arizona in 2003—the year her record store, Stinkweeds, celebrated its sixteenth year in business.

“I had all these young customers and they weren’t connecting here. They’d come back at the holidays and tell me about the amazing things they were doing somewhere else. I thought: How

can I get them to want to stay here and build a better city the way I want to stay here and build a better city?”

She realized that growing up around small businesses—her parents and grandparents were self-employed—and going to local restaurants and stores had created a sense of community that her customers were lacking. “The chain stores have the dominating geography here. You drive from corner to corner, and they’re all owned by the Home Depots of the world,” she says.

And those big box stores were proliferating at the expense of taxpayers. “At the time, [cities] were giving massive subsidies to chain stores, based on the promise of sales tax returns,” she says. Sixty-eight million to Cabela’s; $32 million to Bass Pro; $25 million for the average Walmart. “But those deals have been shown time and time again to be losing deals. Bashas’ has been doing business for close to a hundred years, paying their sales

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The Local First Arizona crew debriefs after a day of meetings in Tucson. From left: Local foods coordinator Steve Russell; founder and executive director Kimber Lanning; southern Arizona membership coordinator Lisette DeMars; and Southern Arizona director Erika Mitnik-White.

tax, property tax, and everything else, and then the government turns around and gives those dollars to Walmart to come in here and try to move them out of business.” A business based in Arizona pays property taxes—Walmart is often offered tax abatements—as well as corporate state taxes; it might also pay a local accountant, a local sign maker, or a local uniform company—who in turn pay their own state and city taxes. A business based in Arkansas—like Walmart—buys signs or uniforms from one main contract and ships them to Arizona, contributing nothing to the state’s tax base.

So she started knocking on doors, asking, “Hey, are you mad about this, too?’” Within the first two years, 800 businesses had signed on to try to level the playing field for local independents.

Today, Local First Arizona has 2,800 members, making it the largest local business coalition in North America.

Thirteen full-time employees work in offices across the state; their online local 146 May - June 2015

“The roads aren’t separate from the schools, aren’t separate from the response time from the fire department.

And through very little extra effort, you could have a great impact on all of those things.”

business directory gets searched 60,000 times a month.

“We need to remember how to do business together,” says Lanning. “That’s how our economy used to work.” How our economy used to work is that a local coffee shop hired a local graphic designer to build a logo; the local graphic designer hired an accountant to do their taxes; the accountant hired a janitorial service to keep their office clean. This is how you create sustainable employment—this is how you create a robust local economy.

This is what economists call a “multiplier effect”—it is how dollars circulate, how money moves, how employment ripples.

Spending money at a local business helps ensure that your money stays in Tucson—or Sierra Vista, or Nogales—rather than accumulating on corporate balance sheets, filing bank accounts that exist elsewhere. The wealth that accumulates elsewhere is wealth that doesn’t help pave our roads, support our firefighters, or hire our college graduates who want to stay.

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Gaudioso catches up with Exo Coffee owners Doug and Amy Smith when he picks up the first coffee order: 40 pounds to be distributed across 21 stations.

According to a study by Civic Economics, if everyone in a city of 770,000—Tucson’s population is 520,000—shifted just 10 percent of their spending to a local business, collectively they would generate $137 million in new revenue for the city, more than 1,600 new jobs, and $50 million in new wages.

“That’s a great argument for people coming at this with a conservative perspective,” says Lanning. “Companies like Walmart create bigger government. One in seven Americans are now on food stamps. And who’s the biggest beneficiary of food stamps? Walmart. They underpay their employees; their employees collect food stamps to make ends meet, which they use at Walmart.” Spending money locally creates local resilience, says Lanning. “We call it self-help economics.”

Like Mitnik-White, Lanning emphasizes that localness is not absolute. “I have people say to me, ‘I’m not going to a local coffee shop because coffee isn’t grown here, so what difference does it make?’” says Lanning. “You have to help them understand that it’s not just the product the business is selling; it’s all the extra jobs they’re supporting, the wages they’re paying.”

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H ICH IS GOOD NEWS for Tucson’s firefighters.

“We spend maybe half of our budget for food staples on coffee,” says Gaudioso. Firefighters work 10 24-hour shifts a month—and getting up three, four, or five times a night to answer calls takes its toll. “We drink coffee morning, noon, and night.”

So Gaudioso set out to find a local source for coffee. “I went around and gathered information on the average cost at stations that were already buying full-bean coffee,” says Gaudioso. “I found the range for the coffee we could afford was about $5 to $6 a pound. Erika suggested we try Exo Coffee. I remember typing the email to them and just cringing at the number—I really didn’t want to offend them.”

“When Ryan first emailed us with his price point,” says Exo’s owner Doug Smith, “I said, I can do that, no problem.” Smith ended up coming down slightly from his typical wholesale contract, while Gaudioso convinced the firefighters union to spend slightly more. “When you average it across 21 stations, with a few dozen guys working at each station, it ended up costing $1.50

BICYCLING THE SANDS OF BELGIUM ON A BEATER BIKE, A WAYWARD TWENTY-ONE YEAR OLD ESCAPING, SOWING WILD OATS. OR WAS IT SPROUTING WINGS? IRRELEVANT, REALLY; IRREVERENT REALLY. THERE WAS NO LOCAVORE MOVEMENT TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, OVER THERE; OVER THERE, THINGS MOVED AT ANALOG PACE, IN A SPACE YOU COULD SEE WITH CONES AND RODS. AS IN THE HUBS OF THOSE BEAT UP WHEELS, SPINNING, CREAKING, TO THE ROADSIDE, BY THE S E A S I D E SALAMI, WINE, BREAD, SWISS CHEESE, SWISS ARMY KNIFE. I CAN TASTE IT STILL, STILL AS THE WATER LOPPING ON THE COBBLESTONES, AS IF IT WAS TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO.

Falora / Sparkroot / BarSidecar : dot com

Restaurant & Bar

Only a short stroll across the Arizona border, nestled in the historic Casa Margot is La Roca.

Savor classic Sonoran cuisine made with produce from Northern Mexico’s fertile valleys, the freshest seafood from the Sea of Cortez, and choice beef from the foothills of the Sierra Madres.

Plutarco Elías Calles, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico T: (520) 313-6313 www.larocarestaurant.com

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utilize—our printing, our marketing—we try to do locally. We more a month,” says Gaudioso. “And the benefits are huge. It’s have 72 employees here. All of our taxes all get paid here. We a little bump in price and we get so much more in return. And feel strongly that we should support local business.” it’s a better cup of coffee.”

Indeed, their niche is “family-owned, independent restau“The thing about being a small business is that we grow in a rants”—500 of them, spread across southern Arizona and into measured way,” says Smith. “We’re not worried about the next New Mexico. “Success, to us, is building partnerships with quarter’s profit margins, as long as we’re comfortable with our customers,” says Sadowsky. “We want to help them succeed. relationships.”

We’re here for the long term.”

And building relationships is one of the reasons Gaudioso Since Mitnik-White connected Sadowsky with the firestarted sourcing locally. “All of the places that we try to partner fighters, Merit has been supplying with are places that, if something goes weekly groceries for some stations wrong, we’re going to be the ones and also food for their special events, walking in their doors,” he says. including the firefighters’ annual By the time I arrive at Station 4 October Chili Cookoff fundraiser two weeks later, the Exo coffee is at Reid Park. In 2014, the firefighton its last legs—the first order of 40 ers raised $15,000 to benefit their pounds went way faster than GaudioAdopt-a-Family charity, thanks to so expected it to. When I ask him how sponsors and food, drink, and T-shirt the union membership has responded sales—T-shirts that were, for the first to his efforts to localize their spending time, made by Tucson-based Fed by habits, he shrugs. Basically, they get Threads. “That was a big reach for us, it, he says. “We’ve seen engines and selling a $20 T-shirt,” says Gaudioso. ladders shut down. We’re aware of “But when you come to the booth and how old our trucks are, how they need see the quality of the shirt, and hear maintenance. All of this hits home for the story behind it—there’s just no people,” he says. downside. And the shirts sold out!”

“Yes, it might be a couple of bucks Fed By Thread T-shirts were only more a month, but this is going to the most visible of the newly localized help my community. This is going wares. The firefighters at Station 4 to help where I live, where my kids bought all the ingredients for their go to school, the roads I drive on. chili from Merit Foods; Sam Alboy of It’s something people don’t think Mama’s Hawaiian Barbeque donated about when they walk into a Walmart, 35 pounds of sausage-based chili to thinking, ‘Oh, I can get the cheapest thing here.’ And then when they drive In 2011, the Tucson Fire Department responded Station 9.

Alboy is the president of Tucson away, they’re going to complain about to more than 82,000 emergency calls.

Originals, a coalition of 48 locally the potholes. Or complain about class owned restaurants. “We’re trying to help coordinate the local sizes at their kid’s school,” he says. “These things are not separate. food community and promote local food businesses,” he says.

The roads aren’t separate from the schools aren’t separate from Originally formed in the early ’90s as a buying club to help small the response time from the fire department. And through very restaurants compete for wholesale contracts, Tucson Originals little extra effort, you could have a great impact on all of those has since shifted its focus to leveraging advertising—to the tune things.” of $100,000 a year—to promote local restaurants, “to let people The easiest local shift for the firefighters was to seek locally know that there’s a better choice than Chili’s,” says Alboy. owned restaurants on the days they don’t have time to make it For every dollar that comes into a local restaurant, he says, 83 to the grocery store, much less cook. “When you’re cooking at cents goes back into the local economy, compared with just 25 the station, if you get a call, you’ve got to shut everything off cents at a chain restaurant. “Basically, the only thing that stays and leave,” says Gaudioso. If you’re waiting for your food at local [at a chain] is payroll,” he says. “There’s no chance for a Wendy’s and you get a call, you’ve got to leave—burger or not. graphic designer to come in and help make something; for a “When businesses are willing to make stuff again for us, or keep local farmer to sell something. Chains push out any kind of local it warm for us, that’s so appreciated. There’s nothing like eating involvement in order to have consistency from coast to coast.” lukewarm burritos.”

Monthly meetings, quarterly socials, and pop-up dining events Once the engine was out of the station—so to speak—Gaudhelp connect the Tucson Originals membership, building the kind ioso kept finding opportunities to localize the firefighters’ of support network that chains enjoy nationally. “It’s a cooperative budget. Mitnik-White introduced him to Mike Sadowsky, the effort,” says Alboy. “The firefighters—maybe they’ll eat at my sales manager at Merit Foods, a Tucson-based, family-owned place one day, but why not also send them to Lotus Garden or food distributor. The food mostly doesn’t come from local Mama’s Pizza? What you see is that local restaurants that join with producers—they’re working on it—but the business runs on Tucson Originals tend to flourish and thrive and don’t experience local dollars. “We built this warehouse almost seven years ago the same closure rate. We’re trying to support each other.” using all local contractors,” says Sadowsky. “Everything we 150 May - June 2015

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A moment for a meal. From left: Sloan Tamietti, Chad DeCastro, Ryan Gaudioso, and Dan Woods.

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H AT ’ S T R U E for Tucson’s firefighters is true for Tucson’s restaurant owners—for Tucson’s farmers and graphic designers and accountants. Community is created through daily transactions—transactions that accumulate into relationships, into familiarity and mutual support.

And while the local-first movement isn’t just about the money, it’s also absolutely about the money. A study by the Knight Foundation showed that connection to place was the single leading indicator for a community’s prosperity—that is, researchers found “a significant correlation between community attachment and economic growth.”

Spending locally is a daily decision, an incremental shift. If collectively you and I make up our community, then we are also our community’s economy. Today’s latte; tomorrow’s sandwich; next week’s dinner party—money’s power lies in its movement.

We can outsource our graphic designers and accountants.

On the whole, we’ve already outsourced our farmers—our brewers and millers, too. But by its very nature, a firefighter’s service is place-based—it has to be local. The structure of core services—police, fire, transportation—is community-oriented.

The example of firefighters buying local food to support their own jobs extrapolates to everything else—we can support our

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farmers and millers, bakers and brewers simply through the dollars we spend. And as the world’s energy resources become increasingly scarce, we might start to consider food as another core community service that we’ve neglected.

“We import $3.2 billion dollars worth of food into Arizona and export $2.8 billion worth of food grown here,” says Lanning. “Anyone who can’t see that’s an enormous amount of wasted energy and resources is simply not paying attention to the system.”

It’s a self-interested endeavor, of course— Gaudioso wants to keep his job; I want to keep my kale. But spending locally also impacts our communities in ways we can’t measure. “Everybody benefits,” says Gaudioso. “Everybody gets an opportunity to hopefully be in a better place than they were if you just ordered everything off Amazon and did all your shopping at Walmart. This community could look drastically different.”

In the meantime, Gaudioso pours himself another cup of Exo coffee. We sit around the fire station’s dining table, and wait for another call. ✜

Spending locally is a daily decision, an incremental shift.

Tucson Fire Department. Tucsonaz.gov⁄fire.

Local First Arizona. LocalFirstAz.com.

Megan Kimble is the managing editor of Edible Baja Arizona. Follow along at facebook⁄meganekimble or @megankimble.

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BUZZ

Diving into the Deep With the popularity of dive bars on the rise, we explore the depths of five of the most beloved dives of the Old Pueblo.

By Jon D’Auria | Paintings by Joe Pagac

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h e ter m “dive bar” originated in 1871 and comes from the colloquial expression referring to a “drinking den” or “disreputable place of resort” based on establishments that were originally located in cellars or basements. While the term has withstood the test of time, the social image of dive bars has changed and evolved, even if the bars themselves have changed very little. In the times when the title was first coined, dive bars carried a certain reputation as filthy or dangerous places that you wouldn’t visit if you held yourself to a certain esteemed level of social status. But thanks to hard economic times and the recent hipster revolution, dive bars are the place to be.

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And nowadays, like expertly trained sommeliers who masterfully critique and evaluate wines, dive bars have a strong following of connoisseurs that soak in every distinct nuance and subtlety of such taverns like a tall sip of a vintage pinot. Modern dive bars embody an honesty and sincerity that attracts people by not trying to be anything that they’re not. In fact, they seem to go to great lengths to preserve exactly what they are. Tucson is home to a wide assortment of dive bars that range from Prohibition-era national landmarks to neighborhood watering holes to college hangs—and everything in between. We decided to explore five of these celebrated Tucson dives to find out what keeps the patrons coming and the beer flowing. And in doing so, we learned that the surest way to find the heart of a city is directly through its best dives.

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hen the ice cream parlor, Double Bubble, went out of business on Stone and Glenn more than 40 years ago, Tucson attorney and philanthropist Tom Chandler quickly purchased the lot to turn it into a bar, which he eponymously named Tommy’s Lounge.

The bar was later inherited by Chandler’s ex-son-in-law, Rich Markham, who proudly ran it for 30 years until he died of cancer in September of 2014. And while there is still a candle that remains lit at all times and T-shirts for sale that boast “ WWRD” (What Would Rich Do?), the longstanding saloon is kept up in the able hands of Rich’s niece, Lisa Markham.

“It was very hard losing Rich, especially because he was battling cancer and it was painful to watch it slowly take him. This place was his life and he handled everything here, so when he had to stop coming because of his health, this place felt different than it did before,” says bartender Lori, who pauses only long enough to talk between filling beers and throwing dice in a game of Yahtzee. “But Lisa dropped everything to take this place over, and she is like the female version of Rich. No one else could’ve saved this place like she did.”

Living up to its title as a neighborhood dive bar, Tommy’s is packed full of regulars, many of whom live within walking distance, who love to briskly pound down the bar’s best seller, Budweiser, and shoot billiards in the various pool leagues that take place in the busily decorated bar.

“Tommy’s is tribal. The people that come here bond together and look after each other. I’ve been coming here for over 30 years, and even though I can’t remember many of those years anymore, I know they were good ones,” shouts a saucy regular referred to as Little Larry over Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” playing loudly on the jukebox. “I’ve had several wives and more girlfriends than you can count, and this place has treated me better than any of them.”

While the bar is stocked with a slew of flavors of vodka and tequila, and various sorts of brown liquors, the dust that resides on the bottle shelves indicate that this is a beer-based dive. But that doesn’t seem to bother the crowd that occupies the smoking area, pool table section, and main bar, as Lori continues to throw dice and wipe counters.

“I love that I get to come to work and have fun and I don’t have to be a stick in the mud. Tommy’s is just a small dive bar that has been around for a long time and over the years we just keep attracting new people. And once they come, they usually don’t stop.”

Tommy’s Lounge. 2747 N. Stone Ave. 520.884.7738.

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ontrary to the glum energy of many dive bars, Wooden Nickel Tavern, affectionately referred to by its patrons simply as the Nickel, has a bright and welcoming vibe to it that hits you the second you walk in.

Located on Country Club and 31st Street, the origins of the Nickel date back to the late 1800s when the structure was built as a railroad house. It eventually became horse stables and then a Polish-American club until it took its current form in 1947. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1984, the Nickel was purchased

by Joey Varela, his brother Fred, and their sister Cice, who are indeed the root source of its cheerful vibe.

“We’re definitely a dive bar, but we’re a nice dive bar. We keep this place cleaner than most bars and everything from our liquor to our food is of high quality,” says Joey as he takes his turn in a pool tournament. “You get your regular clientele, and then you become friends and family.” That guy over there started coming in 10 years ago and now he’s one of my best friends. See that server there, Max? He’s been with me practically since he was born. It’s all about family here.”

Unlike most dives, the Nickel serves a full menu of food, which draws quite a crowd on Wednesdays when they offer

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50-cent-wing night. Patrons across the room are eating burgers, drinking mixed drinks, and sipping their Bud Lights as they banter on. A blend of college students, couples, construction workers, and locals fill the bar, which Varela calls “the neighborhood living room”—everyone seems to know everyone else.

“It’s a neighborhood bar and it’s also a working class bar, so any day of the week you can come in and chat with the friendly people here and even network,” says Natalie, an enthusiastic regular.

“Fourth Avenue and downtown have pulled a lot [of people] from these local dive bars and eventually it will get old down there and all the people will come back. It’s just a fad as far as I’m concerned,” says Varela. “People who have to wait in line all night to get in and wait all night for a beer will get sick of it. When they’re tired of that scene, we’ll be here. And when they come, we will welcome them.” And that is about as concise a promise from a true dive bar that you will hear.

Wooden Nickel Tavern. 1908 S. Country Club Road.

520.323.8830.

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f a l l of Tuc son ’s dive bars, perhaps none have such a diverse crossover crowd as Danny’s Baboquivari Lounge. Drive by the familiar building on Fort Lowell that was built in 1948 as Pavone’s Pizza (the first pizza delivery service in Tucson) and you will see a surprising amount of cars lining the parking lot no matter the time of day. With an eclectic jukebox that features everything from Nas to Rage Against the Machine to Marvin Gaye, a shuffleboard table, pool tables, darts, pinball, and air hockey, Danny’s has become a popular college hang. But by selling endless cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and countless shots of Fireball for dirt cheap, the crowd also includes the full spectrum of drinker.

“The history of this place is remarkable. We have a lady who comes in here who says she’s the fourth or fifth generation in her family to drink here. This place has never closed, its only changed hands, so its history is rich,” says owner Erik Hulten, who bought the bar with his wife in 2007.

“It’s a really eclectic mix of local people during the day, and then in the nighttime we get more of the college, younger hipster crowd. And when that mixture is here at the same time, the crossover is awesome and so entertaining.”

The original owner, Danny Michael, converted the space to a bar in the late 80s, and decided to add the term “Baboquivari” as homage to the famous Baboquivari Peak, considered to be the holy center of the earth by the Tohono O’odham.

And while the assortment of games and cheap drinks are enough to keep the Tucson dive mecca packed, the large smoking patio out back, where a fire pit is often blazing and sports games and YouTube videos are projected onto a 30-foot wall, is also a major draw for patrons.

“People love Danny’s because it’s a mix of a mom and pop place and a neighborhood dive bar. Corporate chain bars try to take their place and have almost killed them off. This is a fading thing, so I feel that there’s some reverence to keep the vibe going that this place has always had,” says Hulten. “We keep our old jukebox, even though so many people come and try to sell us the digital ones. We still have the old wallpaper up on the walls, and we’ve kept things as original as we can here. It’s what makes Danny’s unique.”

Danny’s Baboquivari Lounge. 2910 E. Fort Lowell Road. 520.795.3178.

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T

he Buffet first opened its doors for business in

the Iron Horse neighborhood in 1934 shortly after the Prohibition Act of 1920 was repealed. As one of the oldest bars in Arizona, The Buffet’s liquor license was the eleventh to be issued in the state. In its span, it has gone through 16 owners, all of whom preserved its appearance and humble mission, including current owners Marilyn Smith, her daughter Lisha Smith-Davidson (who claims she is in charge of PR, HR and BS.), and her husband William Davidson. They purchased the bar together in 2007.

“When I was younger I spent a lot of time in bars, but in a lot of them I felt out of place or that I was being judged, and that made me feel like an outsider. The Buffet welcomes everybody and you can sense that when you come in,” says William. “And it’s hard to swallow paying $7 for a beer. I work my tail off every single day like we all do. We know it’s a struggle and we know that life isn’t easy and it’s not fair, so we like to help by offering some loving relief for people who need it.”

And in providing that loving relief, The Buffet says it has continually sold more Coors beer than any bar in America (aside from a brewery in Coors’ hometown of Golden, Colorado) and they also sell more Maker’s Mark than any bar 160 May - June 2015

in Arizona, according to Davidson. By offering some of the cheapest liquor prices in town and opening their doors at 6 a.m., the Buffet attracts a highly varied clientele. Some, like longtime patron John, have been coming for decades.

“You have everyone here from bums on the streets to lawyers to congressmen. I’ve been coming in for 40 years and I’ve seen the whole spread of people. We explain our problems to the bartenders and they listen and give us drinks or advice and sometimes both. You can trust the people who come in here,” he says, between sips of whiskey. “This place just welcomes everybody, and in turn, everybody comes.”

The Buffet has several longstanding traditions, including the recently retired Buffalo Sweat—a shot of all of the beer and miscellaneous hard liquor soaked up by a bartender’s rag. If that makes you gag, on your birthday, you can get a beer and a shot for any single coin. Though you might not be able to tell from the heavily graffitied walls, the memorabilia-covered room, or the original neon sign out front, The Buffet is a place that is fueled by tradition and maintained with love. And so far that formula has worked for more than 80 years.

The Buffet. 538 E. Ninth St. 520.623.6811.

N

estled in a small business district on 17th Street and Plumer, The Silver Room has been a watering hole off the beaten path since the mid-’60s. Austere in appearance and minimal in décor, the bar’s room is basically a large square with a couple of pool tables in the back and a barely audible jukebox that hasn’t been updated in many years. The owner, who is referred to solely as Pup, bought the place when he retired from his career as a firefighter in New York City, back when the bar was called Cal’s Tavern. While you won’t find a lot of excitement at The Silver Room, that seems to be exactly why the loyal regulars like the joint.

“There used to be a lot more people that would come here and the place would be packed at night, but it’s not the same anymore. Now you just get the regulars,” says Tony, who has been a daily patron at the dive for more than 50 years. “If you’re looking for something like a fancy bar with dancing and all of the charades, then this isn’t the bar for you. It’s a nice small place that doesn’t have a lot of excitement or change to it and I like that. I think that’s what all of us like about it.”

In the daytime, the room is filled with retired workers, quiet drinkers, and people of a certain age who remember a time before bars had televisions in them. At night, the scene isn’t much different, though fewer seats are vacant at its long, narrow bar. If ever there was a dive that looked like it might have been used as a set for a Quentin Tarantino movie, The Silver Room fills the bill. But the subtle charms of the laconic patrons and the loquacious bartenders make it a mellow dive to visit if you’re looking for a quiet place to ruminate over a cheap beer.

“I used to be offended when someone would call this place a dive bar, but now I’m not anymore,” says Donna, the Silver Room’s bar manager for the past 14 years. “It used to seem like that term referred to the place being a dump, or somewhere

162 May - June 2015

that you didn’t really want to go, but now it has taken on a different meaning. I think dive bars are popular now because people feel more comfortable talking to each other in a place like this. Things have always been the same around here and people like that.” ✜ The Silver Room. 673 S. Plumer Ave. 520.624.6434.

Jon D’Auria is a journalist, photographer, writer, and musician who enjoys playing bass, running, reading, traveling, fine dining, champagne toasts, and the color green.

The National Parks Store

A window into the people, places, and histories of this region.

Fine Handmade Crafts American Indian Arts Southwestern Food & Apparel Children’s Items Books on National Parks & the West Free Public Events Tours, Workshops, Concerts & More

The store is off the beaten path, but it’s worth the trip.

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NOR_EdibleBaja_MayJune2015_3.625x9.75.indd 1

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All the news that’s fit to drink.

Dos Cabezas Wineworks in Sonoita recently made a small release of sparkling Rosé bottled in a tall aluminum can. The Garnacha⁄Monastrell⁄Syrah blend is sourced from Cimarron Vineyard in Cochise County and drinks perfectly for a Baja Arizona summer. This sparkling Rosé is the same as their still Rosé wine, but dosed intensely with carbon dioxide (think Topo Chico). The label on the can is a reprinting of a tarnished painting that the father of Chris Bianco (of Bianco Pizzeria fame) painted for his mother on their wedding day. In the glass, the wine has a mandarin orange nose followed by kiwi, ripe honeydew, and some lychee flavors on the palate. The production run was fairly small this vintage, but a few cans may still be available around Tucson at Blu: A Wine & Cheese Shop, Bianco Pizzeria, and Tap & Bottle. 3248 Arizona Highway 82, Sonoita. 520.455-5141.

DosCabezasWineworks.com.

Kalina Russian Cuisine and Tea House at Tanque Verde and Bear Canyon offers a complete Russian dining experience with its caviar and vodka pairings. Despite ubiquitous marketing for premium vodka brands, it is important to remember that vodka does hold a traditional dining and pairing tradition in Russian cuisine. Kalina’s pairs bowfin caviar with Russian standard, paddlefish caviar with Russian platinum, and hackleback caviar 164 May - June 2015

with Russian Imperial. These are usually presented atop blini, but on a recent visit they were substituting bread and butter under the caviar (a more traditional service). I am not a caviar expert but the staff was extremely helpful in explaining the proper traditional way to eat and drink through the pairings. Tasting the caviars side to side helps to drive home the point that caviar is every bit the delicacy it is made out to be: fragile, subtle, with intense differences in flavor. After you’ve finished the vodka and caviar, Kalina’s also has a great choice of Russian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian beers to drink alongside a charcuterie board covered in hard-to-identify pickles. 8963 E. Tanque Verde Road. 520.360.4040. KalinaRestaurant.com.

When I started working in the Tucson service industry there were tons of new people to meet. Everyone is friendly and welcoming, but husband-andwife Churchill Brauninger and Elizabeth Menke went out of their way to be the most welcoming and lovable characters around. For years they have been part of the dynamic team behind the bar La Cocina and The Dusty Monk Pub at Old Town Artisans. La Cocina was among the first wave of Tucson’s bars taking their craft seriously with fresh juices, countless infusions, extensive beer and wine lists, and all the Underberg (a bitter German digestif) a person could ever want. Finally, after years in the industry, both in San Francisco and Tucson, Brauninger and Menke will be opening their own bar. The demolition and construction is underway for St. Charles Tavern at the building that most recently housed Barrio’s Pizza on South Fourth Avenue—although it more famously housed The Paddock, a local legend of drunken debauchery, in the ’90s.

St. Charles will offer live music, pool tables, a garden to provide

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cocktail ingredients, and some of my favorite bartenders in town. Brauninger and Menke hope to open St. Charles Tavern by the end of summer.

Some friends and I traveled to visit Abe’s Old Tumacacori Bar, located outside of Tubac, after hearing multiple stories from friends about the bar’s incredible jukebox, wild crowds, and long history as the goto dive bar on the I-19 corridor.

We arrived around noon and saw no signs of life other than some men with leaf blowers at the house next door. They told me to come back at 3. After a few drinks at Tubac Jack’s and some idle conversation with snowbirds wearing Harley-Davidson shirts, we tried to return and were met with a locked door again. After further investigation, we learned that the bar is being passed down to the next generation of the family and, for the moment, has irregular hours. With no more time to waste, we moved on to another storied watering hole: La Gitana Cantina, located less than 15 miles from the border in Arivaca. Originally built in 1880, La Gitana is filled with that favorite southern Arizona character: burnt out, artistic, chain-smoking, hippy cowboy. We ordered cheap beers, talked to some man in dirty jeans about cars, and I had my intelligence questioned when I didn’t laugh at someone’s dirty joke quickly enough. Anytime you walk into a tavern on a Tuesday afternoon and have trouble finding a seat on the patio, you know you’ve found somewhere important. Abe’s Old Tumacacori Bar. 1900 E. Frontage Road, Tumacacori. 520.398.1227. La Gitana Cantina. 17205 W. Fifth St., Arivaca.

520.398.0810.

Bryan Eichhorst is a native Tucsonan, unapologetic sommelier, dedicated evangelist of Oaxacan mescal, and the beverage director at Penca.

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

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

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

By Appointment Only FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS: WILLCOX TASTING ROOM 100 N. Railroad Avenue 520.384.6030 FlyingLeapVineyards.com Wed-Sun: 12-6 KEELING SCHAEFER VINEYARDS: WILCOX TASTING ROOM 154 N. Railroad Avenue 520.766.0600 KeelingSchaeferVineyards.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5 CARLSON CREEK 115 Railroad Avenue 520.766.3000 CarlsonCreek.com Thu-Sun 11-5 ARIDUS TASTING ROOM 145 N Railview Avenue 520.766.9463 AridusWineCo.com Tasting Room Daily: 11-5 Crush Room Daily: 11-5 w/appt.

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

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

PILLSBURY WINE COMPANY 6450 S. Bennett Place 520.384.3964 Pillsburywine.com Thurs-Sun: 11-5 Weekdays by Appointment ZARPARA VINEYARDS 6777 S. Zarpara Lane 602.885.8903 Zarpara.com Fri-Sun: 11-5, Mon-Thurs: By Appt.

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

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

SONOITA/ELGIN & TOMBSTONE WINE MAP To Tuc s

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CHARRON VINEYARDS

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

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

AZ HOPS & VINES

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

4 5

HANNAH’S HILL

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

WILHELM FAMILY VINEYARDS

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

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

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

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

9

To Ft. Huachuca (50 min.)

Sierra Vista (1 hr.)

KIEF-JOSHUA VINEYARDS

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

10 V471 Elgin Road,EElgin ILLAGE OF

LGIN

520.455.9309 ElginWines.com Daily: 11-5

12 L2368 Hwy 83,RElgin IGHTNING

CELLARS

IDGE

520.455.5383 LightningRidgeCellars.com Fri-Sun: 11-4

W 13 T15 N 4th Street,WTombstone OMBSTONE

INE

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520.261.1674 TombstoneWinery.com Daily: 12-6

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

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520.455.5893 SonoitaVineyards.com Daily: 10-4

ILVER

TRIKE

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520.678.8200 SilverStrikeWinery.com Daily: 12-6

SABORES DE SONORA

Amamos Alamos Visit Alamos, Sonora, to find where desert meets tropics, in cuisine and crops.

By Gary Paul Nabhan and Bill Steen | Photography by Bill Steen

A

S YOU DR I VE into Alamos, Sonora, on cobblestone boulevards lined with restored colonial mansions, fuchsia, magenta, and white bougainvillea, and tropical kapok trees, Ceiba acuminata, you sense why, in 2005, the Mexican government designated this city of 13,000 one of Mexico’s pueblos magicos—magical towns.

Long before that honor, Alamos had been a favored destination of tourists from all over the world; it is not only a place where desert coastal cuisines blend with more tropical Mesoamerican ones, but also where the Sonoran Desert most dramatically blends with the astonishing diversity of tropical forests to the south. At the time of the Spanish entradas, these forests covered more than 550,000 square kilometers along the Pacific Coast from Sonora’s zona serrana southward all the way to Panama. Today, less than 500 endangered square kilometers remain, much of it surrounding Alamos, which now headquarters a biosphere reserve for the Sierra de Álamos above the city.

We wanted to see how much Alamos has recovered since the decline it suffered around 2006 when Mexico’s drug wars briefly escalated. What is it that is now drawing so many people to this colonial city at the very southern reaches of the Sonoran Desert, a six-hour drive from the border at Nogales? We found many reasons that Alamos is again attracting international attention, and one of them is food and drink, from fresh vegetables and sea salts to mescal and goat cheeses.

But to get a clearer picture of what is luring the adventurous back to Alamos, let’s briefly touch upon its colorful history.

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Not long after its establishment as a colonial capital in 1716, discoveries of large deposits of silver within the surrounding towns of La Aduana, Minas Nuevas, and San Bernardo made it one of the richest places on the planet. The town’s founders and residents constructed large colonial mansions with lush courtyard gardens and orchards, making it the northern-most outpost in a Mexican silver boom that also generated the likes of San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato to the south. There was so much silver produced that Alamos had its own mint.

As it happens, the silver began to give out, and by the early 20th century, the Alamos economy went bust and most of its colonial buildings fell into disrepair. With the exception of a small population of Guarijio and Mayo Indians who fled the hinterlands for the security of Alamos, the town was nearly abandoned.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, a few adventurous American and Canadian explorers found something in Alamos to write home about. Howard Scott Gentry, the world expert on tequila and mescals, hunted, foraged, and botanized in the Rio Mayo in the 1930s, and published both popular and scholarly accounts of his explorations in the sierras above Alamos. George Hilton’s Sonora Sketchbook includes both drawings and written accounts of the unparalleled plants, animals, and cultures of the area.

And a cattle buyer who still lives near the border, J.P.S. Brown, A common sight in Alamos: Bougainvillea from the gardens of restored colonial mansions spill over into the streets.

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David and Jennifer MacKay sit with their dogs on the steps of the main building at El Pedregal Nature Lodge and Retreat Center.

wrote Forests of the Night, a novel about hunters, ranchers, and farmers pursuing a legendary predator through the sierras behind Alamos.

Somewhere around the late 1940s or early 50s, an American named Charles Pratt realized he could use the mystique of the Sierra Madre to sell deteriorated mansions and ranch properties to other North Americans. Artists, writers, and naturalists continued to flock to Alamos for the remainder of the 20th century, hooked on its natural beauty, architectural history, and culinary as well as other cultural traditions. A great many of those original mansions have been beautifully restored.

For the remainder of the 20th century, Mexican and Anglo populations lived in distinctly different worlds, rarely, if ever, mixing socially. However, with time those barriers have dissolved and once again, Alamos has become a crossroads, a meeting place between the norteño cultures of the Sonoran Desert and the Mesoamerican cultures of the Sierra Madre. Alamos now attracts chefs, artists, ecologists, conservationists, and historic preservation architects from Mexico and abroad dedicated to celebrating the sense of place and taste found where desert cuisine meets tropical influences.

We chose to focus on what was happening in the world of food, farming, foraging, and ranching. Our mission was to explore everything from local goat meat birria in roadside stands to native food crops, community health projects, and gardening traditions. We also were curious about how the Alamos community was grappling with the health issues and diseases that 174 May - June 2015

plague the entire region—namely, obesity and diabetes. Mexico has recently surpassed every other major country in the world in the prevalence of diabetes and childhood obesity.

As our base for our several-day stay in Alamos, we chose El Pedregal Nature Lodge and Retreat Center. Run by Jennifer and David MacKay, the center is situated on a 20-acre oasis on the outskirts of town. They offer great food, mountain biking, hiking, yoga classes, massage, and a variety of tours through the region. In addition to running birding tours all over Mexico, David also grows many of the greens, vegetables, and fruits visitors to the lodge eat.

The MacKay’s investment in a healthy future for their community goes well beyond using locally produced foods for their guests’ breakfasts. Jennifer is the director of the Alamos office of Nature and Culture International, which works to support scientific research, environmental education and sustainable community development. They’ve also helped purchase 14,500 acres, known as the Reserva Monte Mojino, to protect the upper region of the Río Cuchujaqui watershed, a pristine river system with striking landscapes and extensive forest—and also the subject of international scientific study and the southern migration destination of hundreds of different species of birds.

Going local in the Alamos region does not look like it does in Tucson, but that’s the whole point. The place dictates. Alamos offers a diverse palette of eating options scattered throughout town. When entering Alamos, you’ll come across the Alameda, a tree-lined plaza that is the commercial hub of the town, where

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numerous street vendors line both sides of the plaza, selling everything from tacos to dogos (or Sonoran hot dogs, as we know them), mariscos fresh from the sea, elotes (sweet corn and salsas), pickled green chiltepins, goat cheeses, cactus fruit, and much more. On the far end of the Alameda, you can find a modest selection of local foods at the central market.

To the front of the main cathedral is the other plaza of Alamos, the Plaza de Armas, which could be described as the people’s plaza, notably on Sunday nights. Punctuated with 176 May - June 2015

towering Washingtonia palms and a century-old, wrought-iron bandstand, the plaza is the place where fiesta celebrations and other social gatherings happen. Head over to the aging Hotel Los Portales for a beer at La Posta Bar, the ideal spot to enjoy a cold drink while watching the plaza’s goings on.

We ate dinner and breakfast at Teresitas Panaderia y Bistro; owner Teri Arnold describes the restaurant as “my little brainchild that got out of control. We evolved from selling a few baguettes a day, a few days a week, to serving breakfast, lunch,

Alamos at dusk, from El Mirador, the tallest lookout hill in town. Note the center of town with the cathedral, Plaza de Armas, and the Alameda.

and dinner.” The varied menu includes fine wines, incredible desserts, and bread made from White Sonora wheat.

Zapata’s Cantina, the bar at Alamos’s elite hotel, Hacienda de los Santos, has a great reputation among locals. Visit their Agave Café for lunch during the cool season; dinner is servedyear round.

On the outskirts of Alamos, new notions of how to do food businesses are emerging. Bernardo Acuña, a young man with a roadside stand at the Alamos turnoff to La Aduana had come

back to the safety of home from years in Phoenix, opening a business featuring birria made from his own goats fed on the local forages. Behind his tiny highway stand, he pit-roasts his own delicious version of this sweet and savory broth and meat stew.

On our first day in Alamos, it seemed like every interesting man that friends told us we should talk to was named Gaby— until we found out that they were one and the same. Gaby Figueroa turned out to be a superb field naturalist, farmer, bartender, and all-around good guy.

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(Clockwise from top left) Field naturalist, gardener, bartender, Gaby Figueroa. Prickly pear cactus pads (nopales) cleaned, chopped, and packaged for sale at the main mercado in Alamos. Diners take advantage of mild weather to dine at one of town’s many bright patios.

Elizabeth Pettit makes tamales and tortillas from corn prepared using the traditional process of nixtamalization or “liming.”

The Figueroa family property is lush compared to neighboring lands, with tropical shade trees and desert cacti, cultivated fruit trees and vines, and extensive gardens and chicken runs. It is not hard to imagine how working with some of the world’s greatest biodiversity experts has influenced how Gaby farms. If his part-time work at Reserva Monte Mojino is about the structure and composition of wild tropical biodiversity, then his work at home is about nurturing as much cultivated biodiversity as he can pack into a few hectares. As we walked around Gaby’s orchard-garden complex, we tallied up at least 42 crop species and several chicken breeds that he offers to markets and restaurants in Alamos. Here is a chavo (guy) who gets how to make a living off marketing and monitoring biodiversity!

When we walked a few blocks down from the cathedral to the Clinica Almas we saw a new episode of Alamos food history—that is, the use of native ingredients and nutritious foods to heal the many residents who are now plagued with obesity and 178 May - June 2015

diabetes. Elizabeth Pettit opened the Clinica Almas in 2015 after learning disturbing news: Mexico’s adult obesity rate of 32.8 percent had surpassed that of the United States (31.8 percent), making it the most overweight country in the Americas, if not the fattest in the world.

We visited Alamos the very week that Pettit opened a green grocery of healing foods and medicines that featured a variety of fresh-picked greens, fruits, and vegetables, some of them from the market-garden of Martin Gabriel Figueroa, red corn tortillas handmade using the traditional, nutrient-enhancing process of “liming,” or nixtamalization, virgin olive oil from Mission olives grown in the Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California, and moringa, from Ciudad Obregon. Pettit is also hoping to work with the president of the Alamos Municipality—a county-like government including 319 small villages and rancherias—to develop an outreach program to the 22 communities without any local health care access.

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(Top) At a birria food stand located along the highway at the entrance to Alamos, Bernardo Acuna prepares his stew made from goats that he raises.

(Bottom) Hidden from the street and behind the front doors of many restored colonial buildings are courtyards filled with lush greenery.

Pettit intends to advance a comprehensive, community-based wellness plan that would deal with not just obesity, but also the associated challenges of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular problems, and immune deficiencies. She will focus much of her work on obesity rates for Mexican youth, which is the highest in the world. “Like hunger, obesity is a symptom of malnutrition. Right now, their diets are dominated by Maseca (a kind of industrially processed corn flour), and of course, by Coca-Cola,” she said.

Pettit says, “I’ve been listening to the elders in the rural communities surrounding Alamos using their own stories to of180 May - June 2015

fer testimony to how the diet has changed over their lifetimes,” she said. “When I see patients of the third generation—the grandmothers and grandfathers who have eaten these foods and medicines nearly their entire lives—it is startling how much healthier they are than their own grandchildren.”

On the road home, we reflected on our Alamos journey. Not only has Alamos recovered much of its lost tourism, it has also developed into a more diverse and interesting community than either one of us had remembered. There are many reasons to visit Alamos—the geography, the architecture, the winding streets, the food, the people. Take your pick.

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Callaghan Vineyards • Blu A Wine & Cheese Stop • Dragoon Brewing Co. Arizona Stronghold • Ten55 Brewing • Pillsbury Wine Co. • Proper Prep and Pastry • Agustin Kitchen • Old Bisbee Brewing Co. Dos Cabezas Wineworks • Borderlands Brewing Co. • Zona 78 Acacia Real Food & Cocktails • Seis Kitchen & Catering Caridad Community Kitchen • Pasco Kitchen & Lounge

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Covered in cheese, chile, and lime, and roasted on a bed of charcoal, corn on the cob (elotes) is one of the many street foods typically found along the Alameda, the business plaza of Alamos.

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If You Go The dry season runs mid-October to the end of June, which is the town’s high tourist season. Population and prices will increase accordingly. The rainy seasons runs from the end of June to the end of September. If you enjoy summer rains and low prices—and if you don’t mind intense humidity—this is an excellent time to visit Alamos. There are many places to stay, although budget accommodations are scarce. Most hotels are in restored colonial buildings. Prices start at about $75 a night and go up to more than $300 a night.

Airline flights from U.S. gateways can take you most of the way. You’ll fly into Sonora’s main international terminal at Hermosillo, then connect to a commuter flight to Ciudad Obregon, the closest commercial airport. From there, it’s a little over an hour’s drive to Alamos. You can also drive down from the United States and do some sightseeing along the 450-mile route.

Visit AlamosMexico.com or ElPedgregalMexico.com for more information. ✜

Lodging: El Pedregal Nature Lodge. Calle privada (sin nombre), El Chalaton. ElPedregalMexico.com. 52.647.428.1509.

Hacienda de los Santos. Calle Molina 8, Centro. HaciendaLosSantos.com. 52.647.428.0222.

Luz del Sol. Álvaro Obregón 3. LuzDelSol.com.

52.647.428.0466.

Bill Steen and his wife, Athena, are founders of The Canelo Project, a nonprofit organization in Santa Cruz County dedicated to “connecting people, culture, and nature.” Gary Paul Nabhan is senior contributing editor at Edible Baja Arizona.

Located in the heart of Alamos, the Plaza de Armas is also known as the “People’s Plaza” for its frequent celebrations and fiestas.

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Green Fields Country Day School

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

For more information call: (520)297-2288

or visit: greenfields.org

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

Scholarships are available.

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ESSAY

Good Keepers Make Bichicoris

By Gary Paul Nabhan | Photography by Bill Steen

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HEN B ILL S TEEN and I wandered down from Nogales to southern Sonora, we spotted piles of the oldest “pumpkins” in the Sonoran Desert, the green-striped cushaw squash and big cheese pumpkin. They don’t exactly look like classic Jack-o-Lanterns, but their flavors are good and their uses many. The former, what Sonorans call calabaza de las aguas, is often crook-necked like a heron or egret, striped with lime greens, creamy whites, yellows and oranges, and has a stem on its end that looks all the world like an oversized cork. The latter, which they call segualca, is a squat, deeply ribbed oval with dark orange-red flesh. But there is another native term associated with these squashes that reminded Bill and me of an entire realm of local self-sufficiency in the Sonoran Desert that is all but forgotten today.

Fortunately for our region, there are young Sonoran women and men who still practice the tradition of “putting up squash” for use in later seasons. Minerva Perez Banda of La Higuera, Sonora, is one of the young women who still keeps this old way alive, as well as the lexicon that goes with the practice.

Bichicori—the term for a special sort of sun-dried squash—is part of her lexicon, and it echoes a more rural and artisanal past in our binational region. This folk name came into Spanish and English from the Yaqui, or Yoeme, language, and yet it was in such widespread use in Sonoran Desert communities at one time that few think of it as “Indian” at all today.

Among Sonorans, bichi means naked, stripped-down, or skinned out. Cori is related to an ancient term for woven, plaited, or twined utensils, such as utilitarian baskets called caritas, made from Sonoran palm fronds. But bichicoris are made from a skillful “untwining” or braiding apart of the flesh of a winter squash. A skilled butcher or apple corer can take a paring knife with a sturdy handle and dissemble an entire squash into a long string of loopy curlicues that are then hung from a clothesline or bobwire fence to dry in the sun. Another Sonoran term for the same sun-dried vegetable is tasajo de calabazas, which was recorded in the Sonoran language called Nevome as soicpigui in 1720. There is even an ancient Sonoran verb for the art or act of preparing squash as sun-dried curlicues, ictuburhida.

We met Minerva by accident, in the little rancheria of La Higuera. Bandas was born in the very same adobe building that now serves as her kitchen. When I first ventured into Sonora as a 19-year-old, bichicoris were everywhere in the fall, looped over

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clotheslines in the backyards of campesinos along with socks, panties, and other kinds of chonis. The goal was to “fabricate” or break down the abundance of recently harvested squash so that it could be dehydrated or sun-dried for later use in empanadas, caldos, cazuelas, and sopas. I also saw these curlicues hanging around O’odham rancherias in southern Arizona in the 1970s.

In short, making bichicoris was a common cultural practice all across the Sonoran Desert for centuries.

Making bichicoris is parallel to the old country tradition found among Southern agrarians in the United States called “putting food by.” Our predecessors here in the Sonoran Desert had numerous means for storing diverse vegetables, fruits, greens, and grains between seasons. They buried them in deep pits in the sand, sort-of makeshift cold cellars. They dried them on top of ramadas and stitched them together into strings of sartas and ristras hung besides doorways.

And so, they were locally food self-sufficient in ways that perhaps we will never know again during our lifetimes, and they were proud of it. They realized that bichicoris and sartas of chile colorado are not only good to eat but also good to behold as forms of beauty. They even selected their varieties of squashes and apples and watermelons to last over the winter, thus the common heirloom names like Winter Banana or Winter Squash. They referred collectively to such fruits and vegetables as “good keepers,” subtly invoking a value that grocery stores full of frozen foods from who-knows-where have almost driven from our region.

But if anything has the remote possibility of bringing such values and delectable flavors back into our communities, it is relocalizing our foodshed. Food re-localization is not merely about “going out;” it is also about “coming home,” “putting food up,” and making sweet bichicoris with one another on a warm winter day.

When I die, I hope that someone will be kind enough to link my life to that ancient value which once permeated the Sonoran Desert, and put as my epitaph “All he wanted to be was a good keeper.” ✜

Minerva Perez Banda of La Higuera cuts a squash into a long string of loopy curlicues, known as bichicoris, which hang from a clothesline to dry in the sun.

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INK

Book Reviews by Molly Kincaid New Feast: Modern Middle Eastern Vegetarian

By Greg and Lucy Malouf (Hardie Grant Books, 2014)

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of life come calling, it is often healing to cook oneself a nice meal. At times, the comfort of a plain old grilled cheese is what the doctor ordered. Other times, it’s invigorating to read the action verbs from a cookbook and then spring into action to perform them: blanch, swirl, loosen, chop, heat, fry, sauté, crack, bake, mix, spoon, serve. Perform the commands, create something new, a little bit exciting. The joy of a cookbook is in all of the possibility it holds. When will you get the spinach for Turkish Eggs with Chile Yogurt Cream at CSA? Whom will you cook them for? And will they be the best thing ever?

New Feast embraces the cooking process in a way that gets the reader stoked about trying something new.

There are recipes in here that you most likely have never cooked. You may have attempted flatbreads or naan, sure, but have you tried Coconut-Date Naan or Crushed Hazelnut-Rosemary Flatbread? Perhaps you’ve tried homemade harissa, but haven’t whipped it into a homemade butter (and subsequently applied it to everything).

Written by Greg and Lucy Malouf, a team who have written several cookbooks together in the past, New Feast focuses on vegetarian fare primarily rooted in Lebanese, Tunisian, and Turkish culinary traditions. Greg Malouf is a Michelin-starred Australian HEN THE DOLDRUMS

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chef whose parents were Lebanese.

Lucy Malouf is an accomplished food writer and recipe-tester. According to the book’s introduction, both have been drawn to a primarily vegetarian diet as they have aged, thus the impetus for the collection of veg-forward recipes.

The outcome is a gorgeous, intriguing, and drool-inducing collection of cooking possibilities. The only dish I’ve had the chance to make was the Spiced Puy Lentils with Porcini and Herbs, and the recipe was perfect.

Those delectable lentils dotted my salads and made appearances in lunch wraps all week. I’ve got countless others bookmarked: Egyptian Breakfast Beans with Feta, Lemon Oil, & Green Chile Relish; Artichoke and Lemon Labneh; Baby Eggplants Stuffed with Walnuts and Chiles. I consider them little treasure troves just waiting to be broken out to brighten up my day.

Dinner: The Playbook: A 30-Day Plan for Mastering the Art of the Family Meal

By Jenny Rosenstrach (Ballantine Books, 2014)

J

E N N Y R O S E N S T R A C H is the opposite of Thomas McNaughton. She left a career in magazine publishing (Bon Appétit, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple) to become a freelance food writer and blogger, so she’s trained in the art of pithy writing as opposed to gourmet cuisine. Despite her lack of a culinary school diploma, her blog, Dinner: A Love Story, is a resource for dependable, delicious recipes.

Her mission is simple: get dinner on the table. Every. Single. Night.

Flour + Water: Pasta

By Thomas McNaughton & Paolo Lucchesi

(Ten Speed Press, 2014) T DOESN ’ T ROLL OFF the tongue as well, but the name of this book really should be Flour + Water + Eggs. The basic egg dough that is the base for most pastas in the book uses a whopping 18 egg yolks. But it is worth it. The recipe made for some astonishingly rich egg fettuccine, particularly paired with the falling-off-the-bone Anise-Braised Pork and Chard sauce.

Thomas McNaughton, the executive chef at San Francisco’s celebrated Flour + Water, can only be described as an outlier who will inspire jealousy among food nerds. After attending the Culinary Institute of America, he honed his French cooking skills at San Francisco’s La Folie. Then he traveled around Europe, settling for a time in Bologna, where he fell in love with Italian cooking. In 2009, he returned to San Francisco to collaborate with developers David White and David Steele at Flour + Water, which became a wildly popular pasta spot in the Mission. At the time, he was only 26. He also lives above the restaurant (and probably starts each day with a latte and an almond croissant from nearby Tartine, without having to wait in line. Or maybe I’m imagining my dream scenario).

Now at the ripe old age of 31, the baby-faced McNaughton gives the world his first cookbook. Just like anyone’s first attempt at pasta, this first book effort is not without its foibles.

It’s riddled with typos, and the recipes are way too long, with plenty of superfluous droning about the “art” of making pasta.

McNaughton makes alarming directives such as “It’s crucial to remember that whenever the pasta dough is not in plastic wrap or under a damp towel, you’re in a race against time.” (The latter clause became the catchphrase for my friends and me when we followed this recipe.) It’s also “crucial” not to stress the dough, to meticulously create a “gluten network,” and to spritz the dough with water at the right times (we didn’t have a proper spritzing device, so we sprinkled—Heaven forbid!) Does pasta-making need to be so complicated? We never figured out the mysterious process of “laminating” the dough, but our pasta turned out just fine.

Complaints about the prose aside, McNaughton clearly is no rube when it comes to Italian cuisine. In contrast to his pasta-making instructions, his sauces are delicate and simple.

Dishes such as Albacore Confit, Pole Beans and Chile, and Corn and Crescenza Cappelletti with Bitter Honey utilize the freshest produce of the season to showcase the pasta.

His Bolognese Ragu is simple, traditional, and meaty. A note by the recipe relates that Bologna is so serious about its Tagiatelle Bolognese that the recipe is codified by the city: the pasta must be 5/16 inch wide and 1/32 inch thick. So maybe McNaughton is onto something with his rigorous perfectionism. But even if you can’t pull off all of his elaborate instructions, you’ll still roll out some excellent pasta under his book’s tutelage. ✜

I

While a book about bringing back the “family dinner” may smack of fuddy-duddiness, Rosenstrach makes no declarations about what makes a “family,” nor does she stick to the humdrum meatloaf ‘n’ mashed potatoes routine. And her book is designed in a fresh, utilitarian way. She encourages readers to commit to 30 days of cooking dinner, allowing for take-out and leftovers occasionally. She provides 10 complete meal plans, but you can mix and match depending on what’s on hand, what’s fresh, and preferences.

For advanced chefs, these recipes may be simplistic, but even advanced chefs have long days. A Grilled Thai Steak Salad, with meat marinated while you’re at work, dressing whirled and veggies chopped while the grill is heating, doesn’t sound too shabby at all. (Especially when compared with, ahem, Golden Grahams and almond milk.) The Kale Cobb Salad comes together effortlessly, and is packed with nutrients (and you can sub in any seasonal greens and veggies). The Crispy Rice Omelet is a downright brilliant turn for leftover rice and vegetables.

At the end of the book is a section called “Keep-The-SparkAlive Dinners,” where Rosenstrach tucks in a few fancier dishes, more suited for the weekend than a busy Tuesday. But even the delicious Quickish Coq au Vin freezes beautifully for later weeknight consumption (Rosenstrach aptly calls freezing meals “Money in the Bank”). The Braised Adobo Pork with Polenta hangs out in the oven patiently for hours while you fiddle in the garden or clean out your closet. Even seasoned chefs will get mileage out of this handy little book, and perhaps avoid a few take-out burritos and cereal nights, too.

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

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This SOURCE GUIDE is an annotated directory of our advertisers. Many of our advertisers are also distribution outlets where you can find a complimentary copy of the magazine. Our incredible advertisers are the reason we can provide this publication at no cost.

Please make it a point to patronize them often and let them know how much you appreciate their support of Edible Baja Arizona and the local food and drink economy. Baja Arizona towns and cities are noted if the business is not located in Tucson.

Dining & Drink Guide Restaurants, Cafés, & Bars in Baja Arizona

CENTRAL GHINI’S FRENCH CAFFE The embodiment of culinary ecstasy. Providing you locally grown, fresh, made to order, menu offerings since 1992. Award winning and pet friendly. 1803 East Prince Road 520.326.9095 GhinisCafe.com KINGFISHER An American bar and grill specializing in regional cuisine from across the U.S. Specializing in several varieties of fin fish, shellfish, and oysters. Great intimate bar with happy hours and late night menus every day.

2564 East Grant Road 520.323.7739 KingfisherTucson.com PIONIC PIZZA Artisan style pizza baked to a crispy, light, airy perfection in as little as 90 seconds. Pizza, Pasta or Salad. 2643 N Campbell Avenue 520.327.4992 PionicPizza.com PREP & PASTRY We are a modern American eatery. Serving breakfast, lunch, and brunch. All food and drinks are prepared with fresh ingredients, locally sourced. 3073 North Campbell Avenue 520.326.7737 PrepAndPastry.com DOWNTOWN, UNIVERSITY & THE SUNSHINE MILE 4TH AVENUE DELICATESSEN Proudly serving Boar’s Head meats and cheeses, as well as Vero’s Bakery bread (locally owned). Come for the sandwich, stay for the pickle! 425 North 4th Avenue 520.624.3354 4thAveDeli.com BOCA TACOS Tacos with attitude! Happy hour daily 3pm to 6pm. Come explore with us on Exotic Taco Wednesday.

Catering services available. 828 East Speedway Boulevard 520.777.8134 CAFE A LA C’ART Enjoy your breakfast, lunch, or dinner in a casual atmosphere and surrounded by fine art. Try our famous desserts (with gluten free choices!). Join us at the historic Stevens House at the Museum of Art, or al fresco on the brick patio. Catering is also available. 150 North Main Avenue 520.628.8533 CafeALaCartTucson.com CAFE PASSÉ Dedicated to serving great coffee and coffee drinks, locally-sourced organic food whenever possible, craft cocktails and an eclectic beer menu. It is also home to Tucson’s best patio and biergarten with a patio bar. Live music and local art. 415 North 4th Avenue 520.624.4411 CafePasse.com CAFFE MILANO Led by the prestigious Italian chef Fulvia Steffenone (known as La Fufi) Caffe Milano offers a wide range of authentic Italian dishes: not only the classic pasta with tomato and meat sauce, but also the delicious salmon in foil, surprising salads, and fragrant rustic soups.

They also offer classic Italian cooking classes led by La Fufi herself. Call for more information. 46 West Congress Street 520.628.1601 LaFufiCaffeMilano.com

CARUSO’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT Offering fine homemade Italian Food located in the historic 4th Avenue district. Pasta, pizza and Italian specialties, continuously served by four generations of the Zagona family since 1938. 434 North 4th Avenue 520.624.5765 CarusosItalian.com CASHEW COW We make indulgent and healthy desserts for everyone. From omnivores to vegans, we all scream for Cashew Cow. 16 South Eastbourne Avenue 520.326.8558 CHE’S LOUNGE Cheap drinks, great art, great jukebox.

Never a cover. Bringing the awesome since 2000. 350 North 4th Avenue 520.623.2088 ChesLounge.com THE CORONET Brasserie-style restaurant, old world rustic cuisine, cute bar, quiet music, big patio with good shade, outstanding coffee. 402 East 9th Street on the corner of Fourth Avenue and 9th. 520.222.9889 CafeCoronet.com DELECTABLES International selections in a casual atmosphere. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, & late night menus.

Dog-friendly patio dining. Live music every Friday & Saturday. Full bar, excellent wine list, and homemade desserts. Vegan & gluten-free menus. Catering. 533 North 4th Avenue 520.884.9289 ERMANOS Craft Beer & Wine Bar in the heart of Downtown Tucson serving progressive gastropub fare. 220 North 4th Avenue 520.445.6625 ErmanosBrew.com DOWNTOWN KITCHEN & COCKTAILS Innovative farmto-table cooking with global influences & killer cocktails from James Beard Award winner Janos Wilder in an artfilled, urban setting with roomy outdoor patio. Dinner, happy hour, bar menu seven nights a week and late night Friday & Saturday. 135 South 6th Avenue 520.623.7700 DowntownKitchen.com EXO ROAST COMPANY We seek out the world’s finest coffees, craft roast them in small batches and extract them manually at our “slow bar.” Visit our cafe in a minimalist, historic setting and enjoy one of our “regionally inspired” coffee drinks using locally-sourced chiltepin, mesquite and mole. 7am-6pm, everyday. Free educational cupping Saturdays at 1pm. 403 North 6th Avenue 520.777.4709 ExoCoffee.com FALORA In the historic Joesler-built Broadway Village, Falora builds pizzas & salads anchored in tradition with a sharply creative angle. Ingredients are simple, fresh; imported from Italy or sourced from local farms. Lunch & dinner. Charming patio or cozy interior. 3000 East Broadway Boulevard 520.325.9988 Falora.com FROG AND FIRKIN A locally-owned bar and restaurant right outside the University of Arizona campus Main Gate. Please come by, sit on the liveliest patio in town, and watch the world go by! Live music Thursday-Sunday evenings! DELIVERY AVAILABLE. 874 East University Boulevard 520.623.7507 FrogAndFirkin.com

HUB RESTAURANT & CREAMERY Enjoy American comfort food, downtown made ice cream, and over 20 craft beers on draft. Located on historic Congress Street in downtown Tucson. Plenty of downtown parking and the SunLink streetcar route right outside our doors, a night on the town or dinner with the family is not only fun, but easy.

266 East Congress Street 520.207.8201 HubDowntown.com LA COCINA RESTAURANT, CANTINA & COFFEE BAR We care deeply for our community and strive to provide a gathering place for all. Tucson musicians take the stage most days of the week. Our cantina pours local beer and we support our local farmers and ranchers. 201 North Court Avenue 520.365.3053 LaCocinaTucson.com LINDY’S ON 4TH AVENUE If punk rock, heavy metal, Sinatra, tattoos, hotrods, choppers, low riders, a lazy Sunday afternoon, hot ladies, and the man’s man were all put into a burger that was so good you’d slap your mama, that’s what we’re servin’ up in this place. 431 North 4th Avenue 520.207.6970 LO4th.com MAMA’S HAWAIIAN BAR-B-QUE Whether you are a weary Wildcat looking for some cheap eats near campus or out for dinner with the family you will be sure to find something you like on our menu. Open late. We Deliver. 800 East Speedway Boulevard 520.792.2350 MamasHawaiianBBQ.com MARTIN’S COMIDA CHINGONA Nestled right on 4th Avenue, Martin’s is fun, casual and independent. Martin’s serves traditional Mexican food with awesome interpretations by chef/owner Martin Fontes. 557 North 4th Avenue 520.884.7909 MAYNARDS MARKET & KITCHEN We established the first downtown market and paired it with a charismatic restaurant & bar. Both are fueled by a passion for celebrating the best of place, product, and service. 400 North Toole Avenue 520.545.0577 MaynardsMarket.com MISS SAIGON DOWNTOWN Each dish is re-created with the same recipes Grandma passed down. This is authentic Vietnamese, home-style cooking, with a warm and inviting ambience. 47 North 6th Avenue 520.884.4778 MissSaigon-Tucson.com PENCA Mexico City cuisine and international bar located in the heart of downtown Tucson. December 2013, Food & Wine magazine named Penca “one of America’s best bars.” 50 East Broadway Boulevard 520.203.7681 PencaRestaurante.com PLAYGROUND BAR & LOUNGE In the heart of historic Downtown Tucson on the corner of Congress St. and 5th Avenue. Whether you’re looking for the ultimate spot to watch the game, meet up with friends for some latenight dining, or looking to dance the night away on Tucson’s largest ROOFTOP dance floor with our VIP Bottle Service, Playground Bar & Lounge is the place to be! 278 East Congress Street 520.396.3691 PlaygroundTucson.com

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SOURCE GUIDE

Source Guide

PROPER A casual, urban dining establishment serving contemporary, farm to table cuisine. Brunch daily from 9am-3pm. Dinner nightly from 5pm-10pm. Happy hour Monday through Friday 3-6pm. Late night seven days a week, 10pm-midnight. 300 East Congress Street 520.396.3357 ProperTucson.com

LE BUZZ CAFFE A one-of-a-kind hangout popular with cyclists, climbers, and locals with great in-house roasted coffee, full espresso bar, sublime baked goods, hearty breakfast, soups, salads, panini, and quiches. The Le Buzz “house cookie” is worth the trip alone. 9121 East Tanque Verde Road 520.749.3903 LeBuzzCaffe.com

R BAR Join us for a drink at R Bar, the Rialto’s 7-nighta-week bar. Great drinks, great times, no unicorns. Because they don’t exist. 350 East Congress Street, Suite 110 520.305.3599 RBarTucson.com

MAMA’S HAWAIIAN BAR-B-QUE Whether you are a weary Wildcat looking for some cheap eats near campus or out for dinner with the family you will be sure to find something you like on our menu. Open late.

We Deliver. 6310 East Tanque Verde Road 520.770.7800 MamasHawaiianBBQ.com

ROCCO’S LITTLE CHICAGO PIZZERIA Real Chicago Pizza, right around the corner! Since 1998 Rocco DiGrazia has been serving perennially award-winning pizzas, buffalo wings, and chocolate chip cookies on Broadway’s Sunshine Mile. Check out our gigantic beer selection, too.

You’ll agree it’s a HELLUVA pie! 2707 East Broadway Boulevard 520.321.1860 RoccosLittleChicago.com SPARKROOT A cornerstone of a burgeoning downtown, Sparkroot serves up Blue Bottle Coffee & vegetarian fare with flair, in a striking atmosphere. Vibrant community flavor, morning through evening. Great meeting spot; you can even reserve our loft! Beer, wine, & killer Irish coffee. 245 East Congress 520.623.4477 Sparkroot.com SURLY WENCH Established 2004. Late night kitchen featuring fresh, never frozen beef and homegrown herbs.

Delicious burgers, tacos, and more. Full bar. Black Cherry Burlesque, live music, DJs, billiards, air hockey, arcade, foosball, darts. Daily happy hour & nightly drink specials.

424 North 4th Avenue 520.882.0009 SurlyWench.com TASTEFUL KITCHEN Modern vegetarian cuisine creatively prepared, farm to table fresh. We showcase regional heritage foods infused with Southwestern sauces and flavorings. Everything from scratch using whole foods, local organic when available, and few processed ingredients.

Dine in, take out, weekly meals to go, boutique catering, cooking classes, and a private function room. Dinner is served Tuesday through Saturday 5pm-9pm. Free parking. Reservations recommended. 722 North Stone Avenue 520.250.9600 TheTastefulKitchen.com TIME MARKET A historic neighborhood market that includes the best bread in Tucson (baked daily), incredible wood-fired pizza, a fantastic organic produce section, outstanding wines and beer, and a beer and wine bar with a patio. See our listing under markets, too. 444 East University Boulevard 520.622.0761 TOOLEY’S CAFE Fresh baked goods, scones, chocolate chip cookies, turkey tacos, killer mailman burro, pulled pork burro, posole, a great Mexican breakfast, limeade, and great organic coffee! 299 South Park Avenue 520.203.8970 TUCSON TAMALE COMPANY More than 30 different kinds of incredible tamales. Mild to spicy, meaty to vegan, savory to sweet, we have just about every kind of tamale you can think of and then some! GMO-free masa! 2545 East Broadway Boulevard 520.305.4760 TucsonTamale.com WILKO A modern gastropub featuring inventive classic American comfort food in the Main Gate district at Park & University. Everything is prepared on site. We use local, organic ingredients whenever possible. More than 30 wines by the glass, 11 quality brews on tap, and a craft cocktail bar. Check out our artisan cheeses and salume.

943 East University Boulevard 520.792.6684 BarWilko.com EAST FEAST Feast’s menu changes on the first Tuesday of each month, and remains the same for both lunch and dinner, as well as in between. This keeps our menu seasonally appropriate and offers up the freshest ingredients possible at the height of their season. NOW FEATURING A WINE SHOP. 3719 E Speedway 520.326.9363 EatAtFeast.com JONATHAN’S CORK A longtime Tucson favorite featuring Buffalo, Ostrich, Steaks and Fresh Fish specials.

Award-winning chef and owner, Jonathan Landeen and wife, Colette, welcome you to a casual, cozy Southwestern ambiance, accented with DeGrazia prints, Native American art and four beehive fireplaces. Full service catering available. 6320 East Tanque Verde Road 520.296.1631 JonathansCork.com

192 May - June 2015

RENEE’S ORGANIC OVEN Serving creative and traditional pizzas and so much more. We offer a casual space for you to enjoy a menu filled with local and organic ingredients.

Everything we do is made possible by our connection to great people and we would love to add you to our mix.

Happy hour, dine-in, take-out. Reservations encouraged, but walk-ins welcome. 7065 East Tanque Verde Road 520.886.0484 ReneesOrganicOven.com SAGUARO CORNERS Enjoy our Old Spanish Trail comfort food in our dining room, on our patio or at our bar! We’ve been serving our local guests, our sightseeing tourist friends and hungry travelers right outside Saguaro National Park since 1956. 3750 South Old Spanish Trail 520.886.2020 SaguaroCorners.com THE SCREAMERY Hand Crafted Ice Cream pasteurized on-site with all natural ingredients to provide an old fashioned solution to modern day ice cream flavors. Its ice cream base is from the freshest cream and milk from Strauss Family Creamery out of California. Their cows only eat grass and are not treated with any hormones.

50 South Houghton Road Suite 120 520.721.5299 TheScreamery.com TUCSON TAMALE COMPANY More than 30 different kinds of incredible tamales. Mild to spicy, meaty to vegan, savory to sweet, we have just about every kind of tamale you can think of and then some! GMO-free masa!

7153 East Tanque Verde Road 520.238.8404 TucsonTamale.com ZONA 78 Tucson’s premiere destination for artisan pizza, Italian specialties, and an eclectic selection of wine, beer, & spirits. Zona 78 sources many ingredients locally and has an in-house charcuterie.

7301 East Tanque Verde Road 520.296.7878 Zona78.com GREEN VALLEY, SAHUARITA MAMA’S HAWAIIAN BAR-B-QUE Whether you are a weary Wildcat looking for some cheap eats near campus or out for dinner with the family you will be sure to find something you like on our menu. Open late. We Deliver. 15990 South Rancho Sahuarita Boulevard, Rancho Sahuarita 520.207.8187 MamasHawaiianBBQ.com MOUNT LEMMON MOUNT LEMMON COOKIE CABIN, PIZZARIA & EATERY A treat at the top of the mountain. Open 10am-5pm daily.

12781 N Sabino Canyon Park Road, Mount Lemmon 520.576.1010 SAWMILL RUN RESTAURANT A neighborhood restaurant on the top of the mountain. Open every day except Monday. Smoked meats, good eats, great atmosphere. 12976 North Sabino Canyon Parkway, Mt Lemmon 520.576-.9147 SawMillRun.com

NORTH, CATALINA FOOTHILLS ACACIA Located in the Catalina foothills, Acacia offers an exquisite panoramic view of Tucson and features award-winning cuisine by chef Albert Hall. Fresh natural and local ingredients lovingly prepared in the friendliest and most comfortable setting in Tucson. Join us for lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch, and happy hour daily. 3001 East Skyline Drive 520.232.0101 AcaciaTucson.com AMALOUR REVIVAL LOUNGE A farm-to-table New American restaurant, bar and lounge. Inspired globally and sourced locally, our cuisine is a melting pot of ideas and techniques with the purpose of creating healthy, wholesome and delicious food. 4340 North Campbell Avenue (520) 395-1387 AmalourLounge.com ARMITAGE WINE BAR & LOUNGE The setting changes character as the night lengthens, with its Old World ambiance and intimate conversation areas providing a relaxing setting for lunch, dinner, weekend brunch, or winding down after the workday.

As the evening progresses, the lights dim and the music picks up tempo, transforming into an energized nightspot. 2905 East Skyline Drive 520.682.9740 ArmitageWine.com NORTH ITALIA Our love letter to Italy. Handmade pasta and pizza: every day, we start from scratch to create dishes like Strozzapreti with Bloomsdale spinach or supple ribbons of tagliatelle for our Bolognese.

With the spirit of the Italian taverna, North is the place to talk shop over a cocktail or swap gossip sharing delectable chef creations. La Encantada, 2995 East Skyline Drive 520.299.1600 NorthItaliaRestaurant.com REFORMA Located at St. Philips Plaza, we mix modern and classic to bring you a dining experience with a perfect mix of chic and homey. Fresh Central Mexican cuisine made inhouse daily. A huge stock of tequilas, mescals and other agave distilled spirits. 4310 North Campbell Avenue 520.867.4134 ReformaTucson.com TAVOLINO RISTORANTE ITALIONO Specializing in simple, elegant food, Tavolino’s Northern Italian cuisine features fresh salads, homemade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, succulent rotisserie meats, and luscious desserts. Lunch & dinner Monday through Saturday. Happy hour 3-6pm and 9-11pm. 2890 East Skyline Drive 520.531.1913 UNION PUBLIC HOUSE Offering honest food and clever libations served in a stylish atmosphere.

Voted Tucson’s top Happy Hour restaurant and bar.

Whiskey Wednesdays! 4340 N Campbell Avenue 520.329.8575 UnionTucson.com ZONA 78 Tucson’s premiere destination for artisan pizza, Italian specialties, and an eclectic selection of wine, beer, & spirits. Zona 78 sources many ingredients locally and has an in-house charcuterie. 78 West River Road 520.888.7878 Zona78.com NORTHWEST TUCSON, ORO VALLEY & MARANA GOURMET GIRLS GLUTEN FREE BAKERY/BISTRO Everything is gluten free, from the seasonally-inspired menu to the outstanding selection of handcrafted baked goods. Enjoy house specialties all prepared in a dedicated kitchen with no cross-contamination. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner by reservation. 5845 North Oracle Road 520.408.9000 GourmetGirlsGlutenFree.com GRINGO GRILL + CANTINA A place to relax and enjoy fresh, simple flavors. More than 100 tequilas, hand-crafted cocktails, and seriously delicious food...you’ll always come back for more! Be careful, not many can handle the Desert Ghost Diablo! 5900 North Oracle Road 520.887.3777 GringoGrillTucson.com MAMA’S HAWAIIAN BAR-B-QUE Whether you are a weary Wildcat looking for some cheap eats near campus or out for dinner with the family you will be sure to find something you like on our menu. Open late.

We Deliver. 8300 North Thornydale Road 520.572.5225 MamasHawaiianBBQ.com

BISBEE

SONOITA, ELGIN, PATAGONIA

SOUTH & BARRIO VIEJO

BISBEE BREAKFAST CLUB The best choice for breakfast in Bisbee, Arizona. Lunch also available. Open 7am3pm every day. 75A Erie Street, Bisbee 520.432.5885 BisbeeBreakfastClub.com

5 POINTS MARKET & RESTAURANT Bridging South Tucson and downtown, we serve breakfast and lunch. We are also a grocery store and deli. 756 South Stone Avenue 520.623.3888 5PointsTucson.com

CAFÉ CORNUCOPIA Made-from-scratch soups, sandwiches, quiche, and desserts, in the heart of historic Old Bisbee. Open Monday through Tuesday 11am-4pm, Friday through Sunday 11am-4pm. 14 Main Street, Old Bisbee

TIA NITA’S CANTINA Enjoy your favorite drinks in post-modern bordertown surroundings in Sonoita. Full bar opens at 2pm daily, serving Barrio Brewery beers on tap. Italian kitchen opens for dinner nightly, serving fresh, homemade pizza, wings, sandwiches, and more. Closed Tuesdays. 3119 South Highway 83, Sonoita 520.455.0500

CAFE DESTA Offering authentic Ethiopian cuisine, great food and great coffee in a relaxing environment. 758 South Stone Avenue 520.370.7000

CAFÉ ROKA Celebrating 20+ years of serving the Bisbee community and Baja Arizona. We create a wonderful dining experience for our guests, providing delicious food, beverages, and warm hospitality. Reservations recommended. 35 Main Street, Old Bisbee 520.433.5153 CafeRoka.com

CUSHING STREET BAR & RESTAURANT Uptown comfort food, garden patios, full bar, and live jazz, have made this 1860s historic landmark a local favorite for 40 years. Book an intimate party in a private dining room or a wedding for 100 guests. Family-owned since 1972. 198 West Cushing Street 520.622.7984 CushingStreet.com EL DORADO RESTAURANT Authentic Mexican cuisine in South Tucson. Where the locals go to eat. 1949 South 4th Avenue 520.622.9171

HIGH DESERT MARKET Gourmet food, gift market, and cafe. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with indoor and outdoor seating. We do all our baking on premises, serve generous gourmet salads and sandwiches, quiches, pizzas, desserts, and more. 203 Tombstone Canyon, Old Bisbee 520.432.6775 HighDesertMarket.com

LOS PORTALES Our mission is to manage the satisfaction of our clients in a family environment where the art and the music merge to the flavor of the Mexican food. 2615 South 6th Avenue 520.889.1170 LosPortalesDeTucson.com

SEIS KITCHEN Experience the sights, sounds, and smells of Mexico’s beloved street food at its finest—warm handmade tortillas, hot off the griddle quesadillas, fire-roasted salsas, or artisan tortas, all served Seis Style, inspired from six culinary regions of Mexico. 130 South Avenida del Convento 520.260.6581 SeisKitchen.com SONORAN SNO-CONES Highlights the traditional recipes for sweets made of fresh fruit and natural ingredients, instead of artificial sweeteners. 120 South Avenida del Convento Suite 120, 520.344.8470 SonoranSnoCones.com YOGI’S INDIAN CAFE & MARKET Delicious Indian food & delights! Largest selection of South Asian groceries in Tucson & you’ll love the prices too! Centrally located near UA & downtown. 2537 North Stone Avenue 520.303.3525

ELVIRA’S Established in 1927 in Nogales, Sonora, Elvira’s is now in Tubac, bringing you the best Mexican cuisine and award-winning dishes! 2221 East Frontage Road A101, Tubac 520.398.9421 ElvirasRestaurant.com

SHELBY’S BISTRO A southern Arizona restaurant, located in the artistic, historic town of Tubac. We offer Mediterranean-style cuisine. Lunch or dinner, it is a highly enjoyable experience! 19 Tubac Road, Tubac 520.398.8075 ShelbysBistro.com

4 SEASONS RESTAURANT Serving high quality and affordable Chinese, Thai, and American plates. Located off highway 10 & Miracle Mile. Enjoy a new relaxed atmosphere, patio seating, and great food. Open 7 days a week starting at 6 am. 1423 West Miracle Mile Road 520.882.4212 4Seasonsaz.com

MOTHER HUBBARD’S CAFE Serving contemporary Native American comfort food. Breakfast & lunch only. At the northwest corner of Grant & Stone--just minutes from downtown Tucson. Come taste the love! 7am-2pm, daily.

14 West Grant Road 520.623.7976

TUBAC/ TUMACACORI

M E L I O ’ S T R AT T O R I A A m a z i n g v i e w, c a n d e light atmosphere, classic Italian food. 2261 East Interstate 19 Frontage Road, Tubac 520.398.8494 MeliosRistorante.com

WEST

COYOTE PAUSE CAFE Comfort food with a Southwestern twist! Menu inspired by local desert foods. Cheerful unique atmosphere. Breakfast & lunch daily 730am230pm. Omelets, salads, sandwiches, vegetarian choices, beer, wine. Located at Cat Mountain Station shopping center with unique art, antiques, buy-sell-trade fashion!

2740 S. Kinney Road 520.883.7297 CoyotePauseCafe.com

LA ROCA Enjoy authentic Sonoran cuisine with the freshest ingredients from Mexico. Take in the rich ambiance of the historic Casa Margot. Visit our unique shops below the restaurant to find local art, hand-crafted home goods, and beautiful clothing. Calle Elias # 94, Nogales (on the Sonora side) LaRocaRestaurant.com

THE GOODS Green smoothies, hearty & healthful bites for breakfast & lunch in the heart of Tubac. Soups, salads, sandwiches, baked goods, organic coffee, & teas + freshly tempered chocolates using healthful and often organic ingredients. Stop in for a cozy respite and a “good” meal.

26A Tubac Road, Tubac 520.398.2001 TheGoodsTubac.com

SONORAN SNO-CONES Highlights the traditional recipes for sweets made of fresh fruit and natural ingredients, instead of artificial sweeteners. 135 West Ajo Way, Suite A 520.889.0844 SonoranSnoCones.com

AGUSTIN KITCHEN Three-time Iron Chef winner Ryan Clark’s Agustin Kitchen is a twist on new American and classic French cuisine, with an emphasis on local ingredients. 100 South Avenida del Convento 520.398.5382 AgustinKitchen.com

NOGALES

SOTO’S PK OUTPOST Mexican Food, great margaritas, delicious fajitas, and a friendly atmosphere where the customer is #1. 14 Camino Otero, Tubac 520.398.3256

MORNINGS CAFE We are a quaint and popular local diner with a friendly atmosphere and familiar faces. Our menu is simple with creative twists and our half-pound burger menu will impress! Hope to see you soon! 420 Arizona Street, Warren (Bisbee) 520.366.1494 MorningsCafeBisbee.com THE QUARRY Focusing on farm-to-table, non-gmo, local, fresh and seasonal fare. High quality comfort food, slow foods and fresh craft cocktails and beer. 40 Brewery Avenue 520.366.6868 TheQuarryBisbee.com SCREAMING BANSHEE PIZZA & WINE BAR A unique, eclectic restaurant housed in a renovated gas station, with lovely front and back patios. We take pride in our hand-crafted, wood-fired pizza, salads, small plates, calzones, and sandwiches. Featuring a full bar, signature cocktails, local beers, and unique wines.

200 Tombstone Canyon Road, Old Bisbee 520.432.1300 ScreamingBansheePizza.net THUY’S NOODLE SHOP Authentic, from scratch Vietnamese food, specializing in pho, a noodle soup—beef or vegan. 9 South Naco Road, Old Bisbee 520.366.4479 WHYLD ASS COFFEE SHOP An organic, plant-based, culture experience. We feature “more than fair trade” coffee.

Our restaurant offers healthy, tasty, vegan alternatives that are made with only the finest organic ingredients, mainly locally-sourced. Live music and poetry on weekends. 54 Brewery Avenue 520.353.4004

TUBAC JACKS Welcome to Tubac Jack’s Restaurant & Saloon! Discover delicious, authentic Southwestern cuisine infused with our own signature style. 7 Plaza Rd, Tubac 520.398.3161 WISDOM’S CAFE Your neighborhood restaurant for seven decades. Let our family serve your family mouth-watering Mexican food that is lovingly prepared and steeped in tradition. Owned and operated by four generations of the Wisdom family. 1931 East Frontage Road, Tumacocori 520.398.2397 WisdomsCafe.com WISDOM’S DOS! Street tacos, Sonoran dogs, sliders, nachos, burritos, hummus, soup, salads, cheese crisps, and homemade ice cream await you when you want a quick, delicious lunch or want to stop in for drinks and appetizers before dinner. 4 Plaza Road, Suite 102, Tubac 520.216.7664 WisdomsCafe.com/Dos FOOD TRUCKS, CATERING, PERSONAL CHEFS CHEF CHIC CATERING Your answer to your food time dilemma. We are a personal chef service that can handle all of your food needs. Including, prepped meals, table ready meals, special diets, special occasions, parties, catering, desserts, and cooking lessons. 520.406.2757 ChefChicAZ.com ST. ANDREW’S CATERING Led by Deacon Jefferson Bailey (a Tucson culinary icon), this innovative caterer based at St. Andrew’s Espiscopal Church in the historic Armory Park district can do anything, from a locally sourced, organic, multicourse dinner to simply furnishing a pleasant space for an offsite meeting. Proceeds fund the non-profit Neighbors Feeding Neighbors program. 545 South 5th Avenue 520.622.8318

edible Baja Arizona

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SOURCE GUIDE

THE PARISH A southern-fusion gastropub. It draws its inspiration from Louisiana, Texas and Arizona, devoted to comfort, cuisine, hospitality, and community. 6453 North Oracle Road 520.797.1233 TheParishTucson.com

SOURCE GUIDE

Food & Drink for Home Grocery Resources in Baja Arizona ARTISAN PURVEYORS & DEALERS ALEJANDRO’S TORTILLA FACTORY Corn and flour tortillas, bread, & chips. Look out for our new natural tortillas as well as our chiltepin and other flavored tortillas. Find us at many markets and grocery stores throughout Baja Arizona. 5330 South 12th Avenue, South Tucson 520.889.2279 AlejandroTortilla.com ALFONSO OLIVE OIL A world of flavor, locally owned. We invite you to a unique tasting experience of the freshest, first cold pressed, extra virgin olive oils, and flavored olive oils from around the world, and all natural traditional aged balsamic vinegars from Modena, Italy! “Taste first…buy when the excitement becomes overwhelming.” Central location: 4320 North Campbell Avenue, Oro Valley location: 7854 North Oracle Road 520.441.9081 AlfonsoOliveOil.com

SKYE ISLAND OLIVE AND GRAPES We carry more than 30 different flavors of olive oils and balsamics! Come in and sample in our tasting room! Browse our gift shop for locally made items! Open Wednesday through Sunday 10am to 5pm. 3244 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.4627 SkyeIslandOliveAndGrapes.com TORTILLERIA AREVALO We offer tortillas, cookies, and pancake mix, all made with the natural goodness of sweet-tasting Mesquite pod flour. Our products are traditionally made and delivered fresh to the Tucson area. Find us at Heirloom Farmers Markets. 520.822.0952 BAKERIES

BISBEE HOT & SPICY The HOTTEST Place in Arizona. We have over 150 items - - all to tempt your taste buds and blast your head off with heat!! 51 Main Street, Old Bisbee 520.432.4332 BisbeeHotAndSpicy.com

BARRIO BREAD Tucson’s first Community Supported Baker. Don Guerra’s artisan breads, prepared with wild yeast cultures, long fermentation, and hearth baking create a truly inspired loaf. Crafting top quality bread and supporting local foods in Tucson since 2009. Find at Plaza Palomino Farmers’ Market on Sunday, and at the Tucson CSA. BarrioBread.com

BISBEE OLIVE OIL Come visit us in Bisbee and experience everything the town has to offer. We are located in a 111-year-old renovated building and carry 180 different items for sale. With 45 different olive oils and balsamics, there is a flavor for everyone. We also offer free tastings!

8 Brewery Avenue, Old Bisbee 520.432.4645

BIG SKYE BAKERS Bodie from Big Skye Bakers will tell you that what he is selling is romance. Pies and cookies baked much the same as our grandmothers made.

The nuanced difference is the addition of mesquite flour; taste of a summer rain. Inquire about special orders at bigskyebakers@gmail.com BigSkyeBakers.com

BLU—A WINE & CHEESE SHOP There’s a new cheesemonger in town! Tana Fryer of Blu has been crowned “cheesemonger in chief” by Tucson foodies. Also sold in Alfonso Olive Oil locations. 100 South Avenida Del Convento 520.314.8262 BluArizona.com

LA ESTRELLA BAKERY At the Mercado San Agustin: A Tucson staple with yummy traditional Mexican pastries and pan dulce you won’t find anywhere else in town. Monday-Saturday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m., Sunday, 7 a.m.2 p.m., 100 South Avenida del Convento 520.393.3320 LaEstrellaBakeryIncAZ.com

CHERI’S DESERT HARVEST Cheri’s all-natural products are made from fresh fruits and vegetables indigenous to the Sonoran Desert. Only the freshest prickly pear cactus fruit, citrus, honey, sweet peppers, and hot chile peppers are used in her preserves. 1840 East Winsett Street 800.743.1141 CherisDesertHarvest.com DURAZO’S POCO LOCO SPECIALTY SALSAS Fresh fruit salsas with peaches, pineapple, and mangos at three different levels: Mild, Hot and Stupid Hot. Pico De Gallo, Salsa Ranchera (our more traditional), Guacamole, Ceviche with crab, shrimp, and baby clams, and Crab and Shrimp Dip. Find at Heirloom Farmers Markets. 520.884.7178 GRAMMY’S JAMS Grammy offers artisan jams, jellies, chutneys, mustards, and pickles. Habanero Dills, Dilly Beans, Rolling Thunder, and Habanero Jams are favorites. Backyards, our trees, local farms, and orchards provide fruits for Grammy’s special products! Find Grammy’s at Heirloom Farmers Markets. 520.559.1698 Facebook.com/Grammys.AZ HAYDEN FLOUR MILLS A family business working to revive heritage and ancient grains in the desert. We have revived the tradition that started in Tempe, Arizona more than 125 years ago by Charles Hayden and his Hayden Flour Mills. While not milled at the iconic Hayden Flour Mills’ building, our fresh flour harkens back to a time when flour still was full of nutrients and flavor. 4404 North Central Avenue, Phoenix. 480.557.0031 HaydenFlourMills.com QUEEN CREEK OLIVE OIL MILL Oils & olives. A family-owned, local business that produces Arizona’s only extra virgin olive oil. Their olives are Arizona grown and pressed at their mill in Queen Creek, Arizona with four stores and tasting rooms in the state. At La Encantada, 2905 East Skyline, Suite 167, 520.395.0563 QueenCreekOliveMill.com SANTA CRUZ CHILI & SPICE COMPANY Both manufacturer and retailer of fine chili products. At our Spice Center in Tumacacori we sell, along with Santa Cruz Products, a wide variety of gourmet southwestern foods, cookbooks, and more. 1868 East Frontage Road, Tumacacori 520.398.2591 SantaCruzChili.com

194 May - June 2015

SMALL PLANET BAKERY We started baking bread in February of 1975. At that point, we were a collective of six, only one of whom had any baking experience. We now service many stores and do custom baking for eight restaurants and participate in many farmers’ markets. 411 North 7th Avenue 520.884.9313 SmallPlanetBakery.com BEER, WINE, & DISTILLED LIBATIONS BEAST BREWING COMPANY Arizona’s first and wildest craft beer. Our mission is to inspire a renewed passion for flavor, one pint at a time. 1326 West Highway 92 #8, Bisbee 520.284.5251 BeastBrewingCompany.com BODEGA PIERCE Our wines are made exclusively from 17 varieties of mature vines encompassing Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone, Spanish, and Italian grapes grown at the family’s estate vineyard south of Willcox, AZ. The wines are designed to express the high desert terroir of the Willcox Bench and have been found to be unsurpassed in producing spectacular world-class wines. 4511 East Robbs Road, Willcox 602.320.1722 BodegaPierce.com BORDERLANDS BREWING COMPANY Devoted to crafting unique beers using local ingredients and sustainable brewing methods. Founded in 2011 by two friends, Borderlands has a unique tap room located in a 100 year old produce warehouse and is now providing beer for dozens of bars and restaurants in Southern Arizona.119 East Toole Avenue 520.261.8773 BorderlandsBrewing.com CALLAGHAN VINEYARDS Located in the rolling, oak-dotted hills of southeastern Arizona, at an elevation of 4800 feet, we produce rich, complex red and white wines from a 25 acre vineyard. Mediterranean and Spanish varietals—Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Petit Verdot, Petite Syrah, and Grenache—are the basic building blocks for our red blends, while Viognier, and Riesling are blended for our estate white wine. 336 Elgin Rdoad, Elgin 520.455.5322 CallaghanVineyards.com

CARLSON CREEK VINEYARDS A cozy, comfortable tasting experience, with plush seating and charming staff. Carlson Creek’s cottage tasting room allows you to relax and enjoy our wines in a stress free atmosphere. 115 Railview Avenue, Willcox 520.766.3000 CarlsonCreek.com DOS CABEZAS WINEWORKS Planted, harvested, and fermented in Arizona! Come try a glass! Our winery tasting room is open Thursday-Sunday 10:30-4:30. Tasting fee of $15 includes a souvenir glass. 3248 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.5141 DosCabezasWineWorks.com FLYING LEAP VINEYARDS With developed acreage in both Sonoita AVA and Cochise County, Flying Leap offers a diverse portfolio of ultra-premium, carefully crafted wines. Visit the tasting rooms at estate vineyards in Willcox and Sonoita, and tasting rooms in Bisbee and Tucson.

520.954.2935 FlyingLeapVineyards.com GOLDEN RULE VINEYARDS One part of a family farming operation owned by Jim and Ruth Graham of Cochise, Arizona. The combination of rich alluvial soils, a deep groundwater aquifer, brilliant Arizona sunshine, and a wide spread between daytime and nighttime temperatures creates a high desert terroir that is unique in American vineyards. 3649 North Golden Rule Road, Cochise 520.507.2400 HAMILTON DISTILLERS Whiskey del Bac is handmade by Hamilton Distillers in small batches using a copper pot-still and house-malted, mesquite-smoked barley. Three desert single-malt whiskeys made in Tucson. 2106 North Forbes Blvd #103 520.628.9244 HamiltonDistillers.com IRON JOHN’S BREWING COMPANY A rotating selection of small batch craft beers all bottled by hand. We produce all our beer at our brewery and have a small retail bottle shop on site. We invite you to stop by and purchase some of the beer you like. 245 South Plumer Avenue 205.737.4766 IronJohnsBrewing.com OLD BISBEE BREWING COMPANY Come and visit lively, historical Bisbee and taste the premium beer at Old Bisbee Brewing Company in the heart of Brewery Gulch! 200 Review Alley, Old Bisbee 520.432.2739 OldBisbeeBrewingCompany.com PLAZA LIQUORS A family-owned and independent store, Plaza has been around under the ownership of Mark Thomson for 35 years. Plaza specializes in family-owned wineries, breweries, and distilleries from around the world. The service and selection speaks for itself. 2642 North Campbell Avenue 520.327.0542 SAND-RECKONER VINEYARDS Located on the Willcox Bench at 4,300 feet in elevation, Rob and Sarah Hammelman tend to the vineyards. Our name, Sand-Reckoner, means ‘sand-calculator,’ and references Archimedes’ revolutionary and thought provoking third century B.C. writing. In this text, Archimedes calculates the size of the universe by figuring the number of grains of sand that will fill it. The name alludes to our sandy loam soils, our connection to the cosmos, and the infinite calculations required to create a wine that expresses the very sand into which our vines’ roots grow deep. 303.931.8472 Sand-Reckoner.com SENTINEL PEAK BREWING COMPANY Located in midtown Tucson, our nano brewery and tap room provide a constant variety of award-winning, craft beers and great food in a casual setting where families and friends can catch a Wildcats game, enjoy live music, or get a growler to go. 4746 East Grant Road 520.777.9456 SentinelPeakBrewing.com SIERRA BONITA VINEYARDS AND TASTING ROOM For us, wine making is a family tradition. We work hard to produce some of the best wines in Southern Arizona to be enjoyed by those of us who love the life of good food and wine and great company. Visit our tasting room in Tucson.

6720 Camino Principal 520.296.0674

TEN-FIFTY FIVE BREWING Committed to the idea of the local nano-brewer; we are a small batch company using fresh ingredients and open minds to make some great tasting brew. 3810 East 44th Street, Suite 315, 520.461.8073 1055Brewing.com COFFEE ROASTERS EXO ROAST COMPANY Exo seeks out the world’s finest coffees, craft roasts them in small batches, and distributes them in limited quantities to ensure unequaled quality. Roastery and café open Monday-Saturday, 7am-7pm, Sunday 7am-3pm. Come by for free twice-weekly tastings.

Custom wholesaling for area cafes and restaurants. 403 North Sixth Avenue 520.777.4709 ExoCoffee.com SAVAYA COFFEE Our goal is to offer superior quality coffees available around the corner from where you brew at home, so the fresh flavors of the Americas, Africa, and Asia are right here for you to enjoy. Several locations in Baja Arizona. SavayaCoffee.com STELLA JAVA Enjoy delicious espresso drinks made from locally roasted coffee beans at this unique family-owned Tucson café. Mon-Sun 8am-2pm 100 South Avenida del Convento 520.777.1496 StellaJava.com FARMS, RANCHES, PRODUCE COMPANIES APPLE ANNIE’S U-PICK FARM The Country Store is located just off of I-10 exit 340 in Willcox. We are open daily year-round offering our famous pies, apple bread, fudge, jarred good, gifts and other Apple Annie’s goodies that you love! 1510 North Circle I Road, Willcox 520.766.2084 AppleAnnies.com CHIVA RISA We make artisanal, all natural, European-style cheese on an off-grid, sustainable site situated in the upper San Pedro Valley near the Mexican Border.

We treat our animals, land, and cheese with the utmost care and respect. Sharing nature’s bounty with our community through finely-crafted cheese is Chiva Risa’s primary goal. 520.901.0429 ChivaRisa.com E&R PORK A Tucson based producer and supplier of 100% locally raised, grain-fed, hormone-free and antibiotic-free, pork products and cut meats. 520.490.0166 FIORE DI CAPRA Raw Goat Milk, Yogurt, Kefir, Artisanal Farmstead Goat Cheese, and Confections. Healthy, happy goats fed grass, alfalfa, and local browse. Award-winning products can be sampled and purchased at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market, Sundays. 520.586.2081 GoatMilkAndCheese.com HARRIS HERITAGE GROWERS We are a small family U-Pick farm. Our seasons are May, July-November, we also sell farm raised chickens, turkeys, eggs and homemade pies. 27811 South Sonoita Highway (Highway 83), Sonoita 520.455.9272 HIGH ENERGY AGRICULTURE Based out of Marana, AZ. Family owned and operated, High Energy brings the freshest possible produce for maximum nutrient value picked each morning of the market. Find on Facebook, available at Heirloom Farmers Market.

JOJOBA BEEF COMPANY From the southwestern sonoran desert, a-diamond ranch comes Jojoba free range beef.

Jojoba beef is 100% pure. Unlike other natural beef, our animals receive no antibiotics, or growth hormones.

Jojoba beef will never be confined in a feed lot.

Find us at the Rillito Park Farmers’ Market on Sunday. 520.400.7710 LARRY’S VEGETABLES We grow according to the seasons and the garden dictates when each crop is ready to go to market. All produce is picked within 24-48 hours prior to market. Larry and Eunice are “getting fresh with your veggies.” 520.250.2655 LarrysVeggies.net

PATAGONIA ORCHARDS An organic grower, packer, and shipper based in Rio Rico, Arizona. We ship premium organic fruits grown in Arizona and Mexico to wholesalers and retailers throughout the U.S. and Canada. We partner with more than 15 organic growers. 520.761.8970 PatagoniaOrchardsLLC.com RAMONA FARMS AKIMEL O’ODHAM FARM producing ancient, heirloom food crops on ancestral land along the Gila River. Products grown and packaged on farm. Visit our website for wholesome, delicious, traditional Pima recipes for tepary beans, corn and wheat. Shop at our online store or get from Whole Foods or Native Seeds/SEARCH. Wholesale + food service prices. Sacaton, 602.322.5080 RamonaFarms.com

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

4526 North Anway Road, Marana ReZoNationFarm.com SAN XAVIER CO-OP FARM The San Xavier Cooperative Association envisions a farm committed to sustainable farming practices that support economic development in the community. Visit our farm store. 8100 South Oidak Wog 520.449.3154 SanXavierCoOp.org SKY ISLAND BRAND From conception to consumption, you’ve got a friend on the land, SKY ISLAND BRAND! Find us at the Sierra Vista Farmers’ Market (Thurs), Bisbee Farmers’ Market (Sat), Sierra Vista Food Co-op, and Tucson at Food Conspiracy Co-op. 520.642.9368 SLEEPING FROG FARMS Sleeping Frog Farms is an intensive 75-acre farm nestled in the Cascabel corridor of the San Pedro River Valley in Southern Arizona.

Our mission is to improve the health of our land and community by growing high quality fruits and vegetables without the use of chemicals. 520.212.3764 SleepingFrogFarm.com SOUTHWINDS FARM We grow vegetables and fruit in the San Pedro Valley near Benson using organic cultivation techniques and sustainable farming practices. Our farm is off-grid, deriving energy primarily from the sun. We sell in farmers’ markets in and around Tucson and through our CSA programs. SouthWindsFarm.org SUNIZONA FAMILY FARMS We are a family-owned, certified organic farm in Willcox, Arizona growing fruits and vegetables with sustainable, veganic practices, and greenhouse technology. CSAs available all over Baja Arizona. 5655 East Gaskill Road, Willcox 520.824.3160 SunizonaFamilyFarms.com VAN HAREN MEAT COMPANY Local lamb & goat meat raised locally in San Manuel. Find at the Heirloom Farmers’ Market on Sunday at Rillito Park. 520.909.0744 email: TSVanHaren@msn.com WHOLESUM FAMILY FARMS In 2012 the Crisantes family began farming in Southern Arizona after farming for generations in Mexico. The greenhouses built here are of the finest quality and latest technology available anywhere in the world. With three generations of experience, Wholesum Family Farms is producing outstanding quality organic tomatoes. 816.522.8262 WholesumFamilyFarms.com GROCERS, FARMERS’ MARKETS & CSAS APPLE ANNIE’S COUNTRY STORE Open year-round offering our famous pies, apple bread, fudge, jarred goods, gifts, and other Apple Annie’s goodies that you love! Visit our U-Pick farm in season. 1510 North Circle I Road, Willcox 520.766.2084 AppleAnnies.com BISBEE FARMERS’ MARKET Vibrant village market appears magically at Vista Park in the Warren district in Bisbee every Saturday morning. We feature local musicians while you enjoy shopping for healthy local foods and artisan crafts. Choices for Sustainable Living booth features workshops for healthy lifestyle changes. 9am1pm, Saturdays, BisbeeFarmersMarket.org BISBEE FOOD COOP Community owned. Natural & Organic. Open for everyone. Serving Bisbee and Cochise County for over 35 years. 72 Erie Street, Bisbee 520.432.4011 BisbeeCOOP.com FOODINROOT We are a small business startup with big dreams. We believe you can change your world through food, and we are dedicated to bringing greater access and knowledge for all things concerning local food. UAMC Farmers’ Market on Friday 10am-2pm. St. Philip’s Farmers’ Market on Saturday & Sunday 8am-1pm 520.261.6982 FoodInRoot.com HEIRLOOM FARMERS’ MARKETS Four local farmers’ markets that support our region’s farms by: connecting consumers directly to local food producers, strengthening urban-rural agriculture and small food businesses. Heirloom Farmers’ Markets, dedicated to the benefits of local food. 520.882.2157 HeirloomFM.com

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TAP & BOTTLE A craft beer and wine tasting room in Downtown Tucson featuring hundreds of beverage options to enjoy on site or carry out. Look forward to beer flights, events, and merchandise. 403 North 6th Avenue 520.344.8999 TheTapAndBottle.com

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HIGH DESERT MARKET Gourmet food, gift market, and cafe. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with indoor and outdoor seating. We do all our baking on premises, serve generous gourmet salads and sandwiches, quiches, pizzas, desserts, and more. 203 Tombstone Canyon, Old Bisbee 520.432.6775 HighDesertMarket.com MT. LEMMON GENERAL STORE Home of our famous delicious fudge. A convenience shop for your weekend getaways--gifts, food, supplies, we have it all. 12856 North Sabino Canyon Park, Mt Lemmon 520.576.1468 MtLemmon.com NATIVE SEEDS/SEARCH RETAIL SHOP In addition to the seed shop, find a mouthwatering variety of Southwestern foods, including native chile powders, savory mole sauces, locally grown beans, and much more. 3061 North Campbell Avenue 520.622.5561 NativeSeeds.org NOGALES MERCADO Enjoy the border experience at our all-local farmers’ market in the heart of downtown Nogales with Santa Cruz County produce, meat, baked goods, jams/ jellies, and much more every Friday afternoon. The Nogales Mercado is part of Cosechando Bienestar, an initiative in Nogales to renew food traditions so that locally-grown food is enjoyed by all for better health. 520.375.6050 Facebook.com/NogalesMercado PRODUCE WAGON For those who prefer vegetarian or vegan diets, there are veggie burgers, tofu and more. We also stock a large selection of gluten free foods, flours, mixes and frozen items for those on a gluten free diet.

We have a lot of bulk food, spices, specialty flour, coffee, tea, locally grown pistachios, and local honey. During the growing season we offer fresh produce of all kinds, with sweet corn and melons being the most popular. 1036 Eastland Road, Cochise 520.826.0140 TheProduceWagon.com

RINCON VALLEY FARMERS’ & ARTISANS MARKET Enjoy the beautiful scenery and discover a one-of-a-kind shopping experience featuring fruit, produce, eggs, and meat from local Arizona farmers, local raw honey, artisan breads, beautiful artwork, crafts, furniture, aprons, and more handcrafted by our Artisans. We are open EVERY Saturday year round from 8am-1pm. 520.591.2276 RVFM.org SANTA CRUZ RIVER FARMERS’ MARKET Fresh, sustainably grown foods from local farmers. Arizona fruits and vegetables, free-range meat, eggs, honey, baked goods, and natural plant products! Live music, cooking demonstrations, children’s activities, and free workshops. A great place to get to know your community! Every Thursday from 3-6, on West Congress Street, just west of I-10 at Mercado San Agustin 520.882.3313 CommunityFoodBank.org SHOPORGANIC.COM An online retailer of carefully selected Organic and Non-GMO products. Local Tucson customers can shop online and pick up at our facility. We offer shelf stable groceries, bulk foods, personal care, household items, gluten free, raw, and more. 520.792.0804 ShopOrganic.com SIERRA VISTA FOOD CO-OP Our store has a full natural & organic grocery selection as well as frozen, dairy, bulk foods, organic and local produce, specialty & organic cheeses, olives, cruelty-free cosmetics, premium supplements, and more! 96 South Carmichael, Sierra Vista 520.335.6676 SierraVistaMarket.com

SIERRA VISTA FARMERS’ MARKET Open Thursdays at Veterans’ Memorial Park in Sierra Vista, AZ. Meet local growers, ranchers, beekeepers and bakers. Take home some of the bounty of southern Arizona! Grass-fed meats, desert heritage foods, and plants. Contact SierraVistaFarmersMarket@cox.net SierraVistafarmersMarket.com TUBAC MARKET Cold beer and wine, groceries, fresh meats and seafood, local and organic produce, sandwiches, homemade deli salads and an in house bakery.

We have it all! 10 Avenida Goya 520.398.1010 TIME MARKET A neighborhood market since 1919, we bring specialty goods to the table: craft beers, esoteric fine wine, wood-fired pizza, espresso, and artisan organic natural yeast breads. We sell organic produce and use it for our restaurant in sandwiches, salads, and pizzas. We are committed to honest communication about sourcing, and enjoy featuring local farms in our menu. 444 East University Boulevard 520.622.0761 TUCSON CSA Offering weekly boxes of local, organically-grown produce since 2004. We also offer pasture-raised eggs and chickens, grass-fed meats, cheese, and bread (from Barrio Bread). Pickups are Tuesdays or Wednesdays, 4:00-7:00 pm, The Historic Y, 300 East University Boulevard 520.203.1010 TucsonCSA.org

Local Products & Services Nonfood in Baja Arizona ANIMAL WELFARE

AUTOMOTIVE

HERMITAGE CAT CENTER Dedicated to the shelter, protection, and care of homeless cats. Especially those not considered adoptable by other organizations. A variety of beautiful, healthy cats who are readily adoptable and need loving homes. You can feel good knowing that adopting a cat from The Hermitage is a rewarding way to save the lives of two cats! 5278 E 21st Street 520.571.7839 hermitagecatshelter.org

SOOTER’S AUTO SERVICE One of the original Tucson auto repair shops. Family owned and operated for over 63 years, our auto shop provides professional automotive repair, maintenance and service at reasonable prices.

Whether you need auto repair for your car, truck, minivan, or hybrid vehicle Sooter’s Auto Service can help. 429 East 6th Street (520) 623-1002 SootersAuto.com

ART BARBARA BRANDEL ARTIST Original artworks by a long time Tucson artist, rich in luminous color, and well-crafted by the artist’s own hand. Paintings on canvas or paper, and mixed media collages with recycled postage stamps & maps. Themes of world cultures, ecology, nature, and Tucson. BarbaraBrandelArtist.com ETHERTON GALLERY Founded in 1981, Etherton Gallery specializes in 19th, 20th century, and contemporary fine photography, and features top local and regional artists working in all media. We also manage the Temple Gallery at the Temple of Music and Art. 135 South 6th Avenue 520.624.7370 EthertonGallery.com HOWARD KLINE GALLERY Howard Kline’s seemingly casual expressionistic works are built on a classical design structure. His collective works are the best of abstraction and the figure. Visit the gallery in Bisbee, Arizona or shop online. 23 Main Street 520.353.4002 HowardKline.com

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DENTAL DR. KRIZMAN INTEGRATIVE DENTISTRY We are an integrative dental clinic that combines the best aspects of general and biological dentistry, and determines the healthiest restorative dental solution for each patient. 1601 North Tucson Boulevard #27, 520.326.0082 KrizmanDental.com DESIGNERS & BUILDING SUPPLIES ARIZONA DESIGNS KITCHENS & BATHS, LLC Your home should be an extension of things in life you enjoy and value. Our designers have more than 100 years total experience designing kitchens and baths in homes throughout Southern Arizona. Come see us! 2425 East Fort Lowell Road. 520.325.6050 ArizonaDesigns.net

BENJAMIN SUPPLY COMPANY Benjamin Supply’s 10,000 sq. ft. plumbing supplies showroom features only top quality products by leading manufacturers from around the globe from sinks and faucets to the most elegant whirlpool spa. Located in the Warehouse Arts District near Downtown Tucson. 440 North 7th Avenue 520.777.7000 BenjaminSupply.com CARLY QUINN DESIGNS Custom and one-of-a-kind hand glazed tile murals, trivets, coasters, house numbers and more. We hand glaze all of our tiles right in our showroom in downtown Tucson. Great for indoor and outdoor use. Located in The Old Market Inn Tile Shop. 403 North 6th Avenue #119, 520.624.4117 CarlyQuinnDesigns.com ORIGINATE NATURAL BUILDING MATERIALS SHOWROOM Specializing in environmentally-friendly building materials made from natural, renewable, & recycled resources. We offer innovative and unique materials that rival the aesthetics and performance of more traditional interior finishes. Flooring, countertops, cabinetry, paints, plasters, alternative plywoods, fireplaces, and architectural salvage. 526 North Ninth Avenue 520.792.4207 OriginateNBM.com RED BARK DESIGN, LLC LANDSCAPE DESIGN + CONSULTATION RedBark Design offers regionally and ecologically appropriate landscape design services for residential, commercial, and consulting projects. Mail: P.O. Box 44128 Tucson, Arizona 85733. 520.247.2456 RedBarkDesign.com

DNA PERSONAL TRAINING/CROSSFIT Science-Based Fitness and Nutrition - CrossFit - Kettlebells. Wise training for wise people. 930 North Stone Avenue and 3305 North Swan Road 520.327.0600 DNAPersonalTraining.com YOGA OASIS Tap into the wellspring of your inner Oasis!

Every member of our staff is expertly trained in the art and science of teaching yoga. We specialize in making yoga more accessible. Three locations in Tucson: 245 East Congress Street, 2631 North Campbell Avenue, and 7858 East Wrightstown Road. 520.322.6142 YogaOasis.com HOUSEWARE & HARDWARE ACE HARDWARE Locally-owned and managed, we are an affiliate of the Ace Hardware co-operative.

Five locations across Tucson, from Downtown on the West to the far Southeast side. We look forward to helping with your next project, no matter how small or large. Our locations listed at 135Hardware.com BUFFALO GALS Three-quarters hardware store, one-quarter gift shop. 3149 Highway 83, Sonoita 520.455.5523 BuffaloGalsOfSonoita.com HF COORS Lead free, microwave, oven, broiler, freezer, and dishwasher safe. All our scrap and waste is inert or recycled. Our 200 foot long primary kiln is one of the most energy efficient in the world. 1600 South Cherrybell Stravenue 520.903.1010 HFCoors.com TABLE TALK AT HOME Tucson’s Premier Home Specialty Store! Our goal has always been to help you and all of our shoppers make your home as comfortable, functional, and fun as possible. Furniture, cookware, decorative home accessories. 7876 North Oracle Road, Oro Valley 877.828.8255 TableTalk.com TUMACOOKERY 45 minutes south of Tucson, in Tubac, this well-stocked kitchen shop is a foodie destination for gadgets, appliances, cutlery, gourmet food, and more.

Great local products, and knowledgeable, friendly staff, make Tumacookery a regional favorite. Worth the drive to Tubac all by itself! 2221 South Frontage Road, Tubac 520.398.9497 Tumacookery.com HERBAL MEDICINE ALCHEMISTA AROMATHERAPY SANCTUARY & SPA Aromatherapy for the mind, body & soul. Life is hectic. That’s why we based Alchemista Sanctuary & Spa on the therapeutic value of essential oils. From our own handmade aromatherapy products made with all-natural ingredients to comprehensive, innovative massage therapy we offer something for everyone. 6955 North Oracle Road 520.867.6501 AlchemistaLLC.com TUCSON HERB STORE Located in the Heart of Downtown since 2003. Dedicated to serving a variety of ethically wild-crafted and botanical products of the southwest desert. We carry: bulk herbs, teas, herbal tinctures, beauty care products, soaps, books, incense, and much more!

408 North 4th Avenue 520.903.0038 TucsonHerbstore.com YARD WOMAN An old-fashioned natural remedy shop specializing in herbs and herbalism in the Western Herbal Tradition. Custom blending, essential oils, homeopathics, handmade soaps and lotions, books, tarot cards, and yard art. All natural. Servicing Baja Arizona since 2004. 6 Camino Otero, Tubac 520.398.9565 YardWoman.com INNS AND B&BS CANYON ROSE SUITES Our turn of the century building is listed on the National Historic Registry and has been lovingly restored to provide every amenity. The rooms are beautifully decorated and include fully furnished kitchens and private baths. From $99 - $195 and we offer AAA and AARP discounts. Please inquire about our corporate and weekly rates. Subway Street & Shearer Avenue, Bisbee (520) 432-5098 CanyonRose.com

CAT MOUNTAIN LODGE A bed & breakfast in the desert!

Eco-friendly accommodations in a vintage ranch setting with five eclectic spacious rooms. Southwestern comfort—mixed with modern conveniences. Enjoy free full breakfast at Coyote Pause Cafe. Reserve a guided Star Tour at Spencer’s Observatory. 2720 South Kinney Road 520.578.6085 CatMountainLodge.com COTTAGE B&B AND BAKERY A historic landmark with comfortable, private accommodations: 1 bedroom cottage, 2 bedroom guest house. We serve a delicious full breakfast for two. Relax in our garden surrounded courtyard and enjoy a treat from our bakery. We offer a variety of freshly baked pastries, artisan breads, and organic coffee. Ask about our Saturday bakery deliveries to Tucson’s St. Phillip’s Plaza. 1104 South Central Avenue, Safford 928.428.5118 CottageBedAndBreakfast.com DOWNTOWN CLIFTON We are a small inn near downtown Tucson, AZ in the Armory Park neighborhood. 485 South Stone 520.609.6093 TheDowntownClifton.com LA POSADA DEL RIO SONORA La Posada del Rio Sonora is a boutique hotel and restaurant on the Plaza Principal of Banámichi. Our 250 year old adobe has 10 rooms and suites, and two apartments. This is the heart of “La Ruta Rio Sonora” with nearby hot springs. 70 Calle Pesqueira, Banámichi, Sonora, Mexico MexicoEcoResort.com THE INN AT CASTLE ROCK A beautiful, eclectic hotel in the middle of Old Bisbee, located at the foot of Castle Rock, gateway to Tombstone Canyon. This 1895 historic hotel is also home to the historic Apache Springs Well. 112 Tombstone Canyon Road 520.432.4449 TheInnAtCastleRock.com OLIVER HOUSE BED & BREAKFAST The place that will take you away from the “ordinary” and put you in the middle of the “extraordinary.” Under new ownership this timeless building is once again becoming the gem in Bisbee. 26 Sowles Avenue 520.432.1900 OliverHouseBedAndbreakfast.com TRIANGLE T GUEST RANCH Located in Dragoon, next to the Amerind Museum and only about an hour from Tucson, Triangle T is the perfect quick getaway. Established in 1922, the Triangle T Historic Ranch boasts a colorful and exciting past. 4190 Dragoon Road, Dragoon 520.586.7533 TriangleTGuestRanch.Rocks TUBAC POSTON HOUSE INN Located in the historic location of the Tubac village, the Poston House Inn has been occupied since the 1850s. Our Bed & Breakfast Inn has 5 pools, beautiful rooms, a homemade breakfast. Premier lodging in Tubac. 20 Calle Iglesia, Tubac 520.398.3193 TubacPostonHouseInn.com WHISPER’S RANCH BED & BREAKFAST 8 easy miles from Sonoita Vineyards. They offer king sized memory foam beds, private bathrooms, a full breakfast, and personal chef services to accommodate your special dietary needs—amenities that are unparalleled in the community.

1490 Highway 83, Elgin 520.455.9246 WhispersRanch.com LANDSCAPING & PERMACULTURE AHIMSA LANDSCAPING Ahimsa Landscaping is an ethically-focused, small design + build business specializing in creating sustainable landscapes through the integration of permaculture design principles and water harvesting techniques for the desert environment.

Inquiries at info@ahimsalandscaping.com 520.345.1906 AhimsaLandscaping.com WATERSHED MANAGEMENT GROUP Helping you with water harvesting, soil building, edible and native gardens, and watershed restoration. We’re a Tucson-based, non-profit serving the community by sharing our technical expertise and offering hands-on workshops, training programs, custom property consultations, site plans, and project implementation. 520.396.3266 WatershedMG.org LAWYERS LAW OFFICES OF NICOLE J. FRANCO, PLC Do you need a social security disability attorney? If you suffer from a serious medical condition preventing you from working, we can help. All consultations are free. 5111 North Scottsdale Road #160, Scottsdale 888.945.0144 NicoleFrancoDisability.com

LITERATURE ANTIGONE BOOKS Zany, independent (and 100% solar-powered) bookstore. Books for all ages plus large selection of unusual gifts and cards. Regional books on cooking, gardening, sustainability, green living, and more. Voted Tucson’s best independent bookstore. Located in Tucson’s unique Fourth Avenue shopping district.

411 North 4th Avenue 520.792.3715 AntigoneBooks.com BOOK STOP A Tucson institution for decades (since 1967!), the Book Stop stocks thousands of quality used and outof-print titles. Monday-Thursday: 10am-7pm, Friday-Saturday: 10am-10pm, Sunday: noon-5pm. 213 North 4th Avenue 520.326.6661 BookStopTucson.com HOZHONI, A GATHERING PLACE The best place for coffee, ice cream, books, art, events, and more. Weekdays: 6:30am-5pm. Weekends: 7am-5pm. 22 Tubac Road, Tubac 520.398.2921 Hozhoni-Tubac.com MASSAGE, WELLNES & SALONS BLADES HAIR DESIGN Specializing in the greatest cuts, ORGANIC color & highlights, keratin texture smoother treatments, waxing, styling. 804 East University Boulevard 520.622.4247 BladesTucson.com COYOTE WORE SIDEBURNS A high quality progressive hair salon. Our stylists are well-trained and current. If you would like to speak to a stylist about your hair service prior to making a commitment, consultation appointments are available. New location: 2855 East Grant Road 520.623.7341 ESTUDIO DE PIEL This beautiful skin studio is the perfect place to treat yourself. The professionals at Estudio De Piel provide relaxing massages and clinically effective skin care treatments. 100 South Avenida del Convento 520.882.5050 EstudioPiel.com GLOW SKIN CARE & LASHES Melinda M. Spreng’s philosophy is ‘beauty from within.’ She uses all natural products and methods to make you look and feel your best! 3101 North Swan Road 520.261.4635 GlowSkinCare-N-Lashes.SkinCareTherapy.net THE HIVE HAIR STUDIO & GALLERY Conveniently located inside the historic Hotel Congress. We offer premium hair care at a competitive price point, and feature a revolving gallery of local artists. Book your appointment online today. 315 East Congress Street 520.628.4188 TheHiveTucson.com JEFF ROGERS, AT CRANIOSACRAL & ZEN SHIATSU THERAPIES OF TUCSON The only Upledger Diplomate Certified CranioSacral Therapist in Southern Arizona, treating deeply with a light touch all forms and effects of stress, injury, chronic pain, headache/migraines, PTSD, and much more, since 1990. 439 North 6th Avenue Suite 221, 520.990.5865 CSTZST.com KRIS SCHAEFER ROGERS, AT CRANIOSACRAL & ZEN SHIATSU THERAPIES OF TUCSON Provides in-depth and multi-leveled bodywork skills to touch in at the root of energetic, nervous, immune, and organ function to regulate stress, trauma, and pain, since 1985. 439 North 6th Avenue Suite 221, 520.977.8019 CSTZST.com ROOTED THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE & BODYWORK A small, locally owned clinic staffed by independent massage therapists located in the heart of Tucson, minutes from downtown and the University of Arizona. Rooted offers a wide range of modalities, including therapeutic, sports, Thai, prenatal massage, Chi Nei Tsang, and Skincare. 1600 North Tucson Boulevard, Suite 120, 520.326.8300 RootedMassageTucson.com SPA DAZE TUCSON Providing quality pain management, stress relief, & athletic therapy. Therapeutic & Medical Massage, Shiatsu, Ashiatsu, Thai Massage, & More! 6812 North Oracle Road, Suite 100, 520.334.1919 SpaDazeTucson.com TRANSFORMATIONAL WELLNESS, PLLC WellnessFirst! home of Dr Saber, a primary care ND specializing in endocrinology and functional medicine. She gathers your data before diagnosing, taking the guess work out of your health care. Ask about our Optimal Wellness Plan.

520.209.1755 3861WellnessFirst.com

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ORGANIZATIONS BISBEE HUB Are you traveling to Bisbee soon? Find out what’s in store before you travel by visiting BisbeeHub.com and checking out the events calendar. We are also working on a business directory so come back again and again and see why Bisbee is so special! BisbeeHub.com BOYS & GIRLS CLUB, TUCSON Providing building-centered programs, professional staff, and a safe environment to assist youth in developing self-esteem, values, and skills. 3155 East Grant Road 520.573.3533 BGCTuc.org COSECHANDO BIENESTAR An initiative to renew food traditions in Nogales so that locally-grown food is enjoyed by all for better health. We do this by improving access, building residents’ capacity to grow food, supporting sound policy, and promoting local business. 520.375.6050 Facebook.com/NogalesMercado DOWNTOWN TUCSON PARTNERSHIP A private nonprofit corporation whose mission is to revitalize Downtown through economic development, community development, public outreach, and events. 100 North Stone, Suite 101, 520.268.9030 DowntownTucson.org HEALTHY YOU NETWORK The mission of Healthy You Network, Inc. is to promote the lifelong health benefits of a whole, plant-based lifestyle to residents of Arizona. 3913 East Pima Street 520.207.7503 HealthyYouNetwork.org KXCI COMMUNITY RADIO Connecting the communities of Tucson and Southern Arizona to each other and to the world with informative, engaging, and creative community-based radio programming. Tune in at 91.3 KXCI Tucson, or listen online at KXCI.org.

LOCAL FIRST ARIZONA We empower Arizonans to build the life they want in their local community. Together we can create a strong economy, vibrant community, & job opportunities. LocalFirstAZ.com MISSION GARDEN A living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit-trees, traditional local heirloom crops and edible native plants. We are a non-profit volunteer-based educational organization and our primary mission is to preserve, transmit and revive the region’s rich agricultural heritage by growing a series of garden plots that are representative of the more than 4000 years of continuous cultivation in the Tucson Basin.

927 W. Mission Lane 520.777.9270. TucsonsBirthplace.org MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART The MOCA inspires new ways of thinking through the cultivation, interpretation, and exhibition of cutting-edge art of our time. 265 South Church Avenue 520.624.5019 Moca-Tucson.org NATIONAL CENTER FOR INTERPRETATION A research and outreach unit at the University of Arizona charged with social justice for language minorities through cutting-edge research, training, and testing for interpreters and translators while advancing professionalism. 800 East University Blvd Suite 200 520.621.3615 NCI.Arizona.edu PIMA ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS A nonprofit metropolitan planning organization with Transportation Planning, Environmental Planning, Energy Planning, and Technical Services divisions. 1 East Broadway Boulevard, Suite 401, 520.792.1093 PAGRegion.com PRESIDIO SAN AGUSTÍN Located at the center of Washington and Court Streets in downtown Tucson. The Presidio San Agustín del Tucson has living history festivals where visitors can sample Spanish Colonial food, listen to stories of old Tucson, learn period crafts, see the cannon fired, and watch the soldiers drill! Admission is free.

Metered parking is available during the week and parking on nearby streets is FREE on weekends. 196 North Court Street 520.837.8119 TucsonPresidio.com SANTA CRUZ VALLEY HERITAGE ALLIANCE We connect people to the unique heritage resources of the Santa Cruz River Valley in southern Arizona. 520.882.4405 SantaCruzHeritage.org SONORAN INSTITUTE Founded in 1990, the Sonoran Institute informs and enables community decisions and public policies that respect the land and people of western North America.44 East Broadway Blvd, Suite 350, 520.290.0828 SonoranInstitute.org

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SOUTHERN ARIZONA ARTS & CULTURAL ALLIANCE A not-for-profit organization that exists to ensure that, through engagement in arts and culture, our communities produce strong, inspired citizens. 520.797.3959 SAACA.org TOHONO CHUL PARK One of the “World’s Ten Great Botanical Gardens” according to Travel + Leisure magazine, and the place in Tucson where nature, art, and culture connect. 7366 North Paseo Del Norte 520.742.6455 TohonoChul.org TUCSON CLEAN & BEAUTIFUL A non-profit organization with the intent to preserve and improve our environment, conserve natural resources, and enhance the quality of life in the City of Tucson and eastern Pima County. These goals are achieved through initiating educational and participatory programs implemented with broad-citizen, multicultural support. 520.791.3109 TucsonCleanAndBeautiful.org TUCSON JAZZ FESTIVAL A 12-day festival of jazz, with locations at the historic Fox Tucson Theatre, The Rialto Theatre, and the Hotel Congress. The Festival also includes a free outdoor event on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 19, 2015 in downtown Tucson, and festival artists will also hold master classes and educational activities for local schools and academies. TucsonJazzFestival.org TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART Western, Latin, modern and contemporary, and Asian art fills our historic city block in downtown Tucson for an everlasting experience while traveling exhibits keep the paint and clay fresh for each visit. 140 North Main Avenue 520.624.2333 TucsonMuseumOfArt.org TUCSON ORIGINALS Since 1999, The Tucson Originals have been the driving force in promoting the value of Tucson’s independent restaurants and supporting Tucson’s culinary diversity. Visit our website for information on restaurant membership, events, and special offers.

520.477.7950 TucsonOriginals.com YWCA TUCSON The Cafe at the YWCA: Setting the Table for Change. The Galleria Art and Gifts: Gifts with Purpose. Social Enterprises of the YWCA Tucson. Our Mission: Eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. 525 North Bonita Avenue 520.884.7810 YWCATucson.com WESTERN NATIONAL PARKS ASSOCIATION Promotes preservation and stewardship of the national park system and its resources and associated public lands by creating greater public appreciation through education, interpretation, and research. 12880 North Vistoso Village Drive, Oro Valley 520.622.6014 WNPA.org

PET SUPPLIES & FEED STORES OK FEED A feed store based in central Tucson. We carry all all your livestock feed. We sell a wide array of holistic pet food, toys and accessories and we have chickens!

3701 East Fort Lowell Road 520.325.0122 OKFeedAZ.com PLANTS, SEEDS & GARDEN SUPPLY ARBICO ORGANICS Arbico Organics has been providing organic solutions for homeowners, gardeners, farmers and pet, horse, and livestock owners since 1979. Products include beneficial insects and organisms, natural fertilizers, amendments, composting supplies, weed and disease controls, critter control, and more. 800.827.2847 Arbico-Organics.com ARID LANDS GREENHOUSES We sell the most unusual plants: cacti, succulents, pachycaul trees, pachyforms, terrestrial bromeliads and orchids, and bulbs. Order online or to visit and browse, call ahead. 520.883.8874 AridLands.com B&B CACTUS FARM A cactus and succulent grower in Tucson, Arizona, B&B has both seasoned landscape specimens and plants for the collector. 11550 East Speedway 520.721.4687 BandBCactus.com

BAMBOO RANCH Providing Desert Grown Bamboo since 1986. Specializing in non-invasive, clumping bamboo suited to harsh conditions. Providing plants, poles, and expert advice on species, growing, and care, for privacy screening and shade. 520.743.9879 BambooRanch@juno.com BambooRanch.net CIVANO NURSERY We carry a large variety of plants for our unique climate, pottery from around the world in various styles, colors and sizes. Wind chimes that sparkle and herbs and vegetables for your kitchen garden. Fruit trees and shade trees, and flowers for butterflies and bees. 5301 South Houghton Road 520.546.9200 CivanoNursery.com GREEN THINGS NURSERY A retail & wholesale plant nursery located in Tucson in the Binghampton Historic District on the banks of the Rillito River. Come visit us for an unbelievable variety of plants, trees, cactus and pottery all at great prices! 3235 East Allen Road 520.299.9471 GreenThingsAZ.com MESQUITE VALLEY GROWERS NURSERY A destination garden center with 24 acres of plants grown on-site, including desert natives, shade trees, fruit and nut trees, shrubs, roses, cacti and succulents. Also featuring fountains, statuary and garden accessories. Knowledgable staff on hand for planning, learning & diagnosis. 8005 East Speedway Boulevard 520.721.8600 NATIVE SEEDS/SEARCH Revered Tucson nonprofit and world-class seed bank saving and sharing the seeds of the desert Southwest since 1983. Classes, tours, seeds, native crafts and more! 3061 North Campbell Avenue (store) and 3584 East River Road (Center).

520.622.0830 NativeSeeds.org RILLITO NURSERY & GARDEN CENTER An independent family-owned business that has provided our customers with a diverse inventory of quality plants and products since 1994. Our goal is to provide quality products and excellent service at a fair price. 6303 North La Cholla Boulevard 520.575.0995 RillitoNursery.com ROMEO TREE SERVICE Certified arborist and tree worker, Angelo Romeo is the author of the DVD Mesquites & Palo Verdes, A Homeowner’s Guide. 520.603.0143 RomeoTreeService.com SILVERBELL NURSERY & COUNTRY STORE We sell bedding, garden and landscape plants, water harvesting supplies and now even pet food. “Our success is yours.”

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

Offices range from 400 to 6,000 square feet, and leases include off-street parking. Let us welcome you to the neighborhood. 520.623.4091 BarrioViejo.com BIZZY ORR REALTOR Consistently ranking in the top 1% of Tucson REALTORS ®. Specializing in the Tucson metro area, her experienced Team features Spanish speaker, Alexis Chavez. We take care of our clients and love referrals! 520.820.1801 BizzyTucsonHomes.com HERBERT RESIDENTIAL Offering modern, urban living in downtown Tucson! Come see our newly remodeled studio and one bedroom apartments with breathtaking city views. 520.777.5771 HerbertLiving.com HOMESMART ADVANTAGE GROUP The largest real estate brokerage in the Southwest and ranked among the top 10 largest real estate brokerages in the nation. Living healthy and green are inter-related. 6893 North Oracle Road Suite 111, 520.307.6560 HomeSmartTucson.com

STRONGPOINT REAL ESTATE Commercial equine, ranch, farm and rodeo areana real estate sales. Visit our webpage for listings or call. 520.444.7069 SWRanch.com

RETAIL SHOPS & PLAZAS

DESERT LEGACY GALLERY Offering Southwestern gifts and accessories. We also have a frame shop and an interior design service. If you like beautiful Native American and contemporary Southwest jewelry, saddle up your horse and ride on in! 3266 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.0555 DESERT VINTAGE We’ve come to be known as a great source for excellent, one-of-a-kind vintage pieces of quality and flair. We buy men’s and women’s vintage clothing and accessories seven days a week. Come by and check us out! 636 North 4th Avenue 520.620.1570 ShopDesertVintage.com

DOS CORAZONES Offering Fabulous Furniture, Accessories & Gifts. Our store will have your heart singing!

Specialty lines and one of a kind inventory. We can add that special touch or do an entire home! 520.398.3110 DosCorazonesDesign.com FED BY THREADS Downtown Tucson’s Destination for American-Made Organic Sustainable Clothing that feeds 12 emergency meals to hungry Americans per item sold.

Featuring women’s, men’s, baby and toddler apparel made from organic cotton, hemp, bamboo and beyond. 345 East Congress Street 520.396.4304 FedByThreads.com

ANGEL WINGS THRIFT & GIFT SHOP Offering a “boutique” shopping experience with an ever changing and wide variety of inventory. All proceeds go to Our Lady of the Angels Mission Catholic Church, newly built, in Sonoita. 22 Los Encinos Road, Sonoita.

FLASH IN THE PAST Book a pinup photo shoot! Flash in the Past takes you back to the era of the classic pinup! The perfect treat for yourself! The perfect gift for a lover! Pinup parties available! Aside from pinup photo shoots, Flash in the Past also offers Retro Beauty Classes and vintage shopping. 43 South 6th Avenue 520.304.0691 FlashInThePast.com

AVENUE BOUTIQUE One of Tucson’s most unique, fashion-forward women’s clothing boutiques. BRANDS: Gestuz, MinkPink, Plastic Island, Sheila Fajl, Rebecca Minkoff, James Jeans, Blank Denim, Myne, Dolce Vita, Genetic, Garde, Thomas Paul, Hanky Panky. Located in the Broadway Village. 3050 East Broadway Boulevard 520.881.0409 ShopAvenueBoutique.com

FORS SHOP In the heart of the 5C district of downtown Tucson FORS Architecture has created a small gift shop inspired by food, fashion and design. Come chat with us about our architecture and interior design services too, since our office is in the same building. Come and browse! Monday through Friday, 9am-6pm. 245 East Congress Street #135, 520.795.9888 FORSArchitecture.com

BON BOUTIQUE Located in Broadway Village, we offer a collection of well-made, beautiful things… home, garden, clothing, accessories and gifts. The things we seek out are made by skilled craftsmen who are passionate about what they do, whether they are in Tucson or abroad. 3022 East Broadway 520.795.2272 Bon-Boutique.com

GRUMPY GRINGO FINE CIGARS The husband drop off point, daddy day care center. It’s the place to go when the other one is shopping. Grumpy Gringo features fine cigars, pipes, tobacco, excellent camraderie and tall tales. 4 Camino Otero, Tubac 520.980.5177 GrumpyGringoCigars.com

BUFFALO EXCHANGE We buy, sell, and trade designer wear, basics, vintage, and oneof-a-kind items. You can receive cash or trade for clothing on the spot! We’re a family operated company that works to sustain the environment by recycling clothing. 2001 East Speedway Blvd. (Campus) 520.795.0508 & 6212 East Speedway Boulevard. (East Side) 520.885.8392 BuffaloExchange.com

GYPSY COWGIRL RESALE BOUTIQUE Unique resale clothing and accessories for women. Consignment by appointment. An upscale, resale boutique for humble snobs.

Featuring brands like Lucky Brand, Double D, Johnny Was, 3J Workshop. Boots, jeans, jackets, vests skirts, shirts and more. 6 Camino Otero, Tubac 520.398.3000

BUFFALO TRADING POST New & Recycled Goods. We buy-sell-trade wonderful clothing & unique things! Our ever-changing inventory includes home decor, vintage, furniture, textiles, imports, clothing, shoes & accessories for women and men. Known as “Buffalo Exchange’s Older Sibling”. Located at Cat Mountain Station shopping center. 2740 South Kinney Road 520.578.0226 CatMountainStation.com COPENHAGEN IMPORTS Committed to providing the highest quality service to our customers.

Come in and experience our comfortable showroom with exciting displays and sales consultants who are truly interested in your furniture needs. 3660 East Fort Lowell 520.795.0316 CopenhagenLiving.com COWGIRL FLAIR Sonoita’s local “Gussy’d Up Outfitters” providing locals and tourists a variety of contemporary western wear, boots, jewelry, and home décor with a unique style at 3244 Highway 82 #5 in Sonoita, Arizona Wednesday through Sunday 11am to 5pm. 3244 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.4784 Sonoita CowGirlFlairSonoita.com CROWE’S NEST Hats, casual fashions, Minnetonka Footwear, unique jewelry & gifts. Year-round Christmas.19 Tubac Road, Tubac 520.398.2727 DARLENE MORRIS ANTIQUES We carry an unusual collection of 18th, 19th, and 20th century items including silver, jewelry, furniture, porcelain, glass, fine art and decorative items brought to the great Southwest from all over the world. Plaza Palomino 2940 North Swan, #128 520.322.9050 DECO, AN ILLUMINATING EXPERIENCE Treasures for you and your home. An eclectic mix of local artistry, recycled glassware, one-of-a-kind artworks, many items made in the USA, plus worldwide accents. 2612 East Broadway Boulevard 520.319.0888 DecoArtTucson.com

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JILL RICH REALTOR I am dedicated to our Long Realty mission: To create an exceptional real estate services experience that builds long-lasting relationships. “It’s like having your grandma in the real estate business.”

520.349.0174 JillRich.LongRealty.com

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HEART OF GOLD Offers real antiques (over 100 yrs old) and consignments from local estates. The owner is a certified appraiser and can help with consignment services, an estate sale, or appraisals of your treasures. P.O. Box 1273, Sonoita 520.394.0199 or cell 520.240.4490

PLAZA PALOMINO Distinctly Tucson specialty and boutique shopping & dining. Beautiful courtyards, unique businesses and ample parking. Ready to make your shop or restaurant part of Tucson’s gateway to the Foothills?

2960 North Swan Road PlazaPalomino.com

HOW SWEET IT WAS Locally-owned since 1974, we specialize in vintage fashion from the 1880s-1980s. We also buy vintage everyday. No appointment necessary. 419 North 4th Avenue 520.623.9854

PETROGLYPHS-FURNITURE, LIGHTING, ACCENTS An eclectic collection of furniture, lighting ,and accents.

Much of which is produced in Tucson. Located in the Lost Barrio shopping district. 228 South Park Avenue 520.

628.4764 PetroglyphsTucson.com

JGILBERT FOOTWEAR A luxury footwear, apparel and accessories boutique. We offer exclusive collections from Lucchese Classics & hard-to-find brands like Thierry Rabotin, Arche, Salpy and more. Monday-Saturday 10am-5:30pm Plaza Palomino. 2960 North Swan Road Suite 124, 520.327.1291

POP-CYCLE A gift shop devoted to handmade items produced from recycled, reclaimed and sustainable mate-

KRIKAWA JEWELRY DESIGNS, INC. Located in the heart of downtown on Congress Street! In the showroom, you’ll find exceptional handcrafted jewelry, accessories and art made by local and national artists.

Gaze into the workshop and see the internationally renowned Krikawa jewelers at work, making one-of-a-kind wedding and engagement rings, and taking care of your fine jewelry repairs. 21 East Congress Street 520.322.6090 Krikawa.com

TUMACACORI MESQUITE SAWMILL A leader in raw and finished mesquite materials. From lumber, slabs, posts, to exotic burls and burl slabs, The Sawmill has an ever changing selection. 2007 E. Frontage Road, Tumacacori 520.398.9356 MesquiteDesign.com

MAGNETIC THREADS Original Designs then constructed into handmade clothing by Meggen Connolley. 2 Copper Queen Plaza, Old Bisbee 917.660.4681 Magnetic-Threads.com MAST TUCSON A local lifestyle boutique. Specializing in handmade jewelry, leather goods, accessories, home goods & select furnishings. The three co-owners create the lion’s share of the stock, artfully curating an enticing selection from fellow designers and artisans. At Mercado San Agustin, 100 South Avenida Del Convento 520.495.5920 ILoveMast.com

MIRAGE & BIRD Working artist studio and retail shop.

Faux plants, succulents and individual flower stems. Custom and ready made permanent arrangements. Eclectic cards and gifts. Personal consultations available by appointment. ana@mirageandbird.com Plaza Santa Cruz, 10 Plaza Road, Tubac 520.248.5039 MirageAndBird.com MONTEREY COURT Studio galleries, cafe, bar, catering, and entertainment venue centrally located in Tucson just west of Oracle Road on historic Miracle Mile. 505 West Miracle Mile 520.207.2429 MontereyCourtAZ.com PICÁNTE A treasure trove of traditional handmade crafts from Mexico, Guatemala and Latin America. Artisan works include colorful ceramics, tin objects, carved wood santos, and fine silver jewelry. There is an incredible collection of textiles, huipils, fabric by the yard, hand-embroidered blouses and dresses, and oilcloth. 2932 East Broadway Boulevard 520.320.5699 PicanteTucson.com

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SWEET POPPY A one of a kind store, along with a unique selection of furniture, accessories, and much more.Located in the Mercado de Baca in Tubac next to Shelby’s Bistro. 19 Tubac Road, Tubac 520.398.2805 SweetPoppy.webs.com

TUCSON THRIFT SHOP Tucson’s unique vintage and costume-wear resource for the fun side of life! Established in 1979, we have evolved with the 4th Avenue community into a blend of old and new. A marketplace for street-wear and theme party needs. Hours: M-Th: 10-8, F-Sat: 10-9, Sun: 12-6. 319 N. 4th Avenue 520.623.8736

LIVING RAINBOW A gift and craft shop at the top of Mt. Lemmon. You can’t sink a rainbow. 12789 N Sabino Canyon Park, Mt Lemmon 520.576.1519 thelivingrainbow.com

MERCADO SAN AGUSTIN Tucson’s first and only Public Market hosting several locally-owned shops, eateries and incredible experiences. Our courtyard is home to the Santa Cruz River Farmers’ Market (every Thursday afternoon) and many other special events. Open seven days a week with Farmers’ Market on Thursdays from 3-6 p.m. 100 South Avenida del Convento 520.461.1110 MercadoSanAgustin.com

STAGECOACH BAGS Handmade, one of a kind, cowboy boot purses made from authentic cowboy boots. Custom orders available. Unique styles for all that love the look of bling and western flair. Located in Cowgirl Country.

P.O. Box 393, Sonoita 480.265.5312 StageCoachBags.com

SWEET RIDE GIFTS & ACCESSORIES We carry a variety of Sonoita tees for men women and kids. Old guys Rule Tees, Hats and gift Items, Beautiful Bling Belts by Nocona and Jewelry for ladies.

Also motorcycle related gift items for our biker enthusiasts. Stop in and see Valorie—she will be glad you did. 3244 Highway 82, Sonoita 520.455.4717

LA CABAÑA Offering an artful collection of furniture and decor including traditional talavera, blending Spanish colonial and classic styles from around the world; antique and contemporary. 120 South Avenida del Convento 520.404.9008

MAYA PALACE Clothing & Gifts From Around the World.

Festive fashions including prom dresses, wedding dresses, work fashion, casual and seasonal attire. Plaza Palomino, 2930 North Swan Road #120 520.748.0817 MayaPalaceTucson.com

SUNSET INTERIORS & DESIGN STUDIO With more than 30 years of experience, the award-winning Dara Davis is known for her unique interpretation of regional design, inspired by the rich heritages of California missions, New Mexico pueblos and ranches of the southwest. Plaza Colonial, 2890 East Skyline Drive Suite #190, 520.825.2297 SunsetInterior.com

WILDFLOWER JEWELRY & ART We offer affordable and fun arts and crafts classes and have a wide selection of jewelry, drawings, quilts, plants, and more.

Find us on Etsy. 27 Subway #4, Old Bisbee 520.234.5528

rials. The products are fun and whimsical, with a little something for everyone. Many items are produced locally, some by the store’s owners. 422 North 4th Avenue 520.622.3297 PopCycleShop.com PREMIERE PIANO - Home of Steinway The NEW home of Steinway, Premiere Piano is located in Plaza Palomino. Come see Premiere Piano’s newly renovated space – complete with gorgeous showroom and performance area/recital stage. 2990 North Swan Road Suite 147, 520.445.6597 PremierePiano.com RUSSELL’S RETRO FURNISHINGS Tucson’s only store specializing in Mid-Century Modern furniture as well as vintage accessories from the 1950’, 60’s and 70’s. Relive the nostalgic style and function of an ingenious design era from kitchenwares, chotchkes and lamps to refinished, reupholstered and restored dining tables, living room and bedroom sets. Family owned and operated, we offer something for everyone.1132 East Broadway Boulevard 520.882.3885 RussellsRetro.com RUSTIC CANDLE COMPANY Locally-owned and operated. Our candles are hand-poured on site. All styles, sizes & fragrances. Enjoy a fabulous selection of home decor, gift, incense, soap & much more! 324 North 4th Avenue 520.623.2880 RusticCandle.net SAINT PHILIP’S PLAZA Shop. Dine. Experience. A landmark in Tucson. 4280 North Campbell Avenue 520.529.2775 StPhilipsPlaza.com SAN AGUSTIN TRADING COMPANY In addition to handmade moccasins from artisan Jesse Aguiar, this shop showcases fascinating Native American crafts and jewelry. 120 South Avenida del Convento 520.628.1800 SanAgustinTradingCompany.com

YIKES TOYS! Quirky Fun for the Curious Mind. Enchanting books, wacky wonders, old-school novelties. Serious science, kooky kitsch, phenomenal fun. Featuring original works by Tucson artists & scientists. Specializing in Gifts for All Ages. 2930 East Broadway Boulevard 520.320.5669 YikesToysOnline.com SCHOOLS CITY HIGH SCHOOL An Arizona public charter high school serving grades 9-12 located in downtown Tucson in the historic Cele Peterson building. City High School seeks young people who want to study in a dynamic small school that prepares them for college and connects them with the community in which they live. 48 East Pennington Street 520.623.7223 CityHighSchool.org GREEN FIELDS COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL Challenge. Inquiry. Balance. The foundations of a Green Fields education.

From Kindergarten to Commencement, students are encouraged to develop their interests in Academics, Fine Arts, Sports, and more. Class sizes are small and students receive individual attention. 6000 North Camino de la Tierra 520.297.2288 GreenFields.org KINO SCHOOL Where students are given the responsibility and freedom that are the essence of a democratic society. Students of all abilities succeed where learning, creativity, respect for others, and community thrives. 6625 North First Avenue 520.297.7278 KinoSchool.org SKY ISLANDS HIGH SCHOOL A a tuition-free public high school in its 7th year, now enrolling grades 9-12 at its new campus on the Rogers Commons—formerly TUSD’s Rogers Elementary on 12-acres in the heart of Tucson. Call for a tour. 6000 East 14th Street 520.382.9210 SkyIslands.org

GRAY LINE TOURS OF TUCSON Our Tour programs feature both local (Backyard) and regional package tours.

We like to think guests that take our tours become “temporary locals”. Our tours feature luxury transportation, knowledgeable guides and unique experiences. All of our tours are available for individuals and groups. 520622-8811 GrayLineArizona.com

TUCSON WALDORF SCHOOL Tucson Waldorf School is located in the scenic Binghampton Rural Historic Landscape and is home to the River Road Gardens CSA farm.

Children from Parent-Child Classes through 8th Grade experience an engaging education that cultivates joy and excellence in learning. The arts are integrated throughout a classical curriculum and hands-on work. Weekly tours available. 3605 East River Road 520.529.1032 TucsonWaldorf.org

MOUNT LEMMON SKI VALLEY The sky ride to the summit takes about ½ hour and covers approximately 1 mile. You depart the base of the ski area near 8200 foot elevation and climb to 9100 feet-where the earth meets Heaven. Skiing in winter, ladybugs in summer, shops & restaurant all year long. 10300 Ski Run Road 520.576.1321 SkiTheLemmon.com

SERVICES CONNECT COWORKING Connect provides entrepreneurs, small businesses and freelancers more than just a desk, more than just a roof. Connect is a place where cutting-edge minds and innovative technology call home; a place where collaboration breeds success, community and change. And it happens all right here. Right in the heart of Tucson. 33 South 5th Avenue 520.333.5754 ConnectCoworking.com FLASH IN THE PAST Book a pinup photo shoot! Flash in the Past takes you back to the era of the classic pinup! The perfect treat for yourself! The perfect gift for a lover! Pinup parties available!

Aside from pinup photo shoots, Flash in the Past also offers Retro Beauty Classes and vintage shopping. 43 South 6th Avenue 520.304.0691 FlashInThePast.com ORDINARY BIKE SHOP Servicing bikes of all sorts and selling new and used bikes and parts. “Life is like riding a bicycle—in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.”—Albert Einstein. 311 East 7th Street 520.622.6488 OrdinaryBikeShop.com SCRAPS ON SCRAPS Scraps on Scraps is a residential and commercial food waste and compostable materials pickup. If it can be composted, then we want it! Scraps on Scraps is committed to changing the way that you dispose of your food waste. 520.333.7106 ScrapsOnScraps.com SAHUARO TROPHY A Family Owned Business serving Tucson and Southern Arizona for more than 30 years.

We offer Three Generations of Experience in the Awards Industry, to provide you with quality innovative products.

We offer State-of-the-Art Technology in all our Marking Processes, including: Diamond Drag, Rotary, Laser, Photo Etch, Sublimation, Silk Screening and Sandblasting. 2616 East Broadway 520.326.9000 SahuaroTrophy.com SOLAR ENERGY SERVICES & PRODUCTS SOUTHWEST SOLAR Providing the highest quality evaporative cooling products, customer service, and passive heating/cooling techniques; while being a model business for environmentally conscious and safe business practices and ethics through our use of renewable and sustainable energy sources and green building technology. 5085 South Melpomene Way 520.885.7925 Southwest-Solar.com TECHNICIANS FOR SUSTAINABILITY A Tucson based, locally-owned, mission-driven company specializing in renewable energy and sustainable technologies for residential and commercial settings, including solar electric (PV) and solar hot water. 520.740.0736 TFSSolar.com TRAVEL & TOURISM BIOSPHERE 2 Our mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe.

Come visit us. 32540 South Biosphere Road, Oracle 520.838.6200 B2Science.org

MOUNT LEMMON SKY CENTER An exceptional science learning facility located at Steward Observatory’s “sky island” observing site just north of Tucson, Arizona.

520.626.8122 SkyCenter.Arizona.edu

SILVER CITY Be here for lunch—an easy and scenic three hour drive from Tucson. Nationally recognized cuisine, historic downtown district, arts, Gila National Forest, WNMU University, fresh air, clear skies, mild climate, great festivals, a top-ten destination, quaint and quirky!

575.538.5555 SilverCityTourism.org TUBAC PRESICIO Come to Tubac Presidio and experience 2,000 years of Southwest history! We showcase every culture (Native American, Spanish, Mexican, Pioneer American, and Arizonian) with award-winning artifacts and displays to bring those 2,000 years of history to life.

See Arizona’s first printing press, our original 1885 school house, and much more. Open 7 days 9am to 5pm in Arizona’s 1st European settlement. 1 Burruel Street, Tubac 520.398.2252 TubacPresidio.org VENUES, THEATRES, & ENTERTAINMENT BISBEE ROYALE A cultural and events venue screening new, classic and foreign films & hosting wine tastings, poetry, flamenco concerts & more! 94 Main Street, Old Bisbee 520.432.6750 BisbeeRoyale.com FOX TUCSON THEATRE Tucson’s Premiere entertainment venue. A 1,200 seat Southwestern Art Deco movie palace built in 1930 and restored in 2005. 17 West Congress Street 520.547.3040 FoxTucson.com RIALTO THEATRE Recognized by the Tucson Weekly as the Best Indoor Venue for 10 years running, the nonprofit Rialto Theatre is the best place to see live music in Tucson, bar none. 318 East Congress Street 520.740.1000 RialtoTheatre.com LOFT CINEMA A local nonprofit cinema dedicated to creating community through film, honoring the vision of filmmakers, promoting the appreciation and understanding of the art of film. 3233 East Speedway Boulevard 520.795.7777 LoftCinema.com VETERINARY CARE PRICKLY PEAR HOLISTIC VETERINARY CARE Offering mobile, holistic veterinary care specializing in acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, herbal medicine and Reiki for all animals including dogs, cats, and horses. 520.979.9273 (voice/text) email: PricklyPearVet@gmail.com PricklyPearVet.com

WELLNESS CENTERS & CONSULTANTS BOBCAT INTEGRATIVE CONSULTING Bobcat Integrative Consulting Bob Harris, M.A., and Catriona O’Curry, M.A. We both have 25 years of experience working with Individuals, Couples, and Small Businesses. Masters in Psychology, 4 year Diplomas in Energy Healing. Coaching for individuals, couples, families, and businesses. Coaching groups for Women and Men. Energy Medicine Classes. We accept PayPal.Just email: robertpharris1946@gmail.com (520) 822 4982 BobCatIntegrativeConsulting.com COPPERSTATE WELLNESS AQUA workouts in your own pool! With over 19 years of professional teaching and training experience, we specialize in performance, prehab and functional fitness. 520.906.9192 CopperstateWellness.com FOREVER ABLE WELLNESS We are an alternative wellness center that provides services in acupuncture, Chinese herbs, massage, and chiropractic. 205 W. Giaconda Way Suite #135, 520.219.2400 Forever-Able.com NEW GRATITUDE NUTRITIONAL THERAPY Kariman Pierce is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and Real Food advocate with a focus on gluten sensitivity, digestion, and blood sugar related issues. She uses Functional Assessment to uncover your body’s bio-individual needs and supports you with customized nutritional protocols based in nutrient-dense whole foods. 520.477.6204 NewGratitudeeNutrition.com

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GREGORY SCHOOL Inspired Learning—Beyond strong academics. Gregory School develops inspired students who are encouraged to pursue their individual passion and develop a love for learning. Our students are well-prepared to excel in college and go on to create impactful and fulfilling lives. 3231 North Craycroft Road 520.327.6395 GregorySchool.org

LAST BITE

Squab

by Jefferson Carter | Photography by Steve McMackin Driving to yoga this morning, I saw a flock of pigeons raveling & unraveling above the palm trees. Our city’s poet laureate writes about pigeons as avatars of love.

What did I see? Protein on the wing.

Our laureate compares feral pigeons to street people, both declared unsanitary urban pests, the birds’ bodies contaminated by heavy metals but whose aren’t?

I want to be a good person, stop child abuse, take back the night, march against hunger.

I’m ashamed I eat when I’m not hungry.

No more memes on Facebook, no more feel-good marches, let’s learn to mend nets, scald feathers, to gut & to spatchcock, let’s deliver tons & tons of pigeon meat to shelters & soup kitchens, saying, “Enjoy! It’s squab!”

Jefferson Carter has lived in Tucson since 1953. He volunteers with Sky Island Alliance, a locally based environmental group, and is also poetry editor for Zócalo magazine.

202 May - June 2015

SUMMER IS COMING

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