Okay, I’m being a little snooty by making fun of the cook who thinks there are male and female eggplants and actually I had heard the myth before, but hadn’t seen it in writing. And hey, it does defy basic horticulture, but I’m going to leave it alone now.
Oh and what I meant to say when I was jabbering away about Gregory McNamee’s Tortillas, Tiswin and T-Bones, A Food History of the Southwest, is that the chapters are titled by topics like: La Frontera, The Anglo Frontier, Asian Americans, African Americans. And in these chapters we learn the influences relating to our southwest food history. Sometimes while reading this book I made notes to look more stuff up. I love that! This book has a place of honor on our cookbook shelf…well, actually shelves.
Desert Harvesters’ Eat Mesquite and More is sitting beside it on the shelf and not too far from the Carolyn Niethammer section. This one will no doubt end up on the dining table as recipes made from our native foods are perused over and over. I love books like this. It’s very much like having friends in the house.
So two books by local authors about local food. I’ve included a couple photographs of the books and a couple links as well so as to inundate you with information.
http://www.gregorymcnamee.com/
http://www.desertharvesters.org/
Here are photos of some of the plants I was jabbering about: Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis), esperanza or Arizona yellow bells (Tecoma stans var....
It’s funny how irritable those relic Parry penstemons from an old roadside hydro seed make me. For goodness sake, why weren’t more regional seeds...
Petey thinks seeds have stories and the Mexican June corn that a young farmer is growing will have some stories to tell. Let’s listen.
