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/

There are around 30 species of Porophyllum, the majority of which are found in Mexico and southward. Around me in the borderlands of Arizona...
Petey peers into an old bird nest in a tree and discovers the work of a deer mouse.
I neglected to mention that milkweeds are no longer in their own family Asclepiadaceae, but have now been included in the dogbane family Apocynaceae....