Eat Mesquite! Cookbook

Desert Harvesters is working with sister grassroots group Downtown Harvesters to create a mesquite cookbook entitled Eat Mesquite!, which we hope to have available for sale at our fall milling events.

The whole effort is also building and educating community, as we have been working with many individuals, chefs, and community groups to find, perfect, and share fantastic recipes celebrating our delicious and abundant native foods.

To that end we had a mesquite foods tasting and celebration on June 20, 2009, in the new Mercado on West Congress. It was great fun and tasty! Some of the mesquite treats featured included:

Mesquite ice cream
Mesquite beer
Mesquite/olive tapanade
Mesquite juice
Mesquite cornbread, and oh so much more!

Prior to the tasting we had a demonstration on how to harvest, store, and process mesquite pods for eating.

We hope to make this an annual event to kick off the harvest season before the monsoon rains.

Great photos from the event, courtesy of Ian Fritz, are posted below.