Ethno Botany

I don’t recall where I came by the small bag of mesquite flour, but my plan was to make something authentic, the kind of baked mesquite cake that the Hohokam might have eaten. Right. The dry, hard, unleavened lump somewhat resembling a petrified cow flop was not well received. I would have to rethink this if I was going to inspire my students and make the food plants of the desert accessible.

The Second Element
I was inspired to new culinary experimentation by “Great Chefs of the Southwest” which had aired on PBS just a few years before. It had turned many of us into wannabe chefs. Heck, one of those chefs, Donna Nordin was the vision behind the menu at the Tohono Chul Tea Room, being managed at the time by famed Café Terra Cotta!

The Third Element
I met Carlos Nagel, a man with a mission. Concerned by the loss of mesquite forests throughout northern Sonora, Nagel sought to demonstrate that the sustainable harvesting of seed pods, rather than the destructive cutting of trees for firewood and charcoal, could slow the conversion of forests to empty rangeland and increase income for rural communities. Like Gary Nabhan (Gathering the Desert) and others, he also believed that mesquite could be one of the world’s most important food sources; he just had to convince the FDA. While working on improving quality controls to meet FDA standards, he was looking for guinea pigs to experiment with different source batches of flour (some came from South America) and different ways to use it in recipes. Guess who volunteered!

First Steps
With the help of a small cadre of like-minded, food-centric docents, including several who had suffered through that first mesquite loaf, we developed a once-monthly specialty tour of the grounds – A Taste of the Desert – designed to introduce guests to the edible and useful plants of the Sonoran Desert. We taught ourselves to harvest cholla buds and dry them and juice prickly pear fruit. We even tackled prepping prickly pear pads – nopales – one thing I admit now I don’t mind anyone using from a jar.

From there, it was an outreach program for local schools complete with show-and-tell items like dried cholla buds, tepary beans and chiltepines in a saguaro rib “medicine” chest made by Lee Mason and food samples – jarred nopalitos, prickly pear candies from Cheri’s Desert Harvest and mesquite cookies made from one of Nagel’s experimental recipes. And for adults, a speakers’ bureau slide presentation for that covered the A (agave), B (barrel cactus) and Cs (chollas) of edible and useful plants. The most fun of all was that I started cooking for the docent class, on “Ethno” day, serving them a lunch of desert foodstuffs and giving them the recipes to take home and try themselves. I wanted students to share these foods with family and friends, spreading the word, increasing familiarity and demand. If anyone wasn’t up for harvesting and prepping their own ingredients, it didn’t matter. Go ahead and buy the prickly pear syrup or the nopalitos in the jar, the important thing was to use them.

Accepting the Challenge
The elements had come together and it was time to embrace the epicurean possibilities of desert edibles, involving more people in the experiment. It was the new millennium, and we had begun hosting small groups for a more elaborate “Taste of the Desert,” tours and slides followed by Sonoran cookie samplers, heavy hors d’oeuvres or even full meals. We were pate-ing tepary beans, pickling cholla buds and mixing up chili and posole. The Harvard Club loved the food, the seniors bus tour from Poughkeepsie, not so much.

An inveterate reader of cookbooks, I pondered what more we could do with these ingredients and other native foods of the New World. Prior to this time, there weren’t a lot of cookbooks that took a nouvelle cuisine approach to native foods (now there are a number of really good ones). Mostly they recycle traditional recipes. As I have been quoted as saying, “I never met a recipe I didn’t try to change.”

As an excuse to experiment and as fundraisers for Tohono Chul, I offered private dinners in 2001, 2007 and 2012, trying so see just how far I could push the envelope. Smoked salmon blue corn crepe quesadillas or fried green tomatillos with corn pudding and achiote rabbit were on the menu one year. Three sisters (corn, squash, beans) soup shooters, duck breast cassoulet with tepary beans and buffalo steak with warm sweet potato salad were part of the twelve-course tasting menu another.

I almost threw in the apron after that last one, but no, I still had to try making that mesquite crust, bittersweet chocolate tart with crème anglaise.

Making the Connection
In an essay on The Pleasures of Eating, Wendell Berry feared that for many, food was an abstract idea not much considered until plucked from the grocery shelf. Instead, he implored us to build an acquaintance with our food by learning its backstory, sourcing it locally, cooking it and even growing it ourselves.

The point is, “food is our common ground, a universal experience,” according to James Beard. We often reaffirm our connections to society through food – a shared meal with family and friends. We celebrate our culture and our heritage through food – grandma’s secret recipe for apple strudel or the tradition of the feast of the seven fishes on Christmas Eve – in my house it was oyster stew. Living in new places gives us access to new foods, new traditions and the opportunity to be a global diner. That includes the desert’s bounty.

“My grandmother was born in 1883 in northern Mexico, and was a well-known traditional Mexican-American healer in southern Arizona. Known as a Curandera in Spanish, she healed the sick and afflicted with plants and herbs gathered from the Sonoran Desert. As a boy I spent a great deal of time at her side. Every day she would send me on errands into the desert to gather plants for her medicines. She taught me a great deal about living in harmony with nature. At times I would help my grandmother in her garden. Her garden was a tangled mass of plants, cacti and trees. It was a place where one was welcomed with a fresh coolness and a symphony of herbal aromas. That was the place where she taught me about the Nopal cactus.

My grandmother spoke to her plants and seemed to know each and every one of them intimately as one would know a friend. She told me that the Nopal is a special plant because it sustains life. I never knew what that meant as a boy. All that I knew was that the Nopal was no different than any other vegetable at dinner time; something to avoid. She once said to me, ‘The Nopal gives up part of itself so we can live and by doing so we help it to live.’ A profound statement lost as a child but later found and treasured as an adult. What I now know is that the Nopal has been an integral part of the lives of Mexican-American people in the Southwest for generations. It is part of the legend of the founding of Mexico by the Aztecs, it is depicted on the Mexican flag, has provided sustenance to the poor in lean times and even plays a prominent role in Mexican humor. Today, medical science is starting to discover the value of the Nopal in fighting Type-2 Diabetes.

Corazon (center)

“Pan Dulce (Mexican Sweet Bread) is commonly used to celebrate Día de Los Muertos. On the altars used to commemorate a departed family member one can find in abundance offerings of Pan Dulce. In this image I depict a Pan Dulce as the Sacred Heart. This Christian religious icon symbolizes God’s eternal love. However, love eternal is the central celebratory theme of Día de los Muertos. For many Mexicans, death does not represent the end but the beginning of a different existence. This belief has its roots in the ancient religion of the Aztecs who believed the dead exist on a different plane of reality but are allowed to return to their people once every year. The Pan Dulce in this image is depicted in red. In the ancient Aztec religion, the color red (the color of blood) represents eternal life. During Día de Los Muertos, the color red is found as an adornment throughout the celebration.”

Imagen (left)

“Growing up in Southern Arizona my family celebrated Día de Los Muertos every year as part of a traditional Mexican holiday honoring departed family members. This Mexican holiday has its roots deep in the history of Mexico reaching back to the original peoples of the Americas including the Aztec and Maya. Vital to this celebration is food. Food plays a central role in celebrating Día de Los Muertos because it is believed that on Día de Los Muertos the dead are allowed once again to return to the land of the living to enjoy the foods they once loved during their mortal existence.  When my family celebrated Día de Los Muertos, my home was filled with breads, colorful fruits and a variety of vegetables. The air was filled with the savory aroma of traditional Mexican cuisine. It is believed that these aromas have the ability to draw the dead back to their home. My work celebrates Día de Los Muertos by illustrating the complex interplay of Christian iconography and indigenous symbols through the use of traditional foodstuff commonly used to celebrate Día de Los Muertos. This holiday is a complex mixture of Old World Christian tradition fused with the Indigenous Lifeways of Native-Mexicans. My work is illustrative of the fusion of these two worlds.

Throughout the Southwest, La Virgen de Guadalupe (The Virgin of Guadalupe) is the most recognizable Mexican religious symbol. Tamales are a favorite food used to celebrate Día de Los Muertos. But two favorites are the green corn and sweet tamales. In this image I take the iconic image of La Virgen de Guadalupe and represent her by using the main ingredients of these two tamales (a green chile and cinnamon stick for sweet tamales) surrounded by the corn husks used to wrap each one. In Mexico, La Virgen de Guadalupe is considered the mother of all Mexicans, so what better symbol to represent the Mexican mothers who always made these tamales for friends and family during Día de Los Muertos.”

Artist Statement

“In the Popol Vuh, the Mayan Creation Myth describes how the Gods created man from yellow and white corn. This connection between food and religion has always intrigued me. As a boy growing up in a Mexican Catholic home I attended Mass regularly with my grandmother. Every Sunday I would sit in the pew with her listening intently to the ancient procession of the Mass but at the same time noticing something quite unique about it. I learned at that time that the Holy Mass was a sacrifice and that we were literally consuming the Body of Christ. A concept I found hard to understand.

Years later, as a young man, I abandoned the teachings of my family and sought other means of spirituality. However, the interwoven nature of Catholicism and Mexican culture are nearly inseparable. By rejecting one, you almost certainly reject the other. I still feel a need to sit and ‘consume’ the culture that feeds my soul.

As an artist my work represents the inter-connection between Catholicism and Indigenous-Mexican iconography and symbolism. I create images using foods I collected from local mercados (markets) and create objects made from these perishable items and photograph them as still life.  I love the almost ethereal impermanence of these perishable creations because like my own life, my existence is tenuous and I too shall return to the earth.

I wish to connect the sacred and profane by representing food as sacred object.  Why did the Maya choose to represent man as being made of corn? I believe it is because the Maya understood the transcendent importance of corn, the food that represented life to them. They viewed the harvesting of corn as a ‘sacrifice’ and as life itself. My culture, Mexican culture, is life to me. I want to represent the hidden symbols of Mexican culture through the use of food as a representation of its transcendent nature. When I view the food of my culture, I see in it greater spiritual meaning and its symbolic importance in lives of Mexican people.”

Biography

Born and raised in a small mining town in Eastern Arizona, Manuel is a fourth generation Arizonan and Chicano Artist. He studied fine art photography at Phoenix College located in Central Phoenix, AZ and earned his B.A. and M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Arizona State University. After graduation, Manuel was an Adjunct Professor of Chicano Studies at Mesa Community College for seven years.