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Holiday Deliciousness for Diabetics and Friends

/ Savor Blog Partners / 2 Comments

Mmmmm–Wish you could taste this hot and hearty heirloom bean soup!  It hits the spot on this chilly desert evening.  Makes me want to share the message of its goodness.

Piping hot and delicious Tom’s Mix heirloom bean soup warms the soul and enriches the body….

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month and diabetes is indeed now EVERYONE’s issue.  WE ALL need to tune in to be aware of this increasing health problem, now of epidemic proportions especially here in the Southwest. The wonderful thing is that we CAN DO SOMETHING TO HELP by the very foods we serve each other–both for meals and snacks.

Southwestern Native tepary beans are among the lowest glycemic index foods, with published low figures of 30 to 44. In addition to great burritos, they also make a fantastic healthy hummus! (see recipe plus links to local sources for teparies below)

Tia Marta here with healthy recipes that diabetics can enjoy for pot lucks and drop-ins over the holidays or any time.  Interestingly, the great majority of our traditional Southwest foods have LOW GLYCEMIC INDICES.  (The lower the glycemic index the better.  Pure sugar has an index of 100.  Foods lower than a GI of 55 are considered low-glycemic.)   So many of the fabulous recipes recorded in this Savor-the-Southwest archive using traditional wild desert foods (e.g. mesquite and cholla buds) and SW Native crops of Baja Arizona are low glycemic foods great for HELPING TO BALANCE BLOOD SUGAR!   Beans have Glycemic Indices from 30-49, high in complex carbs, soluble, and insoluble fiber, which slow the release of sugar into the bloodstream.  Our rich tasting and versatile Tepary Beans are among the best!

Easy Tepary Hummus RECIPE

2 cups cooked Traditional Native American Tepary Bean Mix (cooked until tender)

reserved liquid from cooking beans

1-2 cloves garlic, minced (or more to taste!)

3-4 Tbsp lemon juice

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

1-2 Tbsp tahini (optional, not needed for tepary’s great flavor)

1 tsp sea salt

In a blender or food processor, add beans and garlic.  Blend gradually with enough reserved liquid to make a frosting-like consistency.  Add lemon, olive oil, salt (and optional tahini) to taste.

Store in freezer, or in fridge in serving size containers to be ready for impromptu company.  Serve with corn chips or whole grain crackers for a healthy low-glycemic snack.

Flor de Mayo’s Traditional Native American Tepary Mix makes the ideal consumable holiday guest gift– available at NativeSeedsSEARCH store on North Campbell, Tucson; at Tohono Chul Park Museum Shop; Tucson Presidio Museum and at ArtHouse.Centro in Old Town Artisans, downtown Tucson; and the UNICEF Store at Monterrey Village, Tucson.  Assorted tepary beans can be ordered from Ramona Farms in Sacaton, AZ, or San Xavier Farm Coop.

Tom’s Mix–the most delectable mix of 14 colorful heirloom beans from the Southwest! Tom’s Mix makes a rich, warming soup, delicious dip, or mixed bean salad. Yummy easy cooking instructions and recipes are on the label.

The taste-jewels in Flor de Mayo’s Tom’s Mix Southwest heirloom beans can be viewed in detail at Tia Marta’s earlier post Glorious Diversity–check it out and start salivating.  You can find them at the above linked sources in Tucson, or online at NativeSeeds/SEARCH and Flor de Mayo.  Tepary Mix or Tom’s Mix will cook easily (after a few hours’ soaking, change water) either in a solar oven or crock-pot slow-cooker.

The most efficient way to cook Tom’s Mix (after presoak and change water) is in a crock-pot. Put them on before you leave for the day and their inviting aroma meets you when you come in the door!

When energy efficiency matters, cook your beans in a solar oven. Sunlight is a gift! You can find a smoking deal on solar ovens at www.flordemayoarts.com.

 

 

 

Here’s a recipe for the best bean dip you ever tasted–great to keep on hand in the fridge or freezer for when company pops in.  As a bonus it is super healthy, gluten-free, high in protein, gives sustained energy, and helps to balance blood sugar!  What more can one ask of a great fun-food?

Tom’s Mix Southwest Treasure Bean Dip Recipe

2 cups (the 1-lb package) Tom’s Mix washed and drained

2 quarts drinking water

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 Tbsp cumin seed ground

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp fresh lime or lemon juice

1-3 tsp Red Devil hot sauce,

1-2 chiltepin peppers, ground (optional for picante taste) (see Savor blog posts on chiltepines!)

1 tsp Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning (optional but good)

Wash, drain beans.  (Presoaking beans 1-2 hours, drain liquid, speeds up the cooking but is optional). In a large pot put beans and drinking water.  Bring to boil then simmer 2-3 hours or until tender.  Alternatively, put soaked beans in drinking water to cook in slow-cooker 5-6 hours, or in solar oven, tending sun angle at 1/2 hour intervals, 3-4 hours.  When beans taste done, drain into bowl reserving the bean liquid.  With mixer or hand-mashing, puree the hot beans with other ingredients, adding about 2 cups reserved hot bean liquid until mixture is dip consistency.  Put in microwavable dish for easy re-heating.  Serve with corn chips for a complete protein complement, and enjoy the gifts of many Southwest farmers through ages of desert harvests.  What a legacy!

Southwest “bean gifts” from Flor de Mayo include not only these precious heirloom food flavors, but also feasts for the eyes, Native food watercolor notecards, canvas art totes, and original paintings by yours truly Tia Marta. Check links below…..

I invite you to visit the specialty and other shops, parks, and museums in Tucson which carry our Flor de Mayo heirloom food mixes and other creations, totes, art notes, and jojoba soaps.  At Sunday’s Rillito Farmers Market look for Tom’s Mix at Cindy Burson’s Country Harvest booth.  You can also explore the Flor de Mayo website for perfect holiday gifts.  We will soon be adding an online gallery of fine one of a kind watercolor paintings by Martha Burgess and the WildDesert nature photography of Roderick Mondt.

Happy holidays–eating well on joyous low-glycemic heirloom tastes from Tia Marta!

 

 

A Gastronomy Tour thru Time–from Ancient to Now!

/ Savor Blog Partners / 3 Comments

Bedrock mortar hole where ancient desert people milled mesquite, legume pods, and other seeds  (MABurgess photo)

All around us in the desert–in our own Tucson Basin and beyond–there is evidence in the rocks that people long ago were gathering, processing, growing and eating bountiful desert plant foods.  The same plants (mesquite beans, amaranth, chia, corn…) are providing us today with a smorgasbord of yummy ingredients for new culinary creativity.  The pre-history and history of our diverse food cultures–not to mention the amazing inventiveness of our local chefs, farmers and gardeners–led UNESCO to name Tucson the first International City of Gastronomy in the US!

Tia Marta here to tell you about upcoming GASTRONOMIC TOURS created to celebrate our diverse local food heritage.  Are you ready for total immersion in culinary bliss?  Tucson’s Presidio Museum is sponsoring tours of our food heritage in the heart of Old Town.  Look for announcements about The Presidio District Experience:  A Progressive Food Heritage and History Tour.

Tucson’s Presidio San Augustine Museum–a living-history treasure at the center of downtown where visitors can envision life of 18th century Spanish conquistadores and their families on the new frontier.

In the style of progressive dinners or “round-robins” the tour will begin at the Tucson Presidio Museum, developing a sense of Tucson’s setting and cultures over the recent 10,000 years.  Participants will enjoy samples of traditional wild-harvested desert foods, then surprising Spanish introductions.  Next tourers venture forth afoot to taste Hispanic and Anglo family traditions plus nouvelle cuisine desert-style at some of our one-of-a-kind historic restaurants.  Past meets present in a symphony of taste sensations with spirits, entree, bebidas or dessert at each new venue.

These tours are educational-plus!  Feeding not only body and satisfaction-center, knowing Tucson’s gastronomic history feeds the mind and soul as well.  Tours are scheduled for Sunday afternoon, March 25, April 8, 15 or 29, from 1pm-3:45pm.  Check out http://www.tucsonpresidio.com , go to the event calendar and click on Heritage Tour for details and registration for each date.

Seedlings of heirloom white Sonora wheat seed from NativeSeeds/SEARCH and BKWFarms, planted early Feb and gladly doused by mid-February rains, growing rapidly, to be harvested in May (MABurgess photo)

Now, with the goal of merging plant knowledge with many food cultures into one tasty recipe, I’d like to share a quick and easy idea to enhance a pot luck or dinner for a few:  Muff’s Multi-Heritage Biscuits. 

A traditional milling of amaranth with stone mano on a metate.  Today, hard amaranth seed can be easily ground in a grain mill or coffee mill.  Traditional Tohono O’odham gatherers ate “rain spinach” or juhuggia i:wagi (Amaranthus palmeri) when summer rains started, then harvested these ollas of small seeds from the spiny stalks later when the weeds dried.   Plan to harvest your wild amaranth (aka pigweed) seed next September if monsoon rains are good.  Amaranth grain is 15-18% protein and high in iron, fiber and phytonutrients!  (MABurgess photo)

One of many species of Sonoran Desert saltbush, traditionally used by Tohono O’odham.  It can be dried and pulverized as baking powder. (Atriplex hymenolytra) (MABurgess photo)

Bringing together Amaranth, Mesquite, and sea salt from Tohono O’odham traditional fare, and Hispanic White Sonora Wheat introduced by Missionary Padre Kino, in a very Anglo-style biscuit from my Southern background,  here is a fast, tasty, local and nutritious complement to any meal:

Muff’s Multi-Heritage Biscuits 

You will need:

1/2 cup mesquite flour [from NativeSeedsSEARCH or desert harvesters.org]

1/2 cup amaranth flour [home-milled from NativeSeedsSEARCH’s whole grain, or Bob’s Red Mill amaranth flour]

1 cup white Sonora wheat flour (or Pima Club wheat flour)  [from Ramona Farms, San Xavier Coop Association, or NativeSeedsSEARCH]

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp sea salt

1/3 cup butter

3/4 cup milk (or sour milk, rice milk, soy milk)

Mixing organic white Sonora wheat flour from BKWFarms, plus amaranth flour, roasted mesquite flour, and butter for Muff’s Mixed Heritage Grain Biscuits (MABurgess photo)

Preheat oven to 450 degreesF.  [You can use a solar oven but it will not get quite that hot.  Solar biscuits come out harder–reminiscent of cowboy hard-tack.]. Sift together flours, baking powder, and sea salt.  Cut in the butter to small pellet size.  Add milk.  Stir until soft dough forms.  Either drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet for “bachelor biscuits” OR, turn the dough ball out onto a floured board.  Knead a few turns.  Pat or roll lightly to about 1/2-inch thickness.  Use any shape cookie cutter to form biscuits–small for bite-size, large for cowboys, initialed for kids.  Bake on ungreased cookie sheet 12-15 minutes until barely golden.  Serve hot, rejoicing in the diversity of heritage foods still available from local farmers or in nearby desert!

Rolling out mesquite, amaranth, white Sonora wheat biscuit dough with Mayo Indian palo chino rolling pin purchased from NativeSeedsSEARCH (MABurgess photo)

Muff’s Mixed Heritage Grain (Mesquite-Amaranth-White Sonora Wheat) Biscuits hot from the oven (MABurgess photo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A landmark in the heart of Tucson’s Old Town, this restaurant, shops and music venue occupy the oldest existing structure in the neighborhood, across Court Street from Tucson Presidio Museum

Two heirloom wheat flours introduced by Missionaries (White Sonora “S-moik Pilkan” and Pima Club “Oras Pilkan”) grown by a traditional Piman farmer at Ramona Farms; also grown at San Xavier Coop Association and organically at BKWFarms Inc in Marana (available at NativeSeeds/SEARCH store)               (MABurgess photo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can find many traditional desert foods and artworks depicting these botanical and culinary treasures at http://www.flordemayoarts.com.   Flor de Mayo native heritage foods can be purchased at ArtHouse.Centro in Old Town Artisans at LaCocina Courtyard, NativeSeeds/SEARCH store and online catalog http://www.nativeseeds.org, at Tumacacori National Historic Site, Tucson Presidio Museum Shop, Saguaro National Park Bookstore, and Tohono Chul Park Museum Shop.  Join us at Mission Garden (http://www.tucsonsbirthplace.org) Saturday, March 31, 2018 for a public tour by Herbalist Donna Chesner and ethnobotanist Martha Ames Burgess about Desert Foods as Medicine.

Hoping to see you in Old Town for a gastronomic tour this spring! Plan now for some of that immersion experience in local culinary bliss….