The Tumbleweed Gourmet: Cooking With Wild Southwestern Plants

Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1987. First Edition . Hard Back. Fine/Fine. 6 1/2" X 9 1/4. Thomson, Jenean. 229 Pages Indexed. This red cloth boards is in pristine gift quality condition. Dust jacket is as new also. The $20 price is not clipped. Author shows how to use Southwestern wild plants that can be had for the taking and turn them into delicious nutritious dishes. Amaranth granola cereal, jellied tumbleweed salad, cattail carrot cake ... just as native inhabitants of the Southwest relied on desert plants for nutrition over the centuries, modern Americans can enhance their diets with great tasting dishes created from plants found in their own or their city's backyard and prepared by modern cooking techniques. The akuthor has drawn on recent ethnobotanical research that demonstrates the wealth of nutritious food available for the taking in the wilderness. She shows how wild plants can be substituted for common ingredients to make familiar dishes more interesting and nutritious, and she introduces a number of exciting new recipes as well. All are written with modern utensils in mind: blenders, food processors, slow cookers, and the like. It is not necessary to go to a stream bed and pound mesquite beans with a twenty-pound pestle in a bedrock mortar. Just as ancient foods can fit into our modern cooking techniques, so also can they be incorporated into our modern dishes. Many of the recipes provided are meatless; others feature chicken, pork, and beef. Because many of these wild Southwestern plants can, in fact, be found throughout the West, this book offers everyone the opportunity to partake of a genuine American culinary tradition. The difference is delightful -- and nutritious. Contents in 27 Chapters: Prickly Pear, Saguaro, Barrel Cactus, Cholla, Acorns, Mesquite, Amaranth, Miner's Lettuce, Monkey Flower, Pepper Grass, Wild Mustard, Watercress, Tumbleweed, Poverty Weed, Cheese Weed, Purslane, Tepary Beans, Chiles, Corn, Pumpkins and Squash, Sunflowers, Buffalo Gourd, Cattails, Jojoba, Halophytes, Appendix, and About the Author.