Let’s take a trip into the desert with Kelly Athena, aka Cactus Kelly — a master gardener and urban forager who teaches classes year-round on how to collect ingredients most people think of as debris in their yards — and make nourishing food out of them.
She came into our studios recently and brought with her an array of goodies she harvested from trees you can find just about anywhere in the city to try.
She talked more about what’s ripe now, and where it all started for her — with her dad, when she was just a kid.
Full conversation
KELLY ATHENA: When I was 10 years old, he gave me a book called “Native American Uses of the Plants.” So, I read that, and after that, I had to know every single bird and plant that I could see in my yard and everywhere I went. And I was just kind of an amateur naturalist my whole life.
LAUREN GILGER: As a kid? That’s amazing. … So, you’ve been foraging for a long time, and there are certain seasons to this, it sounds like. So, let’s talk first about the season we’re in right now and what you might find on a tree literally in your backyard or on the street, where you can get these ingredients. What’s blooming right now?
KELLY ATHENA: Right now, in June, there’s mesquite beans. And most people see them as a problem like, "Oh, litter, and it’s in my pool, and, oh, what a hassle." But I say it’s not litter, it’s lunch. So, all those dried beige pods on the ground or on the tree are edible. Take a little inch of a bean and just suck on it and bite into it a little bit. Maroon—
Make sure if gives you a sweet pop. Usually within a minute you’ll go, "Ooh, wow, that’s like brown sugar." You want to try it?
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Oh, it is sweet.
KELLY ATHENA: Oh, already good.
LAUREN GILGER: Immediately sweet. Wow.
KELLY ATHENA: Good.
LAUREN GILGER: I could see brown sugar in that. That’s amazing. OK. So, I mean, obviously, there’s a long history of this, like generations of people from Indigenous communities here have been using mesquite for various things. How do you use it?
KELLY ATHENA: Right. The O’odham have been using it forever, at least 13,000 years … in the Sonoran Desert. How I use it, I read the book by Wendy Hodgson, "Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert," and that was based on interviews with a lot of the O’odham people. And so, I just got the basics from her, "Hey, these are good to eat. You can grind them into flour." And they did it with the metate y mano.
But I found a machine that is the perfect mesquite mill, so I can make about 10 pounds of flour in one hour. And it’s delicious. The actual seed is inside and like glued into the bean. You cannot open this bean like most beans.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, it doesn’t just pop out, right? … So, you, you grind up the whole thing, the pod and all, OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Right. And the little actual bean, you can see over there, it is like a little flax seed that can be golden or brownish, and that has the protein. And then, all the stuff in between has the fructose and the sucrose, which makes it really slow digestion so that you don’t get hit with a sugar spike. So, this is really our sugar of the desert. It has overtones of honey and cinnamon, even chocolate, like in our drink here. I roasted up some beans. … And then, I grind them up, and then I put them in hot water for 10 minutes. Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so it’s like a tea, almost like a coffee-looking drink here you’ve made me, and it’s delicious. It does sort of taste like a tea or a coffee, but it’s sweet, cinnamony.
KELLY ATHENA: Right. Most people think of the mesquite smoke that you barbecue things with, and that is a whole completely different flavor. And they’re just shocked when they try some flour and they found out I didn’t put any sugar in it. … It’s just the pure bean.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. And it’s and it’s so good for you. OK. So, that’s what’s blooming right now in June. You can get these mesquite beans everywhere. … We just went through palo verde season, and I think there were like two rounds of this this year, right?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, they came 30 days early. So, that is a big wow for me. In all the years I’ve been here, this is the first time I’ve seen them ready in April. So, they are what I call desert edamame. Because you can just take a pod, and some of them are onesies, some have two, some have five. Yeah. And you just tease them out with your teeth.
LAUREN GILGER: So, you’ve got like a green pod there, and there’s like a bean inside of it?
KELLY ATHENA: It tastes just like a pea out of the garden.
LAUREN GILGER: I got to try this.
KELLY ATHENA: So fresh. Yeah.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. Oh my gosh. It tastes like a pea. Like a fresh little, wow, that’s so good.
KELLY ATHENA: A fresh little pea, yeah, they were just picked in April. And then, I have to freeze them. This is the one you have to keep in the freezer because just like frozen peas, it will go bad at room temperature, they go hard. I love it this way. Sometimes I steam them or boil them a little bit. And I like to put quail bush or saltbush. It’s a type of saltbush on top.
LAUREN GILGER: It’s like in a salt shaker here. Let me try this.
KELLY ATHENA: Yeah, we got some green salt in a salt shaker, so it’s
LAUREN GILGER: What’s a quail bush?
KELLY ATHENA: A quail bush is a type of salt bush. It looks like a sagebrush out in the desert —
LAUREN GILGER: Oh my gosh, that does taste like salt.
KELLY ATHENA: It’s kind of hard to find them, but you just sprinkle that just like salt on these palo verde beans, and it just gives them some pop.
LAUREN GILGER: That’s a great flavor.
KELLY ATHENA: Yeah, I just love it. I’ve had kids coming to my class and all they’ll eat is the saltbush leaves.
LAUREN GILGER: … You can pickle these as well, I hear?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, you can. You can take them out of the pod. And if you blanch them or steam them, they’ll pop right out. And so, I’ve pickled them before. Like a Sonoran succotash where I have yucca flowers and ocotillo flowers and these beans and so on.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, look like a caper. I love that, OK. So, what’s next? What’s the next season we’re watching for as the summer carries on here? Are there other types of trees we should be watching for, you know, little treats from?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, definitely. The next one that’s ripe almost right now is the ironwood tree. And —
LAUREN GILGER: These are the ones with the kind of silvery pink flowers?
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, has gray bark or silver bark and very thorny if you get up close. You do not want to touch any twig or anything on that tree. … So, I wait until the beans are dried and dark brown like those.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, very dark brown, OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes, and then I put a tarp down and I tap the tree, either with a saguaro rib that I’ve gotten legally, or a pool pole. If it’s a tall tree, those extending pool poles … are lightweight and you can get them down. They’ll just rain down like hail. And usually, they only produce beans two out of three years, and they’ve produced for the last four years in a row. I think it’s like a mast year. There’s tons of them.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow. What do they taste like?
KELLY ATHENA: They taste like peanuts, soybeans, hazelnuts.
LAUREN GILGER: Let’s try this, OK.
KELLY ATHENA: Those are boiled. Okay. And then, the ones in the middle are actually the best. They’re air-fried.
LAUREN GILGER: Oh, it’s very nutty. … That’s a beautiful flavor.
KELLY ATHENA: You can actually boil them, put them in a blender, it’ll turn into a butter.
LAUREN GILGER: What do you like about this? Like, why do you think you’ve kind of created this whole world around it that you’ve I mean, you’ve you’ve dedicated your work to this?
KELLY ATHENA: Right. Right, and I have a master’s in piano performance. And, this is what I do. … And I have freckles in my fingers all the time. … Oh boy. It’s because I feel the most free in nature, just the connection with these wise beans, these trees. The ironwood can live over 1,000 years and they’re endemic to the Sonoran Desert.
And I just, I think because nature’s looks are so perfectly beautiful that it reflects back to me that hey, I’m part of nature and it makes me feel better about myself. … And I just like to help people get environmentally literate.
Like, most people don’t know the name of the tree in their front yard They go, "Well, I think it’s a mesquite, maybe. Maybe acacia, maybe I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it," you know?
… And they’re not just background props or something. They are our life. We each have to have eight trees in order for us to live. But it’s usually NIMBY — not in my backyard. The biggest thing that HOAs get calls about is, "Get that tree cut down. It’s dropping leaves and pods into my pool." And so, they do. They cut them down.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, and that breaks your heart, I’m guessing.
KELLY ATHENA: Yes. So, I just kind of guerrilla plant a few my own. … Oh, that came up. Oh —
LAUREN GILGER: That is Kelly Athena, aka Cactus Kelly, joining us to talk about foraging in the desert. She’s the founder of Cactus Kelly Urban Foraging Institute. She offers classes year round on foraging, a master gardener as well. Kelly, thank you so much for coming in and teaching me about this and letting me taste all this. It’s been amazing. Thank you.
KELLY ATHENA: Thank you so much, Lauren. It’s been fun.
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