The Garden Kitchen

 

Water collecting cistern at The Garden Kitchen- "A family in harmony will prosper in everything"

On Saturday, we returned to the Cooperative Extension element of our trip by visiting The Garden Kitchen, a weekly Saturday morning cooking demonstration given by agents at Pima County Cooperative Extension.  Each week of the year, the Garden Kitchen offers a 60 to 90 minute cooking demonstration, each one featuring different ingredients, cooking styles, or recipes.  On this day, the theme was rice.  We started by trying 8 different rices, each of which had been steamed, in order to get a sense of the different tastes and textures each offered.  I was amazed by how different one was from the next; some were very sticky, others were loose; some were soft, others were hard, and some were sort of gummy.  Of course, it turned out there were reasons for the different textures.  For instance, rices with a lot of amylose, an unblanched form of starch are not sticky, but those with a lot of amylopectin, a blanched starch, are sticky.  These characteristics help determine what type of cooking style each rice is best suited for. 

After trying each type, the main part of the demonstration started.  The agent showed us how to make three different dishes- rice pilaf, coconut forbidden rice pudding, and risotto.  It was especially interesting to see the risotto being made.  After seeing many cooking show contestants fail at making risotto, I always assumed it was incredibly difficult, however we were told it is very simple, it just demands nearly constant stirring in order to get the proper texture.  Contestants and home chefs alike who try to cook risotto while doing another dish or two almost always fail by not achieving the proper texture. 

Our chef for the morning, stirring the risotto as she taught

The most interesting part of the cooking demonstration came after it finished.  We had a brief tour of the location, a former privately owned restaurant that is now owned by Pima County.  Apparently after the restaurant closed, the local branch of the Hells Angels had tried to buy the restaurant in order to establish a local headquarters.  The county decided to purchase the building and grounds in order to prevent this, but it took several years before they decided how they would use the property.  Eventually Pima County Cooperative Extension proposed the Kitchen Garden program we saw and took over control of the building.  They created a raised bed garden on the grounds, in which they grow vegetables and herbs for use in the kitchen.  The demonstration we saw was the first of the year on their summer schedule- a 60 minute class starting at 10 am.  During fall and winter when it is cooler, they hold a 90 minute class starting at 11 am.  There were about 35 people in attendance for our class and they said they have as many as 50-60 for some classes. 

After lunch, we had two speakers who offered pretty different perspectives on border and immigration issues.  The first was Ken Kennon of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson who spoke about what is called the Sanctuary Movement.  In 1980, a group of 35 Salvadorians were caught crossing the border in Pima County, Arizona.  The group sought asylum from a country that was frought with war at the time.  Someone within the Pima County sheriff's office contacted the church and each refugee was placed with a church family to avoid deportation.  Ken said he was drawn to help the refugees because he had recently lost a 23 year old son in an accident and wanted to help families who were losing their children to violence.  By 1985, approximately 60 churches were offering sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala in a similar manner.  11 of the 60 were put on trial in November of 1985, and 8 were found guilty of harboring and assisting illegal aliens, however by the end of the trial 600 churches now declared themselves as sanctuaries.  A later case, American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh was filed against the U.S. attorney general.  When it was settled in 1991, many of the 500,000 refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala who were originally denied asylum were now given the opportunity to seek asylum in the U.S.  Ken later helped start BorderLinks, the organization that hosted our group and facilitated our tour. 

Our next speaker was Mike Wilson from the Tohono O'odham Indian tribe.  The Tohono O'odham nation is split by the U.S.-Mexico border, and many immigrants will go through tribal land attempting to cross the border.  While many activist groups such as No More Deaths place water in areas where migrants travel, they are not allowed on tribal land.  Mike has taken up placing water throughout the tribal lands for migrants desperate for water as they cross.  While some within the tribe support Mike, others feel that his water stations attract migrants and thus have taken to shooting or slashing the barrels.  Mike argued that the migrants were passing through the land before he started putting out water for them and that by giving them water he is not only helping the migrants, but saving the tribe from incurring medical bills due to treatment of injured or dying migrants captured on their land. 

Both speakers were impressive to me because of the compassion they showed for the migrants they encountered.  Neither had sought out this cause, they just found themselves in a position where they had to make a choice and chose to show compassion for people in need.  When we hear immigration discussed in the news media, we often simply hear only numbers and facts as they are used to support the argument of one side or the other.  We don't hear the human stories that give this issue its true depth.  It was nice to hear two people speak about the issue in compassionate, humane terms.

Flautas de pollo at Casa Mariposa

For dinner that night, we attended a fundraiser at Casa Mariposa, a house that offers temporary shelter to migrant families in need.  Currently, a Honduran family was staying at the house.  Several members of the family were apprehended by border patrol, however the women and children were released (by released, they were dropped at the nearest Greyhound station) while the men remain in detention awaiting a deportation hearing.  Since it could be several months before the hearing is held, and the men may or may not end up being deported, the Casa Mariposa fundraiser was to help raise enough money to pay the first month's rent at a house or apartment for the family.  The family cooked a nice dinner for us, flautas de pollo (pollo being chicken and flautas being a sort of slender taco shell).