On the first weekend of August, a jovial group gathers in a tiled, equipment-filled Ahwatukee kitchen, leaning close around a table packed with things to see. They have come for a mesquite-milling workshop led by Kelly Athena, also known as “Cactus Kelly,” a woman whose energy fills the space even before she begins.
For the Phoenicians who choose to spend their Saturday afternoon learning about foraging, there is an unspoken bond: They are seekers and believers in the abundance offered by the desert, if you know just where to look. Something magical sparks when they come together to learn how to live off the land.
Cactus Kelly begins by explaining the life cycle of mesquite: from shaggy, yellow-tinged tassels of catkins to the ripening long pods that change from green to golden. We will taste them all. She shares samples of velvet, honey and screwbean mesquite pods, each cracking with its own surprisingly sweet flavor. The screwbean, twisted tightly in a corkscrew, tastes like earthy, wholesome Honey Nut Cheerios. I grab another handful.
Meet Cactus Kelly
As the pods circulate, Kelly shares how she became a harvester of the desert.
She is bouncy, passionate and mostly self-taught, having learned from books like Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson and Medicinal Plants of the American Southwest by Charles W. Kane. Local Paipai tribal member Mark Lewis mentored Kelly as she began her foraging journey and Velvet Button, of the Akimel O’odham community, befriended her and showed her traditional ways of harvesting.
Growing up in Northern California, her father gifted her an ethnobotany book that became her roadmap to the living world around her. When she moved to Arizona in the 1980s, she was determined to gain the same understanding of the desert.
A turning point came while teaching Sunday School. The curriculum asked her to display vivid images of hell for the children, but she could not reconcile the depictions with her own experience. Instead, she led the kids outside to a mesquite tree. “Look at this,” she told them. “God loves you. Nature loves you. Look how it provides: Everything around you is food.”
For Kelly, that was the moment everything clicked. Pulling mesquite pods off the trees, the children were delighted by their taste. “A mesquite tree is worth a million sermons,” she says now, and clearly she believes it.
Today, Kelly dyes her hair pink with prickly pear fruit for the Prickly Pear Festival in Superior and sells mesquite and cactus ingredients to chefs like Tamara Stanger and restaurants like Kai. Having grown her food business through Local First Arizona’s community kitchen incubator program, she now leads milling and foraging workshops throughout the Valley. She is one of Arizona’s most enthusiastic advocates for the bounty of our often-overlooked desert pantry.
An ancient staple
Mesquite was a foundational staple food for Indigenous peoples of the Sonoran Desert for over eight millennia. They ground the pods into flour for cakes that stayed good for over a year.
No two mesquite trees taste alike and Tohono O’odham families returned to their favorite trees year after year, harvesting the sweet pods and pounding them in stone mortars carved into desert bedrock, which you can still find pocking rock formations across Southern Arizona.
Yet by the mid-20th century mesquite had nearly disappeared from kitchens. Knowledge of how to process and prepare it faded as elders passed away and younger generations turned to store-bought flour and sugar. The change in diet did not benefit Native populations.
In the 1980s, researchers studying the increase of diabetes in the Tohono O’odham Nation discovered that mesquite pods contained gums and fibers that help stabilize blood sugar. That finding dovetailed with a growing interest in reconnecting with desert foods to propel the resurgence of mesquite.
Today, mesquite appears on restaurant menus beyond its traditional role as a smoking wood. It is now featured as a standalone ingredient in dishes like mesquite miso chocolate chunk cookies, mesquite flan and mesquite chai lattes at Valentine, as well as in products such as Oatman Farms’ mesquite pancake mix or Monsoon Chocolate’s mesquite white chocolate bars.
Nevertheless, mesquite flour is not exactly easy to obtain as it is seasonal, and the milling requires special equipment. In 2003, Desert Harvesters, a grassroots group in Tucson, published the manifesto and cookbook Eat Mesquite, later revised as Eat Mesquite and More. They hosted public millings, which invited community members to bring their own foraged harvests to be made into flour using shared equipment—a tradition Kelly now continues.
Befriending mesquite
Back at the workshop, Kelly pours us cups of freshly brewed dark-roasted mesquite tea. The flavor is shocking: chocolatey, yet smoky and sweet, evoking Mexican hot chocolate. Mesquite, she explains, always surprises.
Next comes the hands-on segment: Kelly fills a pillowcase with mesquite pods, places it on the floor and invites us to stomp. Laughing, we snap the beans underfoot, the first step toward releasing their flour. Kelly tells us we’re transforming the ubiquitous mid-summer mesquite pods that snap, crackle and pop under tires and tennis shoes “from litter into lunch.”
We gather around her small home mill, watching it produce a golden powder after a 10-second grind. We sift the flour by hand or electric sifter and return the dry pulp to the machine for another grinding before it is ready to take home.
Kelly can make 10 pounds of flour in one hour with her mill and electric sifter. Her process yields one-half to two-thirds of a pound of powder for every pound of beans, which is very high compared to other methods. It makes all the work of harvesting beans even more worthwhile.
She explains that milling mesquite isn’t simple: Pods hide tiny, flaxseed-like brown seeds that are incredibly hard—so hard they have been found in fossilized remains of mammoths, mastodons and giant sloths. Breaking open the protein-rich seeds requires a hammermill or a strong metal grinder.
While those seeds provide protein, the mesquite’s sweetness does not come from sugar, but rather the mesocarp, the “filling” the pod contains between the outside and the bean. Processed properly, the beige to golden brown-flecked powder is a nutritional powerhouse: gluten-free, low glycemic, high in soluble fiber and minerals.
Desert flavor
The appeal of mesquite is as much about taste as it is about history.
The flour tastes like Cheerios dust, but more complex, layered with caramel, chocolate and cinnamon. Kelly professes that when she opens her pantry door the immediate sweet aroma of the beans stored there can stop her in her tracks.
Mesquite flour also contains calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc and a balance of amino acids that make it one of the rare plant foods that is a complete protein. Moreover, it lends an earthy sweetness to foods without adding sugar, as the sweetness comes from fructose, which the body can process without insulin, making it an excellent choice for those concerned with blood sugar.
No wonder Indigenous peoples built entire food systems around this hardy, drought-resistant tree.
A forgotten food, revived
Once we have packed up or purchased bags of mesquite flour to take home, we gather around the stove for a final snack. Kelly presents olive-oil-fried mesquite catkins with a sprinkle of salt. Light and crunchy, they are like earthy tempura. In the same pan, she heats up ironwood beans, which taste uncannily like fresh peanuts. Around the kitchen, eyes widen and heads nod.
Eating food that has sustained life in the desert for millennia is both grounding and humbling. These plants have survived centuries of drought and flood, fire and frost, long before Arizona carried its name.
Kelly encourages us to try mesquite at home and reminds us not to overcomplicate it. “Start simple,” she says. “Sprinkle the powder on rice, veggies or oatmeal, or blend it into a smoothie. It’s a desert-grown, gluten-free protein boost hiding in plain sight.”
In fact, she tells me her own all-time favorite preparation is the simplest: mesquite flour sprinkled over basmati rice with olive oil and salt. “Pure desert elegance,” she calls it, and I must agree: It’s shockingly easy, but rich, complex and absolutely delicious.
Kelly says, “In Phoenix, mesquite is everywhere. You might as well befriend it—watch it, learn from it—and before long, you just might fall in love.”
A gateway food
The mesquite trees I pass on my drive home look different now—no longer messy, but miraculous. Their branches and beans hold stories of survival, nourishment and abundance. To see them through Kelly’s eyes is to glimpse a food system that has always been here, waiting for us to notice. I say a silent thanks to mesquite, a “gateway food” that can reconnect people with the desert’s edible abundance.
Learn more
Cactus Kelly leads monthly foraging classes and harvest events across the Valley, including a foraging walk on November 30 and a mesquite milling demonstration on January 11 in Ahwatukee. She also sells mesquite flour, roasted brews and many other foods of the desert.
Find her at cactuskelly.com, on Instagram @cactus.kelly, Facebook.com/cactuskelly or email [email protected].
