In the Eastlake neighborhood just east of Downtown Phoenix, neighbors have been gathering for something unique: workshops that strive to reclaim the community’s health, cooked up alongside a few unfamiliar vegetables.
At the helm is a pop-up food business run by Bailey Spears and Frank Covarrubias called JUNTOS, taking its name from the Spanish word for together and founded on a deep respect for the food traditions of the Sonoran Desert. Their menus shift with the seasons, filled with food sourced from local farmers and ranchers, such as a Moon River Beef skirt steak torta on telera bread with chiltepin mayo and fresh verdolagas—also known as purslane, which grows as a weed in Arizona but is incredibly nutritious. Another hit is a tamal filled with roasted jalapeño rajas and quesillo, topped with mole rojo, roasted pepitas and pickled red onions—innovative food that is deeply rooted in tradition.
When Bailey and Frank started hosting community workshops, the goal was simple: gather, cook, discuss real foods and eat well. Yet through the three-part series, something bigger happened: People started reconnecting—with ingredients that came from the world around them, with memories of foods their grandparents served and with each other. The crowds came hoping to learn how to eat healthier, incorporate more vegetables into their cooking or stretch their grocery budgets, but quickly realized food has much more to offer than calories, if approached the way that JUNTOS represents.
The world around us is full of food, not despite but because it is the desert. The desert is surprisingly full of food. Take the prickly pear cactus you’ve passed in so many yards: It’s not only edible, it’s good.
Meet Nopales
“If we’re going to run a food business in Arizona, why wouldn’t we use what grows here?” –Bailey Spears
If you have never eaten nopales (the young green pads of the prickly pear cactus), you are not alone. They grow all over the Valley, but unless you have had a family member who has prepared them, you might not recognize them as food. Yet they have fed Indigenous peoples of the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years and are a staple food in Northern Mexico.
JUNTOS uses them in salads, on tostadas, even in tortas. Frank jokes that you can sprinkle them on anything. The flavor is tangy and tender, like a cross between green beans and okra with a limey desert twist, and they are packed with fiber, minerals, including calcium and magnesium, and blood-sugar-balancing benefits.
In fact, nopales have been used as a folk remedy to regulate blood sugar and cholesterol—benefits linked to the mucilage, a gel-like substance that helps the prickly pear plant retain moisture. Modern scientific studies have confirmed the value of these traditional uses. Plus, all this flavor and nutrition is only 14 calories per cup.
Not only are nopales packed with taste and healthful benefits, but as a desert-adapted plant they grow with little effort and almost no water, even in poor soils and high temperatures. They offer a potential food source for Arizona that is sustainable and resilient in the face of water and climate uncertainty.
Bailey says JUNTOS was not chasing trends or being high-minded choosing ingredients like nopales, it was obvious. “If we’re going to run a food business in Arizona,” she says, “why wouldn’t we use what grows here?”
And using what grows here makes for food that nourishes our bodies, supports our communities, protects our planet, conserves our water, roots us in place—and tastes delicious.
How It Started
Frank and Bailey met in 2022 in a Phoenix entrepreneurship program through Thrive Consultancy that focused on cooperative food businesses. They clicked right away. Not only did they have friends in common, but they both wanted to cook good food that felt connected to place and people.
Both grew up in Phoenix. Always included in the family’s cooking, Bailey, who is Native Hawaiian and Japanese, remembers Thanksgiving food roasted all day in a traditional Hawaiian underground pit called an imu, built with volcano rocks from Flagstaff. The food was wrapped with palm leaves from her grandparents’ yard that imparted an almost fruity taste. Frank also had an earth-cooked food he loved: fruit-filled, rustic empanadas baked in a mud pit, with a special smoky-sweetness. Learning techniques from his mother that had been refined over generations, Frank first became interested in cooking to connect with his ancestors, who came from Pénjamo, Guanajuato, in Central Mexico.
Their families shaped the way they think about food: not just as nourishment, but as something cultural, seasonal and shared. Something based in place and tradition.
After graduating from the Local First Arizona Good Food Boot Camp, they joined the nonprofit’s community kitchen incubator program, which offers entrepreneurs support and low-cost kitchen space, and began popping up at events around town. Quickly building a following, they earned a Slow Food Phoenix Snail of Approval award for their food that fits the Slow Food standard of “good, clean and fair food for all.”
JUNTOS garnered a reputation for their thoughtful sourcing and creative displays of Sonoran flavors as well as their willingness to teach.
The workshops they hosted were not about showing off; they were about sharing knowledge. At the first session, they handed out tepary bean seeds. At the second, dried tepary beans. At the third, they cooked a dish with tepary beans. It wasn’t just learning one recipe; instead, workshop participants had the ingredients to improvise and the seeds to grow the food themselves.
Food access was front of mind. JUNTOS provided maps that, like the Good Food Finder Directory, show residents where to find nearby CSAs or markets that accept SNAP. “It wasn’t just about feeding people for one night,” Bailey said. “It was about giving people tools to feed themselves and showing them the foods that Arizona has to offer.”
So, How Do You Cook with Nopales?
Start with young, tender pads. You can forage the new growths from prickly pear plants in spring and summer, or you can buy them from a local farm like TJ Farms, which sells at farmers markets around the Valley.
If you’re harvesting them yourself (use tongs and gloves!), scrape off the spines, hold the pads under a bright light to double-check your spine-removal work, rinse well and slice them.
Like many traditional ingredients, nopales come with a learning curve. When chopped, they release a slippery sap that some people find off-putting—but it is this slime that helps the prickly pear cactus maintain moisture and survive with little water, and it’s what comprises the fiber and blood-sugar-balancing benefits.
Frank’s method is simple: Dice them, boil with onion and salt, then strain and grill until the goo is mostly gone and they’re tender. He emphasizes that being heavy-handed with the salt will help remove slime. He recommends grilling to add a charred sweetness and tone down the acidity. You can also sauté them with eggs, pickle them or fold them into tacos. Like any new ingredient, it takes a little trial and error—but it’s worth it.
What’s Next for JUNTOS
We all can learn from JUNTOS about relearning how to eat based on place and what the world around us offers. The desert is delicious.
And it is not something that we should, or can, do alone. Just like their name, JUNTOS, we have to do it together.
JUNTOS is still cooking. They offer catering and occasional pop-up dinners and have plans to launch supper-club-style events with limited seats and multi-course menus that dive deeper into the ingredients, traditions and stories behind each dish. They want these meals to feel intimate and celebratory, with a little bit of learning sprinkled in.
They’re also working to expand their free and low-cost workshops—especially for those who receive nutrition assistance, thanks to grants from the Kroger Foundation and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.
Follow the JUNTOS journey on Instagram at @juntosphx or reach out by email at [email protected] to inquire about catering or upcoming events.
Learn more about nopales and other foods that grow sustainably in Arizona, like white Sonora wheat and tepary beans, in our series “The Desert is Delicious” on GoodFoodFinderAZ.com.
