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Bisbee,
Arizona news, reviews, art, events, history, business and entertainment
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We've already checked in with Valerie McCaffery, spokesperson for the Market. She says it's going to be a light day today. Everybody's gearing up for next week when the first Cochise County Solar Cook-off takes place out here on the summer solstice.
Great date for a solar cook-off. Valerie says contestants from all over the county will be showing up with all sorts of solar rigs, homemade and commercial. Valerie is a veteran solar chef herself, she says. We have a photo of her whipping up a stew on the high temperature solar oven her husband built twenty-five years ago. She uses the oven every day, she says. Her husband is a retired Navy meteorologist. So... they really can predict the weather, we think. They're just not telling us. Or - get it! - maybe they can make the weather. Our old friend Fred Brown used to quote Charles Manson all the time with a big, crazy-eyed look on his face: Total paranoia is total awareness. And we'd start laughing, but look around and underneath things. Valerie told another friend of ours that she couldn't understand why everybody in a place like southern Arizona didn't cook with solar energy. The climate is perfect for it. "What if you want to eat at night? sez our friend.
We amble over to the stand of a pleasant looking lady under an Ash tree. Name's Alice - the lady, not the tree. What do we have going on here? "What we have here are products from Cochise County," she says. "I have mesquite and Old Bisbee Roasters' coffee - roasted early this morning - and Lizard Acres Sonoran Desert honey, and Lasan tea...."
"No artificial flavors," says a woman who has just walked up to the stand, pointing at the tea. "No artificial Flavors. That's the real stuff!" "So what do you do with this?" we ask, hefting a red, pound bag of "Select Mesquite Pod Meal." Hmmm, pods. The pod people.... "Use it as a flour or you can use it as a condiment. I bake with it, throw it in my oatmeal in the morning as a sweetener...." "Okay. What about the tea?" She whips out a couple pages about the Lasan tea. It's grown in South Africa. We barely have to wonder how it gets to be a Cochise County product as Alice details the good things this stuff can do for you. Two different kinds: Rooibas and Honeybush. Sounds South African, all right. Just then a little girl walks up, picks out a couple of thin plastic tubes of Lizard Acres raspberry and root beer honey. "I'm making lots of money," the little girl says, and forks over a bill for the honey.
Kathryn is eight and a half. She sells wreaths made out of Rosemary. She says it's spelled K-a-t-h-r-y-n and skips off with her stuff. Another Norman Rockwell moment, folks. The day is warming up and the crowd - gathering and dispersing under the various shady canopies - is getting bigger. People are buying food and drinks from the refreshment vendors and sitting at tables under a copse of cedars in the center of the park. People are passing by with bags of stuff, with new bangles on, with that 'looking for more stuff' look about them. We see somebody holding up a hanging gourd planter. Way to go, Dennis and Becky. Continued
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"This
is Kathryn, probably our youngest vendor," sez Alice, the pod
lady.
