Fine Dining in the Desert? Yes.

​Doyle Wayman showed us how it is done at our September meeting.

Doyle knows a lot about native plants. He is an expert at foraging in the desert and spends a lot of time in the fall collecting native seeds.

Tasty bread can be made from flour produced by grinding honey mesquite pods with added juniper ash for aromatic flavoring. Some consider purselane an obnoxious weed that invades our carefully cultivated back yards but it makes a healthy salad green. Prickly pear cactus (nopoles) can be eaten in a salad or made into a healthy drink. If you are a hunter you can snare jackrabbit or quail, of course. And those are just a few foods that can be foraged in our local desert.

Doyle brought a variety of dishes for our members to sample. Here are a few, going clockwise from the top:

Prickly pear cactus salad with quail egg
Banana yucca seed pods
Honey mesquite bread with juniper ash flavoring
Purslane salad
Amaranth grain salad

You can find out more about Doyle and the important work he is doing for our environment by following him on Facebook. Visit Mojave Desert Native Plant Initiative and 321go Explore Foraging.​