The University of Arizona Press
Date: February 14, 2026
Time: 10 a.m., MST
Place: Tucson Botanical Gardens, 2150 North Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ
Carolyn Niethammer will talk about “Cactus, Corn, and Cattle: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary Heritage” at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. She will trace the big changes in diet in the Santa Cruz River Valley over the last 4,000 years. She recently received the 2025 Jim Griffith Foodways Keeper Award. Niethammer is the author of A Desert Feast: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary Heritage, which will be available for purchase and signing. The event is free with admission to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Space is limited, so please register online.
About the book:
Drawing on thousands of years of foodways, Tucson cuisine blends the influences of Indigenous, Mexican, mission-era Mediterranean, and ranch-style cowboy food traditions. This book offers a food pilgrimage, where stories and recipes demonstrate why the desert city of Tucson became American’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy.
Both family supper tables and the city’s trendiest restaurants feature native desert plants and innovative dishes incorporating ancient agricultural staples. Award-winning writer Carolyn Niethammer deliciously shows how the Sonoran Desert’s first farmers grew tasty crops that continue to influence Tucson menus and how the arrival of Roman Catholic missionaries, Spanish soldiers, and Chinese farmers influenced what Tucsonans ate.
