♪ mandolin ♪ add bass (helicopter rotor noise) ♪ [Brandy Yanchyk] I'm a journalist and I'm traveling across the United States of America.

On this journey I'll be visiting some iconic American experiences.

My next stop is Arizona.

♪ ♪ drums I've come to Arizona, when people think of the state, they think of the Grand Canyon and the desert landscape.

On my trip, I'll be traveling to different cities.

I'll be checking out the foodie scene and meeting some of the interesting people who live here.

My first stop is the city of Phoenix, which is the capital of the state of Arizona.

I love plants and I love gardening.

So while I'm in Arizona, I had to come to the Desert Botanical Garden.

I'm with horticulturalist Ray Leimkuehler.

Can you tell me a little bit about the plant center here and how they survive in this hot sun?

Well, probably what's most unique about these plants here in the Sonoran Desert really make them stand out is their ability to either save water for lean times or to avoid the use of water altogether.

With this saguaro and the prickly pear that you see here, they're doing these things and they're saving water in their pads, and their tissue, in between raining events.

In the Palo Verde over here has these really small leaves that give them a small leaf surface so that they're not evaporating all this water out in between the rainy seasons.

Now, let me ask you about what this, this contraption is.

What are we doing here?

This is a replica of a traditional saguaro harvest pole.

This is what native peoples in our area and down farther south in the U.S. Mexico border would use to reach these fruits that are way up on the tops of this saguaro.

You'll only find the fruits of the saguaro just at the tops of the arms.

Okay.

Can I try it?

Yeah, go for it.

Okay.

Whoa!

It's hard here, Ray.

(grunts) (laughs) Look at that!

I woulda got the fruit.

I'm gonna just rest this gently here.

Thank you so much Ray.

Imagine doing that in late June when its really high temperatures, 112,114 degrees.

Well, these plants are just incredible.

[Ray] So I wanted to show you this plant right here, Brandy.

This one here, this is a mesquite tree.

It's one of our native trees here in the Sonoran Desert.

This is the kind of tree that you'd find near the rivers or in the floodplains or in some of the drainages.

They need just a little bit more water than some of our other desert trees.

And in the spring, they'll get these flowers.

These little catkin flowers, they almost look like golden cattails.

And if those flowers get pollinated, they'll turn into these right here.

These are mesquite beans.

And native peoples in our area used to and still do can grind this up for the flour.

And with that flour, you can make different types of biscuits, cookies, gruels, this sort of thing.

And what they would do is you take your mesquite beans and you'd put them on the grinder.

This is a metate.

And then you could take either some type of grinding stick or a stone and you can start to work these down and mash them up.

And after a while, you'll start to get some of this nice, pale flour that you can see developing at the bottom.

Wow.

Can I try?

Yeah, go for it.

Oh, I see you need two hands; you gotta get really aggressive here.

Break these down.

Ray, this would take a long time to get through all of this.

And what you're looking for is this sort of flour at the bottom.

You said, right?

[Ray] Yeah.

It makes this nice, pale flour.

And this is naturally semi-sweet.

You can buy this type of flour in the store in some venues here in the Southwest.

Yum!

Yes.

Let me take you to the next stop.

[RAy] So this is our prickly pear and this kind of gives you an example of what the fruit might look like and I actually brought along some prickly pear syrup.

Oh fun!

And this comes from the fruit?

Yeah, this comes from the fruit.

Wow.

Now, may I join you in this?

You got a lot.

Yep.

Mmm, it's really good.

Taste that natural sweetness?

Mmm.

It's very fruity, yeah.

Yeah.

It's surprisingly good.

How fun!

And when can you pick these fruits off?

They vary by species, but they would be ready on the end of summer.

Towards the very beginning of fall, depending on the plant.

Beautiful.

Well, what a fun experience I've had here.

Thank you so much, Ray.

And now I know what new ingredients I can put on my pancakes.

You're welcome.

Thanks for coming.

♪ Next, I traveled four miles to the city of Scottsdale.

This pretty place is well known for its resorts and golf courses.

♪ When you come to Scottsdale, there are so many great places that you can have a meal.

And I've come to Lon's Restaurant, which is at the Hermosa Inn.

I'm with Jeremy Pacheco.

He's a chef here.

Your family has been living in Arizona for how many generations?

Nine generations.

Nine generations!

And what what is their background?

My family came from Spain with the conquistadors and came up through Mexico and settled in Arizona and Tubac and Tucson.

Tell me a bit about the ingredients in front of us.

So we've got lamb sausage we make here in-house, acorn squash from a farm in Peoria and baby kale coming from the same farm.

And we're going to also make a ricotta gnocchi.

We're going to use local durum flour in the gnocchi today.

[Brandy] And what is gnocchi?

[Jeremy] Gnocchi is an Italian dumpling.

Okay.

We're going to start with making the gnocchi here.

You can start by placing the ricotta cheese in the bowl here.

Do I use this?

Yeah.

OK... ricotta cheese right here.

And should I just put all of it in?

Yeah.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

We're going to add some Parmesan cheese.

We're going to crack two eggs in there.

That's gonna be scary.

(laugh) I won't put the shell in, I promise!

Okay, here's this other egg here.

How a pro does it.

(laugh together) And if you wanna get the spatula and start mixing everything together.

So now we're going to add the local durum flour to this.

OK. How'm I doing with the mixing here?

Good!

It's not easy.

I don't want to make a mistake.

Incorporate a little more and then I'll take over.

OK. OK.

So what are we going to do with this?

What are we looking at here?

So we are going to kind of gently knead it together.

We don't want to overwork the dough.

OK. We're gonna get a little more flour into it here.

Can I go in?

Yup.

Oh, my goodness.

OK...

Here, I'll help you out.

It's sort of sticking to my hands.

Yeah.

It gets a little messy.

So we're gonna scrape it together here... ...and we just want to coat it in flour and that'll make it easier to work with at this point.

Cut a small section of that dough out, gently roll it back and forth.

Yes.

This looks so good.

I know I'm not gonna be as good as you.

I'm gonna try my best.

I can at least try this part first.

Yeah, you can cut it.

Okay, is that too big or not?

No, it's perfect.

So now we are going to start our lamb sausage here.

So we're just gonna render it.

Cook it.

So it's raw right now.

We want them to float.

And then I'm gonna let 'em cook just a little bit beyond that to really set.

Our sausage is almost cooked and we're heatin' up the squash.

So now we're gonna add some of this baby kale.

Toss that a little bit.

Just lightly wilt the kale.

We really don't need to season this recipe much because we've got the seasoning coming from the sausage.

And then we're going to finish with this black pepper feta.

It's got that nice salty brininess and the pepper mixed into it already so we've got most of seasonings coming from the ingredients we're already using.

[Brandy] Oh, that's interesting.

[Jeremy] We're going to remove the gnocchi from the water and add them to the pan.

So the last thing we're gonna do is we're going to add the black pepper feta to this.

Oh, this looks so good.

I want to taste it!

All right.

Let's do it.

Thank you.

What should I be grabbing here?

Try and get a little of everything in one bite.

Look at that!

Nice.

I'm gonna get some kale there, too.

Mmm, mmm.

Is that good?

I love the kale and I love the squash.

You know, it's funny cause it's light.

I thought it would be like really heavy because you say sausage.

But it's not.

And it's just...

I can imagine, it's very filling.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely hearty.

But it's not gonna... put you down for a nap.

No, no and you know what?

I love the gnocchi.

This sounds like such a fun thing to try and make at home.

So I really appreciate you teaching me this.

And this has just been so much fun.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thanks for joining me.

I headed north for one hundred and fifty miles to reach my next destination, Flagstaff.

The city is surrounded by mountains, desert and ponderosa pine forests.

The famous Route-6 runs directly through the city.

♪ ♪ I've come to Flagstaff, Arizona, and I really wanted to meet a local artist here, and I'm with George Everback.

He's a glassblower.

He's been here since the nineteen seventies.

Tell me a little bit about the work that you do.

How would you describe it?

[George] I'm a functional glassblower.

For the most part, I make tumblers, wine glasses, shot glasses.

I make a lot of ornaments.

Today, we're gonna do a moon ball is what we call 'em.

Fifty years ago, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

When I came here , I learned all about how every Apollo astronaut had come to Flagstaff to train.

[Brandy] Wow.

OK, well, let's get right to it.

I wanna make one of these moon balls.

[George] See what I'm doin'?

I'm gathering and I' rolling up some of the materia.

It sits in there.

It's just a crucible full of hot glass.

It's like a five gallon bucket of two thousand degree molten glass.

We're going to start applying the powder and the different colors over here.

I'm gonna do two or three times in each color.

(furnace roaring) Now, I just put a light, sprinkle of those black on there, little black specks.

You know, black glass is actually purple glass.

It's just very, very, very dark.

(torch roaring) [George] Stay right there.

Just roll along.

[Brandy] Hey, look at that.

[George] Those are all rolled up on there.

And now, pull it off.

There's the bottom of the moon, OK?

So what I'm doin', I'm makin' sure all the craters are... pretty much flattened out.

And adhering in certain spots.

This one looks busy.

It's good.

The moon has a lot of craters.

Alright.

[George] Not real hard.

Just blow lightly.

All right.

We're just about there.

I like this one!

You did a good job.

Thank you.

[George] This is silica fiber.

(metallic tapping) So, here we go.

Jeremy's bringin' me the hook.

[Brandy] Oh yeah, you gotta move fast!

♪ There's our little hook so you'll be able to hang this ornament in your living room, in your kitchen or wherever you want.

This is so good George, I love it!

It's beautiful!

So wonderful.

Thanks for helpin' me.

♪ I continued my journey by driving thirty miles south to a small desert city called Sedona.

The massive red rock formations give this place a magical feeling.

I'm here in magnificent Red Rock Country.

This is the Coconino National Forest.

It's one of the most diverse forests in the country.

And I'm with Lea Epperson.

She's a guide here.

Tell me what we're gonna do in this Jeep?

We're gonna go see some amazing red rocks.

We're gonna go watch an incredible sunset which is one of my favorite things to do here is watch the sunsets up against these red rocks.

And why do you take people out in these sort of vehicles that have a lot of oomph to them?

We're drivin' on lava rock.

We're doing what Jeeps do.

We're takin' you out and getting out of the city and getting out here into the back canyons.

Wonderful.

OK, let's go.

Awright!

(engine roars) ♪ [Lea] A small rock formation here is called Chimney Rock.

We get a little further, it looks like like one stack.

Then this is part of Thunder Mountain here.

(gravel crunching) Wow.

[Lea] All right.

We're lookin' at beautiful Bear Mountain here.

Three hundred and thirty million years ago, this was under the ocean.

And we're at the base of the Colorado Plateau, which covers part of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico.

The Colorado Plateau is the second largest plateau in the world.

Water's been running off of the plateau for millions of years, shaping all of this beautiful sandstone red rock country.

[Brandy] I love how it's sort of... is in the distance, almost like distant castles.

And then it comes closer and closer to you.

It's just amazing.

OK. Let's get back in that jeep before the sun goes down.

I wanna see more!

Let's go!

♪ [Lea] All right, I just wanted you to see this last orange glow of the night.

The Sedona sunset, which make us so popular around the whole world, people come here from all over the world just to watch the sunsets and it never disappoints.

It's beautiful.

But I love the sound of the forest too, all the... bugs and maybe the birds talkin' to each other.

[Lea] Ah yeah, it's a good place.

Definitely, it's a great way to end the day out here.

Thank you Lea, for taking me on a tour.

I know you had a lot of tourists today and I got to see the last one.

So thank you.

You are welcome.

My next stop is the city of Tucson, which is surrounded by multiple mountain ranges.

I drove south two hundred and thirty miles to get there.

♪ country acoustic guitar One of the really interesting things about being here in Tucson is that the local community really gets behind its local producers.

When you come to Barrio Bread, you can meet Don Guerra.

He is a artisan bread maker and people literally line up to get his bread and fight over it, when it comes out fresh.

Don, why do you think the community is so interested in your bread?

Well, I think it's, it's about the health and nutrition of the bread.

The style of bread-making is called "Levain".

So it's a French method of sourdough, bread-making that has a wild yeast and bacterial cultures that leaven the bread.

So sourdough, long periods of time, up to twenty-four hours and through that twenty-four hours, there is a creation of enzymes break down starches and proteins.

And so that creates a bread that's low glycemic and low gluten.

So the taste is great and it's good for the body, but it's also heightened by the use of local grains.

And tell me what "artisan" means?

Artisan, the term really means that it's handcrafted on a smaller scale and by someone that's mindful, that understands the nuances of their, their process.

Wow.

It's so fascinating.

And can you give me a sense like a grocery list of how many breads you have?

Oh, you know, right now I have about thirty- five breads in the collection.

So it's always growing.

But I love to make a bread for everyone.

So I have a rotating menu and everyone finds their favorite day to come.

Today, we're going to make my signature whole- wheat sourdough.

It's called the Heritage, which is the first bread I crafted off local grains from here in Tucson.

The ingredients, flour, water and salt.

Okay.

So we have two different types of flour here.

We have salt.

We have water.

But what's in these containers?

In the cups are the sourdough culture, the levain.

And the levain is a flour / water mixture that's been inoculated with wild yeast and bacterial cultures.

So this will leaven our bread.

Let's get right into it.

Let's do it.

[Don] First we're gonna add the water and then pick up this container, which is two hundred grams of sourdough culture.

I'm going to pull it right on top of the water.

[Brandy] Okay, all right, hold on and I can take it all out.

Right?

This is fun.

No wonder you like your job so much.

It's very tactile.

So just stirring with our hand.

Little mix.

So next, let's go in with our flours.

OK. One... then the other.

So the last component right here, the salt, we'll just sprinkle it right on top.

Anywhere is fine.

OK?

Okay you ready?

This is the fun part.

This is where you get your hands dirty.

So what you want to do is just put your hands in and squeeze.

So let's keep goin'.

Let's dive in, let's get rough with it right here.

So after the dough is mixed and kneaded, we're gonna leave it for about four hours.

Every hour on the hour we're going to give it a stretch and fold.

So there is some time investment.

You do have to kind of be with it.

It is like a little baby right now.

We wanna take care of it.

OK.

The next step of the process is we're going to scale the dough.

You can see the dough has inflated quite a bit.

Look at that dough.

Here we are.

Let's put it on the scale.

Let's cover 'em up and let'm rest for a little while.

Here you go, put a towel over the top.

Time to go to bed, time to rest.

Whoa!

See how they're nicely risen, they're grown almost twice their size.

Yes.

Excellent.

So we want to be gentle at this step.

Sides, top, bottom and then roll it back.

Seam is on top, into the baskets.

Go on our rack here.

You leave 'em in there for about sixteen hours overnight.

Let's go rest.

Bring 'em out in the morning, Bake 'em.

[Don] So here we are.

The next morning we're gonna take 'em out of the proofing baskets where they've been resting.

I'm going to put a stencil on 'em with my logo and we're gonna load 'em in the oven.

[Brandy] How much fun is this?

[Don] Oh, it's gonna be awesome.

It's gonna smell beautiful.

[Brandy] Wonderful.

[Don] Are you ready?

[Brandy] Yes, I am.

♪ [Don] Wow, that's lookin' pretty.

(rasping noise) [Don] Oh look at that steam coming off of there.

[Brandy] Woah... Mmmm.

Can you smell it?

Wow.

(crunching) Beautiful, eh?

It's so good.

[Don] Y'know, the beautiful thing about natural leavened bread, sourdough method bread is you have this layering of textures.

So you go from the crispy outside where it has some bitter notes, some nutty notes, going to the inside, that sweet wheaty flavor.

Along with some of the acidity, wow, great balance of flavor, flour, water, salt.

That's all you need.

[Brandy] Thank you, Don.

[Don] Thank you for coming by.

For my last adventure here, I traveled twenty- five miles north of the city of Tucson to Miraval, Arizona Resort and Spa.

One of the exciting things you can do outside of Tucson is meet a beekeeper and learn all about honey and bees.

And I'm with Noel Patterson, he is a beekeeper.

Please tell me, what can we do today together?

Well, at Miraval we have a beekeeping program where we have two parts to it.

The first part, we actually have sixty hives on the property.

It's a working apiary.

We produce honey here, but mostly it's an educational project.

So we're gonna get you in the hives.

We're gonna show you the babies.

We're gonna show you how they make honey.

We're gonna taste fresh honey right out of the hives.

We'll talk about why bees are so important.

The second half of my professional training before I was a beekeeper was actually as a sommelier.

And it turns out that everything I learned about wine applies to honey.

So we have a honey tasting setup in our demonstration kitchen where we'll go up and taste different honeys and talk about why they're so different.

Wow.

So tell me a little bit Noel, why are bees so important today?

Most of our food crops specifically rely on honeybees for pollination.

So without honeybees, we as human beings wouldn't be able to eat.

Whoa, okay, let's go meet these bees.

♪ (electric guitar) [Noel] So we're just going to this hive right here.

So come on up.

So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to smoke them.

So the smoke distracts them for a little bit.

[Brandy] OK. [Noel] Gentle puffs.

So you see bees coming out, flying, looking around for nectar and pollen.

You can see bees coming back, bringing back a load of nectar or pollen or water, food for the hive.

So we are going to go in.

Whoa.

And I'm gonna show you how they make honey.

(chuckling) How many are in here, by the way?

So, well the population grows and shrinks throughout the year, peak is about ninety to a hundred thousand.

Then they shrink to about ten thousand in winter.

Whoa!

We're coming into winter.

So the population is declining and it's probably about sixty thousand.

And are these all... male?

These are all female.

All female ?

Yes.

(insect humming) [Noel] So this shows you how they actually build the comb.

See how they're chaining here?

It's called festooning so they're linking hand to foot.

Actually just like, remember that toy "Barrel of Monkeys"?

[Brandy] Yes.

Just like they link hand to foot and they form a chain.

Okay, now see this teardrop shaped bit of comb?

What they do is they form that chain, they link, hand to foot.

And if I were to hold a rope, it makes a shape that you're familiar with, right?

[Brandy] Sure.

[Noel] It's called a catenary arc... it actually has a name to it.

And so they hang in that shape, which you can see reflected in the shape of this, this honeycomb.

So the bees at the bottom of the chain are the bees that are creating the wax flakes.

They secrete the wax flakes and they pass it up the chain of bees.

And it's the bees that are hanging off of the ridge here or that are hanging off of the bottom of the honeycomb that take that softened wax and create the hexagonal structure of the honeycomb.

All right.

This is a good comb of honey.

[Brandy] Gorgeous.

See kind of little curled-up grub in there?

[Brandy] Oh, yeah.

[Noel] So that's the baby bee.

For six days you see this little curled- up white grub in there.

[Brandy] I see the white grub.

There's lots of it.

[Noel] And in six days, it increases in weight by five hundred times.

Keep an eye out for the queen.

This time of year, only about one in ten times.

Ah, there she is in the grey, with the green dot you put on.

[Noel] Yeah.

[Brandy] She's pregnant.

[Noel] Yup.

So she mates once when she's six or seven days old, returns to the hive, spends the rest of her life laying eggs, never to leave the hive again.

That's pretty much all you have to do to get bees off of a frame of honey.

All right.

Let's take ourselves a little scoop of honey here.

Oh, that is a good-lookin' piece of comb.

All right.

All right so... We're gonna close it up, if you would.

Beautiful, whoa.

This looks wonderful.

Yeah, doesn't it?

Wow.

Look at the color.

I really, really wanna go taste this honey.

All right, let's do it.

♪ So as you know, in my past life, I was a sommelier.

It turns out that everything that I learned about wine applies to honey.

The first honey we have here, this is from my backyard in the heart of downtown Tucson.

Very, very creamy.

Want to try honey number two?

Of course, I want to try them all.

They're so good.

And you will.

The second one is from our hives here at Miraval.

And it's a mix of basically everything that you see right behind you.

Mmmmmmm That's very, very gritty, has a lot of texture, I like it.

Oh, yeah.

And it's sweet, but not very, very sweet.

All right.

And then this one?

This is from a plant with which you are very familiar.

It's one hundred percent coffee blossom honey from Guatemala.

That is awesome.

Isn't that a cool honey?

Very fruity and lots of grit, lots of texture for me.

It's an incredibly textural honey.

I love it.

Honey number four is pure avocado blossom honey from Fallbrook, California.

[Brandy] Avocado?

Whoa, that has some kickback, really intense, the most intense so far.

[Noel] It is an intensely flavored honey.

Delicious though.

Definitely.

I think so.

OK. Honey number five, this is gamble oak honeydew honey made from the tree sap of the gamble oak tree in northern New Mexico.

Mmm, tastes like cinnamon.

So this is to me, the most intense honey on the plate.

This is Buckwheat honey.

This is actually grown in Oregon.

Molasses, burnt caramel.

(laughs) Lots of different flavors coming.

Wow.

[Noel] All right, ready to taste some of the honey that we harvested out of the hives just now?

Wow.

All right.

Let's give it a try.

So this comes from the same hives, the same area where we got this honey from here and you'll find the taste is completely different.

Why?

Well, because different plants are flowering at different times of the year.

OK.

So what's blooming in May is different than what's blooming in October or early November now, here.

So this ice is primarily going to be the rabbit brush that we saw in the yard.

There you go.

I'll just take that.

What about the wax?

You can take the whole thin.

There's no gettin' around the wax.

You take it.

All right.

Mmmmmm MMMMMMM It's very sweet.

Pretty good, huh?

Kinda like the wax.

Yeah, I do, too.

(laugh together) Well, Noel, thank you so much for teaching me all about honey.

And I'll think about where the honey comes from a lot more now when I pick it up, because before, actually, I didn't even...

I didn't even acknowledge it.

So - thanks for the education.

And now I really appreciate bees even more.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for coming.

It's been a pleasure to share it with you.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

♪ I've had such a wonderful time here in Arizona.

I've learned so much about the food, the wine and the desert landscape.

It's so clear to me that there's a lot of fun to be had here under the hot sun.

♪