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Mesquite dust. You never know what somebody might be selling at the farmers market.
No, I didn’t buy any. But I’m thinking two little bottles would help us with our hardest-to-fill Christmas stockings.
If there’s a hard-to-shop-for person in your family, the dust vendor in question sells her various mesquite products, mesquite “coffee” included, at the farmers’ market in Abilene, across from Frontier Texas.
She’s on the frontier of mesquite marketing. Guess where she’s from.
THREE-SECOND PAUSE.
Not enough time? You wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. Wisconsin.
No, I didn’t get her name. Just her story. Let’s call her Dusty.
Frontiers suit her. She was the first woman in her hometown to ride motorcycles.
There’s more, but we’d have to digress. Let’s just say it often takes an outsider to help us Texans fully appreciate things we have right under our noses.
Dusty showed me a dissected mesquite bean. Mesquites come in three varieties. Who knew?
She told me more. I should’ve taken notes.
Maybe you’re wondering about the dust. Me too. What is it anyway?
INTERNET PAUSE.
Yep, just like everything else, mesquite dust is online. If you’re in England, a packet (size indiscernible to me) of ground made-in-the-USA mesquite will cost you five pounds plus shipping. And that particular product looks coarser than Dusty’s dust. Caveat emptor.
Generally speaking, mesquite dust seems to be made from the wood instead of the beans. Apparently, it can be a spice or a rub. So, the next time you saw through a mesquite limb, save the sawdust. You’ll have the makings of a flavorful treatment for grillable (my word) meat. Distance yourself from mesquite country, and it’ll be worth five pounds sterling.
Can you see a mesquite pasture woodcutter with a piece of tarp under his chainsaw to catch what’s more precious than the firewood? Use olive oil to grease the chain, and that could work. You’re welcome.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking of the time I interviewed a chuck wagon cook out on the range. A plain old mesquite stump a day kept him cooking. No big deal.
It all depends on where you are as to what’s special and what’s ordinary – not that we Texans don’t appreciate our mesquite. We do.
It hasn’t always been so. Mesquite has taken decades to take root in Texas, literally and otherwise. It took the cattle drives to spread the seed and give us enough trees eventually to choke our pastures. It also took time for non-chuck wagon cooks to discover the culinary properties of the wood.
Mesquite hasn’t always been a backyard household word. Circa 1957 my parents and I were at Lake Kemp when a Staley cousin put mesquite chips over his charcoal. Mesquite? We were impressed. Who knew?
As for mesquite bean jelly, nobody spread it on biscuits when I was a kid. We’d never heard of it.
Mesquite coffee?
A few years ago my rocket scientist friend Tony was thinking about getting into that game. I scoffed.
Now I’m thinking about a latte.
