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SERVING OVER 16,000 HOUSEHOLDS THROUGHOUT ROCKWALL COUNTY

Mesquite beans make great tasting coffee and highly nutritious flour for baking.

Mesquite beans make great tasting coffee and highly nutritious flour for baking.

  Everything in the natural world serves a purpose.

  That purpose might not always be easy to identify but everything from a lowly earthworm to a giraffe fits into a unique slot in the big scheme of things.

  Take the mesquite tree for instance. To many ranchers it’s just a needless plant that sucks water from the soil and quickly covers land that could be used for grazing cattle. But the tree also has long served many useful purposes for man. It’s been proven that the beans and roots of the mesquite tree made up over 20 percent of the diet of native Americans living in the southwest, especially in Texas where 70 percent of mesquite trees grow. Mesquite furnishes shade for livestock and habitat for wildlife. It provides food and cover for many bird species, white-tail and mule deer, feral hogs and many small mammals native to Texas.

  The mesquite-bean pod was a staple in the native American’s diet and was even considered a luxury by some tribes. Pods were ground into meal and made into bread or mixed with water to form a sweet, nutritious atole, which, when fermented, produced a weak beer. Honey made from the nectar of mesquite flowers is considered a delicacy. The women used mesquite bark to make diapers, skirts and other articles of clothing.   They wove baskets, ropes and twine from mesquite fibers.

  Mesquite bark was also used to make a poultice for treating wounds and illnesses. The gum exuded from mesquite trunks was used as candy, as a glue for mending pottery and as a black dye. Unfinished mesquite wood has been used for fence posts and corrals. It can also be used as boiler fuel, wood chips, wood flakes, meal, feed, mulch, particleboard, insulation batting and charcoal. The trees have been used as ornamentals in landscaping homes. The wood is very hard and has been successfully made into such articles of furniture as cabinets, game tables and desks.

  I recently interviewed Victoria Cappadona (www.cappadonaranch.com) who has turned the thousands of mesquite trees on the family ranchland in deep south Texas into a business. She grinds the beans into tasty coffee which is actually not coffee at all but a rich, naturally sweet drink that is brewed exactly like coffee. (I’ll tell you exactly how to make this tasty drink from beans you harvest yourself in a bit). Mesquite bean tea, jelly and flour are also produced on the ranch and marketed through the website and other places.

  For many years, I have hunted in areas with mesquite trees and watched wildlife feeding on the sweet, ripe beans that fall to the ground. I’ve noted that the beans do not all ripen at the same time. This past week when I was picking dry beans for making coffee, I noticed as many green, immature beans on the trees as the ones that had already dried. Most mesquite trees in Texas are of the honey mesquite and pods are naturally sweet. Try chewing on a dry bean pod picked directly off a mesquite tree sometime. You will be surprised at how sweet it tastes.

  LET’S MAKE SOME MESQUITE COFFEE — Last week I posted on social media a photo of some dry mesquite beans I had picked and mentioned the fact that I made a coffee substitute from the dry pods. The responses to the post was instant and numerous. It was obvious folks were extremely interested in learning about how to make this delicious drink which is nutritious but contains no caffeine. The native tribes used their stone mortar-pestle like tools to grind the beans but we have a perfectly well-functioning electric coffee grinder that I used to grind the pods.

  The process is pretty simple. Begin by placing the pods on a baking pan and roasting them at 350 degrees until the pods take on the desired roast. I suggest keeping them in the oven until they are a dark brown which equates to a dark roast coffee. They become very brittle and are easily broken into small pieces that fit into the grinder. The seeds are very hard and most will remain intact. The pod is the part that makes the coffee and it will easily grind to the consistency of corn meal. Once you have your coffee ground, you have two choices; either make cowboy coffee which I prefer or put in an old fashioned percolator and allow the coffee to perk.

  The cowboy coffee method is better because the boiling water seems to extract the flavor from the ground beans better. I use about a tablespoon of ground beans per cup of coffee. Once the appropriate amount of water has reached a rolling boil, add the ground beans and continue to boil for about four minutes. This extracts all the flavor from the beans. I like a little sweetener in my regular coffee but have found the mesquite bean coffee to be just right without adding sugar.

  Another method that works well at camp is to simply place the dry beans (whole) into a dry cast-iron skillet and slow roast until the beans are black and brittle. Then crush the beans up in the skillet, add water and allow to boil until the water becomes dark and looks like coffee. Of course, you can also remove the grounds from the skillet and make coffee in a pot. Add a little cold water and most of the grounds will settle to the bottom. I have a little sieve that I pour the coffee through which eliminates the grounds in my coffee cup but either method works just fine.

  One of the responses to my post on social media post about mesquite bean coffee went something like this, “Why don’t you just open a can of Folgers and make coffee the standard way?”

  My reply was that I honestly like the flavor of the mesquite bean coffee better and there is something special about using natural occurring products from nature that are supplied to those of us that know how to utilize them. I am a self-confessed addict to caffeine and still enjoy old fashioned coffee bean coffee. My mesquite bean coffee is just an added treat!

  Contact outdoors writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio.org

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