Mary, as a matter of fact I had dinner at a local restaurant the other day
where they served mesquite cake as dessert. They had made it into a sweet
cake, so I don't know how authentic this is. It is highly nutritious. It
comes in two forms- screwbean and honeybean, and they are recognizably
different. Surprisingly, native peoples are often not a very good source of
these things. They seem to have stuff like Indian fry bread, which looks like
some whiteman's thing, but not their own native foods.

Native people grind the beans with mano and metate (hand stone and grinding
stone). Maybe a blender would work, or apparently you can buy home stone
grinders on one of the paleo websites. You would have to husk the beans
first. I do plan to actually do this in the near future. How is it
pronounced? The word looks Spanish, so presumably it should be mes-KEE-te,
not mes-KEET. We have it out in the desert. I plan to try and gather some
when I know more about it.

Charles
San Diego, CA