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Salsa brings spice, nutrients to the table

TEMPE — For decades, ketchup’s reign as the delicacy-of-the-moment seemed secure amidst piles of hamburgers, hot dogs, hash browns and potatoes.

But in 2000, a cousin staged a tomato-y coup d’ etat by offering more flavor with less ingredients that had more health benefits.

“Salsa adds a good kick of flavor to whatever you’re eating,” says salsa chef Lupita Lopez. “The benefits of the tomatoes are your health bonus.”

Lopez’s recipes were among 100 entries in the 2008 My Nana’s Salsa Challenge held April 26 on the shores of Tempe Town Lake.

The competition featured about 1,300 gallons of salsa, about 3,000 pounds of chips, and hundreds of salsa-eating fanatics who stopped by for a dip.

“All I know is that jalapeños may be good for your heart, but that’s about it,” independent salsa chef and challenge contestant Dana Lespron says. “Right now, flavor is first. My motto: A fusion of flavor with an explosion of heat. The taste is definitely my priority.”

Salsa’s lineage can be traced back to the tables of the ancient Aztecs, Mayans and Incan Indian tribes of Central and South America. Over time, tomatoes and chili peppers made their way north to Mexico.

That’s where the Spanish conquerors are believed to have had their first taste of salsa. They used it as a condiment to spice up turkey and fish dishes. In 1571, the word salsa was introduced into the Spanish language. In English, it means “sauce.”

It swept into the United States sometime after the 1940s. Today, contests such as the one of the banks of Tempe Town Lake celebrate this spicy, healthy condiment.

Many of the salsa competitors seemed unaware of the list of ingredients in their recipes that were beneficial to their health.

Tomatoes, the base of any salsa, contain beneficial amounts of vitamin C, vitamin A and potassium. The red pigment in the tomatoes comes from lycopene, which, with enough servings, can cut the risks of prostate cancer and stomach cancers.

Onions were another common ingredient in the contestants’ recipes. Onions are often suggested for relief in treating coughs, colds, asthma and bronchitis. They have sulfides that are similar to those in garlic and help lower blood pressure and counts for complex fat molecules in the blood itself.

Other fruits and vegetables in salsa can supply antioxidant vitamins, natural phytochemicals, and mineral potassium to protect against disease. Chiles and other fresh fruits and vegetables, for example are typically high in vitamins and low in sodium and calories.

Salsa geeks should know there’s more to their favorite condiment than flavor.

“My secret ingredient? I don’t know if I have one,” says Cameron Jalla, an independent salsa chef sponsored by Walgreens. “I’m not too sure how many other people use it, but I put olive oil in my salsa today. But everything I add is aimed for taste, definitely.”

Olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as-is after it is freshly pressed. Olive oil can have beneficial health effects due to the monosaturated fatty acids (which can be helpful in lowering “bad” cholesterol counts) and antioxidants. It is linked with a reduction in risks with coronary heart disease.

Yet salsa chefs insist their product stands on taste alone.

“All depending on what you put in your salsa, I know a lot of ingredients might help with heart disease and sometimes cardiovascular issues,” says Lori Roberson, another independent salsa chef and challenge contestant. “Still, the taste beats any other condiment…especially my salsa.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Casinos, culture drive Navajo presidential race

[Editor's note: Incumbent Joe Shirley Jr. ultimately won this race.]

TEMPE — The issues facing Arizona’s largest Indian tribe today range from inadequate social services to drug and alcohol addiction to a lack of good jobs. Sadly, they remain the same each election cycle.

But this time, a woman is running for the Navajo Nation’s highest seat. And this time, the debate lines are clearly drawn.

Incumbent President Joe Shirley Jr. says building casinos will raise loads of cash to solve these problems. His challenger, Lynda Lovejoy, says casinos will only make them worse.

The two squared off in a 90-minute debate tonight at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The debate was held in Armstrong Hall, where about 180 people — most of them young Native Americans — filled the auditorium. [Video is available here.]

They listened and cheered as Shirley Jr., of Chinle, and Lovejoy, of Crownpoint, N.M., traded barbs about the state of the Navajo Nation — a tribe of more than 250,000 people scattered across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

The divide in the audience was obvious. Young Navajo women hollered and clapped for most of Lovejoy’s comments while older members — male and female — cheered for Shirley Jr., whose applause peaked while he gave his closing statements in his native tongue. Moderators repeatedly reminded the audience to hold all outbursts until the end.

The divide between the candidates was obvious, too. Shirley Jr. sees the construction of six casinos on Navajo lands as a way to create 4,000 jobs and bolster scholarships, social services, public infrastructure like water and electricity and drug interdiction on the reservation.

It’s the only major source of cash the Navajo have left to explore, Shirley Jr. said, because funding from the state and federal government — which he called “Washingdumb” — has flagged.

Shirley Jr. also said officials are in talks with two countries outside the U.S. to loan the Navajo $500 million to deliver water and electrical lines to rural areas of the reservation. He did not name the countries.

“You need the capital,” he told the crowd. “You need the capital big time, and it’s not there.”

Lovejoy, however, said the Navajo people should not wait for casinos to come online to solve social ills. She said government services in some areas could be trimmed and spread around to support medical services, public infrastructure projects and college scholarships.

Lovejoy also stressed the need to bring the reservation into the 21st Century. She supports setting up email networks for Navajo living off the reservation to get involved in policy-making, more promotion of Navajo small businesses, and outsourcing the nation’s consultant contracts to PhD-wielding tribal members instead of “non-Indians.”

Shirley Jr. is pushing his reputation as someone who has stayed in Arizona since birth, and needs four more years in office so that tribal members can see lucrative, job-producing ventures come true.

Lovejoy is stressing her background as a former New Mexico state legislator. She says she represents government transparency and stronger leadership at a time when the Navajo Nation is “stagnant.”

Both are from the east side of the reservation, which concerns members like Pauline Martin Sanchez, 53. She said the west side’s needs are often overlooked.

She came to see which candidate would be more connected “to the outside world,” more supportive of the reservation’s rural schools and households and more willing to modernize the tribe.

She waves her hand above her head and talks about cellphone calls and digital messages traveling through the air to illustrate her point.

“Our people have no idea,” Martin Sanchez said. “It’s a technology world, and we’re still trying to put electricity into the homes.”

Her daughter, April Sunshine Sanchez, 25, said luring young, college-educated Navajo back to the reservation is another top issue.

“They don’t feel like they have a place there because the reservation is so far behind,” she said.

Ten candidates competed in the September primary. Shirley Jr. finished first, and Lovejoy finished about 2,500 votes behind him for second place. The general election is Nov. 7.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Q&A: Mr. Mitchell goes to Washington

[Editor's note: The full version of this story appeared in the February issue of PHOENIX magazine.]

TEMPE — Harry Mitchell, 66, just arrived at his modest Tempe home clad in hiking boots, jeans, and a plaid shirt. He was coming from his grandson’s Pop Warner football game.

This is the guy who beat incumbent J.D. Hayworth — a flashy, Republican sportscaster from Scottsdale — to represent a huge swath of the East Valley in Congress.

Mitchell, a Democrat, is a Tempe legacy. He is a second-generation Phoenician who taught high school government for 28 years and served as councilman, mayor and state senator for Tempe.

TZR spent two hours with Mitchell and boiled the interview down to five questions.

TZR: So how did it feel to beat “the bully”?

HM: “It felt great. As the campaign progressed more and more, I really got more determined…

I really believed that the [Arizona Republic] editorial [calling Hayworth a "bully"] was pretty realistic. And I don’t know if it’s anything special to beat him, but it’s important that when you run any contest or and kind of competition, you want to win.

I never entered this thing to lose. I thought all along we had a great shot at it or I’d have never done it. I think, as I hear from people after the election, I accomplished something bigger than I thought I did.

TZR: When you announced your candidacy, you said you were running because “our basic political system…is broken.” What did you mean by that?

HM: No accountability. There was no oversight. It was just a rubber stamp. Stay the course in Iraq. We havd no-bid contracts, we had earmarks. Everything looked like people were using their influence for their friends and their family and their business acquaintances.

TZR: Hayworth was a 12-year incumbent in a district where Republican voters outnumbered Democrats 3-2. How did you beat this guy?

HM: I think elections like this are like job reviews or performance reviews. How’s he done? He got out of touch with his district.

I think there was a pretty clear-cut distinction on the major issues we talked about, and he didn’t want to talk about them. When he did want to talk about [illegal] immigration, for example, he had a very different view than what I did and what I believed the district had. And I think I was right. [Pundits have agreed with Mitchell, saying Hayworth's "get tough" stance on illegal immigrants actually drove voters toward Mitchell.]

For him to say the whole problem was we have to beef up the border and keep people from coming over here — he never did address the root cause of this problem, which is economics. There is work over here and there are workers over there, and we need to figure out a way to match them.

TZR: What stance will you take on Iraq?

HM: I don’t have a specific plan. But I think Congress abdicated its position. It has a constitutional duty for oversight, to ask questions. The president, Congress and Iraqi officials will have to come up with something.

If the President had a plan like that, he never let people know about it. The military did their job. When they came in, they destroyed the Iraqi army, they captured Saddam Hussein. But they forgot to do the political part, the diplomatic part. Once you get rid of the army and the dictator, how do you bring about the peace? [Mitchell said he will support the results of a bipartisan study led by former Secretary of Sate James Baker and former lawmaker Lee Hamilton.]

TZR: Got any good anecdotes from the campaign trail?

HM: Hmm…Oh yeah. I was walking from my car in downtown Tempe — near Z Tejas [bar and grill] — when a guy stopped me and asked, “Are you Harry Mitchell?” [Mitchell has a 35-foot-tall statue named after him in front of city hall. Indeed, Mitchell's so well-known in Tempe that it's like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.]

I told him, “Yes I am.”

He said, “Just be honest, will ya?”

It really hit me because more than one person has said that to me. People are telling me that. What kind of perception would they have [of Congress] if we actually sat down and had a long discussion about what’s going on in Washington?

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.