A High Desert Cookbook-Memoir

Stoned with Saguaros

A High Desert Kitchen — plant-based recipes and real food from a patch of Arizona I love

By Saul Ember

The Invocation

Before the garlic is peeled.

Before the garlic is peeled,
before the blender hums alive,
I stand in the kitchen I live in
and love the light coming over the ridge.


The desert is awake.
The saguaros hold their arms up to the morning.
I smoke, then cook with salt and patience,
fed by the place I'm lucky to call home.

The View From This Porch

What this book is, and where it stands.

The light comes over the ridge around six, and the saguaro in front of the house catches it first — gold running down the ribs like water that learned patience. I watch it from the porch of the house Chris and I bought, coffee in one hand, the morning's joint in the other. That is the whole religion.

I fell hard for where I live. What's mine is the watching — the porch, the heat walking into the kitchen at four in the afternoon like it owns the place, the creosote smell after rain that makes you forgive the whole summer. I write what's mine: my porch, my stove, my body, my view.

And yes — stoned means stoned. The smoke slows me down to the speed the beans were already moving. The desert and the joint teach the same lesson at different volumes: pause, watch the fire, stay.

The pot's on. The door's open. Bring your hunger.

The Pantry

Whole food, plant-based, no oil, gluten-free — and honest about the rest.

Everything here is plant-based and gluten-free — that's how I cook, for the bodies that eat at this table. I reach for the rest of it too: whole food, no added oil. And when a dish strays — a box mix on a hard morning, a little oil — I say so instead of pretending. The food's built for healing that has to happen anyway, so it might as well taste like the desert at dusk.

The Book

Five sections. A kitchen filling slowly — the way it should.

Section 1

The Sun-Warmed Tile

Appetizers & small plates. Where the Desert Oracle Recovery Hummus lives — pulsing pain into paste, drop by drop, until grit becomes grace.

Section 2

Breads, Crusts & Survival Snaps

Flax gel, almond flour, ice cubes thrown to a screaming-hot pan for steam. You want the snap of a dry branch in the desert.

Section 3

The Main Burn

Entrees & hearty rituals. Lo mein for weary hands, lentil loaf heavy as good earth, rice the cooker makes while you rest.

Section 4

Sweet Medicine

Desserts & sacred endings. Pumpkin pie that sits overnight in the cold to remember itself. Date paste like fruit left in the sun too long.

Section 5

Crunch & Clarity

Snacks & provisions. Maple choco-crunch, dust-storm chickpeas that rattle when they're ready, salt left on bare hands.

In Progress

The Book Is Filling

The manuscript is alive and being written by hand. Unwritten recipes stay listed — a book honest about what's still coming.

Rituals From the Manuscript

Three tastes. The book reads like this.

The Blue Hour: Walking the Line

The desert is always awake. Look close and it shows you everything — a kit fox's track, a thrasher deep in the cholla, the slow breathing of things built to wait. I wake when the light is a bruised purple and the air still holds the ghost of the night's cold. I walk past the saguaros in the foothills — sentinels, ancient and ribbed, their skin scarred by birds and heat and time. People see statues. They are reservoirs of patience.

The light is coming. The garlic is waiting.

Smoke and Chiles: Brick-Red Alchemy

The dried chipotles look like old leather. I drop ten of them into a pot of boiling water and let them steep until they surrender. I blend on high until the roar of the machine gives way to a smooth, thick vortex of deep, brick-red paste.

We made fire with heat and chiles and time.

GF Lo Mein: A Ritual for Weary Hands

The sauce starts with a broth thick with umami, the kind that lingers like a secret. I pour it over the colors and slide the rice ramen into the center of the heat. Use chopsticks that feel like tools in the hand.

We survived another Thursday.

About Saul Ember

Saul Ember at the stove, saguaros through the kitchen window
Saul Ember is a pen name chosen for shelter.

Saul cooks with grief. If there's sorrow in your bones, he's already roasting it with garlic and salt. If you're raw, he's tender. Stoned with Saguaros is a terrain. You'll eat. You'll cry. You'll learn where your deserts bloom.

In a world where being visibly and authentically queer can still make a person a target, Saul keeps a little smoke between the face and the fire. The work remains honest. The body remains present. The name simply gives the writer room to speak from the table, the stove, the chair, the page, and the raw nerve of being alive without surrendering every private piece of himself.

Saul writes from the high desert about food, slowness, touch, ordinary tools, quiet rooms, and the stubborn holiness of staying human. His work is for readers who want to return to the body, the table, the page, the porch, and the hour before everything became content.

The face stays private. The work stays warm.

Cannabis is for adults where legal. Saul's kitchen feeds everyone — the recipes ask only for slowness; the smoke is for those who want it.

Get the Book

Stoned with Saguaros is a cookbook-memoir — written by hand, one recipe and one story at a time.

It isn't finished yet. Everything above is a taste of what's coming. When the book is done, this is where you'll buy it.

Buy the Book

Checkout's powered by Stripe — it goes live the day the book is done. The pot's still on.