Stoned with Saguaros — A High Desert Kitchen

The Invocation

Before the garlic is peeled.

Before the garlic is peeled,
before the blender hums alive,
we honor the land beneath our feet —
borrowed, burdened, and beloved.

This desert remembers.
The saguaros stand as witness.
We cook with care, with smoke, with song,
knowing healing is never without history.

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'm a white guy in Arizona who fell in love with where he lives. The desert isn't my inheritance and I don't pretend it is — the saguaros belong to this land and to peoples whose stories are not mine to cook with. 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.

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.

I live here. I cook here. That's the claim, all of it.

The Pantry Law

Whole food. Plant-based. No oil. Gluten-free. Honest about the exceptions.

Every recipe in this kitchen is plant-based and gluten-free — non-negotiable, because that's what these bodies asked for — and reaches for the rest of WFPBNO: whole-food, no added oil. We're human, though, so when something strays from whole or picks up a little oil, we name the exception out loud instead of kicking a lie down the road. The food is built for healing that has to happen anyway, so it might as well taste like the desert at dusk.

Plants, whole, the way the dirt sent them.
No added oil. Heat, broth, steam, and patience do the work.
Gluten-free throughout — rice, masa, almond flour, oats that behave.
Sweetness from dates, maple, and fruit that surrendered.
Exceptions exist, and they are named out loud — a box mix on a mercy morning, a packet of plant-based liquid cheese — Daiya, in this house — when the spirit is spent. Survival is not a purity contest.

The Book

Thirty bowls. 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 Bowls Are Filling

The manuscript is alive and being written by hand. Empty bowls stay listed in the book — a kitchen 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 never empty. If you think it is, you aren't looking; you're just waiting for something familiar to show up. 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.

Smokehouse Adobo 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. We didn't need the oil.

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, not utensils.

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, not shame.

Saul doesn't avoid grief — he cooks with it. If there is sorrow in your bones, he's already roasting it with garlic and salt. If you are raw, he is 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 either way — the recipes never require the smoke, only the slowness.