To make flour, use fully ripe beans with no beetle holes, picked from trees on the desert floor. Clean beans and heat in a 170F oven for 4 hours to destroy any internal troublemakers. Or sun dry as the Indians do. Use a food processor to crush beans. Sift seed coats and fiber from meal, then sift again for a finer flour, golden and sweet. Mesquite flour is not white. It has a natural sweetening with a peanut butter flavor which Native American children love.

Instead of using mesquite wood for grilling, soak mesquite beans in water (as you would wood chips). Sprinkle them over the charcoal, then grill as usual.