Attendees can get crafty, learn some new recipes and get in touch with their artistic side during the Presidio Museum’s Spring Workshop Series.
The schedule is as follows:
Presidio Painting – A Workshop: Feb. 1 and Mar. 6, 1-3 pm, $60/person or $50/member
Spanish Heritage Sourdough Bread Workshop: Mar. 1, 10 am-12 pm, $70/person or $60/member
Soap-Making Workshop: Mar. 15, 10 am-12 pm, $75/person or $65/member
Taste of the Desert: Wild and Native-Cultivated Food Tasting & Workshop: Mar. 20, 11 am-12:30 pm, $60/person or $50/member
Tohono O’odham Utilitarian Vessel Pottery Workshop: Mar. 22, 10 am to 12 pm, $65/person or $55/member
Nopalitos Workshop: April 3, 11 am-12:30 pm, $60/person or $50/member
Pre-registration is required for all workshop at www.TucsonPresidio.com/calendars
During the Presidio Painting Workshop, artist John Gates will lead attendees through a watercolor class covering the basic painting concepts and watercolor techniques. After practicing what they’ve learned, participants will paint a 5” x 7” painting of a scene at the Presidio Museum, which will be placed in an 8” x 10” mat and protective sleeve. This class is for beginners as well as seasoned artists.
Baker Marea Jenness of Casita Catalina (www.casitacatalina.org) will teach attendees of the Spanish Heritage Sourdough Bread Workshop how to make delicious and healthy sourdough bread from scratch. The workshop includes creating a sourdough starter with heritage White Sonora Wheat flour, as well as learning how to make the dough and bake the perfect loaf. This event is a great opportunity to meet fellow bread enthusiasts, ask questions, and hone baking skills. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned baker, this workshop is perfect for anyone looking to master the art of sourdough bread making. Attendees will go home with a jar of sourdough starter and a loaf of sourdough bread to bake in their own kitchen, as well as a recipe for maintaining the sourdough starter.
In the hands-on Soap-Making Workshop, Tracy Conklin, owner of Artemesia Soaps (https://byartemesia.com), will teach participants the basics of making cold-process soap using all natural ingredients. The workshop will also cover the fundamentals of cold-process soapmaking, the best ways to safely work with sodium hydroxide (aka lye) and the process of putting desert botanicals and clays in soap. At the end of the workshop, attendees will leave class with one pound of soap, a soap mold and recipes to continue soap-making adventures at home. (Conklin will also be conducting a soap-making demonstrationat the Presidio Museum on Sunday, Feb. 16, from 11 am to 12 pm. This demonstration is included with admission.)
Naturalist Jack Dash is the presenter of the Taste of the Desert: Wild and Native-Cultivated Food Tasting and Workshop. Dash will discuss wild edibles and native cultivated plants in southern Arizona. Attendees will learn the historic and contemporary uses for several species of Borderlands plants and be able to taste dishes such as palo verde bean edamame, prickly-pear and agave agua fresca, and mesquite crackers, while learning how to make tepary bean hummus. This is an opportunity to connect with the cultural heritage of our region through the foods that have sustained people in the Sonoran Desert for millennia.
Kathleen Vance, Tohono O'odham potter, will lead the Tohono O’odham Utilitarian Vessel Pottery Workshop. Attendees will create a small clay vessel made from white clay, which Vance digs and processes on her own. The vessel is known as paddle and anvil using coils to build the walls of the vessel.
The last workshop in the spring series is the Nopalitos Workshop. Over the past few millennia, the succulent pads of the prickly pear cactus have fed millions of humans and other animals, offering life-sustaining calories, vitamins, calcium and a host of other minerals. When the young nopal pads are cut up, they become nopalitos and they are ready to be mixed with other ingredients to make delicious and healthy dishes. Locally, young prickly pear pads appear in the late spring, but Mexican farmers manipulate their crops so nopales are available all year. Led by Carolyn Niethammer, author of The Prickly Pear Cookbook and four other cookbooks that include prickly pear recipes, this class will show attendees how to clean the pads of spines and cook them so they are ready to incorporate into delicious dishes.
The Presidio San Agustín del Tucson Museum is located on the northeast corner of the original Presidio at 196 N. Court Ave. The Presidio Museum is a reconstruction of the original Tucson Presidio built in 1775. Docent tours give visitors a glimpse of what life in the Presidio was like for soldiers and other residents. Additional highlights include an original 150-year-old Sonoran row house and a 2,000-year-old prehistoric pit house.
Admission to the museum is $9 for adults, $6 for children ages 6-13 and free for children five and under and Presidio Museum members. Pima County residents, seniors 65+ and members of the military receive a $3 discount with ID. The Presidio Museum is managed by the Tucson Presidio Trust for Historic Preservation, a not-for-profit entity whose mission is to guide and aid in the interpretation of history at the Presidio San Agustín through research, education and living history experiences.
In 2025, the Presidio Museum will be the official host of the 250+ Celebration of All Things S-cuk Son/Tucson, the anniversary of the Aug. 20, 1775, founding of the Presidio San Agustin and modern-day Tucson, as well as Tucson’s thousands of years of history and culture. The event will be held on Saturday, Aug. 23.
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