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Mountain View News Saturday, October 3, 2026 
FOOD & DRINK & SURVIVING 88 
Mountain View News Saturday, October 3, 2026 
FOOD & DRINK & SURVIVING 
CHRISTOPHER Nyerges 

THE CAROB TREE (CERARONIA SILIQUA)
PRODUCES A NEARLY PERFECT FOOD! 

Found from California to Arizona to Texas -- But our cities are cutting them down Christopher 
Nyerges He has been teaching ethno-botany since 1974. He is the author of “Guide to Wild 
Foods,” “Foraging Edible Wild Plants of North America,” “How to Survive Anywhere,” and otherbooks. He can be reached at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.] 

NATIONAL TACO DAY -
Keep It Local! 
Tuesday, October 6, is National Taco Day, and I’m suremy friend Greg Simms over at KNX 1070 will have plentyof suggestions from all over Southern California. 
Me? I’m staying a little closer to home. 
Let’s start right here in Sierra Madre. Casa Del Rey makesa mighty fine shredded chicken taco. Crispy shell, plentyof chicken and exactly what I think a neighborhood tacoshould be. I’m sure they’ll have some kind of special goingon for National Taco Day, but special or not, they’re first on my list. 
A few years back, Los Angeles Times writer Chris Erskine told me about Yuca’s on FairOaks. Chris claimed they made the best taco in Los Angeles.
Those are big words. 
But hey, you know the Times — always exaggerating subscriptions and tacos. A little taco 
humor, folks. 
Head over to Colorado Boulevard and there’s Chiquita Bonita, run by my friend Tavo —
Tavo! Their shredded beef taco comes in a hard shell, the kind of taco many of us grew upeating. I recently put it on TikTok and called it the best taco below the 210 Freeway.
I know, I know. Them’s fighting words. 
And yes, chains make tacos too. Seems everybody makes a taco these days. I sometimeswonder if you can actually get a taco in Mexico City. 
My daughter Lauren's favorite is the Yaki Taco at Islands. I'm not going to argue with her. 
I've learned something over the years: restaurant critics can disagree with anybody excepttheir daughters. 
Then there's Amigos. After one of their killer margaritas, everything tastes pretty darn good— including the tacos. That's not criticism. That's science. 
My friend John Mathues likes to use the phrase “Mac Daddy.” I still don't know exactly what 
that means, but if we're talking tacos in South Pasadena, Señor Fish on Mission Street is theMac Daddy in those parts. 
I think they still have my dad Elmer Dills' picture on the wall. Dad knew his restaurants,
and he certainly knew a good taco when he found one. 
National Taco Day is fun, but there's another reason I'm writing about it. Eat Local. 
I was recently interviewed by Mike Simpson on KNX 1070, and he asked me point blank,
“Peter, what can we do to help these restaurants?” My answer was easy. Stop in. 
That restaurant you've driven past a hundred times? Pull over and check it out. Order a taco.
Sit at the bar. Say hello to the owner. Spend a few dollars in your own neighborhood.
It might become your new favorite restaurant. 
That's what Eat Local is really about. We don't have to save every restaurant in SouthernCalifornia. But we can certainly support the ones around the corner. 
So on National Taco Day, have a taco. Maybe have two. 
And yes, I forgot a few places. On purpose? Who knows. 
What is “carob?” If you’ve only had carob drops from the health food store, 
then yOU really don’t know carob. Though the drops do contain some carob, they contain lots ofadded sugar and other ingredients. 

Pure carob is ground from the long brown pods of the carob tree, long regarded as one of the 
ultimate survival foods. The whole pod can be stored for years. It’s highly nutritious, and it 
requires no cooking before consumption. 

According to archivist Richard E. White of Highland Park, California, a large number of thecarob trees growing around Glendale, Pasadena, Temple City, and other Southland cities, fromLos Angeles County to to Arizona to Texas, were planted by Seventh Day Adventists in theaftermath of the Great Depression and Dustbowl era of the 1930s. According to White, “Yearsago, some farsighted Seventh Day Adventists planted carob trees around and on the grounds ofalmost all the Pasadena area public schools, apparently hoping that the students would gatherand eat this free and nutritious food should there be another Depression and a scarcity of food. Ifchildren were encouraged to eat carob instead of candy bars, there would soon be no more litterproblems under the carob trees and, perhaps, fewer cavities in youthful mouths.” 

Carob trees once lined the streets around Pasadena City Hall, and once lined the mirror pools infront of Pasadena City College. No more. 

Unfortunately, many cities have since made war on the carob trees, and have slowly begun tocut them down. This is usually a result of planting them in inappropriate spots, such as betweena sidewalk and street in the urban areas. In such cases, the shallowly-watered roots often breaksidewalks, and the pods continually fall to the ground, causing people to sometimes trip and fall,
and then sue the city! 

According to arborist and Pasadena resident Timothy Snider, “When carob trees are pruned, they tend 
to go rotten. And I don’t mean pruned wrong, just pruned. So ideally, they should never be pruned.
And they should never be planted as street trees, because the cities always want to prune them, and theyusually do wood butcher jobs, and hack at the tree. Then they are even more prone to the sulfur fungus,
which tends to eat them out. Carob is a good tree, but should be planted in more open areas like parks,
fields, farms, and graveyards. Remember, the carob in its original state is more of a shrub. They had to 
be trained to be trees, so it is really inappropriate to use carobs as street trees.” 

A true HEALTH FOOD 

Health-food enthusiasts and authors were advocating carob over chocolate since the 1940s at least. The 
reasons are many. The pods, once ripened, can be picked and eaten with no preparation whatsoever(besides wiping off the dust). They are very sweet and chewy, though the hard seeds should be spit out. 

Though carob is often compared to chocolate, chocolate and carob are two very different creatures.
Chocolate’s appeal is the presence of the stimulating theobromine, but raw chocolate is bitter. By 
contrast, carob has 60 percent fewer calories per pound than chocolate and lacks any stimulants. Also, 
the carob pod is naturally sweet. Carob’s natural flavor is akin to dates, and the flavor is completelydifferent from chocolate. 

NUTRITION 

The carob pods are analyzed as having 4 percent protein (4.5 grams of protein per 100 grams, 20.4grams of protein per pound) and 76 percent carbohydrate. In addition, carob pods contain substantialphosphorus (81 milligrams per 100 grams, 367 milligrams per pound) and are extremely rich in calcium(352 milligrams per 100 grams, 1,597 milligrams per pound). 

Carob is rich in A and B vitamins and many other minerals. Carob is a superior food that ought to be 
used more. 

There was a short-lived carob farm in Riverside County, California, but it was discontinued because itdid not produce the quality of carob that is produced in its native home. 

The carob tree is native to the Middle East, where the pods have a long history of use as food. The trees 
widely planted throughout Pasadena and the United States – mostly in the South and the West -- allproduce edible pods, though they are inferior to the commercially grown pods. Most commercial carob 
today comes from Cyprus. 

Remember the prodigal son in the Bible? After he left his father’s home, he was hungry from famine andwithout money, and looked in the pig’s feed for carob husks to eat (Luke 15:16). Biblical scholars whofocus on the botany of the Bible believe that these husks were not corn, as commonly believed, but carob. 

The ripe brown pods can be simply washed, and eaten – being sure to spit out the hard seeds. 

You can also remove the seeds, and grind the pods into a sweet flour which can be added to cake, cookie, 
and pancake recipes, adding sweetness and a brown color. I’ve done lots of experiments with carob pods.
I always remove the hard seeds first, and then I ground up the pods into a flour. I have made drinks and 
many types of cakes and cookies from this carob. However, I still prefer to simply eat the whole pod and 
spit out the seeds. 


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