Cabbie Gardens

Big, yellow blossoms drew my attention to a plant at the Beacon train station recently. It's sort of miraculous for me to notice anything at the train station, since I'm there not-yet-awake in the very early morning, and dog tired after dark. So let's just say they were bright, miraculous blooms.

I kept watching this particular plant, and grew more interested when it became clear that it was a) a cantaloupe; and b) thriving. I had designs on one of the huge fruits I saw growing there, but realized it must belong to someone: someone must be tending it. That was confirmed when the biggest of the fruits was one day intentionally "hidden" by a clump of dead grass.

I had a chat with Raphael of Raphael Taxi this morning. You see, this particular plant is right by where all the cabbies line up to vie for fares when travelers get off the train. Yup, this plant (and the several others Raphael pointed out to me) are planted and nurtured by the cab drivers. They're particularly proud of that watermelon sized fruit that caught my eye.

It's exciting to see that people all over Beacon are claiming unused space to grow food!

Herb

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not a great gardener. Still, growing dill shouldn't be difficult. My dill plants stay small, droop, and certainly never volunteer. This is a sad thing for a pickle maker. I'm plush with grape leaves from all the wild grape vines in the area. (Grape leaves keep cucumbers crunchy while pickling, especially in warm weather.) I'm okay with garlic, too. But great quantities of dill have been elusive.

So what happened this weekend is a great thing: I set up a dill barter.  I met a farmer who has lots of dill that grows perennially, like a weed, and the plants are more than five feet tall. In fact, he has too much dill, since it's spreading and taking over a bit. Both he and I think that a big jar of pickles for a load of unruly dill is a great trade.

Some things grow fantastically without any help from me. Take this plant that shot up amongst weeds in a neglected spot: it was eight feet tall before I noticed it. Now it's about ten feet tall, and it has a sibling coming up about twenty feet away. I'm not familiar with this plant—are you? For a minute I thought it's jagged, five-fingered leaves might be hemp, but a quick plant ID ruled that out. (Yeah, you can laugh at my naivete here.) Hemp's leaves have long, witch fingers, whereas this plant's leaves are more like paws, like classic maple leaves. And they're huge. One leaf is nearly a foot across.

If you know, help me out!

And, on a totally unrelated note, it's the time of year where I'm in awe every single day over hydrangeas. They're so plush and over the top!

Bottle Trees

Here's a tree you can "grow" outdoors in deep winter, and one that conveniently traps bad spirits.

VD Present Perfect

I just got a sweet valentine in the mail from my sis'. She must've noticed the wintergreens kitchen towel craze, or be tuned into my brain vibrations from across the country, because she sent me a hand printed tea towel from The Heated (a lesbi-printi-furnituremaki-musician, apparently) featuring one of my favorite animals, the ratbird. Al, how'd you know it's what I've always wanted?

This leads me to wonder, what are the ideal ways I can think of to show love this VD?

There's always gifting: burning the hell out of someone you love's mouth with the Vegan de Guadalupe Cookzine; getting the garden started with a set of artpacks from Hudson Valley Seed Library.Or you could go deeper, my friends, much deeper. You can buy revolutionary versions of good ol' valentine standbys at the Vegan Bake Sale for Haiti. Better yet, bring your sweetie to the sale, and fill a box with their favorites.

No sweetie? No problem. Bring your dog, your neighbor, or someone you just picked up in a dimly lit bar and come hang with us. Let your pocket change help people who really need it. Now that's showing the love.

Summer is Coming!

I keep telling myself this, like a mantra. It's better than pouting, right, and I do really feel those extra couple of minutes of light per day!

So I'm thinking ahead to things I want to do and experience this summer. Two things on my mind are homemade vinegar, and edible flowers. So what better than a recipe for nasturtium vinegar?

I haven't walked around eating flowers very much at all, but isn't it appealing? Though my first instinct involves fermentation (I can't help it!), I suspect I'll be trying them as ingredients and on their own, too. Hurry up sun!

Figs and Other Fruits I Don't Have

2009 is the year my fig tree died. It was given to me as a gift many years earlier, because I love the fruit and also love those big floppy elephant ear leaves. I think fondly of the short and stout fig tree that grew in my backyard "on base" (Davis Monthan Air Force Base, that is) when I was kid. It was a grand climbing tree, for me, since I'm scared of heights and was terrible at climbing trees. It thrived there, with no t.l.c.

I still don't know what I did wrong with my coddled fig: it survived last winter (pouting) indoors, by a cold, drafty window with a lot of southern light. She'd shed all her leaves in a tantrum in about March, and then come back strong. Soon after she made the transition to the porch in May, she up and died.

I work in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I've spotted several figs there that fruit year after year. I made friends with some of the neighbors, and helped them pick the fruit this year and planned to use some figs for the C.S.A. We decided that their cool cellar was a good place for storing them. I'd checked in a couple times, and they were holding up just fine. When I stopped by this week, I was told they all had recently spoiled. I'd waited one distribution too long, thinking because of the association of figgy pudding with Christmas, that these delicate fruits would last until the end of the month/year/decade. This lack of judgment goes in the annals of failures and mistakes.

Because of losing my fig tree, losing the figs harvested in Brooklyn, and having missed Southern Arizona's fig season, I'm taking this opportunity to pout about fruits I don't have.
Oh yeah, 'tis the season for want-want-want, so let's start with hardy kiwis. I'm reading the kiwi (a.k.a. Actinidia) chapter in Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. Reading about them and their edible skins and their pop-in-your-mouth deliciousness is making my mouth water. Oh, I have plans to plant them, on a side of my house that needs its ugliness covered by pretty plants, where there's enough room for them to grow like crazy, as it seems they do, and in a place with lots of sunshine. But I have to build mega support for the vines, and house projects tend to back up around here. People get distracted by starting up C.S.A.s, by pickling for farm markets, by train commuting to paying jobs. Thus, walls that are halfway torn down stay only halfway torn down. So, though I feel very determined to get these kiwis going (soon, soon), I wish planting them were going to be as easy as walking down a shady road where the mowers never come and shoving pawpaw seeds one inch under the soil, all along that road.
So, even though I was just complaining about the California Rare Fruit Growers teasing me, part of me suspects I should turn my mid-winter fruit blues toward fruits I can't grow. Just look at them, pet the pages, drool, dream, and move on. (This month's mag features kumquats, which I will be eating in four days. But last month's cover showed Ecuadorian mystery fruits.) What fruits will 2010 bring?

Mushy and Sweet

It was great to meet all our members at the first distribution of the season! We couldn't have asked for a nicer day, and appreciate all of your enthusiasm about the C.S.A.

There's no doubt that pawpaws were the highlight. I was sent a recording of one of our smallest members politely asking if she could have "more pawpaw please," her new favorite food. We were told about the pawpaw festival in Ohio which includes everything pawpaw, and has me wanting a pawpaw beer. Several people revealed the location of existing trees in Beacon they believe to be pawpaws. And several more took and promised to plant pawpaw seeds.

Maybe in a couple of years we can have a Beacon pawpaw festival! In the meantime, we'll see you again over apples and squashes.

Pawpaw Passion

Pawpaws are North America's largest edible indigenous fruit. Why had I never had one before? The best explanation seems to be that they don't "work" for business: they don't keep long, they don't ship well, they don't ripen off the tree, they don't preserve well. Food that can't be marketed on a large scale doesn't "make sense" to grow in our consumer society.

After years of being fascinated with "strange" fruits that grow in our climate—Siberian kiwis, juneberries, chokecherries, gooseberies, honeyberries, persimmons, pawpaws—I got my hands on some pawpaws for the first time. I think the discovery will be a bonanza, since I got the pawpaws from Lee Reich, the genius of Northeastern fruits, who, it turns out, lives and works in New Paltz.
Pawpaw trees look tropical. The fruit, a berry actually, looks tropical. The smell of a small bag full made me swoon, and think I was near the equator. After a good while of sniffing pleasure, I cut one open and dipped in with a spoon. The creamy fruit tastes like custard, sweet and unusual and very rich. Lest I've downplayed the impact these fruits had: the pawpaws and the maitake mushroom have been the most valuable thing I've had my paws on this year.

The fact that pawpaws don't work well for commercial sellers pleases me. Lee says they are easy to grow and take care of, productive, and the ultimate home orchard fruit, since you're not likely to find them anywhere else. Wish me luck growing pawpaw trees from seed!

Deep Brown

I'm still working on black walnuts. With each windstorm, more fall from the trees, and after each storm ends, I go collecting. I always manage to stain my hands, because either I've forgotten my gloves, or they rip, or I can't be bothered to wear them. (It's a scandalous idea to think I can let my hands get farmer dirty, since I make my living by working in an office filled with people with very clean, very manicured hands. I've been hiding my hands the same way I did when I had inky hands in college: I was a printmaker by day, and a waitress by night.)Collecting walnuts in Beacon has turned into performance art, since people are so unused to seeing food harvested in an urban setting. While I was collecting nuts under a primo tree on Fishkill Ave. (and staining my hands), multiple cars pulled over to ask me what I was doing. I felt I should have a big sign explaining. "Walnut harvest in progress." Maybe I'll hang some "Pick Your Own Nuts (FREE)" signs on trees around town.

While collecting and peeling nuts, I've had plenty of time to meditate on all the potential uses for the husks: fountain pen ink, wood stain, fabric dye, temporary tattoo ink, goth lip gloss. Apparently, black walnut husk is a standard coloring agent in both hair dye and wood stain.With all this in mind, I'm going to focus on the nuts for now.

Tart

Speaking of lemons being a key ingredient in my food, and not being a locally grown item, I like the thought (put forth by a food blogger that I can no longer locate) that, in the northeast, rhubarb is our lemon. It's true, it's mostly tart, with some underlying sweet, and can be used to give food the edge that we generally depend on lemons to provide. I've pickled a pretty pink vat of rhubarb, and look forward to experimenting with it this winter. Do you have any (vegetarian) recipes to share where rhubarb isn't a main ingredient (as in pie or preserves) but is used for its tang?

Still Life with Pears

Too beautiful to eat.Too tasty not to.Everything about pears seems decadent.

Nuts, It's Fall

Black walnut trees are one of the first to lose their leaves. I can attest to this because it's only September, and my porch needs serious sweeping. But you really know it's fall when, with regularity, you hear the thud of walnuts falling off the trees.

Few humans seem to be using these flavorful nuts, but it's still a race to collect them, since squirrels know their value: there are already nuts "hidden" in every flower pot and nook.

It's dangerous to collect black walnuts. When they're plentiful on the ground, they're also still falling. These babies dent cars, and don't feel great when they bonk you on the head.

The truly fun part is still to come, when hands and clothes are forever stained black while peeling the fruit away from the nuts so they can dry.

Once dry, the nuts store well in their shell. And then you try to crack them. Put away your nutcracker shaped like a squirrel! You need a vice grip or a specially designed nutcracker to get into these super hard kernels.

A lot of work, to be sure. The exquisite black walnut flavor promises to be worth every minute!

Theory Number Two

There are loads of theories as to why "an apple a day keeps the doctor away." Flavonoids, water content, folic acid, vitamin C, beneficial bacteria, potassium, etc., etc.Apple season has recently begun, and I've been doing my "research" by eating one or two huge Jonagolds each day.

Pardon my overshare, here, but I think theory "Number 2" wins. Apples make digestion, and the expelling of waste and toxins easy. All those other benefits are nice, but none of them compare to the awesome pectin and fiber combination that apples offer.If you'd like to do some research of your own, you can pick your own apples right now at Fishkill Farms, or even lease an apple tree for your family or as a gift at Liberty View Farm. Best idea of them all: plant an apple tree near where you live, where you can walk outside and eat an apple right off the tree. Now that's local.

Italian Ladies

With all the trouble tomatoes have had this year, it seems more important than ever to save those that have eked through.

I came from the desert, and never had a homegrown tomato in season until adulthood. I wasted no time becoming a tomato snob, unwilling to eat them out of season, grouchy about poor texture and lack of juice. Why bother eating the cardboard versions? (Plus, I had to support the Florida tomato boycott!) But the short tomato season isn't quite enough to satisfy, either.

Historically, I've taken the same lazy approach to preserving tomatoes I take with compost. When it comes to compost, that means throwing everything in a heap. No turning, no layering. I give it a couple years, and it takes care of itself.

My winter tomatoes, so necessary for my winter happiness, have generally come roughly chopped and stewed, skins, seeds, and all, with other chunky sauce veggies. My eggplant, squash, onion, and pepper chunkfest may be the lazy approach, but it thrills me to find it in my freezer in February.

Due to teenage pregnancies, adoptions, wars and the like, I don't really know the ethnicities of my ancestors, if I might be Italian-ish. My mom has theories about our love of garlic and olive skin. This year I'm trying to be a proper Italian in the kitchen: stewing tomatoes, removing the skin and seeds in a mill, and cooking the sauce down until it thickens.

I know the sauce will be worth it, but the hours of cooking my glorious tomatoes to one-twentieth of themselves is setting off a new round of respect for the old Italian ladies who lived in my house, who grew a yard full of tomatoes and cooked them down into sauces in their summer kitchen, my basement. The next time I hear Mamma's ghost whistling while she works downstairs, I'll thaw some super-smooth, way delicious, sauce, so I can whistle her summer tune.

Truck Harvest, Car Preserve

Farming and food preservation aren't just for country folk. This Brooklyn truck farm and Seattle dashboard dehydration prove it.

Capsaicin

I grew up in the southwest, and chilies are important to me. (Tortillas, too!) That's why I'm so excited that my cayennes and jalapenos are finally growing strong.

In California, my sister is representing by mixing up a batch of her famous Fuego. She won't give out the recipe, so I hope she comes to visit soon! (My theory is that pepitas are her secret ingredient.)I'm still getting by on last years' fermented hot peppers, and while I love them, I'm really looking forward to fresh. Speaking of fermented hot peppers and eating things inspired by the southwest: the next time you pull out your slow cooker to make a batch of pinto beans, try using the leftover brine from pickled peppers as the liquid. It gives the beans an amazing sweet and spicy kick.

Springing Sprouts

I'm a Metro North train commuter, and not home during daylight for half of each week. This past week, an awful lot happened in those few days without me seeing it! From when the sun set Monday evening to the sunrise on Friday morning, leaves appeared on the trees, wooded areas became jungles, and there are so many blossoms I'm drunk with giddiness. Plus, my outdoor seedlings appeared! Here are chilies, tomatoes, squashes, basil, dill, and much, much more.

Spring, and spring seedlings, remind us of all the power of plants bursting forth. Sprouts are literally seeds bursting with all the energy they've held through dormancy. Sprouts are one of the most nutritionally packed powerhouse foods. So small, so flavorful, and so good for you.

What's great about sprouts is that you can eat them year 'round. In the dead of winter, I like having them grow in jars on my windowsills not only because they're tasty, but because they remind me that spring will come again.

Here are the most simple instructions on how to sprout beans, seeds, and grains. There are far more uses for sprouts than just salads—you can put them in pretty much anything.

Gardening in a Small Space

If you want to grown your own fruit, vegetables, and herbs, you can find a way! Many people use their windowsills (inside and out) for small plants and herbs, ask their landlord or condo association if they can garden in a patch of shared land, or join community gardens. You don't have to live on a farm, or even have a yard to grow food!

This picture is my friend Bob planting in a tree well in the West Village of Manhattan.

There are plants that do better in containers, and in windows, just as there are plants that do better in this climate than in Florida. Do your research, and you can easily grow some of your own food.

Composting Weeds

Have you ever tried drowning your weeds?

I have sent them off with the garbage before, and felt bad that I was contributing to landfills. Past years I've mostly pulled weeds and thrown them on the blacktop to bake, before composting them. But I'm worried this actually dries the seeds and preps them to be spread far and wide by the wind. This year, I'm trying drowning my weeds, then adding them to the compost. Rumor has is that the "tea" the rotting weeds create is actually good fertilizer.

Does anyone have any experience with this they can share?

3 Easy & Essential Herbs

Mint, parsley, and chives are all perennials, meaning they come back every year by themselves. All three look great in your garden (I put them in flower gardens and they control weeds). All three dry and freeze well, and all three make your food much more fabulous. All three grow well in pots.

First, chives. Aren't those flowers gorgeous? Chives were among the first plants in my yard to come up this spring, and they're almost ready to blossom already. To use, cut chives off at the base, and they will continue producing new shoots all spring, summer, and fall. For winter, cut as much as you can, tie them in bunches with string, and hang them in a dry place. Once dry, store in a brown paper bag or baggie in a drawer and use all winter long.

Chives are milder than onion and garlic, and often useful for those who have trouble with spicy foods. Also, kids love them. When I was small, I enjoyed cutting my own out of the garden and cutting them up over food with scissors. Chives are delicious, just ask French cooks!Parsley is key for potato salad, tabouleh (my fave!), stuffing, and good breath! I love parsley so much that put I it in salads and sandwiches. When I first realized how tasty it was, I was horrified that it was so commonly used as a garnish that people don't eat.

Parsley is available at all times in my garden, except when there's snow on the ground. It's that hearty. It's more abundant in summer, but it's there year-round. Plant parsley close to tomato plants to keep pests away. That's it. You don't have to do anything for it once it's established, but this plant keeps giving and giving. (Now we just have to wait for ripe tomato season....)Mints are the queens of herbs. There are zillions of different kinds (chocolate mint, lemon mint, apple mint, ginger mint). There are as many flavors of mint as there are martinis these days! I grow the basics: peppermint, spearmint, and, because I have cats, catmint. Mint calms your stomach by aiding digestion.

I put it in all kinds of food to add zing, but my favorite use for mint is suntea. Stick several sprigs of your favorite mint in a glass jar, cover with water, and let sit in the sun for an hour or so. Chill and drink.

Mint spreads, and some people consider it invasive. I think there's no such thing as too much mint, but you might not want to plant it near delicate plants. You can skip the worry of mint spreading by planting it in a pot. If you put the pot somewhere where it's protected from northern winds in the winter, the mint plants are hearty enough that they will still come back on their own next year.

The drying methods for mint and parsley are the same as chives. Once dry, you can crush and keep the leaves and discard the stems.

You know that by "discard" I mean COMPOST, right?