Birds, birds, birds

One of our escapes within the city is Breezy Point tip, a spit of sand that is part of a federal park, the National Gateway Recreation Area. We see very few people, mostly fishers, as well as boats and sea fleas (jet skis) and occasional yachts out in the channel, where the Atlantic Ocean flows in and out of Jamaica Bay. This tip faces west, and part of our horizon includes Coney Island, New York Harbor, and Staten Island, far across the water. 

Over these last two weekends of August we have spent a Sunday (the first pictures) and a Friday evening on the sand, sipping our drinks, picnicking quietly, and watching and photographing a collection of shorebirds foraging at the water's edge. It is migration season, and the birds are becoming more diverse. We find their lives riveting, and can watch for hours as willets (the long legs, long beaks) rush in and out along with the little sanderlings.

The calm water here makes for good feeding. Passing boats' wakes send more waves curling onto the sand.

It's good to see seagulls being proper sea birds, and not land vultures snapping up bits of pizza. Bad day for the crab.

Out on the water loons cruise. They should overwinter further north and I'm not sure why they stay. Perhaps there is enough food here.

There is a channel buoy not far offshore that clangs in the swell, a remote and lonely sound on the water.

A black bellied plover stands alone among the sanderlings.

And a ruddy turnstone inspects a slipper snail (I think).

Until this year we have never seen willets here before, but there seems to be a regular group of five at the moment. 

I don't know whom the tracks belong to. I hope rangers, but it's hard to say. I despise vehicles on beaches. Birds breed here and the dunes are fenced off. 

On Friday, seeking solace, we headed out to Breezy Point again. On the way, we passed a tree with not one, not two, but six osprey in it. So they migrate, too. At the beach, we found open skies and sun, a very low tide, and flocks of these plovers outnumbering the sanderlings.
 

This poor bird had only one leg, and he hopped strongly on it, fending for himself.

A visiting merganzer stretched and fluffed its feathers.

The willets were still there, and less skittish than before. 

And out in the channel the big loons still cruised, calling to one another when they reunited after hunting far apart. 

It is the end of summer. And of other things, too. Many things. But I am inexpressibly grateful that we both enjoy watching these other lives, and that we are able to see them right at the edge of the teeming human city.

Moonflowers

The moonflowers began opening in earnest the day Don died. The night of the day. But, in South African time, the morning after the night of the day he died. Sensitive listening devices, trained skywards, scenting the terrace, calling a moth or a bat or nocturnal hummingbird. Would he say, No such thing? (Is there?)

I told Don's bereft Rosie today, I keep seeing Don in everything, even where I usually might not. Would he approve of the moonflowers? He liked perfumed flowers. And not just the indigenous and the imperiled, but the old fashioned and the scented and the garden-grown. He bought a vast bunch of flowers and herbs to supper in Kalk Bay the last time we saw each other. Part of the conversation was about the dignity and indignity of death. How it was important to him and Rosie to live somewhere where you could choose the time and manner of your death, should you wish to, and be able to. 

And then he fell off a cliff while hunting for an endangered species.

But maybe that is the same thing.

Ipomoea vines are very invasive in Cape Town.

Don was visiting a small population of critically Penaea formosa. Formosa means beautiful. One idiot news outlet said it is an orchid. Sloppy Google search. That would have driven Don nuts. A symptom of the larger problem. Plant blindness. 

These moonflowers will open for weeks, until the first cold snap. Then their sappy, jungle green leaves will blacken. And I may be very sorry I planted them at all, back when spring's nights turned warm enough for the tropical vines' fat seeds to germinate.

But for now, under a waxing moon, more and more of the delicate flowers open each longer and longer evening. From spiraled bud to fullblown in an hour. 

Far away, in the Cape Town that exists as a concept for me, of home and friendship, there is a growing emptiness I do not know how to fill. Like more and more stars winking out in the black sky—unknown, unknowable, unstoppable. 

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In Memoriam

Milkweed, fennel and lablab beans - late summer's compensation

Very, very late summer and the tall things are bending in the breeze. The South African milkweed and the fennel are irresistible to pollinating insects. So many bees, iridescent hover flies, wasps and hornets visit them. The creatures with stings don't bother us, so we don't mind them. It's good to see their free, flying life while the wider world's confusion and collapse press on us.

Beyond their airy stems, the lablab bean is in bloom. Yesterday we saw a hummingbird buzz its flowers. It's usually sold as an ornamental, as hyacinth bean or hyacinth vine, with occasional and vexingly ignorant warnings of toxicity. This is an ancient crop, hailing either from East Africa or South Asia (so far, its very early domestication has made its origin hard to pinpoint). 

I can't wait to have enough pods to make the two early fall bean dishes I've come to anticipate: a Southeast Asian-style curry made form from the sliced young pods, and a spicy and addictively good dish laced with berbere (an Eritrean and Ethiopean spice mix). 

You'll find both those recipes, and more about lablab beans, via the Gardenista story below.

Lablab Beans: An Ancient Crop and Stunning Vine

A tall, cool drink

Mugwort-raspberry hooch, cut with cold tonic water and piled with ice. In a pretty glass given to me by a Frenchwoman. 

I have cut back the Agastache, and the terrace-bees are cross, searching for what is missing (it's OK - they have plenty of basil, mint, fennel flowers, roses and citrus blossom to feast on). 

I'm hoping that it will flush again with fresh flowers in about three weeks. Mid-September. I'm not sure how summer disappeared, but it's on its way. Nights are noticeably longer and when we eat outdoors, the string lights come on.

(The luscious hooch is in the mugwort chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast if you're curious.)

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Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

Moonflower

6.37pm.

The first moonflower opened on our terrace. It will be a few days before the rest of the buds catch up. But the harbinger is beautiful.

I planted the seeds in May with some feelings of guilt. The guilt doesn't take, though, and they climb and twine and now bloom at the end of summer. The guilt is from Cape Town, where morning glory vines wreak havoc, climbing and scrambling and toppling tree limbs. 

But this is cold weather country. For now.  And the seeds of Ipomea alba drop harmlessly. For now.

For now. It all changes so fast. Or is that age? Or is it age plus, this-is-all-changing-so-fast? 

7.59pm.

The bud is open, and listening. 

 Listening, listening.

Scent beginning to fall into the small space, to call moths, and hold off despair.

For now.

Goldfinches to the rescue

A hot, dry walk yesterday in search of hummingbirds - we did see one - was rescued at the last minute by a small flock of goldfinches feeding on woodland sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus) in a meadow atop Lookout Hill, in nearby Prospect Park.

The day before, a different and rather disappointing outing (so dry, so many crisp and dead plants) was also revived by goldfinches doing exactly the same on Governor's Island, their beaks busy with the seeds of spent echinacea flowers.

I hereby co-name the recent full moon (the Sturgeon Moon for Native American fishing tribes) as the Goldfinch Moon.

The cat's tale

Nkwe Pirelli, two years and six months after being kidnapped from the streets of Bed Stuy and hustled south across Brooklyn to Windsor Terrace. Or South Slope. Depending on the New York map you ask.

He was really kidnapped from Serena Bass's kitchen. She had coaxed him in off the streets weeks or months before, with meals. He would come for food when she whistled and she'd let him back out when he asked, every evening. She said he slept under a tarp in an empty lot. But then he started sleeping on her bed. I fell in love with him when I visited: First, he bit me, then he jumped on my lap and curled into a ball. Smitten. I had been wanting a cat again for a long, long time, and had been waiting for one to find me. Here he was.

The day we came to fetch him, Serena tried hard (and failed) to suppress her amusement as the Frenchman and I scooted about her kitchen on all fours for over an hour, trying to coax this handsome but very streetwise cat into a carrier. The cute little soft carrier I had bought online wasn't going to cut it. Like trying to pack a ball of electric eels into a very snug purse. She wanted us to wrap him in a towel and sausage him inside. We didn't want to traumatize him. Snicker. The Frenchman disappeared for a while and returned with a giant carrier, large-dog sized, froma neighborhood pet shop. We put treats in the back of it. Serena snorted and went to put on lipstick. She was going out. Stay as long as you like, she said. She left, wearing a magnificent, oversized, voluminous white puffer jacket, snickering audibly and wishing us luck.

In the end, her gentleman-cat Tiger helped us out, taking pity on us, or perhaps recognizing that we were trying to remove this interloper from his kingdom. Tiger strode into the giant carrier and ate the treats, purposefully. Percy - that was Serena's name for him - followed. Smart Tiger exited. I leapt, the Frenchman pounced, we slammed the door shut a little loudly and the poor cat was trapped. He rolled madly like an otter spinning in water, but was stuck. We had him. Half an hour later he was home, and he is now Nkwe Pirelli, King of Prrrrp.

 He likes to sleep under things. 

It is International Cat Day.

Be nice to cats.

Food

Our local greenmarket is just a five minute walk away from where we live. On Sundays and Wednesdays trucks arrive early in the day from farms in New Jersey and New York, filled with vegetables and fruit and flowers ripe right now. The farmers or their vendors unpack and set everything up. These harvests were sown months earlier, tended, gathered, cleaned, packed, made beautiful for New York shoppers who've seen it all. At the end of the market day, back it goes, back they go. Long day, New York traffic. 

I don't know what the profit margin is or how real farmers survive. The produce is not cheap - it can't be. It's much more expensive than what you'd pay in a nearby store for similar (looking) and seasonless produce shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, and it's about double to triple what the equivalent quality would cost in markets in Europe. 

I think a lot about food. How it is grown. How to grow it. Who grows it. Who harvests it. Who eats it. How little so many people know about the food they eat. How it is eaten. Who gets to eat it. How much of it there is, in the world. How obscene it is that it is kept from people by other people, who have the power to prevent death by famine. 

This okra and these aubergines were very pretty.

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Pawpaw Cake with Spicebush Streusel

Recently, I served this Pawpaw Spicebush Cake - coffee-cake style, with spicebush-pecan streusel - after a plant walk at the Queens Country Farm Museum, a small but remarkably rural-looking farm in the heart of Queens. Because I needed to feed about 16 people I double my recipe and baked it in a big rectangular pan. It worked!

The pawpaw purée for the recipe was from my frozen stash, circa September 2024. The pulp freezes beautifully, and I keep it in half-cup portions for later baking or ice

cream.

And in case you are in doubt, we're talking the native American fruit, Asimina triloba, a custard apple relative, not papaya, which is also called pawpaw in countries with Commonwealth ties, past or present.

And pawpaw season is coming. And the hunt will be on. 

This recipe is in the pawapw chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast (of course). The streusel in the original is for hazelnuts, but I think pecans work very well indeed. 

A nightly netting

 

Our evening suppers are now netted, which is normal for summer. Usually, it's for tiny flying insects (smaller than fruit flies, but what are they?) that are attracted to anything acidic, like salad dressing, or wine, into which they hurl themselves to perish. But these last few evenings we have been joined by a persistent, chunky hornet, who buzzes our dinner relentlessly. I don't really mind it, but the Frenchman feels about hornets the way I feel about spiders. Heebie jeebies. We both know that both are beneficial, yet neither of us can stand being near them. So, net. 

Supper was a tangle of tiny wax beans soused while warm in shoyu with finely ribboned shiso leaves from the terrace, and dropped onto crisp-skinned, curry-powder-dusted roasted chicken thighs. Before adding the steamed beans I deglazed the hot pan with elderflower vinegar and honeysuckle cordial (the methods for these delightful concoctions are in Forage, Harvest, Feast).

It's 99°F as I write, and the African basil continues to persecute me (see previous post). It's been watered twice, today. But the bees are happy. Very, very happy.

Too much basil

I made a gardening mistake, this year. Enthused by the success of the African basil last summer, and the endlessly interesting pollinator show that unfolded in its airspace from dawn to dusk, I doubled up this late spring, and placed two plants in each of the windowboxes lining our terrace.  

After a slow spring start - the plants really don't like cold nights (did you know that basils are native to Africa and to Asia?) - this long-stemmed hybrid is now bustling with bees. That's not the problem. The problem is that it has to be watered at least twice, and sometimes three times, a day. This morning I watered it at 10am. By 2pm the plants were drooping. Granted, it is extremely hot (96°F), but at the very least this basil asks for two waterings a day. Two minutes to fill the watering can; in out, in, out. It feels like a persecution. 

The other basils, growing mostly in cooler spots or in full shade, are much less thirsty.

In other hot-weather news, the lablab beans have taken off and the bronze fennel is six feet tall. If we are lucky the fennel flowers will attract some cicada killers. They did, last year. The lablab beans we eat, and the hummingbirds visit their flowers on their way south, in September. 

Dirty rice: Just add daylilies

Have you ever made dirty rice? It's a delicious mess of rice made exciting with all sorts of bits and pieces. The Southern Creole dish looks a bit different in our house, but I hope I capture its spirit. One of the staple ingredients  in my various versions is dried daylilies. Hemerocallis fulva is still in bloom here in Brooklyn, and the spent flowers are a delicacy (I think), once dried, with an unexpected flavor of carob. Daylilies are dead easy to dry, and last pretty much indefinitely.

My recipe for dirty daylily rice is now up on Gardenista, along with the how-to of drying. Bon appétit!

(Oh: the salad above? Just watermelon pieces with various basils from our terrace, a little salt, and little olive oil, and a drizzle of good balsamic vinegar.)

Summer's flowers

Summer flowers, wild and weedy, aromatic and opportunistic. Knapweed, Queen Anne's lace, white sweet clover and mugwort are feral fillers for this tangle of two bee balms and rudbeckia. 

Monarda punctata to the right, an underrated cut flower and edible herb. Plant more. 

And on the windowsill, some extras from the terrace: liatris and hyssop, and more obliging mugwort. Aside from being a very useful herb, this super-invader lasts exceptionally well in water. Just strip off the lower leaves and immerse it for 30 minutes to revive it after picking. Florists? Mugwort is everywhere, and it is free.

A vegetable love

When local greenmarkets spill over with produce it's hard not to be vegetarian. Corn is ritually peeled of its outer husks, the tender silk removed (it's very good to eat in a coconut milk soup), and then the inner husks folded back carefully over the kernels so that they are not burned by the fire that cooks them. 

We ate this corn with basil butter (heaps of basil whizzed in a food processor with as much or as little butter as you like), and an anchovy butter. So...not quite vegetarian. A quick cabbage slaw, and broccolini dressed with ramp leaf salt and a Palestinian olive oil made by Al'Ard. 

Late bees still buzzed the hyssop and African basil while we ate. 

Outside

 

Hot days, hot nights, heat advisories. Turning on the oven seems insane, so if we're not eating cool and cold food, we're cooking outside on the tiny terrace. 

The charcoal is always Red Oak's lump charcoal, never briquettes; the firelighters I use (I am the braai mistress!) are the little chunks made by If You Care. The lightweight charcoal lights fast and burns hot, so one doesn't need too much. 

Lillet, seltzer, rosemary, ice. A drink to sip while watching the chimneys swifts on insect patrol above us. Every night there are more and more fireflies, and every night they fly higher, coming right up to the terrace to blink as we eat.

Wax Bean Salad for Summer

The last week of June has resembled the first week of August. Daytime temperatures of 100 degrees. Watering the terrace two, and sometimes three, times a day. (How? A two-gallon watering can, carried from the kitchen - strangely I don't count the trips. But I do know that it take about two minutes to fill the can. I have to view the unavoidable task as a combination of patience and strength training.)

The weekend was better, and suppers returned outside after some evenings of respite in the cool of the air-conditioned indoors. Cooking indoors has been minimal, but the braai on the terrace has been in frequent use. Last night it was boneless short ribs marinated in shoyu with scallion greens - one rib for our supper, one to eat cold, tonight; with a wax bean salad and a farmers market salad of tomato, snap peas and purslane.

You know it's summer when the hyssop is tall and in bloom. It makes the bees very happy.

Wax Bean and Shoyu Salad with Perilla (or Shiso) Pickle

I use frilly shiso or perilla (also called sesame) leaves for this riff on the method for Korean kkaenip jangajji (sesame leaf pickle). They turn limp and soft but their rosewater flavor holds its own. 

Sesame Leaf Pickle:

15 young sesame leaves

1/4 cup shoyu (Ohsawa nama shoyu) or soy sauce

1/4 cup chopped scallion greens

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon sugar 

1/4 teaspoon Korean chile flakes (gochugaru)

Beans:

8 oz wax beans

Toasted sesame oil

For the pickle: Layer the sesame leaves in a small bowl with the scallions. Add all the other ingredients. (Make sure the leaves are submerged.) Allow to marinate for an hour before using.

Cook the beans in boiling water (or steam)until bite-tender. Drain. 

Roll up and thinly slice 6 of your pickled sesame leaves (keep the rest in the fridge) and add them to the still-warm beans. Add two spoons of the marinade. Toss, and add a drizzle of toasted sesame oil and shower of chile flakes. Serve warm or at room temperature

No-Cook Food

 

Too hot. To trot.

So it's Caprese salads all the way, whee, whee, whee. 

We are so very, very lucky to have central air on days like these. That has not always been the case. The feel-like is allegedly 107°F. The crazy (cough, determined) Frenchman went for his five-mile run, regardless. 

I have some other insalata do Caprese ideas over here, at Gardenista.

Where are you? What is the temperature?

Tuna Mousse: Food for a Heatwave

It wobbles, it jiggles, it's straight out of the beginning of the middle of the last century. It's wonderful. It's tuna mousse. Wrong, somehow. But wonderful. And inhalable. I revive the recipe every year when heat threatens and I won't cook indoors. We are in for a possibly unprecedented week.

We  - the Frenchman and I - used to eat it on our rooftop in Cobble Hill, accompanied by Don Estorbo (de la Bodega Dominicana - a bodega cat before bodega cats were cool), with a wide view over New York Harbor. In those days we had a single, room airconditioner, whose roaring was no match for the baking heat. The rooftop was our evening escape.

Tuna...is overfished. Try and find pole-caught tuna: American Tuna, Wild Planet, or Whole Foods 365 brand are better choices. Walk past the Starkist. You are better than Starkist.

Tuna Mousse

The beauty of this decadent, 60's-suggestive mousse is that it goes with all the crunchy, healthy things: celery stalks, crisp cucumber spears, carrot sticks, endive leaves, snap peas (halved lengthwise), long breakfast radishes or round, stout ones, quartered.

Tuna Mixture:

2 cans tuna in olive oil, drained
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon ketchup
4 cornichons (tiny cucumber pickles) 
1 Tablespoon capers
2 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice
Freshly ground black pepper

Wobble Mixture:

1/3 cup just-boiled water
1 packet (1 Tablespoon) gelatin

For the tuna mixture: Combine the ingredients and whizz in a food processor till smooth. No food processor? Chop the capers and cornichons finely, then mash everything with a fork in a mixing bowl bowl.

Wobble mixture: In a small bowl, combine the gelatin and the extremely hot water and stir until the gelatin has dissolved. 

Add the gelatin mixture to the tuna mixture and whizz/mash again.

Taste. Assess the salt, pepper and lemon juice situation. Adjust.

Transfer the tuna mousse mixture into a small bowl or mold. Chill for at least 2 hours. To unmold, slide a knife dipped in hot water around its edges, cover with the serving plate, and shake until it plops out.

It wobbles. See?

Of course, you can also eat it with a good baguette, or dark brown Scandi bread. Or crackers. Or a spoon. Or on your own, with no one else watching.

Here's a bonus picture of Storbie, aka Estorbo loco, aka The Don. 

Gone, never forgotten. Eeep.

A tea to soothe sleep

 

Standing on the terrace recently I snuffed the air and smelled an unmistakable and welcome scent. Lindens were in city-wide bloom. Some still are.

Feeling besieged by the sense that the world is about to break over our heads?

Sip some linden tea.

Are the trees still in bloom, yet to bloom, soon to bloom, near you?

In New York, lindens are planted very, very widely. Littleleaf, bigleaf, European species, native North American species. 

Their flowers dry easily, and rehydrate gracefully. Linden tea has been used for a long, long time, to calm nerves, and soothe the sleepless. I am a convert.

Find the recipe and some gathering tips in my linden tea story for Gardenista.