Forage kitchen and the politics of information

Picnic prep in the forage kitchen. Two focaccias (focaccie, I suppose) - mugwort and serviceberry - cooling. Tartlet cases flavored with yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) just out of the oven, also cooling in their pan because they are shatteringly brittle while hot. 

The leaves on the foreground are bayberry, Morella pensylvanica. 

Pickled eggs. The brine is magnolia vinegar softened with some water (too much vinegar and the eggs become very hard) and tinted with some slivers of beetroot. I was tempted to leave them at this pretty, sliced-open stage, but the yolks are destined for deviling. Maybe next time.

Keeping up a blog in the age of AI makes little sense. Bots scrape these posts daily, gleaning, gathering, learning, and then offering it all back to you. In the past I only had to think about unscrupulous content creators appropriating and publishing my images or writing without credit or permission. You know, old school copyright violations. 

AI bots make that kind of theft seem laughably ineffective.

Blogger is a very old blogging platform (this blog is one year shy of its 20th anniversary) and does not have built-in anti-bot measures. You know how, when you open many websites now, you often first see a page that says something to the effect of Security Verification, possibly with a box you need to check? That's an attempt at preventing the scraping. 

Guaranteed original content might become a commodity, like gold. 

Change must come. I mean, for this blog, if I am to keep it. I have been self conscious about its vintage looks and interface for long time, anyhow. Tick, tick.

Boom.

Gathered flowers

This is June. Flowers and shadows. The longest days.

Linden flowers for drying, for later teas and toddies. Earlier in the month I included them in a fermented serviceberry/juneberry (Amelanchier) syrup. 

Daylilies, their bright petals added to salads. Soon, I'll pick the day-old limp ones to dry to add to soups, stews, sautés, and dirty rice dishes. 

And common milkweed in the back, now fermenting, too, in a simple solution of Brooklyn tap water and sugar, tinted deep rose-purple.

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Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

The name of the rose

 ...is Bolero, reclaiming that word's place in my good graces. Ravel's Boléro, on the other hand, was played to syrupy death for me when it was a favorite song of seduction by men who should have known better, long ago.  

This rose, it could be argued, is syrupy, too. Its scent is powerful. Open a bottle of rose water and that is exactly what you smell when you push you nose into its sumptuously cupped, quartered petals. 

The flowers opened two days ago, just before mid-June's blue sky, dry air perfection was smothered by claustrophobic humidity and bleached heat. So I picked them, kept them for a day on the shadowy windowsill and for a night beside the bed, for pleasure. 

Today I pulled off their petals and stamped them fine with sugar in a Japanese mortar. They are now in a jar, where they will become syrupy and as flavorful as they are fragrant. (I add a quarter cup to a favorite vegan cake that I bake for some of my walks.) 

Ascent

 "What are you doing up there!?"

(Then wonders whether he can grab the tuna mousse before I climb down.)

My story about how the terrace garden woke up this year is on Gardenista.