Pimm's No. 1

The tail end of a bottle of Pimm's has been living in the fridge for at least a year. It's a drink I forget about easily. Good, two days in a  row, then suddenly cloyingly sweet (the Pimm's is mixed with ginger ale), and one shunts it back behind the bottle of Cassis (which turns glasses of white and sparkling wine pink, and makes Mississippi Mules, with good gin), the field garlic pickles and the tall jar of black currant chutney. Till a friend writes about drinking  a Pimm's Cup, and suddenly, in the first warm evenings, it seem like a good idea, again.

The scarlet month

After visiting  a beautiful garden on a high floor yesterday, I stopped at the Union Square Farmers Market, where I exercised restraint (one box of strawberries - my first of 2014, and three holy basil plants.)

In 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life, I wrote:

JUNE

This is the scarlet season.

In Brooklyn Bridge Park the slender branches of serviceberry trees hang low with ripe fruit early in the month. The little pomes - inverted coronets - taste sweet when red and apple sauce-ish when purple. It is easy to browse quietly for a secluded hour here on urban fruit within arms’ reach. At Pier Six an MTA bus driver waiting for the start of his shift beside his bus asks, as he sees me reaching up for more, Are those things edible? Yes, Sir, I say, they are indeed. 

As I walk up the low hill at the western extremity of Atlantic Avenue and turn down shaded Henry Street towards home, I think about serviceberry pie, a highlight of my foraging year. I think the bus driver might like it. He might like serviceberry pancakes, better, though. What is more American? Pie, period? Or pancakes for breakfast?

And that is where I will be today. Walking that route (if you're quick on the draw, you can still come), looking for those fruit, and perhaps finding some mulberries at the tail end of the expedition. Our delayed spring means that the ripening may be off by a week or two. And I can always return for the serviceberries. Friends will visit us from Virginia, mid-month and I'd like to bake them a serviceberry pie.

Walk on the Botanical Wild Side...

Serviceberries

This Saturday:

Brooklyn Bridge Park Walk
7 June 2014, 1pm - 3pm

On a stroll from Pier 1 to Pier 6 and environs, come and discover the wild edible plantings of Brooklyn's most botanically rich and Northeast-native inclined park. It has the best view in New York, too.

From sassafras and blueberries, cattails and pickerel weed, bayberry and sweetfern, to sumac and sweet serviceberries (pie recipe on p107 of 66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life), here is an outdoor classroom that allows us to spot and identify a wealth of indigenous wild edibles.

Mulberries

On the parks edge's we'll find edible invasive such as mulberries and day lilies.

Day lilies

We meet in the park in at Pier 1, at the entrance to the wine bar and cafe near the pond (straight in line with Doughty Street), off Furman Street - see map link: look for red markers).

The closest subways are the 2/3 at Clark Street, from where it is a 10 minute walk downhill to the park, or the F to York Street, which is about 12 minutes away on foot.

The walk will end at the foot of Atlantic Avenue. There is plenty of good shopping upstream, and at Sahadi's you can purchase foraging-related items for the kitchen, such as powdered sumac, and mahlab (wild cherry kernels)...

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The Move, on Gardenista

for Gardenista

I was very happy to be asked by Gardenista to write about our move from Brooklyn to Harlem, in terrace terms.

In case you missed it, here it is: 66 Square Feet (Plus).

I think it fills in some of the gaps.

Other gaps I'll fill in here in the next week or so. Perhaps a kind of State of the Terrace speech...

Life on the Harlem terrace

It happened. The transplanted Brooklyn Abraham Darby is in bloom (it arrived bare root in 2012 - and was my second A. D. The first didn't make it). It is one of two survivors of That Winter (the other is Windermere, and I wasn't mad about that rose: Windermere was a bit of a wuss in its pot high above Henry Street - too hot, I think. Now, with four hours of sun (it hurts me to say it) it looks quite dewy and lush).

 The sun starts to touch the Harlem terrace around midday, and instantly the Abraham Darby droops in the sudden shock of heat. Late July will be interesting.

We had supper outside, eating some potted smoked trout on fire-grilled bread while we waited for the lamb chops to cook with their terrace herbs: marjoram, oregano, and thyme.

Our little black friend joined us.

Yes, we shared.

Strawberry lawn

Why not?

Harlem of many hats

I have walked a lot in the last month.

Through East Harlem.

Up and down Lenox Avenue.

Through West Harlem.

Up 5th Avenue...

And across its interruption, at 122nd Street, by  Mt Morris Park, now recovered from snow.

On our own block we have drug addicts and drug dealers, musicians and professors, old timers and young professionals, overnighting tourists and residents about whom I know nothing. And us. As the weather warms the street vibrates at night with open windowed cars rapping down the road at a crawl or at the scream of BMW horsepower. By day there is a gaggle of older men outside the bodega, on plastic chairs and upturned crates, shooting the breeze. I greet my neighbours on their stoops - the old lady painting her toenails, the white whiskered father and his bearded son, and say good afternoon to the old gentlemen who walk down the sidewalk in their good shoes and Sunday hats. I try and meet the eye of the angry man who screams at white girls whenever he can. Ron, the super next door, always has a smile, and keeps company with the lady sitting on her walker who can't walk far but who likes to sit in front of the building. The angry man will run errands for him, subcontract his freelance trash-bagging gigs on the street and wash his shiny black pick up. The overseas and domestic visitors stream in and out of the Airbnb with shopping bags and pale legs and cameras, taking pictures of the street, our cat in the nighttime-lit window, and themselves: Look, we are in Harlem! The boys with the lowslung pants and fast car friends slouch in and out of their house.

It's an interesting time.