A day in the Catskills

We Zipped out of the city.

At my feet a flask of espresso and hot milk, the way we like it.

In my hand the ritual Catskills donut. The only time I ever eat a donut: One jelly donut en route. Vince's is Boston cream.

We found the leaves, on the climb called Devil's Kitchen. We had not been here since 2009.

It was very cold. A few degrees above freezing. I was shivering when I got back into the car.

There were icicles.

And wraparound beauty.

Even the poison ivy was gorgeous, below:

I did not grow up with woods, and they remain magical.

Two hours from New York City, the wilds.

Then it began to snow.

We Zipped on, heading for our favourite spot in the narrow Peekamoose valley.

...stopping often for leaves.

...and views.

...and crabapples. So many Posted signs. Private. Beware of Dog. Stapled to trees or fence posts on the road. Why does the countryside sound so paranoid?

...and flowers.

...and garlic mustard, Too close to the road to collect but I did munch surreptitiously on a leaf to try and quell the non-stop sneezing and sniffing fit that had besieged me since Brooklyn. I can't say if the garlic mustard was the reason, but the fit stopped, after two solid hours of nose blowing. Naturally, now the Frenchman is sick - we shared the coffee cup - but I am fine.

The valley has steep sides striped with water.

And then we crunched down the familiar path. We were last here in January. We found this place in 2009, with my mom.

Mushrooms! They turned out to be Armillaria (often called honey mushrooms), and probably A. gallica. 

All Armillaria are edible, but it took a lot of reading, and asking, and spore printing before I had a bite, 36 hours later (delicious).

The water in the stream was low but rushing nicely.

And our spot was as deserted as ever. It has never disappointed us.

We broke out the picnic - hen of the woods soup (left over from my forage walk in Prospect Park), and bacon and Brooklyn arugula sandwiches.

Vince eats picnics standing up. It might be a Canadian thing.

On the way back we saw lots of barberries - these pretty but invasive shrubs have devastated parts of the Catskills woods, shoving out more reticent natives.

And then it was back home. 

Re-entry on a Sunday is always a lengthy process, when you are New York-bound.

Over the Hudson-spanning Tapanzee Bridge towards Tarrytown, to avoid the potential nightmare of the George Washington Bridge from Jersey.

And back home again, in thick traffic.

Hugging the Brooklyn Bridge Park on the BQE, trying to remember that we had just been in a place of nothing but trees and pristine water and leaves falling across the open road.

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Brooklyn's wild foods

We had a fantastic forage walk in Prospect Park on Saturday, in the first real chill of October. 

A lovely bunch of people attended - from New Yorker South Africans to native Rhode Islanders and Upper East Siders, a strong Brooklyn contingent and a very enthusiastic and interested 8-year old - Scout - below, who was appointed the official puffball-fetcher. At the beginning of the walk she pronounced, I don't like mushrooms. By the end she was knocking back shots of hot hen of the woods soup, calling it "delicious." Also a fan of the rosehip jam and barberry bread.

So I was happy.

And I think everyone who wanted a puffball got one.

Lots of hawthorns in fruit, a native Sichuan/Szechuan pepper tree (Xanthoxylum americanum - the Chinese species are simulans and piperitum), lambs quarter seeds, plenty of pokeweed and elderberry bushes (for spring), and a lot inbetween.

. 

The next walk is November 15 in Central Park's Ramble. 

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Seed, water, light

The arugula sown in the last week of August is producing enough for several salads a week. The leaves are picture-perfect. This is a dream come true (my dreams are small and green). Arugula is as much a staple in my life as my morning cup of espresso.

The arugula - and the red mustard - held its own against the weeds while we were in South Africa and survived even as we lost several of our potted plants to drought while we were away - in-ground soil moisture lasts.

I have subsequently sown a couple more rows, as well as some wild arugula, kale, mesclun and mâche. The first, late August sowing of mâche did nothing, and it may germinate better in cool soil. And I saved some more of its seed to sow next week, in case cool means cold.

It will be interesting to see how these leafy greens handle the: 1. chilly temperatures 2. increasing shade. Currently they do not receive more than three hours of direct sun. Which is very little. I remember the blazing heat when I first saw this space, in late July - but essentially it is a garden where shade sets the pace.

But that is fine. I am learning new things. And we are happy here, for many reasons - not least of which is our very decent landlord. We have post traumatic renter's stress, and are gradually learning that there is another way of doing things.

An experiment, above - I planted some fenugreek seeds - store-bought, as a spice, from Sahadi's. They were the first to come up. Fenugreek smells like curry powder and I hope the leaves, eaten fresh in India, have time to grow before there is frost. It was Madhur Jaffrey's memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees that gave me a longing for fresh fenugreek. It is a wonderful book.

I planted the fava beans and peas on the 23rd of September and picked the first shoots yesterday. I left enough green to continue making food for the plants. They get morning sun, as soon as it clears the ivy hedge on the eastern side (about eight feet tall) - also about three hours right now.

So that is the edible news. I am waiting for  a bulb order to arrive - Alliums from Brent and Becky's, and more lilies from The Lily Garden, whose bulbs are the best.

And now we are off to see the leaves in the Catskills, with a flask of coffee,  a flask of maitake soup, and crispy bacon and arugula sandwiches, schmeared with Hellman's.

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October forage walk, Brooklyn

There are five three two spots left on this Saturday's walk in Prospect Park (but more for the Central Park walk on November 15th).

Saturday's will be an early autumn ramble, with the leaves just beginning to turn color. While I can't promise edible mushrooms, we may be lucky, as evidenced above, but our focus will be on plants: edible, not edible, indigenous, and invasive.

For our snack I am leaning towards a barberry, spicebush and banana bread.

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The hunting month

Weird, yes?

Calvatia gigantea - giant puffballs, picked before quite giantish, in Brooklyn. Their cooked texture may be an acquired taste, but I like it. You peel them first, and they cook to something like firm tofu. Excellent sops for flavor.

We had mushrooms on toast last night: one of these, and a portion of the 8lbs of hen of the woods I brought home.

It was a beautiful day out with enough provisions for several meals and recipe testing.

Some maples have begun to turn.

Ohio buckeye - Aesculus glabra

Buckeyes look delicious, but are not.

Aronia (chokeberry)  - above -  must be very ripe to collect, and I wouldn't, here. 

Horses, from a mushroom hunter's perspective.

A puffball, above.

And a lovely hen (of the woods), a.k.a. maitake, Grifola frondosa. 

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Hunting for supper

October mushrooms for dinner, thanks to an afternoon's hunt.

We need a bit more rain, though; despite last week's pre-hurricane downpours the woods were quite dry.

I love puffballs - their texture (cooked) is to vegans like silky tofu and to meat eaters like bone marrow.  When you peel them, they squeak like gentle styrofoam. Sliced and sauteed, they melt into risotto. The genus here is Calvatia but I'm not sure whether the species is fragilis or cyathiformis. Both are edible. When old, C. fragilis has dusty purple spores, but at this young stage that puffball is a pure, dense white mass.  Edible puffballs MUST be pure white inside (below, far right). If their flesh is purple when young, walk away.

There were some young chicken of the woods nubs, too - and I sauteed all the mushrooms separately before adding them to the risotto. The herb was mugwort.

It was delicious.

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