Happiness

Photo by Vincent Mounier

My happy place: with my husband, in the woods, meeting a new plant (Viburnum dilatatum, linden viburnum - invasive and delectable, if you like tart flavors). This is out on Long Island's north shore, and within the driving limit that my back can handle right now. Stupid back. I can't sit for long without pain, but I can walk for miles. So it could be much worse.

The fruits make a crimson jelly. And a good, sour powder, too. The seaweed I collected  a little later is already dried and crispy, waiting for future recipes (crackers, for sure, and probably some things I have not thought of, yet).

It is a blustery weekend in New York City and I think by Monday many of the beautiful autumn leaves will have been blown from their branches. So peep as many as you can now if you live in the hood!

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Forage, Harvest Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

Autumn

For another few days autumn in Brooklyn will still be very beautiful. Riding my bicycle home through the park from the farmers market is a pleasure.

And on the days when the sun shines, the sky is that immaculate blue.

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Forage, Harvest, Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

66 Square Feet - A Delicious Life

To the woods!

For the two months before our move the Frenchman and I had to cool our hiking heels. Instead of woodland trails, we pounded sidewalks and Brooklyn neighborhoods, hunting for a new place to live. Once we had moved, it was with huge relief that we headed out again to Harriman State Park, the minute the last box was unpacked. Our usual Catskills haunt is over two hours from the city, while Harriman - discovered this summer - is just over an hour's drive. For my injured back, this is a godsend: while I can walk and exercise as much as I like, sitting for longer than half an hour becomes very painful, so long drives are not fun.

Harriman is a gorgeous park, with hills and woodlands, blueberries for miles, and many lakes. We visited four times in July and early August. Different every time.

We park on Kanawauke Road - Route 106 - and head south towards Lake Skenonto. The trail (yellow above) we chanced upon is still our favorite, although there is much more to explore. We use Gaia Maps (app and web) - you pay an annual fee, and they have superb maps as well as coverage. This lake is also accessible by public transport, from Tuxedo Park.

Cute corts, as the mushroom people call them. Some blue mushrooms (like blewits and milk caps) are very good to eat. Some are not. Cortinarius iodes - above, probably -  is not recommended. It has a tell-tale slimy cap. But so does its identical lookalike Cortinarius iodeioides - confusing, yes?! They also have similar spore prints. Enthusiasts tell them apart by licking the cap. C. iodeioides has bitter slime.

No, I don't lick. And I don't bother with corts at all, for eating - there are easier mushrooms to enjoy.

Like my dear friend the hen of the woods, Grifola frondosa. Also called maitake, or dancing mushroom, by the Japanese. Easy to identify, hugely generous, and delicious. It has been a bumper year for hen of the woods and they have been so prolific that just about every other oak tree in Brooklyn seems to have borne a crop this fall. Not a good sign for the trees, as this fungus causes butt rot, which eventually kills the tree. We saw many on our walk and I collected just one clean specimen, turning it into pâté and soup and a few other things back home. Especially fun when they sell for $20/lb in shops.

The woods were also bristling with honey mushrooms, members of the Armillaria complex. They are also delicious (and destructive to trees), but not a beginner mushroom: they must not be confused with some toxic lookalikes. Fortunately their white spore prints differentiate them from so-called deadly gallerinas (rusty-brown print) and sulphur tufts (purple-brown).

The Frenchman's favourite edible mushroom, after chanterelles. The beautiful black trumpet.

Many fallen logs were studded with little puffballs. While these diminutive Lycoperdons are edible (while young, firm and white inside), I don't see the point. Although on a pretty plate in a restaurant...maybe.

The tall blueberries in open spaces were already burnished with the changing season.

Invasive barberries doing their best to convince us to plant them in our gardens. Don't. They displace local plants and harbor ticks. And birds disperse the seed.

Equally destructive and pretty Rosa multiflora festooned with rosehips (good for jelly, syrups, and Vitamin C).

Also in openings in the woods are stands of hay scented ferns (Dennstaedtia punctilobula).

Here, at our halfway mark, we stop on a cliff above the lake and have lunch. Almonds I roasted in coconut oil with lots of berbere spice and salt. Manchego, and an Italian sausage from our new hood (we didn't like it and will go back to our Columbus staple). After having gone breadless in April, picnics without a crusty baguette do lack a certain...'ow do you say...je ne sais quoi. But both our waistlines thank us. And I do cheat. The Frenchman doesn't cheat. He never cheats. Consequently, he is thinner: Minus 35 lbs since April, me a mere 15...

After lunch we turn back towards the other side of our loop. Lots of moss, everywhere. 

Pixie cups belong to a species of lichen called Cladonia. Lichen is classified in the Fungi Kingdom, and moss in Plant. But lichen is really algae living in symbiosis with fungi. Fascinating.

The woods are late turning, possibly because we had so much rain in August and September.

Back in the car and driving home along the beautiful windy road, I was lucky enough to spot between the trees a glimpse of my first-ever coyote.

Good end to a very good day.

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Forage Harvest Feast

The Windsor Terrace

I climbed up the fire escape to photograph the new terrace.

All the citrus trees moved with us: Thai limes (Citrus hystrix), Meyer lemon, and finger lime (Citrus australasica - and yes, native to the understoreys of the Australian subtropics) - and all of them have fruit! The largest curry leaf is in the lower left corner (the other went to my friend Irene Khin, where it is kept company by a giant Burmese ginger). The myoga ginger, cardamon and new galangals came, too, so this seems to be an adventure in subtropical edibles.

Other sentimental favorites are there, too: black snakeroot - about to bloom, baby oak leaf hydrangeas (their large parent was adopted), the prickly ash that was so sickly in its first year and now robust (I grew it for Forage Harvest Feast's sake - the leaves and fruit are wonderful), some pineapple lilies and a fat rhododendron. I am not sure why I brought the begonias - probably just because I knew I'd want some flowers.

The terrace receives eastern sunlight, and then some more in the very late afternoon, from the west. The top floor apartment (no more upstairs terrorism!) is very bright and they will thrive indoors in the winter. I hope.

We are still digging our way out from under a mound of boxes; work and book events have taken up much of our time, but there has been progress, and we can now even see parts of the apartment's floor (it is a very solid floor, and does not squeak like the last one).

I am leading an autumn forage-plus-picnic in Central Park this weekend, and the next in Prospect Park. See the link below to book.

And now I must unpack a dozen boxes of books.

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Fall Forage Walks

Autumn talks

Join me at The Museum of Food and Drink this Thursday at 6.30pm for a discussion of native flavors and how they should inform our regional cooking and be used in kitchen gardens. And sip this cocktail, too: From the pages of Forage, Harvest, Feast it is 'Long Nights' - bourbon-based with lashings of spicebush.

And on Saturday I will be at the Union Square Farmers Market in the Food Bookfair tent to sign books from 10am -12pm this Saturday, too, if you'd like to say hello and munch on a mugwort cracker...

In other book news, acclaimed food scholar and author Darra Goldstein wrote a generous review of Forage, Harvest, Feast recently for The Times Literary Supplement, calling its recipes "bold and exciting."

I hope you agree (and some of them - like 200 or so - are even easy!)...

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Autumn Forage Walks

On the move

Ten days ahead of our move a plant party was thrown. In terms of garden space we are downsizing from a ground floor's 1,000 square feet (if that is confusing read the About page for this blog, all is explained) to a top floor's 100 square foot terrace.

For drinks we had chilled prosecco poured onto a dash of common milkweed gin (made from fermented common milkweed flower cordial and gin).  And nice Brooklyn tapwater with wisteria ice cubes.

Ready...

(Ones with ribbons are my keepers.)

Set...

Go!

Thirty nice people came and went and most plants went out the door to new homes. Heavy pots and plants are being picked up over the next few days.

Melina made a plum cake. I made bruschetta rubbed with garlic and topped with heirloom tomatoes and garden basil. (Bye-bye, basil!) Radishes and butter for snacking.

And now, back to packing.

To see all stories about this garden, visit the 1st Place BK tag in the sidebar Pigeon Holes.

If you'd like to catch me in the next couple of weeks, I will be giving a talk about Native Flora and Regional Character at The Museum of Food and Drink on October 4th at 6.30pm (you need to book, and tickets are $20) and on the 6th I will be signing copies of Forage, Harvest, Feast at the Union Square Farmer's market.

The end of a season

Elderberry syrups and gin. Started in August, bottled in September. I have some sumac vodka and sugar (all recipes in Forage, Harvest, Feast) in mason jars right now, and those will be the last forages to be bottled before we move, soon.

I will miss this kitchen very much. The glass door to the garden (I now think every kitchen should have a door to a garden), the little window beside the stove. It is a small space, but very efficient, and one of the two bright spots in this long, ground-floor apartment (the other is the bedroom, at the opposite end).

Many things, small and large, framed our nearly three-month search for a new apartment, after this lease was not renewed. Good natural light for my photography (and sanity), a decent kitchen - no dark cabinetry and ancient black appliances (food photos, again). A good floor... you laugh, but the floors we have seen. Light fittings from hell. The notorious nipple light. Good proportions - which includes everything from ceiling height to room size to window width to distance between sink and bath. A neighborhood where we feel at home.

We have found many of them in our new space, near Prospect Park. It is pricier than 1st Place, and slightly smaller. But the top-floor apartment (no thumping upstairs neighbors!) has been gut-renovated with an unusually fastidious and good eye for detail, light, and that sense of proportion that can make or break a room. The place has been finished with a sense of integrity that only two others we have seen, shared. We have seen dozens. The terrace is small, it's about 100 square feet, but it is very private. It will be a relief to sip a cup of coffee in genuine solitude. But I will miss the birds, and the wandering possums.

The proximity of Prospect Park (and Green-Wood) is wonderful, for me. But it is far from the Frenchman's important twice-weekly running route home from Manhattan, so he loses. Some of our things will have to go into storage. And this Thursday I hope many plants will find new homes, as dozens of friends, forage walkers, and gardeners come to adopt them.

It is friends who have kept my nose above 2018's rising waters. To each of them, thank you. You are extraordinary.