City summer

The first muggy days have arrived in Brooklyn. We have supper on the terrace, and are entertained - soon after 8pm - by the fireflies, who first appeared on the 24th. We wondered if we would see them from this terrace, and are very happy that we do. The gardens below - ranging from indifferent, to lovely,  to barren - are mostly empty of people but are flashing with those little swooping lights.

We have central air, now, which seems very luxurious after 1st Place, where we couldn't even squeeze a wall unit into the windows because of their - thankfully very pretty - wrought iron burglar bars. But turning on the oven still seems a crime, so suppers are increasingly salad-like, or we braai. I did cheat tonight and baked a clafoutis with some wonderful cherries.

Those skylights on the big roof across from us are mysterious. They are all covered by cloths. Sometimes a strong wind whips one away and then men come up to attach new ones. We can only assume that the building below becomes very hot and that the extra sunlight doesn't help. We see no roof units for air conditioning, even though there is a huge fan or machine that roars all day - possibly extraction for the laundry business below. It is a rare remnant of industria in a residential neighborhood. An episode of The Sopranos (I am only watching it now!) suddenly tuned me in to the fact it is mafia-founded and owned, or at least owned now by the sons of mafia. The long green wall of Boston ivy on the southern wall must help with cooling. This vilified climber deserves more respect for its ability to lower building temperatures (and it is beautiful - like a thick green pelt). It is embraced in Europe and herbicided, here.

Once, we saw a raccoon trundle across that roof in the moonlight.

I have a new botanical walk schedule up - you'll find it on my Forage Walks and Talks page. The next one is this Sunday in nearby historic Green-Wood Cemetery, where the gorgeous trees should help to cool us (You can read about it in the August chapter of my first book, 66 Square Feet- A Delicious Life).

Serviceberries this Saturday

One of the best things about New York in June is serviceberries. Juneberries. Saskatoon. Shad. Mespilus (if you are European). Amelanchier, if you know the botanical name.

The local Brooklyn serviceberries are delicious. I know, because I have eaten them (nearly) all. But I left some for you.

Come and meet them this Saturday on a Scents and Serviceberries walk (book via PayPal below). Our picnic will feature, well, yes: Serviceberries.

We will identify many other edible plants too, and some of them smell very good. Really. Pineapple weed. Common milkweed. Not to mention the wild greens.

Serviceberries freeze very well, which is how I come to make serviceberry ice cream out of season, with an equally freezable compôte of beach plums (which ripen at the very end of summer). Two delicious North American fruits, happy together.

Lots (and lots) of recipes in Forage Harvest Feast - A Wild-Inspired Cuisine.

Or just come and eat some of them this Saturday. I will do the work for you.

WALK COMPLETE

Eating wisteria flowers - an ephemeral treat

It seems a shame to let May go without looking back at the wonderful ways of wisteria blossom. North of us wisteria panicles are still dripping from wherever they twine. And at 1st Place, our last address, I found that pruning the rampant, ancient old vine there resulted in fresh blooms in July, so by all means hack back hard as soon as they have finished blooming if you would like to enjoy these perfumed flowers again in the sullen, hot days of late summer.

Wisteria sinensis is very invasive locally (it smothers and strangles trees and shrubs), and can be very aggressive. Which is good for foragers, since it has invaded our city forests. Native W. frutescens is slightly more laid back and a better choice if you would like to plant one at home.

Look in Forage, Harvest, Feast for these recipes. And if you happen to be one of the people who has left an Amazon review for the book, thank you very, very much! They really do help sales.

The recipe for this Concentrated Wisteria Syrup, above, is on page 441 of Forage, Harvest, Feast. It is very aromatic. I make syrup because I like to bake with it, and to make drinks:

...to wit: Like a julep, but I shook it up, instead. And there are black locust flowers in the background! Yes, they have their own book chapter, too.

Still julep-ing, and with wisteria ice cubes.

This is Misteria (my name for the plant when I was very small), page 442 - read all about it. Delicious with tart-sweet sumac sugar. That's another chapter... (but check out page 405).

Vinegar. Does anyone like vinegar as much as I do? I am lost without it. For slow cooking adobo-type dishes, for mixing low ABV drinks (the new mixology catch phrase: low alcohol by volume; last year they were mocktails), and for quick pickles. Salad dressing, of course. I have a quick vinegar method in FHF, but to ferment from scratch - very satisfying - follow the Common Milkweed Flower Vinegar method on page 98.

The vinegar is also very good for baking biscuits and Fluffy Wisteria Pancakes (page 444.)

I LOVE tahini with vinegar, as a vibrant, tongue-smacking, but creamy dressing. This chickpea salad is a riff on one I used to inhale at Anatoli on Sunday nights in long-ago Cape Town (made with giant white beans). It's really good with slivers of raw, red onion. Page 443.

This is made with summer wisteria. Basil's ready, real tomatoes are ripe (I always wait). Mint. Balsamic, salt. Hm, hm, hm

And to finish (especially on this hot, hot late May day and Memorial Day weekend), wisteria and Nigori sake popsicles. Page 443.

For grown ups. Or for loud children who need swift sedation.

Your choice.

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Come on a Wild Walk

New wild walks

After an amazing walk in Inwood's forest yesterday (that is part of our picnic, above), I have a new schedule of pop up walks and picnics:

This Tuesday we will be in Prospect Park in the early evening, with wild inspired drinks and late spring forage snacks (like wild lettuce galettes).

And on Saturday we explore the shoreline at Fort Tilden, on the Rockaways, before the teeming hordes of beach bodies invade the currently peaceful and botanically exciting dunes.

See all the options (plus more in June) on my Forage Walks and Events page.

Pine Cone Jam

May was pine cone jam month, in our kitchen.

You use immature, green pine cones. I collected cones mostly from exotic Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii). The cones of native pitch pine (Pinus rigida) are very sharp and rough on the fingers. The black pine cones are much easier to gather.

See? Green inside.

It's a fragrant process, after the first boil (you pour that water off, to remove some resin, before cooking in sugar-syrup).

My recipe for pine cone jam is next door, at 66 Square Feet (Food).

After the process is complete and the mixture is cool, the texture is taffy-like.

And tastes completely wonderful.

The mothers

Nomatiptip at Babylonstoren, on January 23rd, two months to the day that my father died. He died on her birthday.

Names: When the little, bright girl arrived at the farm school that she would walk to every day, barefoot and for miles, the white female teacher asked her name, as she did with the whole roomful of children. When Tipsy gave her name, the teacher said, You are now Selina. So each child was rebranded on the spot. And those were the names they carried into the white, ruling world.

When I am trying to locate Tipsy and don't know where she is I sing in a high voice, Teep? Teep? And she sings back, Hooooooo! And I find her.

Since I was 14, she has cared for my family, protected, deflected, absorbed. She has given. She has held secrets. She has held her tongue. She has spoken out.  She has cheered. There are so many stories, and some I am still learning, from Thabang, her son, who grew up without his mother, and suffered for it. The great tragedy was that I benefited from his mother's warmth where he had not. And this is just tip of the iceberg stuff.

So two months later we went Babylostoren for the day as a belated birthday, and walked the beautiful gardens and picked figs and ate lunch, and talked.

And here is my mom, on Sunday, December 2nd last year, with the patio table set for an incongruous three. This was her birthday, a day after the memorial for my father in this garden. The Frenchman had flown in the previous week, when I knew my father would die, and he had the chance to say goodbye to him. And to be with us. For my mom's birthday we drank bubbly, and didn't try to be happy. But we popped the cork loudly over the patio, as my father would have done. He didn't believe in a discreet pffft.

So it has been a hard year, and for all kinds of reasons that would require a novel to explain. But for now the two mothers have each other. And sometime today two beautiful bouquets arrived for them (thank you, Lush, as always). Tipsy will see hers late, when Thabang brings her home from the house my father bought for her some years ago, and where she sees her family every weekend.

Mother's Day, Father's Day - my father was scornful of these so-called holidays, thinking them cash cows for businesses and pressure for people who could not afford the splurge. I think I belong to his camp. Why just the one day? And how hard is the hooplah for parents who have lost children, whose children don't care, or for children who have lost parents, or simply want nothing to do with them, possibly for very good reasons? One size does not fit all.

So don't go chirping, Happy Mother's Day! without thinking.

Sometimes, it isn't.

Checking in

There has not been time for catching breath (a.k.a. blogging, hence my love of Instagram, like a microblog). There have been many wild walks, dinners, and picnics for paying customers (who are often also friends). And lots of rain. Hundreds of photos must be downloaded and uploaded (my phone camera stores images in the cloud, my camera on a memory stick, so... down and up) and sorted into their respective files on my computer (and then backed up, note-to-self), the result of weeks of lush spring foraging, gardening and recipe creation. And I look forward to a full day of Sunday rain to catch up, and just sort. An unsorted life really rattles me.

Also, I will vacuum.

The drink is delicious. The pink is from the syrup of the pine cone jam I have been making this last week - baby pine cones cooked till soft in syrup; for the drink, add gin and good tonic, and a pollen-heavy male pine cone cluster for effect. It is being sipped at 7pm on the terrace to the tune of a singing robin, a declaring cardinal, and chirping sparrows. The huge trees across the empty roofs of the benign business that envelopes our little row of townhouses are a very fresh green. In the windowboxes on the railings the arugula and lettuce, herbs and pansies are looking like I had hoped they would, in early April. We are already eating our own salads, cilantro and mint. I just sowed some purple basil. Yesterday I moved the cardamom plant outside. I even planted  a rose. We'll see.

As I write the Frenchman is headed home to Brooklyn after an afternoon's paragliding, upstate. And in a few weeks - it does not seem real - we take a short vacation to the French Alps, where he will fly, and I will hike and look at plants. We will get together every evening and discuss. I fell in love with the Alps when I was a teenager and my mother took me to Switzerland. I may not come home. It will be our first vacation together (ever) that is not to visit family. And my first Elsewhere since 2006. For as long as I have lived 8,000 miles from home I have gone home, and nowhere else. And Else beckons, loudly. It always has. I itch to travel, and my French husband longs for the land that stamped his DNA. So fuckit. We have broken loose. Thank goodness for AirBnB.

The first drops of rain are falling. Supper calls. I think an aubergine just exploded...

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Book a Spring Walk