Into the snow

We have had heavier snowfalls in New York City, but the most recent one was exceptionally beautiful. It frosted every branch on every tree and shrub, catching delicately on any extended and horizontal surface. So of course we went to the beach. The Frenchman to run, me to walk and explore and take pictures.

This drive-by photo was snapped as we passed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To think that once, long ago, both my parents cruised beneath it, the massive Queen Mary 2 barely fitting in (I included that link because the ship's website shows exactly that perspective), on her maiden voyage. They stayed in SoHo and we ate out and explored and walked and it all seems impossible, now.

The edges of Brooklyn looked like a fairytale as we were about to cross a channel of Jamaica Bay onto the narrowest, sandiest, least diverse portion of Queens. Breezy Point is a conundrum, waiting to be solved. But that's another story.

And Fort Tilden, at last. Part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. These back roads behind the beach are one of my favorite places to walk, in any season. 

The sense of emptiness is emphasized by the deserted tar roads, remnants of the military base here that tended nuclear warheads. Cold War days. And we don't seem to have progressed, much.

The thickets include native trees and shrubs like black cherry, serviceberry, sumac, bayberry, eastern red cedar, and pitch pine, as well as privet, those Nanking cherries that we only captured in full fruit last year, and strangling tangles of honeysuckle, bittersweet, and multiflora rose.

The snow on sandy, colder-than-tar paths showed footprints of earlier adventurers. I saw two people. The other 8.8 million were elsewhere.

And the dunes above the beach. Grasses and hedges of beach plum and bayberry. Somewhere on the low tide beach the Frenchman was running. 

Grasses still upright and not a snowy owl to be seen. (But you can spot some gorgeous Long Island owls on the Frenchman's site.)

Back in Imbaleki (our electric VW; she replaced the beloved Ntini, the little gray golf), the little enigmatic church beside the soccer fields. 

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Prepare to Forage and Plant

Oyster mushrooms, year-round

I wrote about oyster mushrooms for Martha Stewart Living. Did you know...they are carnivorous! Yup. And they are being made into vegan bacon, too. And they decompose just about...anything.

If you are not a regular mushroom hunter it may surprise you to learn that winter can offer choice edible mushrooms. In a thaw between freezes, oyster mushrooms may appear. These are in nearby Prospect Park. They always grow on dead or living (but wounded) trees, and here they are fruiting from a mostly-decomposed log, so they look as though they are growing on the ground.

And of course, oysters are now easily available at supermarkets (or are they, where you live?). 

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Don't wake the lilacs

 

Clearly, this is not now. This is then. May, when nights are stretching the day all the way into bright June. Lilacs gathered from an abandoned homestead in the Catskills. A gin and tonic with lime leaves and strawberries. 

I must show this picture to our bedroom citrus flock, and whisper, "Two, more, months." This last stretch indoors is always the most problematic. The Meyer lemon has aphids on its flowers. That's a first. The black pepper vine (that turns out not to be a black pepper vine, but a betel, despite being sold as such by the grower) produced a mealy bug, which must have friends. The galangal has spider mite, and will be showered again, today. The yuzu has dropped some leaves but has a dozen fat buds.

For now the stone table on the terrace is the meeting-place only of mockingbirds, who come to eat fruit salad there every cold morning. A small dish of chopped fruit. This morning it was tiny cubes of apple and three raspberries. 

We may meet these lilacs again, in a green season. Now, they are covered in ice in the field in the old mountains, and fast asleep.

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Of abundance

Time capsule. Brooklyn chestnut blossom on our windowsill in May, 2021. 

Have you ever tasted chestnut honey? It is dark, and slightly bitter, and smells of springtime in a small German town, then only recently released from the East, where Goethe built his theatre, and where I sang, disguised in heavy make-up, false eyelashes, and bespoke costumes. That was long ago. 

But the smell of chestnut honey (more than the blossoms, strangely) whips me instantly to the park in the town where the trees in bloom soared like green cathedrals.

From the forage kitchen, too, last May. How different the season, and how encouraging. A bowl of pokeweed shoots, waiting to be blanched (the pokeweed chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast explains this in detail, along with lots of recipes, including one for Kentucky Egg Rolls - you'll just have to read it). Pine cone jam and green fir cones, to the right beside the laptop. Some of the cones were pickled some are still buried in miso and must be tested. And who else tapes over the camera on their computer when not in use? I know I'm not slone.

The books on the counter? Let's see: Koji Alchemy, by Rich Shih and Jeremy Umansky, The Complete Bocuse by Paul Bocuse, America - The CookBook, by Gabrielle Langholtz (I contributed the wild recipes), and Larousse Gastronomique, a grand and dated but wonderful reference. Half the stack was for reference and half was for a video meeting (I perch my laptop on them). In the days when culinary residencies were beckoning, only to be tanked by COVID. 

In the background there is a damp paper towel draped to dry over the Frenchman's Nespresso machine. Paper towels are one of weaknesses. But I recycle them.

May is a a busy time. Recipes. Notes to be taken. Constant exploration.

Tuesday confessions complete.

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That happened, and will again

On a cold (cold) February night I discover a spring evening. Here is May 1st, 2021.

My winter chore of downloading and editing an intimidatingly large number of photographs from my camera's 2021 memory sticks is making progress. It was supposed to have been a daily task. But I allowed it to escape me, and then I became paralized by the enormity of it.

But Stick 1 is done! And now I set out to nibble-gnaw-decimate-in-increments the 1,231 images on Stick 2. This is the third image I found. (The first two I deleted: one - cutleaf toothwort beside a stream -  was slightly out of focus, viewed at maximum size, one - a morel atop a mushroom book - was boring).

But this memory of a supper made me happy. Little sausages. I can see they come from Balady's Halal Market, a supermarket in Bay Ridge that is a source of excellent olive oil (Lebanese), lamb, and spicy little sausages. The little dish of sliced strawberries would have been for the almost-tame mockingbirds, who sometimes came to eat their fruit while we both sat there. The violas and nemesias are still new. But the trees are leafed out. 

Spring will come. 

And with it, more photographs.

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Book a Winter Walk, 12 February

Follow that passionfruit!

Slurp.

Where are all the US passionfruit? Find out in my story for Gardenista. 

(I ate my way through pounds of passionfruit to answer the question. It was rough.)

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My Books

In the shadows

From the photo files, as I swim my way back to the present, through images.

There are as many shadows in my feelings about family as there are in this picture of the kitchen where I find meaning and occupation (is occupation, meaning?) when I return home. 

But objects become lodestars. Sweet peas, old South African cookbooks, green figs, ripe figs, nasturtium seeds.

The light also makes me think of Karel Schoeman's Another Country. I must read it again.

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