Monday, March 22, 2010

Cambridge public maple

Took a bike ride up the Charles in Watertown yesterday. I've been finding a lot of cleavers. They are not anything special but they are easy to ID - square stems, whorls of leaves, grow in bunches, and tiny prickly hairs all over them - and they are fine in soups. Harvested two big oysters from my espresso oyster bucket and combined them with some buttons, and some last year's chickens, hens, and honeys, for a fine mushroom soup with wild greens and black beans. Botts enjoyed it, so I must be getting better at getting people to eat my foraged food.

Unfortunately, I am still allergic to daylilies. I harvested a bunch and ate them in Hanover the other day, then spent the night feverishly - literally - trying to process them. I hate to let an abundant wild food go, but I might have to let these guys go. Who am I kidding, I'll keep trying to develop an immunity. Chinese people dry the flowers, I'll try that. Anyone know about developing immunities to allergic foods in general? Probably not possible, otherwise people would have stopped squawking about peanut and everything else allergies.

Apollo Sunshine played a nice show at the gallery yesterday. It was acoustic, different from this link.

And, finally, an update on the maple tapping that I promised. I tapped 4 trees, 3 of them did nothing, 1 of them produced big time. The first gallon was swiped by someone, including the metal tap, but I persisted and got a couple gallons of sap. I boiled it down just enough to make a sweet liquid and this gives me one large ball jar of maple-liquid. Since I put it in oatmeal anyhow, to which I add water, no need to waste the natural gas to bring it all the way down to a syrup. So, Cambridge public maple is possible.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What is the deal with people stealing the sap and tap? That reminds me of the story that people swiped fruit from Davin's fruit trees. Another friend had her tomatoes stolen last summer. This crime needs a new name and some vigilante effort to stop it. Down with stealing other people's free stuff.