Wednesday, July 7, 2010

In the thick of milkweed pods

It's hot out there. Inside the gallery a photo shoot is happening right now, we are snapping some portraits [a little 4th grade school style..a slight body turn, a slight head tilt]. Annie just added paint brushes into the mix, I am over here trying to keep things consistent, but I'm blogging so my voice for that is not predominant and things are getting more and more out of control. I will soon give up and go over there with my ball jar full of sumac-ade and use that as my prop. Since everything is early this year, the sumac is already ready and delicious. The ball jar method: put a staghorn of sumac into a large ball far, fill with cold water, let sit for a day or so in the refrigerator. I sweetened mine with a touch of agave syrup.


Had a brief NYC trip last friday for Alex's b-day party. Walking around that day, the 4th floor of the Leica gallery building was vacant which made for some fun snooping and photography (I'd buy a Leica if I had any inkling whatsoever what makes a good camera good). Here's a nice shot of the space.

Larry David sighting that day. He was filming, probably Curb by the look of it. He was hailing a cab and then yelling at some woman who nabbed it from him. "..This is anarchy!" It was great.

As for the party itself, Ingo Lou got things crazy from the moment we decided we needed some extra wine. After all, who drops the "cash only" at the same time they drop the 1400 dollar bill? Things proceeded downward from there, ending with a dumpstered baguette fight, everyone including myself versus me. Forehead bread scar.

Speaking of dumpstered, here's the fruit salad that got me through last week. Since the last few days have been HOT, I've kept clear of the dumpsters. But not the milkweed patches. E. Gibbons and S. Thayer disagree wildly on milkweed preparation and while I truly dig all of Thayer's writings, I'm siding with Gibbons on this one: boil the heck out of them. It could just be a personal thing, like daylilies, and me and Gibbons taste the bitter principle in there. Last night was a good prep: after two five minute boils, into an Asian stirfry with plenty of field garlic (thanks arboretum) and ginger (thanks somewhere far away).





Cherries from Putnam street. Made jam with them, used old over-jellied crab apple jam from last year to sweeten it. Hopefully that wasn't a terrible thing to do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice post, D! You sure packed a lot of life into the last week.

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Jon Reisman said...

David, have you ever tried steeping the staghorns in boiled water? If so do you find that hot water gets more of the taste out of the plant than steeping in cold water? Also, do you think one is more bitter than the other?