Summer unofficial

Memorial Day came in with a cold dip in Walden Pond. I still have to see the movie Yes Man because I feel that all the time, plus I love Jim Carey. Kate and Brian jumped in so I had to follow. It was a good way to usher in summer.

Last night we ushered in movie night (to replace art night..maybe not the best idea regarding creativity, but certainly more relaxing). 400 Blows, a French movie about a kid who has shitty parents so he gets in trouble a lot at school, and finally just leaves altogether. He gets caught stealing and gets sent off to Observation Camp to be watched by shrinks and juvenile officers. The movie ends with his escape, a long run to the ocean, which he's never seen before. I thought it was a great flick, and the tofurkey sandwich which Jordan made for me could have qualified as art, so art night didn't die quiet yet.

Who has time to blog with all this foraging to be had?

Last weekend I joined Brian for a 4-borough bike tour of NYC. Towards the end of our loop, back in Inwood, we re-visited the black locust trees I pointed out to Paul and crew last fall, and sure enough, they were in the perfect stage for eating the flowers. This was the first time I ate them, and I completely understand why Sam Thayer devoted a whole chapter in his book to them, they are great. I brought a bunch home and showed them to Romanian Corina, who flipped out, like usual "WE HAVE THOSE IN ROMANIA!!". She says this about every plant I point out to her...dandelions, grass,... Well, in this case her Romanian upbringing came threw big, she taught me how they make fritters with them and we did a vegan version that was excellent. Next time I'll try with whole wheat flour I think, for more substance.
And next time might be soon, because the next day after we ate them, and after I complained to her that beantown doesn't have enough of them, I came across a boatload of them near Ringe Ave in Cambridge. I was up there because she dragged me to an "opera" which turned out to be a mess in several ways. First, it was the CSO, not exactly the most in tune orchestra I've ever heard. Second, it was in the vineyard church, one of those new touchy feely christian congregations that make my skin crawl. but, I found black locust so totally worth it.

Came across a great book at Rodney's in central. despite their total lack of decent fiction, they do pretty well stocking nature books. Sure, there are occasionally titles like "Weed Survey of Michigan, 1968", but there are lots of gems too. Bought Ghosts of Evolution, a book about fruits and seed pods that no longer have natural dispersal agents (animals who eat them and crap out the seeds far from the tree). Like, avocados, mangoes, papayas, honey locusts (everywhere in cambridge - a tree adored by urban arborists for its deep roots that don't crack the sidewalk, and its ability to grow in all sorts of soil qualities). Anyhow, where are those dispersal agents? They are extinct! 13,000 years or so they vanished, but the plants have hung on and now we cultivate them. Kentucky Coffee Tree is on the list, and so I gathered a bag of last years seed pods and will roast them soon to try the coffee substitute enjoyed by colonists in Kentucky. Since there are no dispersal agents for this tree left, sure enough, under on of those trees, or the honey locust, you find an abundance of fallen pods. So this is great, we're not stealing from the squirrels!

Lots of pokeweed over the last couple weeks, some in suspect places, see photo, but I'm still kicking, so all good.
It's too bad you have to cook it to death before eating it since it's so juicy and pretty when you pick it.

A trip out to upstate NY a few weeks ago to visit and forage with my friend Sarah from the yearly Rhode Island Rhythm and Roots music festival proved extremely fruitful. My personal highlight was finding the roadsides abounding with wild parsnips. This was the classic exciting 'first find': I'd seen the pictures of the notable leaf pattern so many times in books I recognized it right away, and it was really yummy (it's the same as cultivated parsnip). Apparently it's classified as an invasive, which just means it's strong and successful, and so, to celebrate its strength, I named my newest computer at work after it - pastinaca. Some other items of note on that foraging trip where trout lily, wild mint, nettles, and some yellow violets. Here's the feast.

Lady's thumb is out now and it's a good potherb. Despite this blog entry, I think there's a slight lull in great edibles right about now, so I go after things like lady's thumb and lamb's quarters. Here's lady's thumb, easy to spot to the the centered dark splotch on each leaf.

Lastly, another word on knotweed: that stuff will grow anywhere. Saw it in a stream the other day, a lone, skinny one. Cut to ten years from now and the stream has a knotweed damn. At least any beavers left won't have to work so hard.

OK, one more last thing. As I type these final sentences, my mouth is full of watercress from J.P. Watercress is a sneaky little one, but somehow the seeds adrift always find the places that make you say, "yep, that's just where watercress ought to be."

The Tab (and Bigfoot)

Last night was an eventful one at the Cantab. Before making it to the tab, our thursday night haunt with the Chicken Slacks, we had a great opening reception at the gallery for Miriam's show. Then some drinks at the Middle East and some vegan grub, then off to the tab. I think I worried some of my friends who didn't see how the whole following went down, but here it is in brief.

I walk outside for the set break and there's a tall black (only important because he kept bringing up race and how I "don't know anything", etc) homeless (also important for the same reason), self-professed alcoholic 59 year old guy. Anyhow, he's singing really well, and tapping some rhythms on his legs, and it sounds so good and I've had a couple of drinks so I sit down and join him in song. He feeds me the bass line which I sing, and I think we're sounding pretty good. Then it went down hill right after that song. He tore into me, getting in my face. Which was fine, because I knew he wasn't going to do anything bad and it was obvious he was sort of all over the place, canned lines, not listening to me, so I took it for a while, then decided that I thought he wanted some action. So I started barking back a little at him...this is when my friends were worried something was actually going down, which of course it wasn't. Anyhow, we calmed down after a bit, and then for about 30 minutes, I got some seriously nutty tales. He was obviously well-educated somewhere along the long line of life, dropping interesting words and phrases. He told me he used to be an industrial psychologist, ok fair enough, his friend had been a clinical psychologist. But then there was a refrigerator in a field somewhere (he could not disclose the location, there was some military tie in, but it sounded like southern U.S.) locked up, and he was hiding behind it to not get shot. Enter Saskwatch - aka BigFoot, although Al also refered to him as Billy. Billy saved him, and was huge, and had a fat girfriend, but with a very cute face, but Al hasn't seen him since it all happened. After that story, Al asked me, "Are you an abductee." He claimed to have been abducted by aliens. It went on like that for a while.

We ended on a good note, both fed up with the world but agreeing on that at least, and we stood up and I moseyed back into the tab. And I guess to clear my own conscious, I am not posting this in a way of saying "hey look at all the fucked up crazy people out there, check this one out...". I like talking to people, and if I can talk to someone who got the short end of the stick, all the better. I generally try to listen and do my best to commiserate on the sadness of how the world stamps some people down so hard. It would be great to know his story, and all the other stories. Afterward, his friend saddled up to me and told me I had lots of patience.

Then, we got freindly with Sam, who we only ever see serving us falafel late night at Moody's, but he was out and about last night. Nice guy. Apparently "suspended" from the job until Monday -- issues with the boss. We still got ourselves a great couple of falafels, which we really didn't need given that we all consumed tons of homemade hummous with japanese knotweed and dock, and another with all sorts of wild greens, including linden leaves which are out in full force right now. We alsohad the treat of a Mike "Not Art" appearance, who tagged brian's T-shirt and my gray button down. The Not Art movement is going strong thanks to it's one foot soldier, Mike.

All in one week

My how things change during one good week of Spring in Boston. I come back from a great trip to the Vineyard to find all the leaves of the maples, oaks, and lindens out, and the last-week dormant honey locust leaves popping out too. So, on my ride in today I gathered my lunch salad: linden leaves, cleavers, dandelion greens, plantain, and curly dock. And bought some annie's asian sesame dressing to make it all taste yummy.

Martha's vineyard greens salad

From the violets up top around clockwise:

• violets and their leaves
  
• wild mint
  
• dandelion leaves
  
• wild carrot
  
• cleavers
  
• narrow leaf plantain
  
• curly dock
  
• j-weed
  
• orpine aka sedum aka live-forever aka frogbellies
  

For the salad, I cooked the carrots, steamed half the dandelion leaves, the cleavers, the plantains, the dock, and the j-weed. Then cooled it, and added the rest of the greens raw, tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. It was yummy. It's satisfying when the land can look pretty barren but still yield such a good variety of eats. Going foraging with Lindsey Lee, author of Edible Wild Plants of Martha's Vineyard, tomorrow. If you're on the vineyard at this time, you can also be tantalized by the serviceberry trees blooming in the meadows and the autumn olive leaves coming out.

"I'm hungry but I don't want to eat plants."

I stopped at my brother's in Hanover to pick up his bicycle for my trip to the vineyard. Instead, I got my nephew Sam. We really tore it up for the couple days he was here with my mother and me too. Up at 6 am, in bed at 7 pm, and for those 13 hours, non-stop action.

Some highlights:

Feeding the horses using our flat palms (dandelions, violets, and dock).

Picking dandelions for dandy bread, and making it. And eating it. Sam didn't want to have jam on his because I wasn't and my mother wasn't, but then he tasted it: "I want jam on mine."

Sam and I took a bike ride along a nice easy bike path. Every time we went downhill he'd say, "Oh no I can't look I can't look," but I'd look back and he'd be looking. I guess he just likes to say that. I saw an old beat up car in the woods so we stopped to check it out and take a pee break, and then he piped up with "Hey...pea and pee is the same word." We have been talking a bit about peas lately since we planted some at his house and the beach pea plants are out too. No pictures of all this sam fun because my camera out of juice right when I opened it first day here. So I just fired up my webcam to snap me and Henry.

We did some good monkey swinging from the twisty tree in Cedar Neck Sanctuary. At some point when he got hungry, I think this was back by the horses, he came out with the soon to be classic: "I'm hungry but I don't want to eat plants." I'm not discouraged, he'll make a good forager. He helped my scrub in the ocean the evening primrose roots we found in Biddy's yard.

Whiffle ball and 'ping pen' and harmonica playing and lego building were our at home fun time activities. Like I said, we packed in the days really well. When 7 pm rolled around each day, I felt a certain sense of accomplishment, not to mention quite a sense of fatigue too.

Now we have Henry with us, but he's all Lorena's job basically, and he's doing just fine. We just got back from a walk around the woods here and found enough wintergreen berries to actually make it worthwhile to collect them. I've also sucked it up and just been making strawberry Japanese knotweed crisp. Although I'm still searching for the best savory preparation, I want to hook people in to wild plants, so I'm selling out and making the crisp. And, we were actually able to 'forage' the strawberries yesterday -- as we were leaving Stop and Shop, I noticed in the trash a big container of strawberries with one moldy one on top. I paused, looked around and snatched it. True foraged Japanese knotweed strawberry crisp.

Here's me, webcam: .

Art night

Finally did a painting last night at art night, haven't done one in weeks. Grabbed some knotweed and a dandelion (entire plant, with root) and painted them. I like the idea of painting from the real objects in front of me, but I think they always come out worse than when I work from photos, and I think that's because with a photo I don't feel rushed, and I guess it's also easier from photos because everything is already flattened onto 2D for me. Anyhow, when I was doing this painting I was thinking about japanese ink paintings, which I know almost nothing about but I totally love. Read this blog for more, by a local writer. But, alas, I can't do it. My friend Valeria took a photo of my little watercolor last night, from her iPhone, mailed it to me, this morning I threw it through an oil filter using gimp, and voila, kind of nice. Japanese/watercolor/iPhone/oil/tech painting of knotweed and dandelion root and greens.