Urban Foraging

NPR hen nut special post

2011-11-17T17:28:00.003-05:00

The other day on my annual fall visit to Mt Auburn Cemetery, in search of a chicken mushroom and some chinese chestnuts, I instead found a load of ginkgo nuts and the right type of pine tree for pine nuts. Not too much new to report on the ginkgo nuts, except to mention that if you are going to gather them and then jump in a friend's car, be careful not to step on any of the blue cheese-smelling fruits that surround the nut (the one nearest my fingertips in the picture). Blue cheese is being kind...these guys smell BAD.

The pine nuts were an exciting find, although the excitement wore off when I got home and cracked them open, getting quite sticky, only to recover 11 nuts. All the others were blanks. But, the ones that weren't were tasty! Here they are, all 11 of them. My Italian houseguest at the time ate about 6 of them.

And in case you missed the action about 1 month ago, hens were everywhere. I had gathered so many in early October that by late October I had assumed they were all done. Then I got a call from Brian in NY who had just stumbled upon some in a Brooklyn cemetery. Of course, I then had to get out of my cozy reading situation and venture out before dark. Not really expecting to find any right in the city, I took my best guess and headed towards Brookline, took a left down a street I never go down, and whoomp, double-take, brakes, 4 huge hens. I couldn't even take them all. Hen pickles, frozen hens, plenty of stir fries and them some. Two giants below:

These days...burdock and evening primrose are keeping my rice and lentils happy at lunchtime.

A day in Jamaica Plain

2011-09-28T09:11:00.012-04:00

It's Kousa Dogwood season and this is a good year for them. After stats class at Harvard last night (which I am barely following, but I find the nerd level entertaining) I noticed a great kousa (there are lots in Harvard yard) right next to my bike so I loaded up.

I've basically given up trying to get other people to enjoy this fruit. I guess the skin wigs people out. Maybe it's because I eat kiwis with the skin on that I'm used to it. Or because I'm stubborn and have decided to like all foraged food.

This was anna's last weekend here. Another person moving through the revolving doors of Cambridge. She was here for a while and was a good seed. Never a bad word for anyone. Here she is with rob and ZARAH under an apple tree by J.P. pond.

An anna creation.

The apples looked runty but were good, especially the red ones that we shook down. Not quite like shaking mulberries down, but, effective nonetheless. Some guy came whipping by us during this and proceeded, in the span of about 3 minutes, to enlighten us on protein content of apples, paw paws, how many people the earth can sustain, according to his own calculations (less than 1 billion), and that there are 4 amino acids. Interestingly, he told us about paw paws and about Peter's hill in the arboretum, where there were lots of apples (worst protein food there is, said he), but he didn't know that there were in fact two paw paw trees over there, which we were heading to. I told him, but I don't think he listened. The paw paws were perfect for eating and we gathered and munched a bunch. Bad year for the quince though, there were almost none. But I grabbed some of the small ones from the flowering quince shrubs, and will see if they are any good in a jam.

After a brief pitstop at the Ukranian club (Andrew, a friend of anna's, is Ukranian), we headed over to the old Franklin park zoo. With all the rain and stories coming in from the boston mycological club, I was on the high lookout for hens. And sure enough, even in over-picked Franklin park I spotted a few. Which of course made my day because hens are great. I saw some for sale at the Cambridgeport farmer's market the other day. Forgetting to take a picture in situ, I propped this guy by another oak tree for a photo, and flipped a piece over to reveal an identifying characteristic of the fungus: brown on top, white underneath. Later the next night, spicy potato, mushroom, pasta soup.

In totally unrelated news, today is the first patient treatment using the MCO software I've been working towards for the past 7 years. A big day for IMRT treatment planning!

Are those autumn olive flowers in your jar?

2011-06-01T15:56:00.013-04:00

Yep! I've working on infusing all sorts of stuff in vodka for P.U.B. - the latest spinoff of hot potato. P.U.B. is pop.up.bar, a party we are planning where all the drinks are cocktails made from local infusions. Rhubarb, elderflowers (if I can find any), autumn olive flowers, hawthorn flowers, horehound, etc.

Over the past few weeks, lots of poke and milkweed to be had. I've come to like pokeweed a lot more than milkweed, although milkweed's plus is that it offers more edible parts as the year progresses.

Urban Milkweed

Urban Pokeweed

I took the Fung Wa to NYC this weekend, and the Lucky Star back. Brian and Jordan had a great party. Who says vegans can't barbecue? Brian grilled up old but reliable chicken mushroom. We just reconstituted it since its 6 months in the freezer left it a bit dry, then soaked it in BBQ sauce, and it was pretty darn good.

Watching the black locust flowers cover the trees along the highway was painful. I hoped the rest areas would have them, but they didn't. However, the rest area on the way home, just off Rt 84 in Connecticut, had a nice outcropping of wild grapes, which we stuffed last night for hot potato 4, coming up this Friday. I also got a veggie burger and fries at BK because I couldn't stop myself. Whatever addictive substance BK throws into their whoppers etc, they throw in the veggie burger as well.

I did some foraging yesterday in East Boston/Winchester. The foraging wasn't great, but the bike ride was. You jump on the blue line, jump off 5 stops later, and it feels like you've just started your vacation on the Jersey shore. It is so different over there. Deer Island is beautiful too, and I learned from one of the signs there that they process the waste from over 1/2 the people living in Massachusetts. That's crazy stuff. I ate some curly dock from Deer Island. Also crazy.

Weedseason

2011-05-16T15:53:00.006-04:00

It's milkweed and pokeweed season. Pokeweed in my opinion is the far better of the two, but alas, on the way to work today, taking the railroad track route to hopefully find some pokeweed, all I found was lots of milkweed. This is about the sketchiest of all habitats that I "urban forage" (most of my urban foraging is done in nicer places, along rivers, in parks, etc. Railroad tracks through industrial Cambridge I consider more quintessential urban foraging).

But, already ate them for lunch, along with a big wollop of tansy just to try that out. Let's say they went down, but I won't be recording the recipe for the ages.

Some pics here
of the foraging tour from Saturday. We had a good time, exploring somerville, medford, and arlington, and feasted on our findings at the end, which included oysters mushrooms, nettles, a lot of pokeweed, and a large mixed green salad of linden leaves, dandelions, chickweed, redbud, and sorrel, and a stir fry of knotweed, burdock, cattails, and the mushrooms (including a young Dryad's Saddle!).

I am super impressed when people are completely shameless about their dumpster diving. Go Zaac, who led us into the Arlington TJs dumpster in broad day light, no feeling like he needed to explain anything to anyone or justify it, at all. Just another part of life. All the stuff that would have ended up there - which looked like a ton - we spotted tucked off in some red push cartons, so, not technically garbage yet, so we passed it up. If it were only a bit closer to Cambridge...

Here is the Japanese Knotweed Hot Pickle recipe that lots of folks have been asking me about. This is the first season I can get people to consistently say "wow, these are great!" and they are talking about knotweed pickles, not say, lobster rolls. Given the years of japanese knotweed stir fry attempts, this is big progress. Next year, I should approach grillospickles.com and get them hooked for running a few batches. And I should get some mugwort, tansy, etc for gruit for some local old school beer making, and then talk Cambridge brewing into doing that.

OK, on to the recipe:

JAPANESE KNOTWEED HOT PICKLES
1 part vinegar
1 part water
Bring this to a boil and add some pickling spices and salt. I like whole black peppercorns and red pepper flakes.

Add enough tender knotweed (first couple weeks of growth, whole stalk, after that, just the top section that easily breaks off) so that it is just covered. Remove from the flame. It does not need to cook at all, just being plunged in the boiling water vinegar solution is fine.

Put into sterilized mason jars. Ready for consumption as soon as they cool off! Great in salads.

In the works: hawthorn flower infused brandy. And once elderflowers are out, I will go for the homemade St. Germain. Alcohol infusions ("schnapps") I can handle but making beer and massive quantities of japanese knotweed pickles, that I must outsource.

The Gallery fundraising foraging dinner cooked by Didi Emmons was a smashing success. Many people gawked over the nettle burdock risotto, but I was most pleased with being able to find enough wild greens for a full salad for all 47 attendees. Here I am in the vineyard watercress patch, a place of real beauty.

Weed Foraged Pizza and eating grass

2011-03-31T14:19:00.005-04:00

Foraging season is off to a fine start despite the cold weather we've been having here in Boston. Nettles were already poking up in some sunny spots a couple of weeks ago. Young mugwort, plantain, and dandelions are ready to be gathered, and the banks of the Charles are well stocked with evening primrose roots. I don't consider MGH to be great foraging grounds, but I just took a walk to find some plants to throw on my foraged pizza and was able to doctor it up nicely with all of these.

Very soon we won't be able to keep up with all the greens. The japanese knotweed (itadori -- see this cool site) onslaught is almost upon us. With this preparation technique to try, plus my soon-to-befamous hot pickle, we'll be ale to handle it no problem.

I wrote in my book that "all grasses are edible but only the young ones are digestible." On my walk that I just took, I noticed a lot of fresh young grass growing out of some haystacks (no surprise) that are lining the Charles. So, I decided to put my mouth where my words were and I ate some. It was decent.

Welcome to Spring. I hope to write a post on cleavers (an early spring edible) soon. This is a reminder to myself to do so.

My new foraging tour schedule site

2011-03-25T09:45:00.001-04:00

foragelive.com

Eden still open

2010-12-06T08:40:00.005-05:00

After staying up until 5:20 am playing guitar all night at Pete's party, I ended up in bed at 8:30 pm last night. Up at 5:15, like a farmer, and I decided to check out my favorite pair of apple trees. Every time I go I there I think it will be my last of the season, but, alas, there are always a few more goldens hanging on up there, making this a very long apple season. I brought a bunch home and "put up" some more apple sauce. This one I used the food processor on to whip it into baby food consistency, just to switch it up from my usual chunky blend. There they are, on the tree, in the 5:45 AM light, Allston building lights in the background.

I thought this picture of the ball jars being prepped in the microwave would look nice, but what I really got out of it was a reminder to clean the thing.

Here they are before getting cooked, and on the left you can see the sauerkraut I started last week. It is fermenting along well.

Speaking of apples, on Saturday, out for a walk (before the 10 hours finger numbing guitar playing session), I stumbled into the BU art gallery for a work-in-progress exhibit by triplet sisters from J.P. called In Search of Eden. They are called triiibe. Eden brings up apples, and they had a great collection of wacky apples from the living apple museum in upstate, Geneva, New York. I ate a big one that looked like an Asian pear. Also, free tea and music for everyone, it was a nice treat.

Nerdnite

2010-11-30T18:33:00.006-05:00

Here are the slides for the talk I gave at nerdnite. I brought a bunch of food: boiled acorns, boiled burdock, pickled japanese knotweed, pickled purslane -- the usual fare. Expected to go home with most of it but the crowd ate it up. I mean, the acorns were boiled not nearly long enough to remove all the tannins, but at least one person was loving them anyhow...said they were "addictive". The biggest praise Cambridge acorns have ever received.

Hot potato 2 is coming up. To that end, I will hop the apple fence one last time tonight to see if there are any stragglers left on the ground that have not been beaten too badly by the frosts, and I will step foot into Trader Joe's and plunk down some cash for the cheapest wine in town. Hopefully I'll also find some time to tickle the ivories too. I am working my way through the Goldberg Variations..see how many times I can cycle through the full set this winter. Anything to procrastinate the manual grunt work required for moving into the new apartment.

Not quite Thoreau (thorough)

2010-11-17T17:30:00.000-05:00

Thoreau recorded extensive notes of what was flowering/fruiting/etc when. In that vein I'll offer a highly abbreviated recording: black nightshade still to be found, as well as burdock and lamb's quarters and apples.

Dodder

2010-11-05T10:50:00.002-04:00

As always with a new plant that I look up, there are conflicting reports on edibility. Last night at a really great lecture by the new director of the Arboretum, I was reminded to look up that orange thread-like plant that grows on other plants along the Charles River. I did, and found it: it is called dodder. Enough web sites say it is edible, and one that even says it's full of beta-carotene. Look out Charles River weird orange parasitic plants!

Delicious goldens

2010-10-18T17:09:00.007-04:00

After a couple of jam packed weeks of work (kaiserslautern, stockholm) and then gallery grant writing and opening, I finally got to return to the woods a bit this weekend.

Saturday, Julie and I went to a socially conscious fashion show at Codman Farms in Lincoln. All she had to say was "Lincoln" and I was there. The fashion show at a farm bit didn't hurt either, because that just sounded weird and fun. And it was. They gave away free white turnips which no one was taking so I took two batches, but the real foraging happened when I arrived and immediately, momentarily, ditched the event to look in the trees for a chicken mushroom. I found a little guy about 15 feet up after walking for 10 minutes, and banged it down frantically with a stick .. so I could get back and not miss the cat walking.

The next day Anna and Rob joined me to Lexington and Concord for a walk through the Minuteman National Park. We hunted and hunted for mushrooms, without much luck (been saying for a couple years now, I really should learn the russulas, there's always plenty of them in these woods and I know people eat them, even though the Boston Mycological Club steers everyone away from them). Did get lots of nice evening primrose roots though, and sour fish (sorrel) and a few autumn olive berries. Then towards the end (it seems like this often happens -- God finally feeling bad for me and throwing me a bone) we scored a bunch of puffballs and an Agaricus. The puffballs weren't great in the kitchen, but the Agaricus was. But, I enjoyed that one solo since it seems a riskier mushroom to impose on people.

The day after I got back from Europe, although not feeling great, and riding on some Benedryl because of some nasty rash that would take over my body for an hour or so and then vanish without a trace (was it those oddly juicy elderberries I found in
Stockholm?) I decided to check out the two great looking apple trees just over the barbed wire fence at the waste water treatment facility by my house. It was a difficult fence jump given my state, but worth it in terms of fruit quality. Someone years ago must have decided to beautify the waste water treatment facility with a couple of really nice apple trees, a golden and a red. Slightly weird choice (Cambridge doesn't put apple trees in public parks, but they will throw them behind huge fences) but, fine by me. I did almost deck myself hopping back over the fence -- benedryl clumsiness - but the apples are great. Particularly the goldens. Delicious.

There were about 30 loaves in the savvy's dumpster the other night. It was painful.

An old spring movie

2010-09-30T10:38:00.003-04:00

Somehow this video never made it online. Knotweed is a great plant not only because you can cook it sweet and savory, but also because it is so dominant in so many landscapes, you can beat the heck out of it and not worry about it. Last spring I drove my new bicycle and myself through this patch of it on Martha's Vineyard.

Follow this link for the video.

More currently, some friends and I did a quick tour of Santa Barbara wine country this past weekend. After two sips at our first stop, I got bored with that and decided to take advantage of the cacti growing beside the tasting house. I harvested them (carefully, using newspaper and cardboard so as to not get a handful of prickers Lorena-style) and we dined on them over the next couple days. As is often the case with my foraged goodies, I ate about 80% of what I hauled in, and everyone else respectfully had a bite or two. In this case, OK by me. Prickly pear cactus: grainy pulp like watermelon, magenta juice, mildly sweet, and seeds that go right down. Much better than the one I found in a New Hampshire supermarket one day. Random websites also reveal that prickly pear is "High in Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Magnesium, Calcium and Potassium." Every plant is high in some good vitamins though, so I usually don't care about this, but a friend of mine asked though, so there it is.

Fruit frenzy on Fire Island (and the Iron Sheik)

2010-08-29T17:07:00.001-04:00

Last week I took a short trip to Fire island, which is off the southern coast of Long Island. The getting there was hectic, a direct consequence of my preference for not planning things. Long story short, the rain, the traffic on I95, and my late start from the Cape all added up to my making the 6pm ferry from new London in seconds, literally, and then plunking down and realizing I had no clue how to get from the ferry landing spot, Orient Point, which might more aptly be called Nowhere Point, to Bay Shore from where I would take the final ferry to Fire Island. I was banking on the goodwill of one girl who heard my plight and seemed to be viciously iphone chatting her mom to convince her I was OK (so i imagined) but at the end, she said no. So I went to the bar and the pet lounge, two places on the ferry where one might find some trusting humans, and struck out there too. It was late and pouring, and just as I was glumly leaving the ferry, a woman offered me a lift. She had been in the bar and initially said no, or rather, said nothing, but she mulled it over and decided to help me out. She got me to fire island that night and she restored my sinking faith in humanity. Her name was Jean.

When I finally got to the ferry to take me the final mile, I was completely fried and had 30 minutes to kill. So I went into Nicky’s Clam bar and ordered a Jameson “neat” and this was just the start of having people look at me (and soon brian and jordan) as if we were from another planet. The bartender had no idea what neat meant, neither did his two drinking buddies, the only other occupants of the bar. I was tired so had trouble defining it (“you know…neat”) finally one of the bartender’s buddies said “Oh..straight up!” It wasn’t over at that though. I think he had never poured the drink that way, and he filled up and entire highball glass with the stuff. Well, waste-not, down it went. From a series of half-drunk-fully-tired art photos taken on the way over:

Asking for vegan food on Fire Island was equally confusing. We ended up eating a lot of low budget toast, some fruit, and gorging on black cherries as we walked the path. When Brian and Jordan and I hang out, we often chat about veganism and such, and the rampant waste all around us, and on our final breakfast out we were beside a couple who each ordered the 19 egg omelet, so we got a little excited. I squirmed around for a while until finally I went right for the jugular: “Miss, my friend’s and I recently are experimenting with freeganism… … …so…. if you are not going to finish that omelet we gladly will.” They were quite nice about it and happy to hand it over, so down it went. plus their home fries cooked in butter, and their biscuit. Ah the sweet taste of rescued diner food.

Fire Island itself is an interesting blend of get-me-out-of-here teenage vacation wasteland, cool beach architecture, and a compact nature refuge. The plants I was most interested in were the beach plums which were just getting ripe and the plump omnipresent black cherries, but I nibbled some early autumn olives and a handful of blackberries too. The deer on the island walk the little paths and eat people’s gardens and seem to have a pretty nice existence, except for the battering of the ticks and the other fact that they seem to be hated by everyone on the island. They didn’t bother me, although one of their foodstuffs did: I got poison ivy on my left ankle…almost made it a year p.i. free, no such luck. Better than on my fingers though.

Aside from the adventures of trying to be vegan on Fire island, we did a lot of walking around. Some yoga on a fallen phone pole:

After brian and jordan left, I saddled up with the Gregor’s for more Fire Island fun. Mark Gregor has single-handedly provided me with all sorts of fun in the past couple weeks. A velir work party to cirque-de-soleil OVO (every time I see cirque, I am reminded just how lame my yoga is compared to what these people do. also every time i see cirque, it is because mark has an extra ticket), a company 10th year anniversary celebration at DeCordova, which ended in a night dip in the adjacent pond, and then fire island, staying at a house that had a pizza oven installed in the kitchen. Here’s a night-shot of the DeCordova.

My contributions to dinners were a beach plum tart (a winner) and a black cherry cake (a loser) and a non-foraged past dish, but why talk about that…I mean, it’s too easy when the food isn’t foraged. here are mark and angie’s children, jacob and mia, after eating non-foraged, possibly even non-earthly, foods.

Orient Point, which was dark and stormy on my first visit, was beautiful on my way home. It was the end of a 40 mile bike ride through the northern fork of Long Island - wine country!…which means also wild grape country. I had a few minutes to kick around before the ferry back to New London, and gathered some seaweed and found a killer apple tree right at the meeting of a small wooded area and the beach, not something i expected.

Preceding the fire island trip was a quick one to the cape and vineyard since my brother’s family was on the vineyard. I rolled into Oak Bluffs and immediately got comments on my wacky Hawaiian shirt, and then many more as I proceeded to munch on the sea rocket, the mustards, the rose hips (or, tomatoes and Sam calls them), fallen apples and pears, some beach plums, and some seaweed, which I had chewed up and was ready to swallow when Mike told me that the bay was closed for swimming the other day due to bacteria or something.

Black cherry tree that we just had to stop for in the oak Bluffs graveyard.

Yesterday, Rob, Anna, and Nadin and I headed back to the South Shore for the Marshfield fair. I expected this to be a walk down memory lane, but as we kicked around the fair (for about 4 hours…it was great!) I sort of concluded I’d never been there. Or at least I couldn’t remember it at all. I couldn’t remember the demolition derby, the wrestling ring, the largest pumpkin contest (over 1/2 a ton, whoa), the pigs, chickens, rabbits, llama, water buffalo. The vortex, the Lance Gifford magic show, the completely non-scary fun houses. I mean, this place had everything (except fruit trees, have I complained about that before? - enough with the oaks and the maples for god’s sakes). It turned out to be more difficult to hand off the stuffed animals than it was to win them. And finally, it turned out you don’t just take a picture with the Iron Sheik for free, you have to pay $20, which we did. I mean this was crazy. There sat the Iron Sheik, at a folding table off in the distance, alone, a wrestling career far behind him. Just as depressing as the movie The Wrestler paints the picture of amateur wrestling and the life of again wrestlers. All this and single wrinkly string bean with a first prize bean winner ribbon on it. Tonight is the last night of the fair for this year, kind of sad. Already looking forward to next year.

A recent d-dive haul (is that queso fresco, fully sealed up there? yep.):

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

2010-07-25T13:55:00.008-04:00

I took a long walk from the convention center in Philadelphia to my friend Andrew's place near Fishtown. My impression of Philly was a lot of vacant lots, depressed, hot, and big weird weeds that I could not identify. Philly is huge so this walk wasn't enough to judge the whole place, but this is what we do...see a little and generalize. Philly looks to me like Detroit + LA, 3 cities I don't know well.

Bartram's garden was a little run down too, even though the web claimed it was a hidden gem of philly. It was in a dumpy neighborhood. I ate Cornus mas for the first time. Sour, except for the ones over-ripening and attracting ants on the ground. Those were hot -- temperature -- and sweetish. I never see that plant in Boston, although I've heard of it, probably at the arboretum (philly's arboretum I passed on. They charge $15 to get in).

I didn't realize until I had arrived at bartram's garden that this was the very same bartram of botanical illustrations that I had looked into before when I was considering using public domain old botanical images for my book, which never happened because it was really hard to find old drawings of the plants I wanted to include, which was frustrating because I figure people must have have drawn them all many times over the years.

The other great find for me at bartram's garden was patience dock, according to Sam Thayer the best of all the docks. I found it in the weed/compost pile and it was fantastic. This plus a massive amount of purslane that they let me take made for a nice dinner at Andrew's parent's house.

After the few days in philly, I returned to cambridge for a few hours, enough time to finish off Crime and Punishment (one sentence summary: 23-year old melancholic intellectual stews over the idea of offing some old pawn-broker lady, finally does it, then stews over confessing, finally confesses, then goes to Siberia for 8 years of hard labor) and forage some blackberries for my 4 day trip to Colorado.

Here in colorado, the berries of choice for foraging right now are raspberries and mountain gooseberries. While the rest of the fellas went after trout yesterday, I went after lamb's quarters and nasturiums etc. for a salad. I dug a burdock root, mainly to try to stop everyone from asking "can you really get enough from just greens?" but it is mid-summer and the thing was hard as a stick, so I tossed it. There is lots of salsify around here, but it's not the season for those roots either, so my trusty lamb's quarters has kept me going. There is also tons of cow parsnip so even though it is not spring, I grabbed some of that for a soup. A long walk last night before our drinking fest led me up a mountain rd, several deer sightings (including a baby that hopped away just like Bambi...the Disney animators nailed that one) and a coyote (or some other hungry skinny ragged looking animal) sighting.

Since finishing off Crime and Punishment, I haven't selected another read yet, so I've been pounding through this month's Harper's. Here's a funny snippet from an article about this guy who made a really terrible movie a few years back, called The Room, which has become a minor cult hit. The director and writer and star, Tommy Wiseau, states that his goal, which he is fairly certain he will reach, is for 90% of Americans to see the movie. The reporter points out that not every American has even seen Snow White. At that point...

T. Wiseau: I'm not concerned with other movies. I'm concerned only about The Room at this time. If that's your analogy, that's fine with me. But yes, absolutely, we will eventually beat Snow White.

The reporter: You realize how ridiculous that sounds.

Wiseau: No, it's not at all.

That section made me laugh out loud. It was preceeded by a quote from critic Robert Hughes which I also enjoyed: "The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." I don't agree with that. In fact, I bet a lot of lesser artists (i.e. most of us) who experience doubt would turn to such a quote as a pat on the back (oh, you have doubts about your work, this means you have great artistry inside), and I bet that's why the quote is well-known.

Addendum: on the way to the airport, actually heard the old John Denver song Rocky Mountain High, whcih goes on for a while, but is still great. One never hears that song on the east coast nowadays.

The black nightshade post

2010-07-13T14:51:00.010-04:00

I was just out for a stroll to keep the blood flowing nicely through me veins - I had some varicose veins removed the other day so I'm all bandaged up and it is good to walk a lot. Anyhow, while exploring some parts of the MGH campus that I hadn't gone to yet, I walked by a black nightshade plant with black berries fully ripe and ready to go. Complete trust in the authoritative Sam Thayer on the plant and I popped them right in, and he is correct, they are great, and they taste just like ground cherries. I've been excited to write this post for a long time as I've been eyeing the plants come to maturity this whole summer. A google search on something like "black nightshade poisoning" is a fun way to waste some time on the web. It's amazing what people will say on a topic they have no knowledge of.

Weekend on the cape, mom and I enjoyed a great fully foraged salad.

I am considering doing a post on the vein surgery, but that might gross out my 20 readers, so, we'll see.

In the thick of milkweed pods

2010-07-07T18:43:00.013-04:00

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.

A good year for fruit

2010-06-21T17:26:00.001-04:00

It's going to be a good year for fruit. Juneberries are finishing up but had a big yield this year, particularly since I found many more juneberry plants that I had known previously. Also, to my delight, MIT just threw in about 10 very mature juneberry shrubs over by my old stomping grounds, building E40. Walking always reveals way more foraging opportunities than cycling, and the other day Sarah and I walked right under a cherry tree busting out with brilliant red and juicy sour cherries. Went back for a bunch. If I go back again, a step ladder could be put to good use.

Peaches are looking real good around town, and I spotted a huge nectarine tree in Allston the other day. Dust off the Ball jars.

Purslane is coming out now too, and I just enjoyed a salad of it with chickweed, both taken from my brother's yard yesterday. I only had to remove one of sadie's (their dog) hairs.

And savvy's last night: mega bread, golden delicious apples, a peach, onions, turnips, and two sirloins. The biscuit: wrapped sandwiches, sure enough. This I learned from a fellow d-diver, swapping diving locations.

I better learn amaranth pronto because I was flipping through a new book at harvard co-op the other day, urban homesteading, and in their chapter on urban foraging, they mention amaranth. Shameful that I haven't pinned down that one yet. Did however FINALLY find the elusive (around here) salisfy plant the other day. Just check in the driest, nastiest, railroad "soil" and there it will be.

Making the world a better place

2010-06-10T12:56:00.004-04:00

I was doing my public service of weeding a community garden over in Newton, along the charles. After getting a handful of lady's thumb and such, a nasty old gardener (nog) asks me if I am a "member". I say no, I'm just picking weeds. Then something like this ensues.

nog: you gotta leave, get out of here.

me: ok. but (leaving) but i was just picking weeds.

nog: doesn't matter. you have to go.

(i'm still walking toward the exit at this point, where I was heading anyhow).

nog: .... you were here before, right?

(I think for a sec and then say)

me: yeah, like two years ago I think I came here.

nog: no, you were here last week.

me: ahh...nope.

nog: yes you were.

as I am getting on my bike, he is grumbling to his friend, another nog no doubt, about my being there. amazing. some people are just not out there to make the world a better place. I was tempted to show him my findings, explain to him these are good eats, etc.

Anyhow, I tell this lightly, but I was all stirred up inside. I hate when people treat others that way, and I should know to completely avoid even sharing words with them at all, no matter how diffusing and polite I try to be. Trying to argue with that guy would have obviously gone nowhere, and just gets me riled up. Next time, I just say nothing. I'll play a mute.

Amsterdam has a LOT of nettles, and I saw a chicken mushroom (already) growing on a willow outside of de hortus. Almost took it but it would've been hard to get through customs. Actually, no it wouldn't. I find that you just lie and say you have nothing and you have a good chance. Instead, like an idiot, I admitted to the customs that I took a few seeds home (flowers seeds, a mask for my mary-j seeds). Total failure, they made me thrown them all out. In a fictional world...

me: Can I keep the 4 mary-j seeds I paid 20 euros for?

them: step this way, sir.

Savvy's dive last night (and a question we all have at some point: what is a lamb, a sheep, same thing? lamb is to sheep as beef is to cow):

Also, tons of juneberries and mulberries out. Since most mulberries usually are pretty bland, I made my sheet-gathered lot into spiced mulberry jam, which came out decent. Here's a tray's worth ready to be frozen.

Red and white mulberries in the pots.

Magic night, etc.

2010-05-26T13:03:00.001-04:00

Last night Shannon was in town so we hit magic night. Stetson was good, the rest, eh. That's a valid banagrams word right there according to Jeremy. I thought the best trcik was Stetson's dice prediction trick where someone takes his large die and places it with a certain number facing upwards and then covers it. Stetson then predicts it, 4 times in a row. I google searched it but came up dry.

Lunch today is late season pokeweed shoots, polenta with grape leaves, topped with chickweed. All from the Fens yesterday evening. There was a whole section I'd never explored: lots of geese, lots of untended land, and two gigantic trunked hawthorns.

Monday night was Shannon's first night in town and we all burnt our candles as it were that night. We sat outside and boozed a bit at the Legal Seafood bar and became curious about this party we could see on the second floor of the Charles hotel. It looked lame (a lot of that Harvard fashion of coral-colored shorts and Izod shirts and such - awful - where are the fashion police these days) but it also looked like a lot of free booze. And that it was. We got kicked out several times, but made off with some wine and a nice plant. And as for the dumpsters, well, Upper Crust provided well for us. Although there were some complaints that the buffalo chicken pizza wasn't that great. Who complains about fresh pizza tossed away? Apparently my friends do. Not I.

I really don't understand why the magicians at magic night DO THE SAME GD TRICKS EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. I KNOW they know lots of tricks, do these people have no boredom gene. I just don't get it. Hopefully I'll get some comments to this post that shed some light on this issue, in Chinese obviously.

Clear Flour Bakery

2010-05-20T12:12:00.003-04:00

There is a neat little bakery tucked away off of Comm Ave in Brookline called Clear Flour. Next to it there is a huge apartment building. The amount of fresh bread in their little dumpster last night at 12:10 AM could have fed that whole building. I carried two bags home, left about 6 there. Please come to my house and have some bread, it's in the firdge and the freezer. And you might have a Baer sighting. My landlord, Baer, is lording over the pipes and trying to stop a drip in my bathroom. The place is crubmling. He stil calls the bathroom above mine "Ingo's bathroom". Ingo lived there two years ago. He hasn't rented it out again yet.

30th anniversary celebration of food not bombs this Sunday.

Braintree back roads to Braintree printing

2010-05-12T14:51:00.002-04:00

I just a trip to Braintree Printing (T then bicycle). Passed a huge patch of milkweed right outside the T station. It's a little late, they are getting pretty tall, but I'm giving them a lengthy boil right now, see if that softens them up. I decided to go for a 250 run of my book, which brings them in at around $4.50 a pop. Which isn't too bad.

Everything in the suburbs is weird. One highlight though, and not typical 'burbs, was a stack of books for free outside someone's apartment. A bunch of poetry (a guy like John updike publishes a book of poems, and you can't really tell at the outset if they are going to be good or they are published because he also brought us rabbits running and witches of eastwick). I started reading Murder in the Catherdral by T.S. Eliot on the train back. OK so far.

Late season milkweed shoot verdict in: it's too late. They are pretty stringy. I will eat them of course, but I'm glad I'm not serving them to anyone.

poke mountain

2010-05-11T09:43:00.004-04:00

That cool pic? Hipstermatic, or something like that, an iphone app that gives all sorts of retro-looking picture options. Thanks sarah b and rob for alerting us to the app.

Milkweed and pokeweed hauls on the vineyard last week. Over by the famed watercress patch I found a construction site with a mountain of pokeweed in perfect stage for harvesting. I'd love to get to the bottom of "minimum amount of time to cook the stuff" since every book is different, but this is a risky thing to uncover. For now, I'll just continue to cook the heck out of it and serve up mushy greens.

The vineyard week was great, and I'm happy to report that my friends all put up with a large amount of foraged eating.

Also, my book -- Urban Foraging -- is finally available harvard.com's book site.

Brian tells me black locust flowers are out in NYC. Gotta go exploring...

x Weed

2010-04-27T10:54:00.001-04:00

Japanese knotweed has ended its prime time (pickling worked, wild fermenting is stinking up my kitchen, and pan seared knotweed tops -- or "knotweed calamari" is good) and milkweed shoots are out and pokeweed is just poking up. Book hard copy #2 is out and in the hands of 5 new recruited editor friends. MIT press interested in carrying it, as well as Rodney's and Darwins and maybe TeaLux. I'll measure success in 10s, not 1000s :)

High Rise bakery provided me with 2 beautiful and huge whole wheat sour dough loaves the other day, which will keep me honest for a couple weeks.

Vineyard next week!

Garlic mustard weed - a crunchy invasive

2010-04-14T14:40:00.001-04:00

Garlic mustard weed scapes a good size for picking right now. Thanks to Sam Thayer's new book, Nature's Garden, I learned that this is the best part of the plant. And sure enough -- crunchy and light and a bit of a symphony in the mouth - lots of tastes happening. Great chopped up into a linden salad.

Again: preserving Japanese knotweed

2010-04-13T16:47:00.001-04:00

It seems like overnight the knotweed has gone from little red stumps to two foot stalks, so I gathered a bunch from the Charles river (that patch just north of Harvard sq is coming along well) last night and set to preserving it. Four different ways. Hot Hot pickle, where I boiled it in vinegar and water briefly, added some spices and salt, including hot pepper flakes, and jarred it. Cold garlic pickles. COld sweet pickles (a touch of maple syrup in the water/vinegar solution, no spices, except a little salt too). Finally, the most adventurous, wild fermentation. Chopped it in mini food processor (wanted to shave it but couldn't get that going) and added some salt, into an open ball jar, and now fermenting - hopefully - on my counter.

It would probably save me time if I just flew to Japan and asked the locals there what they do with it. They'd probably tell me they prefer sushi.

Perfect Linden salad time, and getting some burdock and wild carrots too, and still plenty of evening primrose.

Just finished J.D. Salinger's "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters". That writing really puts you smack into NYC 1950's white intellectual culture. Interesting that he headed off to the country so completely.

From the dumpsters: bagels, foccacia, 6 eggs, and some hair coloring dye that I didn't take.

7 apples, 2 bagels, ...

2010-03-31T22:58:00.002-04:00

OK folks, the report of the first few dumpster dives is in. Summary: full success.

But first, some back story.

When I first started out foraging, I worried a little bit that as I learned all the edible plants around, I would have to always stop to eat them because otherwise I would be "wasting" free food. Fortunately, I have calmed down and can pass over curly dock without halting every time I see it (although not this morning on the way to work - the first dry day in a while so lots of new growth to observe).

But what about the fine food thrown out by supermarkets, bakeries, etc every day that is slightly past due. How can I let that go? I get so fumed about the food waste all around, and it didn't help that the other day in the book store I saw [and bought] a book called Waste - uncovering the global food scandal. I've only read a few pages, but one pertinent conclusion is that in the U.S., ABOUT HALF of all food that gts produced gets thrown away. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

OK, so my small part for now is going to be the occasional dumpster dive. In the past week I've hit a few. The tally: 7 excellent golden delicious apples, 3 organic pears, 2 bagels, a cinnamon raisin breadstick, a bread bowl, a chicken caesar salad, and a high end ball of mozzarella cheese. This is crazy. This is three dumpster visits. It would be basically trivial to supply all your food needs this way. So anyhow, I'm a little worried an addiction will set in, but fortunately summer is coming - more plants and less 'still fresh' dumpster food to grab.

Nettle heaven

2010-03-29T10:37:00.002-04:00

The bussey brook meadow section of the Arnold Arboretum has so many nettles that I have no problem blogging about this specific location in this instance. If everyone I knew went there to get nettled, I think the nettle population would be just fine. I gathered a bunch yesterday, and in walking around I discovered that I love that place even more than I had before. Milkweed, sumac, grapes, thistle, burdock, cattails, apple trees, goutweed. Good heavens. Even munched on some early violet greens popping up, very good when young.

But my next delivery to Didi Emmons will be curly dock, which I found a stretch of a little westward on the Charles. 3 days of rain coming up though, according to google.

I tried doing some apple tree grafting yesterday. I tried the bark graft, the inlay bark graft, and the whip graft. If any of those grafts actually work, I'll be amazed, and psyched.

Cambridge public maple

2010-03-22T11:06:00.005-04:00

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.

Haiti and a new season of foraging

2010-03-11T18:00:00.005-05:00

Last week I took a trip with pidonline.org to Haiti and was part of the construction team. Headed up by lama (turns out his real name is Lamarre, but lama is much funnier), we worked on a stone wall surrounding the clinic, and headed up by Osnell, we started a new pid (partners in development) house. Partners in Development, out of Ipswich MA, builds and runs health clinics, builds houses for people without them, and gives interest free loans to help people get their businesses going, in Guatemala and Haiti. After the earthquake, pid's role in Haiti increased a lot and they started sending down new loads of fresh blood, which is how I came to go down.

My camera broke on the second day there, sometime after I took some pictures of a church service in a makeshift church (a tarp and some benches) and then let a bunch of little ones see the pictures on my camera. I think they got their little fingertips right in the lens cover and poof, there goes that camera. Right away when I got home I bought a new one since it is foraging season again and I have to be good about photographs for the book. Anyhow, here are my favorites from the teams pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/gallery263/HaitiPhotographs#

The scene in Haiti was rough but sometimes felt a little hopeful, and this feeling of hope has everything to do with the fact that the kids are so fun and friendly and the adults aren't too bad either. After a couple of days hauling rocks and concrete in the worst wheelbarrows ever made, the Haitian construction crew (lama, osnell, alexson, ..) and the whites (me, joe, joe, steve, and dave) started to mix it up a little and we had a lot of laughs, especially given our lack of ability to communicate much more than MORCHE (translation: give me another shovel-full of cement) and WASH (give me another rock). The biggest laughs the entire construction crew had all week was when lama and alexson would start yelling for more morche and joe lee and I would go like crazy - ripping shirts off, attempting to lift the whole wheelbarrow full - trying to get them their morche. Those guys work HARD. Everyday back in Boston I'm sitting, like I am now, at my desk at MGH, nibbling on some veggies, and they are out in the sun adn the rain putting rocks together to make walls. Yikes.

Another good laugh was when I borrowed Dave's camera to photograph the well-diggers and the meanest looking one just at me like: who you taking a picture of. The Haitian onlookers thought it was bold of me I guess, anyhow, all in good fun.

My nickname on the trip - I didn't feel like telling the team that I already had a nickname -- big daddy -- became Mango because early on I grabbed one from a tree and ate it even though it wasn't at all ripe. The next day a cute little 8 year old girl brought be a mango, which I gladly took, rubbed it with hand sanitizer to keep my teammates happy, and ate. These kids have next to nothing but they brought me a mango, and the next day 3 more, and the final day Darlene, a girl who takes care of her sick mother, they live in a tent right near the clinic, brought me 3 too. I sucked down two on the plane but the other one didn't make it through customs in Miami. Then there was Martha, who tried to bring home four of the hugest yams I've ever seen and got completely stuffed at customs. There are a million little stories like this from the one week away.

One day I pointed up to a coconut tree and said COCO and about 15 minutes later Serge, of the all black turtle neck - likely his only shirt (I gave him my fort point open studios shirt, now he's got two) - comes back with about 6 of them, and all the workers take a break and suck them down. No hand sanitizer this time (because I don't know how to say in Creole - "ahh hold on guys let me just wipe down that machete blade with some cleaning alcohol..."). We were all fine and the coconut juice and slime inside hit the spot. Other foraging down there: when the sugar cane truck would pass by they would throw a couple of stalks to the kids who would run up to it, and those kids would then bring their haul back and share it with us. I was wondering if you eat sugar cane that counts as a whole food...

I saw some purslane too, but like everything else there, it was trampled on and covered in dust so I let it go. Man, I see purslane everywhere I travel, I love that stuff. Oh yeah, and almonds. Day one I tried to get something going right away with one of the kids, turned out to be one of our favorite, Pabush. Anyhow, without much by way of equipment, we started playing catch the almond, as there was an almond tree right in the clinic, a nice touch. I gestured..can you eat these, and sure enough you can so down they went. The almond nut we know is covered by a juicy red pulp which is pretty good, but a little stringy and difficult to deal with which is why we never see it. Speaking of which, whoever invents a non-stringy mango gets a pat on the back from me.

It was an emotional time, and given that I was often physically exhausted (roosters in Haiti get up and start squawking at 1 am, and dogs are always up, and then there are many other weird sounds too, it's a symphony all night long), I almost came to tears a few times, which is weird for me. The combination of the desperate situation (few jobs, tons of destruction, everyone living in tents, some of which are just sheets that can't keep out the rain, some living on the streets directly and thus unable to sleep whenever there is traffic) with the great attitidues for the most part of the Haitians, the generosity, the smiles, the effort, ugh, it just kills you. Samuel Joseph and I played opposites all week, where I would say a word and he'd have to come up with the opposite. He loved getting them right, and he almost always did, and then he would always spell it for me, and always like this: "short, like, s-h-o-r-t". Anyhow, a guy like that, he's trying so hard and is a good guy, and he might never get much past where he is now because there are so few opportunities there. And yet when I say coconut, they bring 6 of them over pronto. Emotional rollercoaster. We would unwind at night with a beer or some rum, and some bananagrams. I was usually too tired to try to get any yoga going.

Flew back through NYC, and it was great to unwind with Brian that night at Union Hall, a cool bar in Brooklyn (imagine that), and then hit the foraging tour with wildman steve brill the next day in prospect park on Sunday. Best finds were ginko nuts with the rancid smelling pulp all washed off from the winter snows, and goutweed, which was a new plant for me. Brill got excited when I pointed out a thistle. He dug it up. I gotta start carrying my trowel again now. I saw one the other day in the Arboretum but was not ready for it.

In cambridge, foraging is off to a slow start. I've just been picking some field garlic from the riverside, but I haven't really gone looking for much else yet. Oh wait, I DID tap the maple trees in my neighborhood and although I thought I was too late, one of the trees gave me a half gallon of sap (which will of course make about a quarter cup of syrup). Hopefully the gallon container hasn't fallen yet. Will boil it down tomorrow. Also finally got around to breaking open my black walnuts that have been in my fridge all winter. Got, what a job...almost as bad as acorns. Luckily, they taste a lot better than acorns and I've already eaten them all. Next thing to by, a Davebilt nutcracker.

The book is almost ready, watch for it in stores (even if I have to drop a bunch on the counter, I'll get those things in the local bookstores).

LAMA

LAMA

Scrapatarian - a new word for the English language

2010-02-06T16:25:00.004-05:00

I've been looking for a word to describe my eating philosophy and this week in Costa Rica, we hit upon it during a brief brainstorming session: scrapatarian. This is close to freegan, which is a vegan when it comes to buying food, but if it's free will eat anything. For me, it's not if the food is free, it is if it's getting wasted that I will eat it (and here, "it" can be ANYTHING - people are amazed to see me eat red meat, as if that is somehow "worse" than eating chicken for someone who normally only eats plants and does so for ethical reasons).

This week in costa rica, we went out to eat every night and the portions were big, so I ate the scraps off of nearly every plate towards the end of each meal. I got pretty full needless to say, but that is the origin of "scrapatarian". Hoping it spreads so pass this post along. As of this posting, a google search on the word brings 0 hits. This will change in a couple days though, since google tracks blogspot.

I obtained a couple books on plants and edibles from costa rica, but it was too overwhelming and the only things I spotted were coconuts, maybe some date palms, and definitely a well trodded and well pissed on patch of purslane down by the beach bar called D+N. At a farmer's market though, I asked what some long brown root was nad they told me burdock. I obviously got excited and ate it that night. What a plant, along the charles, and cultivated in costa rica.

One month to foraging again. Brill's first tours are March 6 in central park and march 7 in prospect park. If I'm not in Haiti, I might have to go down and have some fun.

Check out Rule 31 from Michael Pollan's new little guide book Food Rules.

I had some mild success surfing this week, but I still don't have the courage to get out there and go for a big wave. Maybe this goes back to getting pummeled at surfside beach in Nantucket one too many times as a kid while my brother and the Thorntons seemed to fully enjoy themselves.

Squirrels

2009-12-28T11:18:00.001-05:00

There are certain oak trees around the city - I can think of three - that must either be out of the foraging range of any squirrels or must produce acorns that the squirrels don't like. Either way, the upshot is that when all the snow melts, there are still lots of acorns to be gathered, so I grabbed a bunch this morning. I might need to find replacements for my last crew of acorn shuckers since they all complained of raw fingers afterward.

On another squirrel note, my landlord, a famous squirrel hunter, has been lax lately and a squirrel has found her way back into my walls. Luckily I think we sleep the same hours, because although I hear action in there in the middle of the day, it's quiet at night. I wonder what it looks like in there. It's probably bigger than my apartment, and for a lot less money.

There are two native species of vascular plants on Antarctica.

article in progress for localinseason

2009-12-11T18:34:00.001-05:00

There is an isolated patch of stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) along the Charles River in Boston. They can be seen in the early spring, but soon they get covered up by the desert false indigo (Amorpha fruticosa) that grows all along the banks. At the end of fall, when all the indigo has been cut back, the nettles make a brief reappearance. Many edible spring greens make a fall reappearance in fact. There is still enough warmth so that their leaves do not freeze, and the leaves of the tall trees and the shrubs that have been shading them all summer have dropped away, so they come out again to gather the last of the fall sunlight and fatten their roots. And so even in early December, even after a little snow, I can still go out and gather some nettles, some curly dock (Rumex crispus), dandelion greens (Taraxacum officinale) and ox-eye daisy greens (Leucanthemum vulgare). While the ground is not yet frozen, burdock root (Arctium lappa) and evening primrose root (Oenothera biennis) are available too.

By the time March rolls around, evening primrose rosettes are back out, making January and February the only two full months of the forager's lament. I alleviate the lament by stocking up for the winter months by jarring, drying, and freezing. Whatever I jar usually ends up in the freezer because I'm always too rushed to do a good job with the sterilization process. Too many things going on in the summer in the city to do a good grandmotherly job jarring up the apple sauce. I bought a cheap food dryer on craigslist last year, which makes drying tea herbs and apples for winter usage easy. Somehow I even cut corners on drying my apples and I noticed some fruit flies on them a few days later. They are in my refrigerator now. Although I'd like to embrace additional aggressive eco-stunts including “unplugging the fridge”, given my ineptitude with jarring and drying, I'm not ready for that yet.

Rather than spend too much time lamenting the frozen ground, I prefer to catch up on the things I've missed because of foraging too much – reading, watching movies, studying up on mushrooms. Just the other day a friend forwarded me an article on dumpster diving [link to http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/12/for_local_freeg.html] and this got me thinking: I don't need to forgo foraging afterall in the winter, I can turn to a much more urban version of it – jumping into grocery dumpsters late night and digging out the perfectly good food that gets thrown away in quantities I don't like to think about every day. One of the things that attracted to me to foraging in the first place was that foraged food is free. Dumpster food is neither Local nor In Season, but it is a sad waste that occurs on a massive scale. I am a little worried that when I do my first dive, there will be so many viable munchies I won't know what to do with myself (I sometimes have this feeling when I find a neglected apple tree loaded with fruit – I sigh and wonder when I'm going to have the time to chop and jar all of the apples that I'm stuffing into my backpack). I am really hoping I do not find OK meat. I'm a vegan usually, but my policy is, if an animal product is getting tossed, I eat it. It's bad enough that people eat factory-raised meat, but then to have it thrown out, ugh. I hope not have to face the dilemma of 'should I take those packages of ham?' Please let my first dumpster be filled with slightly bruised bananas, day old whole wheat bagels, and celery.

Seeding the garden

2009-11-29T15:57:00.003-05:00

Lest anyone think foraging in New England is over, it's not. At mom's over the weekend, we made some burdock oyaki (fried mashed potato pancakes stuffed with burdock/carrot/soy sauce mixture). I also gathered and dried a bunch of mint, and almost went for some mussels, but stayed vegan thanks to high tide.

I went "seeding" this morning along the Charles because I'm going for a "natural" garden in the style of Fukuoka next year, where I encourage all the great weeds of the area to grow in my garden. So, I gathered seeds of milkweed, burdock, evening primrose, and lamb's quarters, and put them in my garden.

Beech trees, nettles, black robes

2009-11-23T12:03:00.002-05:00

Some highlights from my recent trip to The Netherlands.

* An hour at the Sauna Deco. I asked the lady at the front desk if they had bathing suits in addition to the towels for the spa, which was "co-ed" but primarily men > 50. She replied, "NO! we are totally nude!".

* Black robes worn by the entire thesis committee for the defense I was a part of. This was good because it hid the fact that I was wearing brown cords and looked like hell compared to everyone else in their suits and ties. The Q/A session was pretty funny, one questioner heavily citing his own research, and someone fainting on stage towards the end of the session.

* Tilburg forest filled with beech trees, black berry brambles, and nettles. And some weird running competition that I asked an older couple about and they replied things like: "Chops" and "Clogs" and "Warande" and I of course said yes, yes, yes as if I had any clue what they were saying.

* The coffeehouse scene is weird. People go in there and roll huge joints and really make a big thing about it. It's kind of like, listen, you're just rolling a joint, take it easy. Man, they go to town though, with their props and all. Flower shops selling tulip bulbs also carried pot seeds. I almost bought some but didn't want any trouble getting back into the good old U S of A.

2 Hauls

2009-11-17T10:40:00.001-05:00

While everyone was in town this weekend (Brian, Shannon, Alex) we still found some time for foraging. Shannon, west coast forager famous for almost poisoning a dinner party of botanists, joined me both times. The haul on the first day out was a grocery bag full of oyster mushrooms. The haul on the second day, at the end of a walk in the Fells, was 2 bags of quince fruit, ripe and not too buggy. Sometime in the next 36 hours (before Holland trip) I need to find some time to chop them up. Call it global warming or something else, but foraging is still going strong. Burdock, plenty of greens (a bunch of beautiful ox-eye daisy rosettes), and evening primrose roots too still abound.

I'm going to get in trouble for tapping Cambridge maple trees next winter.

2009-11-11T12:30:00.004-05:00

Oh well.

Cantaloupe Dune

2009-11-09T16:56:00.001-05:00

Two foraging highlights from my research retreat weekend in Gloucester.

1) A cantaloupe plant growing on a beach dune with a viable cantaloupe that I took. I ended up eating the whole thing later that day (it was salty, as expected for fruit growing on a beach) since the meeting started at 2 and no food was served until 8 -- that's a long time for a 95%vegan to go without food.

2) Big bands of kelp on the shore. I ate some of that raw and took a bunch home and dried it. It's already successfully gone into one soup.

Also grabbed some autumn olives and wild mustard greens, which were growing abundantly along Atlantic Road.

Retreat was very nice, even if the staff were a tad freaky. The Addams family or something going on there.

Halloween

2009-10-31T14:17:00.002-04:00

Today is warm Halloween. I woke up with 3 hours to kill before having to be at the Gallery, so I headed out for a bike ride to Lexington, along the Minuteman Trail. First stop was some bittersweet for Sarah B's costume. Not edible.

next stop was a couple of pretty good looking patches of stinging nettles, so I bagged up some of those. I poked around in some woods around there. Mostly maple along the minuteman, so not a good chance for hen-hunting, but I did find one old hen-of-the-woods. It was taken over largely by mold but I can't let a hen go, even if moldy, so I cut out some of the better looking pieces.

Then, on my way home, I took a walk onto a meadow trail and found a chicken that was in better shape. I had run out of bags so I bundled up as much of it as I could and balanced it back to my bike. My few bags were filled up - I'm trying to get better about bringing enough but this seems to happen no matter how many I bring. And then, passing through Alewife Pond Reservation, I hit upon a high bush cranberry that was loaded. In they went, right on top of the nettles. That will be fun to sort out later.

Rob and I chatted over a couple of beers last night about an age-old topic for us: the COMMUNE. Buy some land around here (my stipulation; needs to be within 2 hours of beantown, I like beantown) and go pioneer, building up houses and gardens. Eventually it turns into a place where writers, artists, musicians, like-minded people come to stay for a brief term to get away from the grind. This idea is not a complete check-out from society, more of a picking and choosing of the prime parts, and emphasizing work and back-to-the-land, and art and creativity. Every time we discuss this, it seems a little closer to possibly happening in some baby-step capacity. Anyhow, fun to think about.

Foraged soup for the intern-dinner last night; burdock root, evening primrose root, evening primrose seeds (they are finally out, and not that hard to gather!), lamb's quarters, narrow leaf plantain, dandelion greens, curly dock, and then a bunch of stuff from Trader Joe's to make it reasonable.

It looks like The Bread Machine show might happen. Bread machines on the gallery walls, one going off or so every hour with a fresh loaf, and these loaves being tweeted about. First come first served. I have to find a local wheat producers, and get some of my mother's antique toasters...a few of them will go up also. I think this show will warm up January quite nicely.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

2009-10-09T20:13:00.005-04:00

I finally got to meet the famous and somewhat elusive Boston mushroomer Ben Maleson the other night. Ben is the guy who foragers for the edible mushrooms that you get in Boston restaurants. He taught a class the other night on boletes and polypores, but it's closer to the truth to say he stood behind a table of mushrooms and entertained the crowd with wacky half tales interrupted by himself, occasionally interspersed with a thing or two about the boletes and polypores. The edibility of the mushrooms he touched on seemed to be beyond him, and every time someone would ask: "Is that one edible" he would invariably say "You can eat any mushroom once".

I tried hard to curry favor with the mushroom man, but I need to keep this brief right now, show time with Hermann Hudde at the Gallery in 25 minutes. So I will just say that the best bit I got from him was that there was a nice chicken up high in a tree near the Sphinx. The Sphinx? Yeah, the Sphinx in Cambridge, everyone knows where that is. I figured if I found it and got that high mushroom, he might give me credibility. So I googled a little and found it. The Sphinx is in the Mt Auburn cemetery and is a civil war monument. I got there the other day, and sure enough, a beautiful chicken right up in an oak tree where a large branch had been cut off. Way too high to get right then, I will need to go back with a rope or something,

But the trip was not for naught. The best score was a haul of Chinese Chestnuts, which are just like the real thing after you get by their sea urchin-like hull. Really, the day after God made the sea Urchin, he made the Chinese Chestnut, it is uncannily similar. Here they are in the fading light of the day.

God and mushrooms

2009-10-02T17:37:00.006-04:00

The god debate is never ending, everyone knows that. And it is easy to get real sick of it. This has come up for various people I've been talking with lately. Plus, for a few weeks I had the book "The God Delusion" by my bedside. My tactic of late for dealing/coping with the complex issue (I see the God issue as complex, even though atheists and believers seem to have no problem with it) is to have fun throwing the G word casually into conversations..."ahh, that's just God telling you to slow down", etc.

I've been finding some new mushrooms (to me) over the last couple of weeks. Wine caps were popping up all over the mulch at the arboretum, so I ate a lot of those. Then the other day I noticed, along the Charles, a patch Inky Caps. The books agree that this mushroom should not be eaten with alcohol since it has something in it that makes the liver temporarily unable to process booze. Well, it took me 4 days to finish the load that I found, so this was 4 days with not so much as a beer to end a long day. This was, of course, God telling me to chill on the consumption. Going to the chicken slacks last night sans miller high lifes just was not the same. I've made a vow, from now on when I find Inky Caps, they win over a beer, Oktoberfest or not.

The J.P. open studios was good the other day. Apparently i missed getting to see Eliza and her baby by about 10 minutes. My favorite artist that I found was a soft spoken woman who titles her paintings after lines she gets from poems and stuff, which I dig. Here is one of her paintings. I forget her name. Harvested heavily from the one autumn olive tree I know of in J.P. and made a puree with the fruits. It goes right in my oatmeal, along with the kousa dogwood berry puree I made the other day when I came across a loaded kousa tree with quality fruits. This is a good fruit for the foley mill, I didn't even need to cook it first since the inside is naturally soft.

Last night was a marathon battle with my car, which needed to be moved for street cleaning. I needed to jump it since the battery drained because I grabbed rope from it a few weeks ago, and left the interior lights on like an idiot. I've removed all the interior door lights so this wouldn't happen (the right rear door doesn't shut all the way so these lights would always be on). I should knock out the other lights too. Anyhow, I borrowed Sarah E's car to jump it, this was about 12:45 am. By 2:30 I was in bed. Where did those hours go, you wonder. Well, it took a while to get the thing started first of all. After 10 minutes of being connected to Sarah's battery, it sounded like a creaking rocking chair when I tried to turn it over. At this point I had basically decided that was it for the car, and sad that I'd have to pay for a ticket and towing, that would be a bad final date with the car. I gave it another 20 minutes or so, eating an entire bag of chips to pass the time, and it miraculously started after that. This puts us at around 1:45 or so. Next 30 minutes I spend looking for a spot. Then, finding one about a 10 minute walk from my house, I walk home.

Also, a new feature: my headlights only work when I put them on high beams - and then they are normal beams. That car needs to find a cliff.

The other day after work I made a quick trip to Brooks Estate in Medford with stef. Grabbed my first burdock root, but was really hunting for mushrooms. It had rained very hard a few nights before -- the night the Sox got rained out and we watched the rain come down from our sheltered grandstand seats. As the sun was disappearing, I was really getting edgy, and finally I saw an old tree with a bunch of mushrooms, but nothing I knew. I peaked around to the other side and bingo, chicken of the woods, young fresh and lots of it. That's me in the tree getting it. Later, picking up Stef's CSA, the farmer had a huge hen of the woods in his truck. After working hard on him, he parted with a piece of it. So I've been eating lots of hens and chickens these days. Also, in the Brooks Estate, found my first east coast thimble berries, which I'm happy about because Thoreau mentions them but I had begun to doubt they were still here.

I've started helping robert house .com with his new website, and art-based social networking site, kind of a monster. We'll see if I don't fry my computer brain with this project. Spend a week planning esophagus patients for a study I'm working on at MGH, then come to the gallery today and spend all day updating, webbing, working on a press release (for the coming show, mechanical migration, which I'm very excited about), and then, php for f-celebrities [rob's new site]. UGH! Need to go mushroom hunting ASAP. And visit NYC. And do more yoga. And record a new album. And shell those acorns in the bag in the back room.

All the greens

2009-09-20T18:20:00.001-04:00

All the greens are making there little fall re-appearance. Curly dock and dandelion and some fresh narrow leaf plantains have been going into my fall soups. And mushrooms, of course. Some new ones for me this week, found in the mulch patches at the arboretum: wine caps. pretty, but not extraordinary in taste, but not bad either.

Also, at the Boston mycological club foray yesterday in the Fells, I didn't find anything but one puffball, but the collective forces brought in a bunch, including some Entoloma abortivum and Armillaria tabescens (a type of honey mushroom). Staring at in-the-hand samples is the best way to learn new plants and mushrooms.

Rob might become the illustrator of my book, in return for php coding of f-celebrities.com, his latest get-rich-slowly scheme.

Kousa

2009-09-11T10:43:00.001-04:00

Kousa dogwood fruits are out. Challenge: make the inherent taste, which is usually good, outshine the paper-rough exterior texture that no one likes.

Working on my Tom Waits mix CD. At the instant, digging the tune called Cold Water.
I get angry when weather forecasts are wrong, not sure why. I should probably take the weather gadget off of my home page.

Apples and Acorns

2009-09-09T13:42:00.002-04:00

Acorns are falling now, and they might not be as tasty as the black walnuts, but they are a lot easier to release from their shells. My current best method is a swift whack with a hammer and then yanking out the nut meats by hand with a pair of pliers on hand for the more stubborn ones. Next I use my old fashioned nut grinder that I bought for almost nothing at the tiny tucked-away thrift store in Harvard square last year to grind them coarsely. Then, I get a large pot of water boiling and use it to supply water to the smaller pan in which I boil the nuts in a 4 or 5 changes until most of the bitterness is gone. To serve, I've so far tried them in pancakes and soup, and both were fine.

I need a small cider press or juicer to deal with all the apples that people just let fall down to the ground.

Another hawthorn tree, this time on the Boston side of the Charles, is giving nice big haws. And here again, due lack of time, I want to see if an automatic food mill/strainer will process these and crab apples etc faster than my hand cranked foley mill. I'd love to stick to the manual devices, but this cuts into my foraging time!

Curly dock is making its fall appearance now. I'm eating some for lunch right now, along with my Japanese knotweed beet compote, which I have to say tastes much better out of season because I'm not so sick of Japanese knotweed right now.

Grape juice and vodka drinks last night preceding Verena's going away sushi fest.

I'm currently strategizing on how to curry favor with Ben the mushroom man. I had a dream the other night that he took me in as an apprentice. In the dream, I told him I was ready to go because I had a food dryer that would dry a lot of mushrooms at once, and he said I wouldn't be needing that since it would take me years to learn the art of edible mushroom picking. Maybe it was more like a nightmare.

Hawschnapps

2009-08-26T14:35:00.002-04:00

I shelled my first acorns this morning and have them soaking in water, and the haws are out (hawthorns) and hawthorn schnapps is on its way. Will be ready in 5 months. Hawschnapps in preparation.

Bye Bye Blackberry

2009-08-25T10:03:00.001-04:00

If you blink you miss the start of new construction in a city. I rode by my favorite foraging spot in the city today, the Geese Ghetto by the B.U. bridge, and it has been leveled. Some woman stopped to ask what was going on and the construction foreman told us that they were repairing the bridge, 2.5 year project, and had to make a staging area for this. There go hundreds of blackberry bushes, pokeweed, burdock, and milkweed. The guy says they are putting in a park afterward. The woman says "Oh, that sounds great..". At that point I left, pretty sad. Felt like an old man watching his favorite tree die. Then I picked myself up by the bootstraps on the rest of my ride, and imagined helping design a fruit tree park with the city of Cambridge. Apples, Juneberries, Kousa Dogwoods, Hawthorns, Black Locusts, White Oaks, Peaches, Pears. Could become a different type of foraging mecca. Will have to write a proposal, and have someone draw up an artist sketch.

Blackberries for David, and swimming in the Charles River

2009-08-20T16:15:00.005-04:00

There is a guy who occasionally pickets "Save the geese" along the BU bridge. I took a pamphlet from him the other day to check out what his beef is. Basically, he is concerned about the town of Cambridge disturbing the few remaining wild life areas. The result of this has been that the geese are now confined to what he calls "the ghetto" - the area under the BU bridge where they all hang out. I always just thought they liked hanging out there, it was sort of protected, there are so many of them they seem well-fed and all...but he had a different opinion. He said that Cambridge planted all those shrubs on magazine beach to keep them out of there. Maybe so, but they planted some shad bushes and elderberries (and way too many willows) so I can't really complain. Plus, the geese in the ghetto don't seem to care for the blackberries that are there right now, so I have been hauling them out of there for the last couple weeks, and they keep giving. Geese don't like the pokeweed or the milkweed either. We get along well.

The single elderberry bush that I have been hitting is offering up big yields too right now. I tried another jelly (crab apple/elderberry) this morning, crossing my fingers for it to jell correctly.

Brian and I took a dip in the Charles River the other day. Temperatures in the 90s plus a B++ rating was enough to get us in there, although naturally we were a tad wary about it. So, we were sitting there dangling our feet over the dock and procrastinating for a while when a large black woman with her 3 kids strolled by. They were lingering, assessing, so I asked her if they ever went in. She responded without pause:

HELL NO

Pretty sweet.

Anyhow, the water was great, and we kept our feet far away from disturbing the bottom.

2009-08-06T22:08:00.008-04:00

I sit here in a beautiful bed and breakfast in Madison, WI and I look at the title of my blog and I feel like I should start with brief thoughts on the three topics that don't get enough attention.

YOGA. Down to twice a week, so my yoga prowess that I had going in say March has dropped. I ran class the other night at the gallery...my one night home in two weeks, and it was fine. I had to go easy on my right wrist though because on my recent trip to Seattle, Kevin D's drunk buddy Dahveeed got wasted and tackled me [jokingly, but it hurt...head went down pretty hard on the pavement] and I caught us on my wrist.

ART. I got rejected from the arboretum juried art show. Given the jpeg I sent, I thought I might get accepted, and then maybe they'd regret the acceptance when they saw the real thing. jpegs of my art always look better than the real thing. Taken to the limit, a jpeg would be a single pixel...how bad can that look? Well, anyhow, just so it doesn't become solely a collector of dust (old joke from the tuesday night magic auctions in Watertown I used to go to as a kid: "This one's a collector's item"..some genius heckler in the back .."Yeah, it collects dust"), here it is. Title: "And Washes In Dew From The Hawthorn Tree". Isn't that enough to get admitted?

ART2: Gaudi stuff in Spain was fantastic. I dug it because he used nature but only as a starting point, he didn't just copy it directly. It was more like nature meets cubism in architecture, and I fully realize I am treading into waters I'm not that familiar with when I write something like that. But really, in summer time we all have to put up with a ton of bad nature art - visit any sea-side town and go into any art gallery for the latest in wind swept beach dune scenes tacky enough to want to make you hurl yourself off the nearest pier. Those 'artists' could learn a lot from Gaudi: don't just copy...make it your own. Heck, I could too. But I've pretty much decided that if and when Art Night resumes in the fall, I'm going to use the time to crank away on my book, which I've not begun but already titled: Urban Foraging.

MUSIC: Highlight from Spain was the wanna-be Chickenslacks who did a lot of originals. Like, "I dig black music". Sarah couldn't drink but still tore it up, I got boozed up enough to find it very amusing to watch a guy buy cigarettes from a machine, so much so that I recorded the whole process with my camera, including him walking out the door and off into the evening. Last night in Madison on the water I had a tofurky bratwurst and a large beer and enjoyed some not-very-good live music, but the setting was nice and if the mayor of Boston ever gets around to reading this blog, well, I think we should have a place like that in town.

MUSIC2: Karaoke in Ocean Shores Washington. After my work trip to California, which was great, except for the Joshua Tree National Park which may as well be closed in mid summer in my opinion unless you are trying to lose weight, I headed up to Washington State to tour the Olympic Peninsula with my friend Kevin D from Williamstown. After the photo show at the gallery by Jeff Weinstock on the O.P., I decided I'd get out there soon, and Kevin was a willing participant. Well, the first day we got a late start due to our drinking and wrist injuring the night before, so we didn't even get out there till late. But not too late for karaoke in a very hick town Jersey-shore-esque. Kevin was honestly a little worried by the looks of this place, but we charged right in. Within about 2 minutes, I had a tattooed guy telling me he was just looking for a reason to punch some dude like 4 stools down. Great. Oddly enough, the first song tough-guy sang was "You send me". It was a country song karaoke feast other than that, with all the women there blasting out their polished tunes waiting for american idol scouts to jump up and whisk them away. I figured it would be a great time to try a new Morrissey song, so I did "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now." I can't say it was a hit or anything, since basically no one was listening, but one dude came up to me and said he liked it, and Kevin promises to give it a whirl next chance he gets, so I declare full success.

The photo is from the Hoh rain forest in the Olympic Peninsula, and has nothing to do with foraging, art, yoga, or bad karayoke.

Finally, a brief word on FORAGING.

In my recent world tour, here are some foraging highlights:
* Oranges and dates and purslane, all eaten on, from Spain.
* Something like sea rocket, tasted but not swallowed, on the California coast. Brittany and I also gave names to about 5 other plants that we found along the shore. Gumbi plant, Perspiring Brittany Bush, and more.
* Thimbleberries, red elder berries, salal (another berry), and a salmon berry, in the Olympic Peninsula.
* Madison WI is a few weeks behind, so out here I've been enjoying mulberries and gawking at the number of black walnut trees. If I lived out here I would quickly figure out a good way to process those guys.
* Back home for my two days in between Washington and Wisconsin, I went foraging with Becca who will write a foraging article in the globe coming soon. We had a nice meal of berries, greens, and mushrooms. The mushroom find was key, and involved me getting very excited to see a Russian woman out there getting them herself. I got so excited to ask her stuff I scared her away a bit, but I chased her down and finally she showed me her goods. She was collecting boletes, but had some of the ones that turn blue when you open them or press them. I haven't gotten to that level yet, I leave those ones alone, even though I hear they are very tasty and I'm dying for someone to show me how to positively ID them.

Also, I ate a mound of purlsane in the U.W. arboretum this afternoon. That place is big and wild and obviously hard for them to keep up, but, even though they dissed me on the art show, my heart still resides in the Arnold Arboretum, super-manicured though it is.

Ruby beach...the Olympic Peninsula.

Watermelon man

2009-07-12T18:43:00.007-04:00

The Re-paint show at the gallery is really great and the opening was well attended, and we've sold two pieces already, so full success on that front. Yoga is also in full swing with 4 new teachers. Now we just need to get the students pouring in.

Today was the first mushroom walk of the Boston Mycological club's season. The results were not spectacular despite the heavy rain last night, which drenched a lot of people including me. I was quite happy to crawl into bed after that and curly up with the ever volatile M. Fukuoka. This book, called The Road To Paradise, sounds much more serene than it actually is. Instead of spending much time exposing his ideas behind no-till, aka natural, framing, he just goes off the spout about everything from industrial rice growers to Charles Darwin. His idea for a world which has everyone leave the cities and take up their quarter acre to farm their rice, barley, and veggies is so out of touch it's amazing this got through the publisher's sieve.

Anyhow, I hoped to pick up one new tidbit at the BMC walk this morning and I did. The prez, Ellen, told me that the Ganoderma tsugae (the shiny shelf polypore in the picture) I had found was "a very good one and perfect for making tea with anti-cancer properties". Sweet. Shannon is staying at my place for a couple weeks, we're gonna hit that. Can't have too much anti-cancer tea.

Other hits of the mushroom weekend were oyster mushrooms at the woods by a graveyard in Dorchester (how is it that Dorchester is like my top place for mushrooming???), and chantrelles on my way home from the BMC walk.

Last weekend, Henry and his infinite cuteness kept everyone feeling good. here he is with a watermelon.

Finally, although I didn't find enough time to really harvest all the juneberries and mulberries that i could have, I did go out yesterday evening to shake a few mulberry trees. I put a sheet down so they'd fall onto it, and got an OK harvest. Well, the mulberries I found yesterday were white ones, which I don't like as much. But, it's fresh fruit and it's free, so who really cares about it. Partridge berries are the same way, except they are even blander. but this got me thinking in the woods today. I'll show someone some partridge berries and they will try them and inevitably sort f shrug and tell me they don't taste like anything. This doesn't make me love them any less though. Cows don't complain that grass is bland. They just stand there and eat, and then sit there and eat again -- ruminate -- all day. We humans, so spoiled, everything has to "taste good". I'm going on a partridge berry campaign to point this out. Speaking of weird campaigns, just learned that President Polk used the poke berry plant as his campaign illustration. Weird. I also found a massive amount of pokeweed over by the oysters in the Dorchester graveyard. Next spring. Finally, I found some wild parsnips out in Littleton or so on the way to the walk today (I pulled over when I spotted their yellow buds). I will make that trip next spring too since i like them so much. I mean, they are no partridge berries, but...

Utagawa Hiroshige and the hanging foragers

2009-07-03T13:06:00.014-04:00

Last weekend's adventure was babysitting, in order of increasing age, Callie, Sam, Jaime, and Bella. We had lots of fun and burned lots of calories. I tried out my idea of teaching kids foraging by letting them come up with their own names for plants. Sheep sorrel got renamed sour fish. It's sour, and tastes like a fish. This is a much better name than sheep sorrel. I just want to make the foraging literature even more confusing (like, if every plant had as many English names as the Shad bush does).

We came across some Indian Cucumbers on our West Hanover hike. This is a great hike a mile from their house, and so far I've gotten them on it twice, even though both times, around 2/3 in, the complaints start; are we almost done,... all that. They love it though.

Not sure if I should have, but I've started bella on her own blog. Her entries are short and simple, I could learn from that. Check it out: www.fantastic-friendship.blogspot.com.

The main thanks goes to Corina and my mother: they did all the hard work, including one unmentionable task early on, thanks to Sam+fruit. Hated to tell him the next day "no fruit" - who wants to say that to anyone (well, except if you are starting your own locavore movement and you are in New England in January), but, it was prudent. Enough said.

The rock tripe that sarah and I found on top of Red Mountain was delicious. In a strange mixing of worlds and art and foraging, I stumbled across (ok, there was some hunting) a beautiful Japanese print of people foraging for rock tripe, with a serious rigging. I can't even tell you how happy that makes me. It's by the same guy who did the big one in Sarah's dining room that I'm always gawking over. I prepared the tripe by boiling it for about 20 minutes, after a 2 hour soak in two water changes with some baking soda -- rock tripe eats rocks so you have to tame the acids. Then I added it to pasta with garlic and local asparagus.

Thanks to Kingsolver's book, I feel guilty buying avocados now since they are not local. Soon, I'll be eating only lambs quarters and wood sorrel, two weeds outside my door.

Foraging news:
* Brought some juneberries into chef Barry at The Hungry Mother the other day. he ate 'em right up, no questions asked, and then asked for them to use in a dessert that night. Then I told him on email that milkweed will be offering a crunchy edible part soon, and he is game to try it. Will try to get some recipes for the book with this collaboration. Chef Barry was voted one of the top 10 new chefs in America by Food and Wine.
* Lamb's quarters a current favorite, lady's thumb ok. Both out lots now. With all the rain we've had, mushrooms are out too. I don't really know what I'm seeing though. I grabbed what I hoped was a boletus bicolor the other day, but back at the office for an ID, I discovered it probably was not, it wasn't red enough.

* Cattail has been a challenge for me - for all the hype it gets in foraging books, I haven't really loved it yet. But I'm coming around. The young familiar cattail spike part is good like mini-corn-on-the-cob. Here I shaved it off after boiling for a few, and used it as a pizza topping along with sour fish, daisy leaves, and a tiny bit of early purslane.

* My oatmeal these days involves juneberries and knotweed compote. (I realize when you start a sentence with "My oatmeal these days.." people might fall asleep.)

Yoga at the gallery stands to pick up. Four new teachers coming soon, stay tuned. Also, the gallery now has it's own blog, The Scene, thanks to Intern Melissa.

More pics from the babysitting, recent foraging.

Berry season has begun

2009-06-24T10:33:00.003-04:00

With all this rain I should have more time to blog, but things -- a trip to Vermont, half a day's walk through Boston to hand-deliver the application for 501(c)3 non-profit status recognition for the gallery, seeing Brian off for his trip to Spain, painting a Repaint for the juried art show, and starting my hawthorn tag painting for the arboretum juried show -- have been keeping me busy.

But, in the spirit of keeping this blog up to date with what's edible now, berry season has begun in earnest. Juneberries (aka service berries aka shad berries aka saskatoon berries aka Amelanchier sp...does any berry have more names? i guess this is what happens when a berry has a fairly wide native range but it has never been commercialized to give it a single common name) and mulberries are out. A classic foraging moment happened yesterday when Shannon and I came across some shad bushes out in front of the federal reserve bank in downtown Boston. We were filling up a large cup's worth of them and this older gentleman comes up to us all awkward and says - "are you going to make a pie with those? those..Amelanchier canadensis..". I just identified big time because I also love nothing more than to bust out the Latin name of something any chance I get. Like in yoga when you bust out the Sanskrit. We just all like people to know that we know our stuff. Or at least me and that guy do.

Anyhow, here's a nice vegan Juneberry pie Sarah and I whipped up the other night. Photo courtesy of Perez E.

Lunch from Dorchester

2009-06-17T13:15:00.001-04:00

Eating cattails, curly dock, and onion buds from along the river down in South Dorchester.

Last night some friends and I met up at Middle East. Meghan's boyfriend Mark is in town for an MIT conference so we all went to dinner. Dinner was nice, chit chat about art and such, until the COMEDY SHOW started. Not just comedy...open-mic comedy. Talk about stressful and not funny. I had to get out of there. At this points, a few pitchers in, we headed down to the Cantab for some bluegrass, and brought our typical Thursday night shenanigans there on a Tuesday night. We picked up a straggler named Shannon Senn on the way and had a blast. No one lost any shirts, although it was close at times.

Grape leaves

2009-06-03T10:56:00.001-04:00

One of my purposes for keeping this blog (which would more appropriately be called simply Forage since I never discuss art yoga and music) is to remind myself of what's out when for a book on foraging that I may eventually right. Anyhow, grape leaves are out right now and abundant at bussey brook meadow, a small section of the Arboretum I came across the other day with Jody and Shannon. In short, this small section, which used to be farmland in the 17th - 19th centuries, has instantly become my new favorite foraging spot in Boston. I've never seen even close to that many stinging nettles before. I might go commercial with them next spring. And tons of wild grapes -- get me some bottles and throw me over there in august and I'll have the whole city drunk by december. I still need to read a good wine book, I don't even know how long it takes to make wine.

Right now the grape leaves are perfect for stuffing. Last night I stuffed a bunch with brown rice and assorted wild greens - lady's thumb, lamb's quarters, clover blossoms, plantain. And I made them correctly so they are moist and ... yummy, which is apparently the only word I know to describe good food.

Summer unofficial

2009-05-28T11:28:00.001-04:00

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?

2009-05-22T12:44:00.013-04:00

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)

2009-05-08T13:11:00.005-04:00

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

2009-05-04T10:11:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-30T08:50:00.003-04:00

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."

2009-04-29T12:05:00.004-04:00

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

2009-04-23T10:11:00.004-04:00

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.

Knotweed, the movie

2009-04-22T13:39:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Rob House for filming and editing this.

I'm going to try something like knotweed thyme soup soon, and also I want to try frying them. Think fried artichokes. I also ate some with peanut butter last night. Other than the fact that I gobbled up way too much peanut butter in a short amount of time, causing me to be swallowing for the next 20 minutes or so, it was pretty good. I've also been cutting up raw pieces and adding them to any hot savory dish and they work well there as little bursts of lemony crunch.

Island #2

2009-04-18T18:15:00.013-04:00

Last week I went to the Cambridge department of public works for some free compost. They had a mountain of the stuff. The former City Arborist happened to be there, so I took the chance to let him know I was a forager and see if he had any cool trees that I should know about. He hooked me up big time. A couple female ginkos on Church St, some june berries in Inman Square, a Kousa dogwood over by the library. That info was worth more to me than the free compost, but I'm pretty excited about both.

Today, Brian and Sarah E and I hit the minuteman trail to harvest some knotweed. It was pretty fun to barrel through the old stalks, they crunch away pretty easily and create quite a ruckus. Brian and I are both pretty scraped up as a result but it was fun. We had to get a bunch of knotweed for the competition we are hosting here tomorrow. It looks like we'll have about 12 contestants or so, so it should be pretty fun, and funny.

The other night I ate a nice meal of nettles and knotweed that grabbed in the Fens. here it is. I've decided that when people say, Hmm, that's pretty good, all it really means is that I can cook pretty well. These vegetables, like all vegetables, are all about how they are prepared. There's very few magic vegetables that are just good no matter what you do with them. Sweet corn, garden tomatoes, they come to mind. For everything else, add some olive oil and garlic and salt and fry it up fast, and you probably have a hit.

I'm still hoping that Cambridge Tab covers me, they called me and chatted for a while yesterday about my knotweed cookoff, but I haven't seen anything yet. But I sent them some nice pics, and if they don't publish them there, well, at least they are going up here.

I finally convinced myself that all the marsh marigold I have been seeing is in fact marsh marigold. I cooked it up last night, 3 changes of water boiled for a total of 30 minutes to get rid of all the toxins. And sure enough, totally tasteless after that. And then Noah asked me a perfectly reasonable question: after all that boiling, is there any nutritional value left? Well, I guess what i should have answered is, imagine you were on an island with either 1) only water or 2) water an marsh marigolds. I'm sure you'd live a lot longer on island number 2. Still, I see his point. And to roughly quote Sam Thayer, "The problem with marsh marigold is, they inherently taste bad." Pretty funny coming from a great foraging book. So why include it in the book? Because it's an old standby for New England foragers and it's one of the first greens aplenty to come up in Spring. It really tastes like nothing though, and I doubt I'll grab much more of it.

I've probably blogged about this before, but I have to vent a little more. it drives me absolutely buts that no one asks me what the heck I'm doing out there when I am digging up and plucking wild plants. I mean, we were crashing through knotweed stands today and no one asked a single question. PEOPLE!!! Finally Sarah E got some people to ask me questions which made me infinitely happy. She later told me she prompted them discretely, but whatever, once they started talking they asked more questions and were excited to learn.

Since I knew I'd be around for a straight month or so with no trips, I decided to finally undertake sourdough; I started a couple weeks ago. 6 days to make the barm, aka the mother starter.
I've had a little success with the actually bread, but nothing to write home about (although, evidently enough to blog about...). Basically, it's a huge pain in the ass and I'm going to probably leave it for the San Franciscans. The picture here makes it look better than it actually came out. Well, truth be told, it has been some of the best bread I've ever made, but not 8 days of effort good. After spending 8 days, the stuff oughtta taste like bacon wrapped scallops. Plus, I ended up using some active yeast for the final rise since it wasn't moving with the wild yeast that should've been naturally in there. It tasted somewhat sour.

On Easter, my brother Jay and I took 3 of his 4 kids on a great walk through the woods of west Hanover. Here you seem them all happy and fun. What you don't see is 30 minutes from that shot, when they are all complaining: how far, when do we get home, I'm hungry, I'm tired. Meanwhile, Jay and I are having a blast because we stumble across the old West Hanover graveyard, home to all the dead bodies of the 1860s of West Hanover. And the kids were alright once we came out of the woods and got them candy at the liquor store. It was Easter afternoon, but apparently they hadn't had enough candy yet. I had potato chips. I can never have enough of them.

Things in the Fens

2009-04-06T12:07:00.002-04:00

Turns out the Fens has more than just community gardens and homosexuals in the reeds. It also hosts a good deal of stinging nettle, some evening primrose, a turtle in one of the ponds, and I'm pretty sure some marsh marigold which I will have to return to soon and verify, because that one will be a new one for me. It is a little strange though to harvest these plants from the Fens when there's very likely a used condom three feet away. Such is urban foraging.

I'm adept at getting nettle without needing my nettle gloves now. I'm a little slower at it, but I think that's fine, there's no rush. made a nice pesto last night of galric mustard weed, dandelion greens, spring onions, primrose roots, garlic, evoo, salt, etc. Threw it on a past with Andrew and crew, it was great. And a side dish of nettles with some very early japanese knotweed shoots. So small it's ridiculous to be harvesting them already, since in two weeks they'll be everywhere and crazy. But, you have to ease people into them, after all. They need a better name. I'm going to post a contest online I think for best vegan j-weed preparation. Should get a little stir in the community going. If it goes well, will do it for other local forageables.

Linden leaves will be out for the munching soon. Annie at the gallery brought in a branch of linden, which has sprouted it's yummy leaves earlier by being inside in the warm gallery. Gallery nibbles.

Walk

2009-04-03T12:01:00.004-04:00

When you live in Cambridgeport and you like to forage - the Charles River is the best place for a little fix after work or something. On Wednesday, art night, which has sort of turned into music night with me, brian, rob and dan rehearsing old folk and soul numbers, brian decided we'd go with ethiopian food.
We did, but it was Ethiopian food with a side of evening primrose roots and wild onions (with berbere, of course).

The roots are starchy parsnip looking vegetables with a spicy taste but they're one of those foraging items that makes you proud to be a forager because they are so hearty and cool and unseen. Last year when I started foraging, the books said the evening primrose was one of the first edibles available, but I had no idea how to find it. I mean, they say it's everywhere, but is it really. One thing I've learned over the past year is, when they say that something is found everywhere, it really is. Seeds fly and go everywhere, and in habitats that are conducive to their growth, you will find them. The other thing I've learned is, walk, no cycling, you'll miss the basal rosettes, you'll miss the early nettles (which I saw the other day too - but am holding off until they get a little more substantial).

Caterpillars and butterflies

2009-03-31T12:35:00.002-04:00

I don't get it at all. A caterpillar eats leaves creating a big squishy soft body, then wraps itself in a cocoon. Then a few months later out emerges a butterfly. Completely insane.

Wild onions on the Charles

2009-03-29T12:21:00.006-04:00

A little over a year ago, my friends Brian and Alex left me a little surprise when I came back from a week away. My bed was covered with bananas. Trader Joe's was selling them for 20 cents each, they bought 100. For weeks afterward I ate 3 bananas a day - part of the genius of this particular surprise prank gift is that I can't waste food of any sorts, so right away I knew I was in for a lot of bananas. I ended up having to freeze a bunch [ :) ] of them, and I'm still working on them - I took a break for a while - but almost done. Anyhow, Brian also has this aero herb garden that is awesomely productive and he mowed down the field the other day and gave me a bucket of herbs to mow through. The combination is the result. Banana and herb smoothies, with some assorted whatever like pineapple, lemon, and also some nut milk like almond or hazelnut. And the verdict: excellent. So soon, instead of herb smoothies, it will be wild edible greens smoothies.

We always want spring to come quicker than it does, and we always get teased. The warm weekend in early March is the teaser. Today, the last Sunday in March, is cold and rainy and I'm sitting in the gallery awaiting the Muse Stew jazz show. But what I'm really awaiting is the coming of the foraging season. Here I've been teased too. I found some wild onions on the Charles the other day, and gobbled some up on the spot. Then i returned for more and put them in my miso soup. So I thought - foraging is on. I even think I've spotted lots of evening primrose stalks from last year so i am diligently returning to those spots to look for basal rosettes that I can yank up for a big yummy root. No luck yet though. And yesterday poking through my brother's woods, the most I found was some old wintergreen and some old puffballs, which amused my nieces and nephew. I tell them - don't eat these - as if a child would want to pop a weird dried out old mushroom in his mouth. Still, they've seen me pop in plenty of weird things in my mouth out there, so I gotta be clear.

Briefly, the 3 books in my life right now: Dragon Mountain - memoirs of a late Ming man. Sometimes I'm at a bookstore and I see a book that looks good and has high praise, and I know jack squat about the subject, so I buy it and see what happens. So, I'm learning about the life of one upper class Chinese guy born around 1500 who was an essayist. Upper class in the Ming apparently studied their entire lives away preparing for state exams, each rung they passed allowing them a better state job. So, nights of socializing and partying, and taking boats out across the lakes, and attending and organizing lantern festivals, and days reading ancient texts, Confusious, that sort of thing, preparing for exams.

History of Anesthesia. This topic has always fascinated me. I mean, there are plenty of things that "shouldn't exist" - sea horses being a prime example. The world is already strange enough that it exists as it does, and then you throw in the sea horse and it just pushes us over the edge. OK, so you have sentient life, which is _obviously_ whacked out. And then the straw breaking the camel's back - you can find not just one but several chemicals that shut off consciousness and allow doctors to saw off limbs and remove internal tumors and yank out teeth, with the patient having no feeling or memory of pain. The stories from the book that I like the the best so far are these 1840's science guys sitting around passing out as they experiment with ether, chloroform, nitrous oxide, what have you. Science doesn't happen that way anymore.

Just finished "Changes in the Land" which I picked up for free at the irate hippy Harvard square sidewalk book seller who is getting thrown out by Cambridge, so giving all the books away. Slim pickings, definitely now. A couple of months ago I stumbled on this book on their shelves, it's about how the ecology of New England changed when the colonists came over and pushed out the Indians. Briefly, the settlers were not about to be roamers like the Indians, and grazing and farming a single piece of land wears it out pretty fast. Indians working the land were constantly moving and burning undergrowth and had a pretty steady state sustainable thing going. This all changed come 1620, and the book details the process. Also, the book prompted me to look into the story about how the settlers gave smallpox infested blankets to the Indians to wipe them out. This always depressed me a lot. turns out, it's not true. There seems to have been one letter written by someone suggesting this as a possible tactic, but there is no evidence that it was ever done - and certainly if it was done it was a small time operation and not massively organized and repeated. Anyhow, a relief.

Jazz time.

A quick walk - oenothera by the tracks.

2009-03-07T16:42:00.002-05:00

Today I'm sitting the gallery all day. Lots of people came in - the good weather gets people out. Pete kindly offered to sit and relieve me for a couple hours. I took this time to do a walking loop: I took 3 bags of clothes and dumped them in the Planet Aid box, which brought me along the railroad tracks through Cambridge. I suspected I might find some old evening primrose stalks, and I did (I think). In less than a month rosettes should be out and I can dig them up and eat that spicy root vegetable that is supposed to be underground from them. I searched for these guys last year, but I was a real amateur then (now I'm a real intermediate), and had no clue. In the case of evening primrose, it's all about looking for last year's dead stalks. So, today then marks my first official foraging day of 2009, which is pretty exciting.

Then, I found my way to the salvy and bought my third microwave in the past half year. I have bad luck with them, they die suddenly. I'm feeling good about this one. It's the same model as the one at the gallery.

Drinking watery coffee. Allowed to drink a lot of it, even if it's past 4 PM.

Pipe lights

2009-02-25T07:05:00.003-05:00

I'm developing some new ways to get vegan food at a restaurant without being totally annoying and pretentious. Here's how I go: 'Do you have anything vegetarian?' (start them off gently). Then maybe they rattle something off something vegan in which case I'm good to go. Otherwise I say, that sounds good, but can you leave off the (cheese, milk, whatever), and everyone's happy. This might sound simple but it took some time to polish it so the whole vegan thing doesn't become mount vesuvius every time it comes out while out. I've been having much success with the technique here in Stockholm. I think it helps that I go to nice looking places, under the assumption that they have good chefs who are also hopefully decent people. Last night at a restaurant called the blue door (blo dorren or something) I got rice and ratatouille with asparagus, capers (HUGE capers, had to ask what they were), mushrooms, and spinach. It was fantastic. Also started off with some snaps. Their English spelling. They meant schnapps. They had some crazy flavors, including sweet gale, which I felt like I'd heard of. Back on the internet, I looked it up and it's similar to bayberry. Then I looked up schnapps recipes on the web, and it turns out that you can throw vodka over just about anything and make schnapps. Some examples - I'm not making these up: oak branches, pussy willow puffs (technically, "catkins", linden flowers and leaves, dandelion buds, and mountain ash berries). Foraging meets getting hammered Swedish style.

My days here, similar to in Costa Rica, have fallen into a nice workable pattern. Up at 7 or so for hotel breakfast, which is a great shmorgasborg of options that honestly tests my vegan will power every morning (all that cold herring and salmon, mmm) but I've passed thus far since they have lots of bread, fruit and veggies and mustard and nuts. I'll tell you though, the food that people waste kills me. Here I am not eating a slice of cheese and people are tossing out slices left and right. Hrrmph.

Found two great yoga classes thus far (much more impressive than Rekjavik, where I couldn't find a single yoga studio). Will go back to the first place tonight for a vinyasa class. I'm sort of going about this without the best yogi attitude. I'm essentially totally proud of all the yoga I've been doing and I know that I'm kicking butt in there. Oh well, one thing at a time, the yoga mindset is harder to instill than vriksasana (tree pose).

Stockholm is a great city and people should bump it up on their lists of places to visit. I keep finding new parts, which is a nice side benefit of searching out yoga studios. Last night's yoga, www.shaktiyoga.se, was in such a beautiful part of town I stood for a few minutes at an overlook just gazing at the city below. Then I saw some person far below on a path and it appeared that he was lighting his newspaper on fire. Turns out he was just lighting his pipe, it took a while and the flame looked bigger than that. After yoga I strolled around some more, and walked by tons of art galleries. The quality of the art in most of the galleries was poor. Makes me feel good, of course. I wonder what fraction of art galleries across the world are similar to all those Brooklyn boutiques you see: something besides sales keeping them afloat. I bet it's high.

Dark chocolate is a vegan life raft. I'm always on the prowl for it now...even the 7-11's here have it! And more than one type! Actually, the CVS at Charles/MGH also has a strangely good selection of dark chocolate.

From paripurna navasana to enlightment in 8 steps

2009-02-18T08:46:00.005-05:00

I'm back from the three week intensive yoga trip to Costa Rica, in body if not quite in action. In action, I've been going to bed early, like costa rica, waking up early, and hitting some yoga. I had to buy myself a new yoga pad (a lotuspad, made in cambridge!) because after 3 weeks of sweating mine up in the rainforest, that guy did not smell good at all. And doing yoga on a nasty yoga mat really detracts from the experience.

Some pics from the trip are up at snapfish. Supposedly everyone from the class (34 of us) are to post there, but everyone else must be stick in bird of paradise or something because no one it moving on it.

If I ever get bored, all I need to do is get a book of tropical edible and medicinal plants and head down to the tropics. It was like starting over down there, I didn't know what to forage. Luckily, I didn't need to, they fed us well, and we ate a ton. After hours of yoga, meal time, and when you know the next meal isn't for 3+ hours, you pack it in. Especially when it's vegan.

Lorena and Adam had Henry, who seems like a decent enough individual. Corina had much success keeping him settled. I didn't. I usually think I have a certain touch with kids, but I failed.

Here's a neat fact regarding yoga. Over the past 1000s of years, the yogis have laid out a path to enlightenment (which I'm just throwing out there as a word...not saying I know what it means). Anyhow, in the yogic view, the steps are basically as follows.

1) become a decent person to yourself and others.

2) practice your poses.

3) turn inward, removing your senses from the outside world and turning them on yourself.

4) but, lose yourself. meditate, detach from and eventually lose the thoughts that scamper across your brain.

5) after meditation practice, where you see firsthand that you are the same as the Oneness of the universe, the sense of self being an illusion (we didn't really talk about why this illusion persists or why on earth the whole shebang is set up this way, which dismayed me, but these types of why why why questions always pop up to me, and I got sick of hearing myself ask them while everyone else was just throwing around words like 'pure consciousness' and 'we are all one' with no problem).

So, anyhow, the interesting thing is, to real-deal yogis, the poses (yoga class here in the states) are only meant to train the body to be able to sit still and comfortably in meditation.

Thoreau called the original yogic texts some of the heaviest most worthwhile things to consume that the world has put forward...far more impressive and substantial than anything similar put out by the West. Of course then, this makes me want to read them. Add them to the every growing list. Also added to the 'to read' list this trip: The Road, some Nietszche, some book that brittany just finished that the teacher gave her, called orynx and crake or something.

YOOOOGGGGGAAAAAAA

2009-01-29T19:46:00.002-05:00

Good God there's a lot of yoga going on out here in Costa Rica right now. It's all great, but we are certainly packing in the material. Every day is identical, so I'll just spell out one for you.

Alarm clock goes off at 6, Jordan hits snooze twice, I'm glad it finally went off because I've been tossing and turning since 4:30 or so anyhow because this whole ultra-structured situation has not really sunk in with me yet. But, I'm trying to let it go and just keep on plowing. 6:30 - tea or coffee in silence with the other 34 people. 6:45 - in circle, meditation for 30 minutes. Then 2 hour yoga practice. Then breakfast. Oatmeal and local fruits and coffee. Then 3 hour class. In class we review all the sanskrit we've learned thus far, talk about yogic philosophy, people volunteer to read the essays on whatever topic was assigned the previous night, discuss discuss. Then we learn more poses and how to teach them, we practice. Then lunch. 2 hour break - nap, beach, pool, study, something like that. Then 3 hour anatomy class. Then dinner, then I', so darn tired I cannot even think about emailing everyone and blogging although I want to, but I have homework to do and it's late, so this is my first blog post from here yet. I thought I'd have tons of them!

Twice a week we get the afternoon off. That was today. Went zip-lining through the jungle, saw a couple sloths, it was awesome. Exhilarating.

The food here is fantastic and mostly vegan. The instruction is great. Meditation is a huge challenge for me, my mind likes to race, well, I guess everyone's does, and that's why it's such a challenge for us westerners to meditate. We are in a beautiful place though, howler monkeys in the trees, lots of nice people. It feels like we've been here forever already though. Man are we going to be cooked in yoga by the time we are out of here.

Off to dinner. Tonight's homework: write essay on aparigraha - the fifth yama, and learn the sanskrit for all the new poses, and learn like a thousand muscles it seems.

The preservation of knotweed

2009-01-14T16:18:00.011-05:00

One crucial omission on my "things wrong with my car" list. I don't know how I forgot this one, it's great.

14) You have to sit on the back trunk to close it. Slam as hard as you want, to no avail. Sitting on it is the only way to close the back trunk.

For some reason in my old age, I'm getting picky with Cambridge businesses and swearing them off one by one. At ZuZu the other night, after we had had a drink and got there early enough to avoid the line and the cover charge, which has gone up to $5, the bouncer comes around collecting money from us if we wanted to stay. We got that place going back in the day, now they charge us once already inside. No good. India Palace the other night didn't know what the word 'vegan' meant. Then Indian food in Inman Square suckered us into paying for a henna tattoo. The quote from the waitress was something like "we have someone doing henna now, and it's free". The way she said it implied to all of us that it would cost nothing. Turns out she meant, "there's no one getting a henna right now" OF COURSE NOT, who wants a henna while enjoying dinner? I was excited for Indian food as a vegan, but I have to make it myself because it's too painful trying to make sure whatever you get is vegan. More on that in a few...

There have been at least 3 more restaurants/bars I've sworn off but I can't remember them. Old age again :). But, one place that has a solid A+ right now, and so I'm recommending it to all, is Amelia's in Kendall Sq. Nice people, chef who actually makes you feel fine about ordering vegan, and great food and great bar. Plus, it's off the beaten path and so it's a cool find.

Regarding making my own Indina food, so far so good. Coconut curry veggie stew the other night rocked. All supplies easily obtained at Shalimar in Central (although very hard to get the store staff enthused about white man cooking Indian food. So far, zero success on getting a smile, let alone a 'how 'bout that!'). Coconut milk - a food of the Gods, a creamy delicious vegan sauce.

Play last night, The Corn is Green, at Huntington BU theatre, fantastic. The last decent play I saw was Seafarers in NY. There have been a lot of duds out there, so it was a pleasant surprise. I am still crossing my fingers for the new central square theatre, but really, they gotta get some better programming in there. Just do Chekhov for a while, everyone's happy. Or Tennessee Williams, or Eugene O'Neill. Are the rights on those plays significantly more money or something? I have no idea.

I have my cell phone back, and a word of advice to anyone who loses their cell phone: figure out the insurance policies rules before you go blabbing about what happened. In my case, I lost the phone on the slopes because I was wearing a ridiculous old man's suit outfit and it popped right out...no zipper pockets on that ski outfit. But, I felt like that was too dumb, so instead I told them (truthfully) that my phone had been shutting off all the time in the cold weather and so (untruthfully) I got so annoyed the final time I just upped and threw it out. They read it back to me to confirm, and hit enter. Then they told me they don't cover thrown out phones. But they do cover lost phones. So I stuck my tail between my legs, called back the next day, and told the truth, all with levity of course. Got nowhere. Instead, received two letters in the mail - not sure why two, they were duplicates - highlighting that my phone could not be replaced via insurance because the client (me) misrepresented the facts of the case. So, the lesson learned is either 1) tell the truth, but, that's too much of a Latter Day Saint's type of lesson, and it won't necessarily always work, so I prefer 2) Figure out what story will get you a new phone, tell that one.

The weather is very cold right now. So, let's turn our thoughts to Spring. One of the first plants out in abundance around here for foraging is Japanese Knotweed. Check it out online. It's only around for good eating for about the first 3 weeks of its growth, so it goes fast, but there's tons of it. I'll be sponsoring a contest this year, the best recipe for it and the best way to preserve it. Sort of...The Iron Chef of urban wild edibles. Start brainstorming. It tastes a bit like rhubarb.

Early virtues of the vegan diet

2009-01-06T15:07:00.004-05:00

As of January first, myself and a couple friends have gone to the vegan side. This of course comes with some risks. I hope not to become intolerable to go out to dinner with, asking about each and every item. This was worse enough as a vegetarian. I also hope to continue to love food and eating. So far, so good.

The first two days were the hardest. Maybe it was psychological, but I really felt empty and hungry all the time. I was panicking a little. But things smoothed out. Now I am thinking that vegan has some extra benefits that I hadn't considered up front. 1) I get to eat more often -- I love eating and preparing food so this is a good thing. 2) I get more creative - I force myself to so I continue enjoying food. I used to tout this as a virtue of the vegetarian diet, how I always found myself cooking more creatively since I couldn't rely on things that automatically taste good, like, oh, i don't know, sausages. You gotta work a little harder to make those veggies and grains pop. And now without cheese, eggs, and butter you really gotta work. Luckily, have had some early success already. Ribolitta from Mario Batali's cook book was excellent. I prefer normal cookbooks to vegan ones, since vegan ones are full of recipes for things like "Ground bulgar and lentil loaf". Mmmm. On the other hand, normal cookbooks with some tweaks offer fine vegan cuisine.

Making yoga free at the gallery has brought people out of their caves, which I'm happy about. I gotta get cracking on reading the yoga books for costa rica. Last night and this morning, I was reading a play by Eugene O'Neill called The Emperor Jones. I bought a book of three of his plays, published by Dover (book called Three Great Plays - only after I got home with it did i realize, wow, that's a clever publisher's title that literally got me to buy the book), hoping that one might work as a movie script for Rob. Unfortunately, The Emperor Jones is set in the West Indies and involves mainly a large black man running terrified through the woods. Not exactly what we are looking for regarding 'filmability'. Maybe one of the others in the book, 'The Hairy Ape', is more suitable.

Panicking is a weird word, having to add the 'k' before adding the 'ing'.

The problems with my car

2008-12-29T17:13:00.004-05:00

As promised, here is a near complete list of things wrong with my car, in the order they come to my mind.

1) Brake light is always on.
2) The button which makes the rear defroster go on is long gone. So, it's an L.E.D. by itself.
3) The car locks automatically when you close the door, usually. It's a matter of time before the keys get locked in there.
4) I had to remove all the interior light bulbs since they always stay on even after the doors have been closed. One remains, the green light ring around the keyhole. To shit that one off, I need to bump the right rear door after I shut the driver's door.
5) There is a leak in the exhaust manifold which brings the fumes right into the cabin if the car stays put.
6) The rear shocks are caput. In the winter I think they fill with water and freeze and thus become especially bad. I sometimes get car sick hitting frost heaves, which is new for me: I've never gotten car sick while driving myself.
7) The radio goes out once in a while. Acceleration in either direction often is enough to get it going again.
8) There is no display on the radio anymore, it has long since faded.
9) There is a crack in the engine block, making it virtually impossible to pass inspection without slipping someone some bills. Additionally, it makes my car terrible on gas mileage.
10) There is a huge dent on the right of the hood.
11) Sometimes when you try to unlock it manually, it resists and snaps back to a locked position. I don't know how to make it not do this.
12) The right back window does not go down.
13) The heat only sort of works.

And now, the good list:

1) It has new tires and windshield wipers.
2) It starts surprisingly easily in winter.

Quote from Thoreau

2008-12-29T11:50:00.001-05:00

"I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious." -- from a journal entry in 1857

Diamond Light

2008-12-22T19:21:00.003-05:00

In the slushiest, wettest weather possible, Brian and I headed over the bridge to In Your Ear records in Brighton yesterday. It's right near a pretty sweet salvation army, a boxing school, a store that sells recording equipment, and a cold stone creamery. I got a 10 dollar nasty microwave at the salvy, and a bonsai tree growing kit. It'll be great if one of them actually works.

IYE records was a real find though. Lenny and Squiggy, at about the age they'd be now, run the ship, and it's tight down there. For instance, there's an entire rack of 8 tracks, and there were three DIFFERENT Boz Scaggs 8-tracks on that shelf. I wasn't aware he had three albums. I bought one of them, since Brian bought me an early festivus gift - 60% of a car 8-track player. One time I replaced my car radio with another. It took forever. Then Ani wrecked my car a few weeks later. Still, It would be sweet end days for my current shit box to have an 8-track player installed. If I'm successful in that, I'm going back for those other two Box Scaggs.

Another gem there: a black candle, which was placed right by the checkout.

Me (after Brian threw done some non-insignificant bills for a record player setup for Jrock): How much for the [crappy, used, dusty] candle?

Lenny: Oh, that's not for sale.

Me: C'mon, name a price, you don't need that thing.

Lenny: Hey Squiggy, is the candle for sale?

Squiggy: Ah yeah. Just give it to him.

The other great thing about IYE is that they have all sorts of decent albums for about 3 dollars. I couldn't resist but force Brian to get Anita Baker and Sade. When I get into something, I force it upon my friends, and currently I'm into 70's women soul singers, and Sade. Lenny is also into Sade. Upon mention, he says; "Oh, you gotta get Diamond Light...great record." That was awesome. Also, Lenny gave me a little trade secret: when people test new speakers etc, they often use the album JT by James Taylor, because it's supposedly one of the best recordings regarding diversity and sound quality out there. My man James. I tested Brian's system with it, it sounded great. Your smiling face.

You know when you are driving and you see a car pass beside you, but optically it appears that his wheels are spinning backwards? Technics record players use that phenomenon to do small-scale speed adjustments of their turn tables. You adjust until the phantom freezes in place. That was exciting because I've never seen an application of that phenomenon.

I did two new paintings this week, which I'm pretty happy about. They are both here.

Globe coverage for the gallery on Sunday! I always like the way newspapers and magazines come up with clever titles. I bet they have software or something that they type in some keywords and it busts out some ideas. In this case they went with Out of obscurity. Well, that changes the intended meaning of Lighting the obscure world, but no matter, no one seemed to get that right anyhow. Some friends tore into me when they found at that name, thinking I meant it like, how cool g263 is, lighting the obscure world. I meant that artists in general shed light on the obscure world when they do paintings. And, I stole it anyhow, from that weird movie Synecdoche, NY.

I'd like to list a few things wrong with my car, because I think that would be fun. But I'll make that my next post, because I've slipped on my posting and this one's already long enough.

Stay warm. My house is freezing these days. Baer would rather catch squirrels than put decent windows in. Or he has hibernated.

Things that seem new rarely are

2008-12-15T17:33:00.000-05:00

For example, it is often tempting to think that we are in the midst of a major new environmental awareness. But, I just read today that hundreds of years ago residents of Truro, MA - out there on the tip of Cape Cod, were asked by the government, or maybe forced, I couldn't tell, to plant beach grass to help keep the sand banks from eroding. They brought the beach grass seeds from The Netherlands.

Microcomputers are definitely new though. And I'm struggling with a contract job right now involving how to teach a computer to generate a simple shape based on constraints like "it has two lines that intersect at right angles and then a third line which is to the right of both of them." One knows we still have a long way to go with artificial intelligence when one tries to take simple things like this and program a computer to do them.

I pretty much hate my new PC, but it got a point this morning. Somehow it got left on our heater in the gallery, and I looked at the bottom this morning and it was all bent and melted. It miraculously turned on just fine and is fine.

I want to put an art show up where the paintings cost like $6 or so. See if that gets people buying them. Call it meta-art, where the pricing itself is an art statement. Any artists out there want to donate a piece for the cause? It might be all me (and my stuff is worth at least $40 :)), and anything I can steal from Rob.

Last Wednesday during yoga class, our first yoga customers arrived. Jordan was absent, so it was up to me. OK, except that I had a massive stuffy head, and thus was sweating profusely midway through. Today I think I accidentally drank a pot of caffeine: Moroccan mint? Sounds herbal, right. They must've dropped in a green tree bough or something. The jumpy nature of this post reflects the unintended caffeine.

Here's a depressing website: recently extinct species.

For the foragers out there - don't give up on 2008 yet. Rose hips are still available and yummy.

Baer is nuts

2008-12-12T17:46:00.000-05:00

My landlord is a obsessed with squirrels.

I live in an old house that has been subdivided into about 8 apartments. About 3 of them seem to always be vacant, because my landlord spends more time crafting ways to find and rid the squirrels than renting the apartments. I often leave my apartment to find a squirrel trap baited with peanut butter right outside my door. Once there was a squirrel in there, flipping out. I felt bad for it, so I gave it some food, Baer -- the landlord -- probably wouldn't have liked that. later, I swear the squirrel was asleep, which I found amazing. I couldn't sleep in a situation like that, but he found some calm somehow.

Once I asked Baer what her does with the trapped squirrels. This made him a little uncomfortable, and I detected a slight air of defensiveness. After hemming and hawing for about 5 minutes and never really coming out with it, I pieced together that he takes the traps down to the Charles river, in the middle of the night, and throws them into the river, probably tying them with a string so he can retrieve them. Because he will never be rid of the squirrels. But, he told be that he always "gives them a chance". I guessed that meant he opens the cage, throws it in far, and if they can get out and swim to land (I don't think those guys can swim, I don't think Baer does either), they are free. I imagine that after he tosses in the cage, he strolls around the Charles for 15 minutes, thinking about God knows what, and returns to empty his trap of the dead squirrel, then he goes home to bed.

The other day, he tried to hire Corina to sniff around in all the crevices in the basement to try to find any dead squirrels. She needs a job, but this was too much. After 20 minutes, she made up an excuse - a job interview - and hit the high road.

Some thoughts on karaoke

2008-12-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

However much I love singing and love karaoke, I'm absolutely abysmal when it comes to song selection. To put it in contrast, last night Rob N. managed to whip off two killer songs in a row: sussudio and i wanna new drug. Now, had I picked songs like that, all would have been fine. Instead, I start with For The Longest Time, billy joel. A good song, but not a rowser like those first two. But that just started off my landslide downwards. My next pick: Sade, No Ordinary Love. A fantastic song, but not I song I will ever attempt again. I was rescued at the end by Sarah B. who asked me to duet with her on the country cheese song by kid rock and sheryll crowe, Picture. I love cheesy music, so that was no problem, and it was nicely in my range, so that was great. I think my best karaoke flop over the years was a long while back over at club 608 in Somerville, which is now some out-of-place rock blues hangout I think. I went for Praying For Time by g. micheal. Like No Ordinary Love, a fantastic song, but not one I should be trying. I don't learn. I like a song so I try it, but I gotta get into using a different set of selection criteria. Anyhow, it was a fun night. BUT, that place Do-Re-Mi, however nice it is that they turn a relatively blind eye and let people sneak in booze (one time the manager came in though and asked my group "No Tequila". apparently other hard liquors were completely fine), they overcharge. And then, as I'm signing the credit card slip the guy says "this charge doesn't include tip". The charge was $385! Obviously, I should have politely nodded and said "Oh, it doesn't, interesting" and continued without tipping, but no, I threw in a tip. Idiot.

I like karaoke because I love music and singing and watching others sing, and at any time during a karaoke evening, if I feel like dancing, singing, or chatting, all are options.

I also like karaoke because, good or bad, it's fun to watch people. It's really a goldmine: people trying real hard to get it out right, people with no sense of rhythm, people who simply want to impress everyone else, people who try to sing Sade and wish in the middle of it that it was a Johnny Cash song, and on and on.

Speaking of Johnny Cash, all karaoke goers should thank him for giving a whole bunch of guys a set of songs to sing that will sounds fairly decent with no vocal skills at all. Most people don't sing too often, and so those low notes are much more available to guys than something from AC/DC for example.

Something's up with Allston and sneaking in booze to places: they let us do it at Grasshoper - vegan asian cuisine nearby to do-re-mi - too. They let us dump wine into the stainless steel tea pots on the table. Nobody in Cambridge does that. And that might be the only thing Allston has over Cambridge, come to think of it.

A pair of jacks at the jack and jill

2008-12-07T11:06:00.000-05:00

Do animals like the snow as much as we do? I think about this always on the first snowfall. I think not, because I think the reason I/we like it has to do with the fact that the comfort of heat and a home is emphasized by the snow. That and, snow gives us a reason to slow down our fast paced lives. It's like having a cold when you are a kid - bad enough to stay home from school, but not bad enough to make you miserable.

Making fresh spring rolls is like making sushi but far less stressful; they are more forgiving to inconsistencies and sloppiness, they are almost as good, and they command an almost equal amount of 'wows'. Not that that last one is a good reason to make something, but, we all like the pats on the back. Bread making is the same way. Follow a simple recipe on the flour wrapper for bread, and serve it 30 minutes after it comes out, and you get far too many 'wows' than you really deserve.

Nice event last night at the gallery - jack and jill baby shower for Adam and Lorena. The summer rolls where my present. How can I get the little rascal something if I don't even know him yet. I wouldn't want to force him to get into say Rachmaninoff if that turns out to not be his thing. Although, come to think of it, who wouldn't like a nice set of piano music by him? Maybe next time I'll just give a homemade Baby Rachmaninoff. At the risk of making a frantic and over passionate baby.

I got a pair of jacks for my first hand, during the poker session for the jacks of the party. Even with absolutely nothing at stake - the game was friendly and all the 5 dollar entry fees went to gallery donations - I still got all nervous about my good hand. I was super tired, so that didn't help either, but really, to get an elevated heart beat from a pair of jacks...this is why I shouldn't be allowed to gamble. Having said that, a casino night at the gallery would be AWESOME and if we can pull the non-profit strings and see if there is any legal way we can do that, man that would be sweet, if stressful.

I'm supposed to work on shape generation software today. Currently wondering why I take on these extra projects, leaving me with a Sunday, otherwise pleasantly snowing and Bach playing in the freshly cleaned gallery, during which I stress out. All I need to do more of is forage, art, yoga, and music, and I'm sure I'll be fine. :)

Some Christmas carols in the works for Central Square, with a premier at an upcoming lousy sweater party. So far on the roster: O Come All Ye Faithful, Angels We Have Heard On High, and Silent Night. A bunch of agnostics(+)atheists (that word atheists has such a hard sound to me) whipping up tunes about the baby Jesus. Kind of strange.

14,000 years

2008-12-05T16:51:00.000-05:00

Big day at the gallery. Here are the highlights:

Miriam, an artist who works over at the Piano Factory, came in and showed us some fun funky and funny illustrations she did on her press. I was wondering when I looked at them how she managed to get such a textured look but only have a few bold dark lines popping out. Thousands of pounds bearing down onto an etched piece of copper I guess. And then painted over to brighten it up. Very nice stuff, and we'll be showing it early next year.

Then Sam Thompson came in and we agreed on a set of watercolor classes for a younger age group, 8 to 16 or so. This will be on Saturday Mornings in January. At the end of January I'll be leaving for Costa Rica to get my 200 hours yoga training.

Then Peter came in to discuss music nights here. He's going to work on throwing the first one together (after the NH gig next week that is). We were sitting there drinking tea and eating pizza and imagining the G263 turned into a bunch of little round tables, cafe setting, string trio bringing it all together. We'll see what actually happens. Found some cheap chairs on craigslist. Emailed, no response. Drives me NUTS. Too many of my friends are into that too. Read an email that obviously could use a response - we are a society after all - and nothing. Thanks to all of you who reliably respond to emails :).

Stef dropped by and did a bang up job flyering the town with yoga and dec 13 flyers. Then she won 4 dollars on a scratch ticket and basically told me I was an old man. Speaking of scratch tickets...megamillions.com...146 million dollar drawing this Sunday. If anyone who reads this goes out and buys a ticket as a result, and wins, remember that that could pay for G263's operations for about 14,000 years, literally. So be kind.

There's a gigantic red flag waving outside the gallery right now that says open and people are walking by left and right and not coming in. Maybe I should shave my beard, or just hide.

I didn't include inflation in that 14,000 year calculation. Or the probability of the demise of human civilization.

The fate of bread machines

2008-12-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

So many bread machines end up in the goodwill. This is too bad. I mean, if it was that people were throwing them out in favor of making bread by hand, that would be great, but I doubt that's why. I guess people prefer buying store bread than spending all of 3 minutes throwing in the flour yeast and water and oil and salt and pressing START. That's all it is, and the result is that 5 hours later (depending on the model...I actually once lived with a bread machine that would make a decent loaf in 20 minutes, which seems impossible, but it did it. It was German I think.) your apartment smells wonderful and you are good on bread for a few days.

My kitchen is so close to my bedroom - I live in a shoe box - I haven't been using the timer feature on my bread machine lately. The noise of the kneeding would wake me up. But if you have a better situation, USE THE TIMER FEATURE. Fresh bread smell when you get up, look out.

I think one reason these fantastic appliances end up on the shelves of goodwills is that they get given as gifts, but the recipients don't know exactly how easy they are to use. So, here's an inexpensive gift idea: go rescue a bread machine from a salvy (there will definitely be one there, probably several), try it at home after a cleaning, and provide simple instructions to whom you give it to, and tell them they are nuts if they don't use this.

I'm going to try the no-kneed recipe that was all the rage a couple years ago and report back. Same author has a newer one for whole grain breads which I may try too. Kneeding bread is good exercise and otherwise therapeutic, so I have mixed feelings about this whole no-kneed method from the get-go, but, it's interesting anyhow and so I'll try it.

Pencil sketches of the masters

2008-12-03T18:07:00.001-05:00

Art night, the weekly Wednesday night friends art session that Rob and I started a couple years ago, is back in full swing. I like to have canvases around for people who show up with nothing to do, but I'm thinking of scaling this back to pencil sketching. Now it's true that most museums and galleries show paintings and not drawings, but it's not true that paint is required for beautiful art. All of the masters have fine examples of pencil sketches. I should link to one or two here, that would the proper blogger thing to do, but I'm in a rush. It's almost yoga time. Jordan's late.

Anyhow, I was thinking about this on the ride home today, and it occurred to me that this would make a great Gallery 263 lecture: Pencil Sketches of the Masters. I've been trying to come up with something to prepare a lecture for, and, given no training whatsoever in art history, I feel like this one is at least within some realm for me to do. I just need a handful of hours. Was also thinking I should play music as much as I've been doing yoga these days. I like sleep too much for all that jazz though.

Tonight's plan for art night: learn some Christmas tunes, four part harmony. Possible highlight as I look into my crystal ball: Boar's Head Carol.

Bulgar wheat

2008-12-02T17:18:00.000-05:00

Bulgar wheat isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. I whipped up a bulgar wheat pilaf last night with Jordan and Brian, after trial yoga run #4 at the gallery, and it was downright edible. I'll be pushing the stuff, especially since when I go vegan in January, I'm going to be seeking out new food varieties to keep me happy.

In pleasant harmony with yesterday's post, it turns out the Thoreau was the first Westerner to identify himself as a yoga follower. That guy must've been an awesome person. It doesn't bother me an ounce that his mother and sister did his laundry, or whatever it was that people like to point out when his living in the woods at Walden comes up. I'd do the same thing. It's not like having someone do your laundry completely brings you back to the bustle of modern life. There's still plenty of hours alone with the fishes and the birds and the squirrels. People do this all the time with me and my 95% vegetarianism: they jump all over me when I sneak a bite of salami or what-have-you. But really, if every one was a 95% veggie, then it's exactly the same as having 95 out of 100 people be full vegetarians, and that's a great thing. Here comes the Einstein quote I always bring up at this point.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

Winter tea pickings

2008-12-01T16:14:00.000-05:00

Falmouth MA is full of walking paths, which for some reason were all but abandoned this past summer, but over the Thanksgiving break I was happy to see lots of people out and about. The foraging for the year is coming to a close, but I keep going out 'one last time' and this time it was a batch of winter tea that I will dry up and try soon. The stuff: wintergreen (enormous amounts in Beebe woods), white pine needles, hemlock needles, rose hips - intensified in flavor since there have already been a few frosts, and some northern bay thrown in there too. Not sure about this last one, since I've read that bay (as in bay berries) around here is more intense than the European bay that we find in our spice racks. We'll see.

I've been enjoying Cape Cod by Thoreau this past week too. He travels around (c. 1849) and meets the locals, walks the beaches, observes what plants grow in the sand, and generally offers a glimpse into life on the cape 160 years ago. He has success making candles from the bayberries. Props to Henry David - I tried that once when I was about 10 and got about 1/2 teaspoon of wax.

Falmouth also has a town dump which has a take-it-or-leave it swap shop that my mother frequents. The current word, and I verified it myself, is that people aren't leaving as much stuff as a few months ago? The bad economy? Anyhow, dump some stuff off if you are in the neighborhood.