mint-y fresh

I'm obsessing about wild foods these days. Mostly because I'm working with singular focus on the text for my next book (due 12/31!) but also because as the growing season ends I especially appreciate those few plants that are still growing and feeding me!

Last weekend's meals included chestnut cake, sauteed day lily tubers, and the most troublesome (and ultimately most rewarding) dish: wintergreen ice cream.

Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) is a modest evergreen ground cover that comes into its own this time of year. As other plants drop their leaves, wintergreen's glossy green leaves and occasional red berries stand out. It grows best in shade to part shade; in cold temperatures the leaves may take on a reddish tint.


Wintergreen flavor was the inspiration for Teaberry gum (do they still make Teaberry gum?) and its leaves are often used for tea. Which I find a little boring. So I was happy to locate an on-line recipe for wintergreen ice cream. (I do NOT find ice cream boring.)

My happiness ended when I MADE the ice cream and it tasted like MAYBE someone had THOUGHT about wintergreen while making the dessert...seriously, barely a whiff of flavor. And that was AFTER I'd tripled the number of called-for leaves and chopped and bruised the foliage to release the essential oils.

This was an egg-based (custard) ice cream recipe. I thought maybe the strong egg flavor dominated the wintergreen, so next I tried an egg-less (some call it NY or Philadelphia style) ice cream. After simmering more than a cup of chopped wintergreen leaves in the cream/sugar mixture, the flavor was still underwhelming. Slightly stronger, but not what I was looking for.

Feeling dejected, I returned to the library, and eureka! Thank you, Euell Gibbons.


Euell wrote about the weak taste of wintergreen tea in Stalking the Healthful Herbs. He inadvertently discovered that soaking the leaves in room temperature water releases the essential oils and creates a strong wintergreen infusion. Some internet sources say the release of flavor takes place in as little as 12 hours. Euell said 3 days and darned if he wasn't right on the money.


In the end I made a superb wintergreen ice cream with 2 cups of cream, 3/4 cup sugar, and 1 cup of strong wintergreen tea. Sweet, unique, and not on any restaurant's menu. It wasn't easy getting there, but every bite proved it was worth the effort.

STREET FLOWERS/NYC

Taken with my iPhone.Downloaded to my iMac.
Edited in iPhoto. Even I can do that.
Double click on any image, click again to read some messages.

Grazing the 'Hood

I know, I know, we've written a lot about The High Line here at Garden Bytes. So sue us. We like it.

Monday morning I took a new friend to visit: Francesca Yorke, who taught the Garden to Plate photography class I took last month in Santa Fe. It was lovely strolling the park with a companion in photography, each of us finding images that floated our respective boats.

No surprise that my boat was floated by the surprising number of ornamental plants with edible parts. I'm a little obsessed at the moment, working on my back yard foraging book. But even for me, who sees edible plants everywhere, The High Line was impressive.

Let's be clear: I am NOT suggesting you graze The High Line! (I promise I didn't pick a single thing.) But take a walk and see what's on the menu. Then use it as a model for your own yard or terrace. You might be surprised by how tasty some of those traditional ornamentals can be.

Use dried, ground juniper berries in spice rubs.

The flesh of yew arils (berries) is sweet and juicy. But spit out the seed...it's highly poisonous!

Sumac berries are tart and lemon-y. You can make sumac-ade, or use it to flavor rum. I vote for rum.

Both the flower and berries of elderberry are tasty in multiple ways.

That's right, sedum leaves. Put 'em in your salad.

Young sassafras (the autumn leaves above are too old), when dried and ground, make file gumbo.

Rose hips are very high in vitamin C and make a great jelly.

Thanks for the acorns, noble oak!
(Thanks for the sign, Manhattan Mini Storage.)

And thanks to The High Line for showcasing so many useful/delicious plants, of which the above are a mere smattering.

Martha Stewart's Harvest Show

When Martha Stewart decided to do her first harvest show ever, she put out a call for audience members to bring baskets full of their home grown bounty. Colleague Kathy Jentz (Washington Gardener Magazine) requested three tickets, then invited us two Ellens to come along.

(ESP & KJ)

A line of eager gardeners reached halfway down the block in front of Martha's Chelsea studios. Some baskets were truly impressive, others just confusing. (Like the guy who brought leaves and seedpods of Ricinus communis. Really? Sure, they're pretty, but also deadly poisonous. He didn't seem to have a clue.)


Kathy brought a bumper crop of okra, tomatillos, and ground cherries.


O.E.'s basket overflowed with herbs and photogenic rose hips.


Mine was fully foraged: mushrooms, sumac berries, crabapples, dandelion greens, silverberries, houttuynia, bayleaf, and a demi-bouteille of lilac wine.


Alas, the subtleties of my wild edibles were lost on Martha's minions. They fell for the gardening equivalent of the blonde cheerleader with big boobs: overflowing baskets of corn, squash, tomatoes, and peppers. We smart girls with great personalities were relegated to the upper reaches of the studio audience.


I was able to interest Emeril with my wine as he walked through the audience looking for ingredients to use. He took it, but didn't end up using it in his dish and never gave me an on camera nod. Yes, that bugged me, but it was my own fault. I shouldn't have brought something I wasn't willing to part with...I just expected an appropriate thank you in exchange.

Once I recovered from the unanticipated agony of flashbacks to the cattle calls of my twenties, I was able to sit back and enjoy both the bounty and the message. Baskets overflowed with gorgeous edibles, Martha and Emeril whipped up two vegetarian dishes (sans wine!), and we watched a special remote segment on the recent National Heirloom Exhibition in Sonoma, CA.


It was great to see heirloom vegetables, seed saving, and non-GMO crops get the press they deserve from someone with a platform as far-reaching as Martha's. I've admired her for years and was pleased to see that she is as strong, articulate, and quick on her feet as I hoped she would be. So kudos to Martha for celebrating the harvest with her television audience. And next time pick one of the smart girls. They're way more interesting.

PERFECT TOGETHER

Two of my favorite pairings: a good book and lovely snack; a garden with art on display. On a rainy Friday I was treated to the latter, where artist Alexis Pace is showing her work in Le Petit Versailles Community garden, Houston Street between Ave B & Ave. C. The garden itself is tiny, but just big enough to provide a green and cultural oasis in Alphabet City. (double click on any image to enlarge)
Pace has avoided the obvious (don't all gardens have sculpture?) by creating photographic images, which, though sleeved in plastic, are expected to degrade during the course of the show.In her artist's statement Pace says "Dis-Embodied/Re-Embodied is a site-specific garden installation of larger-than-life photographs. Five foot tall female body parts and limbs are abstracted and manipulated almost to the point of non-recognition, distilled back to their basic elements of lines and curves. Blown-up to a hyper-real size, they can no longer be compared to any “ideal” instead, they can once again be viewed and appreciated for their inherent beauty. As this is a month-long installation, the images are designed to naturally decay as the season progresses, further reflecting the impermanence of beauty."
Someone has strewn mirrors around this small garden, reflecting and enlarging the plantings from all angles, a hot tip for any urban or small-space garden.
Reduced to using my I-phone camera in the rain, these images can't possibly do justice to Pace's work, but you still have four more days to go see for yourself. If you're one of GardenBytes readers from Indonesia or Brazil, even So. Cal or NH, visit the artist at her website where she has some astounding images and her complete bio.
This exhibit will run through the month of September, open to the public Thursday through Sunday 2-7pm, but like all community gardens run by volunteers, availability is somewhat flexible.

A PERFECT LAWN

The second section of The High Line opened to great fanfare during the second week of June . One of the most eagerly awaited areas was a lawn, where visitors could picnic, people watch and loll. By the time I got to see it on 8/26 the sign above was posted.I'm told that visitors to the first section felt strongly that a lawn should be included in the design for the new sections. So now we design gardens according to poll data? Could there be no understanding of what 3,000,000 visitors a year would do walking on a small patch of grass? And why even try to achieve a trimmed, perfect lawn when the most delightful aspect of The High Line is it's feeling of escape into nature?

I led a tour of the High Line for a bus group of out-of-staters this spring, and one woman's comment at the end of the tour was that the park was too narrow. It should have been widened. I explained yet again about the restoration of the original rail line going into the meat packing plants; she thought the park would be nicer wider. Perhaps more strips of lawn around the edges?

My Idea of the Perfect LawnAt the home of Jen & Mark Hopkins the 'lawn' gets mowed once or twice a year, paths mowed more often to make it easy to walk across to a neighbor or a favorite view.The front 'lawn' at the home of Diane & Gary Hitzemann gets the same mowing treatment. Flower beds, thyme scented bluestone paths and terraces with tables and chairs are close to the house. The rest is meadow. It's perfect.

surprise!

I came off the E train at Port Authority en route to a midtown lunch. Let's face it, it's not one of the more scenic parts of our fair city, so you'll appreciate my surprise at finding this on 40th Street.


Even though I was already late, I had to stop and take a few shots...to show my appreciation. When I looked to see which midtown business had injected a little bit of tropical beauty into this otherwise dingy block...


well...


I'm pretty much speechless.

It's like being married for 23 years and finding out your husband can still surprise you. Fantastic.