Leda’s Urban Homestead

There is something magical about walking between rows of beets and cucumbers while looking across the East river at the Manhattan skyline. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is one of my favorite places to visit, and it was a pleasure to spend the afternoon there teaching a workshop on edible weeds.

Urban farmer Annie Novak had her workers refrain from weeding for days in anticipation of my event. Even so, there weren’t very many weeds. That’s a problem I do not have in my garden, and I was able to bring samples of a dozen “volunteer” edible wild plants that are common in the city.

At the farm, we did find some amaranth, purslane, lamb’s quarters, and mugwort. I did a garlicky stir fry with the amaranth greens, and a salad with the purslane for everyone to sample.

The farm produces an impressive amount of food in just seven inches of soil. Along with their CSA, workshops, and providing produce to several restaurants, on Sundays they have a small market. The market is indoors where the temperature is cooler than under the blazing sun on the roof.

In addition to the rows of vegetables and herbs, there are also beehives maintained by Megan Paska, chickens, and rabbits.

All of this on a rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn!

The farm is open to the public on Sundays, and there are many wonderful talks and workshops as part of their partnership with Growing Chefs. Definitely worth a visit if you are in NYC.

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

I’m back in Brooklyn after a trip out to California to see family and speak on a local foods panel. While I was away, I gorged on locally grown avocados, citrus, almonds, and other stuff that can’t survive our Northeastern winters.

A couple of days after I arrived in San Francisco to stay with my dad, pianist Kelly Johnson,

I spoke on a panel with fellow local food authors Deborah Madison and Jessica Prentice, moderated by Temra Costa and hosted by the Commonwealth Club. What a wonderful group of feisty, eloquent, passionate ladies! I was honored to be among them.

After that, Dad and I drove up to Yreka where my mom, Penelope Lagios Coberly, her husband, Frank Coberly, and my grandma, Eugenia Kilgore  live. Yreka is about as far north as you can go and still be in California. The official reason for the visit was my grandma’s 98th birthday.

Yia-yia, a.k.a. Grandma Nea was born in SF, but she identifies as Greek. So we cooked Greek: hortopita (like spanakopita–spinach pie–except with whatever green you want to use. Horta means edible greens), eggplant dip, local olives, plus galaktobureko for dessert.

There are two designated lawnmowers who have recently joined my mom’s household, Bert and Ernie.

Frank, my mom’s husband, has a drum set. He invited Nea to have a go. First he got on the drums while she played keyboard.  Then my 98-year old grandmother rocked out on the drums.

After that it was back to SF, where Dad and I cooked for friends. I improvised a mushroom soup using some of the stash of dried wild mushrooms that I’d given him last fall. We also did a seafood salad, and a feta cheese-dried tomato dip. But the real star of the show was Dad’s peach custard pie.

On my last day out west I experimented with a peach salsa recipe that I plan to use for the cooking demos I’m doing for The Edible Garden at NYBG. We picked up the peaches at a farm stand on theway down from Yreka, but I had to run to the supermarket for a few ingredients. While online at the checkout, I saw a magazine called Urban Farm touting the benefits of sustainable city living. That made me grin. The times, they are a changing…

Back in Brooklyn, I dealt with garden devastation. Although my housesitter did an admirable job of watering my container plants, that didn’t compensate for the 3-digit heat wave and lack of rain while I was away. My first round of tomatoes are lost to blossom end rot (from uneven watering). I spent today pruning out brown, brown, brown–black cohosh blossoms that crisped before they ever opened, toasted ostrich ferns…well, I’m going to stop because the full catalog of loss would make me cry. Out on the street, there were so many brown leaves littering the sidewalk that it looked more like October than summer.

I lost most of my cucumber plants. I don’t need to grow cukes for salads, etc. because my CSA farmer Ted Blomgren of Windflower Farm gives me plenty. I grow them to make cornichons pickles because there’s no other way to get the tiny, pinkie finger-sized cucumbers I need for those.

As a consolation prize, I picked up some sour cherries at the farmers’ market today and am making pickled cherries.

But my raspberries, asparagus plants, and a few others were impervious to the heat wave. And some plants bounced back after I gave them a deep watering yesterday. All is not lost.

While I clean up the garden and pray for rain, I’m enjoying the memories of three generations of my family getting to spend time together.

If you have a chance next Weds. 14th, come to one of the two events I’m doing. I’ll be demonstrating (and handing out samples of) Dilly Beans and signing books at the Union Square Greenmarket from 11 a.m.-12 p.m. That evening, I’ll be doing a discussion/reading on how to eat local on a budget at Bluestockings bookstore from 7-8 p.m.

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

I know that according to the calendar summer hasn’t officially started yet, but for me it started when the first fresh fruits of the year showed up in the field, in the garden, and at the markets. The parade of gem-bright colors and juicy sweetness continues now through the first apples of fall in an ever-changing parade of ripeness.

black-cap raspberries

I indulged in the first strawberries to appear at the farmers’ market even though they were pricey. It was the first fresh fruit I’d seen since last year. I’ve had plenty of fruit in my diet since last fall, but it was the storage apples and pears on offer at the markets or the frozen fruit, jams, and otherwise preserved fruit on my shelves. So I had to have that first strawberry. Now, however, I’m holding out for the more affordable (and often tastier) strawberries I’m expecting in my CSA share next week.

It’s the wild fruits that are exciting me now. Juneberries and mulberries have been coming in for a few weeks, black-cap raspberries just started. Soon there will be wineberries and wild cherries, followed by blackberries, elderberries, beach plums…

One fruit, though, doesn’t seem to be doing too well. Mayapples are dropping before they’re ripe, and have for the past couple of years. Something is wrong there. NYBG pulled up the mayapples in their native plant collection because of a disease. Sad.

Meanwhile, tonight’s dessert is black-cap raspberries and juneberries on spicebush ice cream. I still need to cook dinner first, right?

If you’d like to dig into the parade of wild summer fruit, please join me for one of my upcoming wild edibles tours:

Edible Native Plants in Brooklyn  July 18

Stalking Wild Edibles July 20

Urban Foraging Aug. 21

And one other thing I’m excited about: Leda’s Urban Homestead made it onto a list of 50 Best Homesteading Blogs. Besides being tickled to be included on the list, I discovered some new-to-me great sites there.

Time to go cook dinner so that I can get to that wild fruit dessert…

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

Today I went foraging and came home with elderflowers for “champagne” and basswood a.k.a. linden blossoms that Ellen will make into wine. I also collected mulberries, juneberries, and nettles.

I also have a fridge stocked with the current wealth of the farmers’ markets, including some green, or spring, garlic. I used that up on some tostadas I made with Hot Bread Kitchen’s tortillas made with locally grown corn and Cayuga Pure Organics local beans. Some of the nettles got cooked up and added along with lettuce, cheese, and hot sauce. Yum!

I made the hot sauce with the last of last year’s pickled hot peppers. Simplest pickle recipe in the world: seed and chop large hot peppers, or leave small ones whole and prick with the tip of a knife. Loosely pack into a glass jar. Cover with vinegar. Use in any recipe calling for jalapenos or other hot peppers. Since the hot pepper plants I overwintered indoors are already bearing fruit, I have no need of the preserved ones any more. I threw them into the blender along with their vinegar, and voila, hot sauce.

The elderflower “champagne” recipe is a variation on the one in Ellen’s excellent book Down & Dirty Gardening. The original calls for (non-local, where I live) sugar and lemons. I’ve worked out a variation using local honey and homemade vinegar (see recipe below).

I collected lots of the elderflower umbels, but was careful to leave plenty on the shrubs (no flower=no fruit later in the summer). Then I realized I had a problem: the batches of elderflower champagne I’ve made in the past required plastic bottles because the liquid gets really bubbly and can explode glass bottles.

I no longer drink anything that comes in a plastic bottle. Last year Ellen saved me some bottles from her recycling, but I didn’t want to wait to start this batch (yes, you can make it with dried elderflowers, but I like it better when made with fresh). I considered going through my building’s recycling.

But some of the recipes I looked at predate plastic bottles. There must be a way to do it. I’m going to try using some thick ceramic jugs with wire flip-down tops that I’ve saved over the years (from some very non-local Belgian beers). To hedge my bet, I did mooch one plastic bottle from my neighbor, and I plan to divide the batch.

I know it’s not officially summer yet, but harvesting wild fruit and making elderflower champagne makes me feel like it is.

P.S.–Ms. Ella Fitzgerald says hello:

Elderflower Champagne

Makes approximately 4 quarts

4-6 large elderberry flowerheads

6 pints cold filtered or non-chlorinated water

2 pints boiling filtered or non-chlorinated water

1 lb honey OR 1 1/2 lbs sugar

1/4 cup cider vinegar OR 2 large lemons (juice & rind) plus 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1. Do not wash the flowers–it’s their natural yeast that will cause fermentation. Just shake off any insects and remove the thick stalks.

2. Place the honey in a very large bowl and cover with 2 pints of boiling water. Stir to liquefy.

3. Add 6 pints cold water. Stir in the vinegar and the flowers.

4. Cover and leave, for 48 hours, stirring occasionally.

5. Strain out the flowers (and lemon rind, if using). Pour into clean plastic bottles with screw tops (or, we hope, thick ceramic or beer bottles with flip tops), leaving at least an inch of headspace.

6. Leave at room temperature for a week, “burping” (opening briefly) the bottles occasionally. After that, move them to the refrigerator, but keep “burping” the bottles for another week. Store for an additional 1-4 weeks before serving cold. The earlier you drink it, the yeastier it will taste. Wait the full six weeks from bottling if you want it at its best. (Note: the honey version takes longer to ferment out than the sugar version. The final drink should be fizzy and sweet, but not cloyingly so).

Upcoming Foraging Classes in Brooklyn on June 12 & June 13!

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

Recently a woman told me that she doesn’t eat a local, seasonal diet because she’s afraid she’d get bored. “I’m so used to being able to get anything anytime,” she said. She couldn’t be more mistaken. I’d be willing to wager a hefty bet that I get excited about what’s on my plate more often than she does.

Today I went foraging. I collected red clover blossoms (Trifolium pratense), which I’ll dry and use to make wonderfully spongy, slightly sweet red clover bread. Red clover is in peak bloom right now, and that will only last another couple of weeks. That’s okay, the edible flower season is far from over. Today I spotted basswood (Tilia americana) about a week away from its bloom season. I’ll come back in a week and collect those honey-scented clusters for Ellen to make into one of my favorite wines.

I also collected burdock “cardoons” (the immature flower stalks of Arctium lappa) today, which I’ll marinate for an Italian-style antipasto, and pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) shoots that I’m going to use in a quiche. Both plants will soon be out of season, so I’m making the most of them now. That’s okay, because when they’re gone it will be time for milkweed florets, daylilies, and mulberries.

After my foraging jaunt I went to the farmers’ market. I bought strawberries and sugar snap peas. Neither was in season yet when I left for a working trip three weeks ago. I love both, and hadn’t tasted either since last year. Heaven. Of course, those will be going out of season by the end of next month, but that’s okay because then it will be time for cherries, new potatoes, the first summer vegetables…you get the idea.

Sometimes one food stays in season for so long, or there is so much of it, that it does take some culinary experimentation to keep it interesting (note: not because I can’t have it, as that woman supposed, but because I have too much of it!). Last year my CSA farmer inundated us with cucumbers. When it became clear that I wouldn’t be able to keep up by eating them fresh, I got creative with pickle ideas. The maple bread-’n'-butter pickles I came up with became one of my all-time favorites.

I like having choices and abundance as much as the next person. But for me those aren’t about anything anytime. They are about the right thing at the right time.

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The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

I just did an interview for the radio show Let’s Eat In, hosted by Cathy Erway I shared the interview with Wildman Steve Brill and Ava Chin from the New York Times. It was tremendous fun trading foraging stories and tips with Steve and Ava, and hopefully the interview will encourage even more people to get out there and learn some foraging skills. You can listen to the show online here. Enjoy! Leda

Today I was part of a crop mob that descended on the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.

A crop mob is a group of volunteers who show up for a day’s work on a farm. This one that I participated in was organized by Crop Mob NYC.

At 11 a.m. this morning I was standing with a group of crop mobbers outside a building that houses sound stages for film. A gorgeous, totally glam woman with a thousand-watt smile met us. She was Annie Novak, the farmer. Her farm is a green roof–no raised beds or containers, just soil straight on the roof.

The soil is a mix of mushroom compost and shale (gravel and gravel-sized bits of brick). It is piled up into rows about three feet wide and at most seven inches deep. I was surprised by how much she grows in that shallow planting depth.

The farm has a Sunday farmers market that starts up in a few weeks, a mini-CSA (11 members), and also supplies a few NYC restaurants with produce.

Annie divided us up into teams according to skill level, gave us clear, detailed instructions, and got us to work.

Most of my tasks today involved planting seeds (spinach, lettuce mix, radishes, arugala).

I also helped a little building honey bee hives under the supervision of Meg. The farm already has a couple of hives, but is adding several more this year.

I guess the pool of potential crop mobbers is still pretty small, because I ran into people who were at the food swapping party a few weeks ago, and others who had taken my foraging classes.

Time out for a plug for my upcoming classes: I’m teaching Edible Weeds and The Thrifty Urban Locavore for BBG on April 25th. The first is a foraging class. The second is a combination cooking, foraging, gardening, and how to eat local on a budget class for people who would like to eat more local foods but think they don’t have the time, space, or money. I’m also leading a foraging tour for Green Edge NYC on the 17th.

Three hours into the crop mob day we took a break and Annie served up some just-harvested spinach, her homemade olive oil sourdough bread, and sliced apples. I was starving and it was delicious. Hunger truly is the best sauce, because I just shoved those spinach leaves onto a slice of the bread, called it an open faced sandwich, and loved every bite-no mayo required.

And I have to mention the view today, because it was pretty spectacular.

If you’d like to visit the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, and maybe pick up some of their farmers’ market items, they are open to the public starting in May.

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget by Leda Meredith

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

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Today I did an interview for Heritage Radio Network on Nicole Taylor’s Hot Grease. I enjoyed the conversation, which ranged from how our U.S. farm policies impact Haitian farmers to foraging for wild edibles in the city to lacto-fermenting as a food preservation method. You can listen to the interview online here.

I just made twenty small plant pots out of old copies of the Park Slope Food Coop newsletter. They’re for the Victory Garden class I’m teaching tomorrow at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but I’m making a few for myself, too. You can watch a short video about how to make them here. Here are some dill seedlings in one of the pots.

Another reused/recycled pot comes from the tomato can that came to me as a container for Meg’s backyard eggs (she nestled them in straw inside the can). I punched out some drainage holes on the bottom, and now it’s holding cilantro.

These are some tomato seedlings growing in an old local milk carton. I cut off one side and made drainage holes on the opposite side. The rubber bands keep the center from bowing away from the potting mix.

Besides starting seeds and potting up seedlings, today I went to a tasting of oils made from locally grown squash seeds. In my new book, I bemoan the lack of local vegetable oils. If I’d known about these by Stony Brook Oils I would have mentioned them for sure. They had two oils at the tasting, one made from butternut squash seeds, and the other from delicata squash seeds. Both are absolutely delicious! Not primarily cooking oils (I’m keeping my olive oil exemption), but finishing oils with a buttery taste a little like a mild toasted sesame or walnut oil.

Last but not least, I am out of local garlic and well into the stash of lacto-fermented garlic that I put up last summer during the garlic harvest. To make it, peel and slice garlic cloves in half. Cover them with a brine of 2 teaspoons salt per pint of water and leave at room temperature for 2-3 days. Store in the refrigerator until you run out of the local garlic from last year’s harvest.

There’s also plenty of field garlic around, but although I’ve been using the leaves like chives, the tiny bulbs are a pain to peel. I’ll stick with my lacto-fermented garlic until the first green garlic shows up at the farmers’ markets next month.

Some food-related classes I’m teaching in April that you might be interested in:

April 17th Urban Foraging

April 25th Edible Weeds

April 25th The Thrifty Urban Locavore

Get Signed Copies of Leda’s Books! (credit cards okay via Paypal):

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

and

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

The crocuses are blooming in my garden. The neighborhood restaurants have pulled out their outdoor seating. I saw someone in flip-flops today. Yay! We made it through the winter! Right? Not so fast.

At the farmers’ markets and in the garden we’re still weeks away from the first spring crops. I am SO ready for asparagus and strawberries! But what’s available for sale is still storage and cold frame stuff: apples, root vegetables, and Brassicaceae like kale, collards, and cabbage.

Fortunately, the foraging season is underway. It fills in the gaps in the agricultural calendar perfectly. A couple of nights ago I had a field garlic and daylily shoot stir-fry to go with dinner. The garlic mustard, violet leaves, and chickweed are up, so there’s fresh salad aplenty.

Okay, here comes the shameless plug for my upcoming classes. If you’re intrigued by the wild edibles, join me for Edible Weeds at BBG or Foraging with Green Edge NYC. If you’re prepping your veg and herb garden, you might want to join me for Victory Gardens.

copyright

My new book is here! Yeah, The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget is available on Amazon, but better for both of us if you order an author-signed copy directly from me. Email me if you’re interested.

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith Ditto: email me if you’d like an author-signed copy.