Leda’s Urban Homestead

I’m almost done putting the garden to bed for the year. The hostas and raspberry canes still need to be cut back, and I haven’t done the final mulching yet. But the rain barrel is already emptied and turned upside down (to protect it from cracking, which could happen if it sat full of freezing and thawing water all winter). The container plants that will overwinter indoors are in. The tomato vine remnants are history.

As I’m finishing up with this year’s garden, I take mental notes on what did and didn’t work this year, and what I want to try next year. One thing that I want to do is be more pro-active in heading off the infestations that plagued my garden this year (spider mite on the tomatoes, aphids on the roses). I think I’m going to order some ladybugs to release next spring…

Here is a guest post by Bryan Baker  to help with planning organic methods to control pests next year:

Going Organic with Organic Pest Control

By Bryan Baker

Backyard gardens are a place to cultivate something of your own and create an environment for some of the purest and freshest flowers and food. Doing so organically adds another layer of achievement: you’ll see it in the expressions of those who have the privilege of eating your tomatoes or smelling your roses.

So how can we create a truly natural environment, while keeping those detrimental critters from fouling our benefits? Lets start by identifying some of the top culprits:

1. Aphids are a very large group of insects that suck the sap out of the vessels of your your plants. In turn, leaves will drop and the plant becomes susceptible to disease.

1. Caterpillars are probably the most obvious because they eat the leaves and sometimes even burrow into fruits and vegetables.

1. Cutworms will devour a plant at the stem and as a result, possibly cut the plant down (hence the name).

1. Flea beetles can attack a plant two ways: The adults feed on the leaves, while the larvae attack the roots.

1. Tarnished plant bugs feed on the early developing plants, fruits and vegetables. This can effect future growth.

We know that these critters are harmful to our gardens. Now what are some options that can be taken to prevent and/or control them?

1. Floating row covers offer your garden protection while allowing the growing plants to push it up. These are not the most attractive additions to one’s garden, but may be necessary. Not only will they offer protection from insects, but they shield the garden from rabbits, deer and birds. Some floating row covers are supported by simple frames, while others are laid directly on top of the garden. They all allow sunlight, air and water to penetrate.

2. Encourage native predators in your garden such as ladybugs, lacewings, and beneficial nematodes. You can purchase these online and insert them into your garden. Ladybugs can consume 50 to 60 aphids a day. Furthermore, beneficial nematodes will kill soil dwelling insects. This can be a very fun project for children as they get to learn about some pretty bugs, while doing your garden a favor.

3. Just plain handpicking the cutworms and caterpillars. There is nothing less glamorous than this, but it’s effective. Most gardeners check their garden daily anyway, so while you do that feel free to handpick those critters out of there.

With these options, you have done nothing to tarnish the organic nature of your garden. Try these steps before resorting to spraying your garden with synthetic chemical mixtures. I think you will be pleased with the results.

Bryan Baker works with Moxie Pest Control, which offers unique organic pest control services. He also spends time gardening with his family.

While I was away camping out at the Red Sea,

cavorting with dolphins in Eilat,

and contemplating the uses of the spices sold in East Jerusalem,

back home in NYC Superstorm Sandy was uprooting trees, severing power lines, and flooding the subways.

My neighborhood, Park Slope, was mostly spared Sandy’s rampage. The power never went out here. But I have friends in other areas whose homes are damaged, and a few who are still without heat or electric power a week after the storm.

Even Park Slope is feeling the impact. There is one gas station open two blocks away from me. Round the clock, there are people standing in line with red gasoline containers hoping the station gets another delivery so that they can power generators back up or drive to work tomorrow.

Last year was Hurricane Irene, the year before a tornado that trashed the north end of Prospect Park and felled a massive Ailanthus tree that crashed the fences of three adjacent back yards next to me. And now Sandy.

I don’t think it’s too much to say that these represent a new weather situation where I live. Call it climate change, global warming, whatever label floats your boat. I expect that “superstorms” are now to be expected at this time of year in this part of the world.

In some ways, I guess I’m more prepared than most. I know how to forage for wild edible plants and mushrooms. My one-bedroom apartment is stuffed with the bounty of locally grown food that I preserve. So I’ve got a kind of food security going.

But I couldn’t post this blog, Skype my long-distance boyfriend, write my foraging column, publish my food preservation recipes, or call my mom and dad without juice. Electrical juice, the kind that Sandy so easily wiped out for millions of people.

I’m staring at my solar phone charger right now. So okay, cool, I can charge my phone even if the wall outlets aren’t giving me zip. But if my phone company doesn’t have power, then what good does that do me?

Saw this on my local hardware store window today:

Sandy has highlighted how utterly cheap-oil-economy, electrical power and info-tech grid dependent I am.

Well, if the grid seriously crashes, at least food won’t be an immediate concern for me.

Meanwhile, in the can’t-hurt-might-help category, get out there and vote tomorrow if you haven’t already, okay? Choose the candidate you think might give a damn about climate change and renewable energy sources.

A few of you have asked whether I try to eat local when I’m travelling. Absolutely!  I think it’s just plain culinary common sense to eat local when you travel. As I’ve pointed out before, you don’t go to Italy to try the hot dogs.

Plus my food choices impact local farmers and communities, and the environment whether I”m in Brooklyn or the Middle East.

I know, I know - I”m eco-guilty of a lot of travel lately. Here are a couple of pics from Istanbul. The guys in towels are at the airport, FYI:

And here’s the hammock I bought in El Salvador and sent to Jerusalem:

Today I was reminded of just how local my local food knowledge really is. I was at the souk (market) in Jerusalem and Ricky asked if I wanted to get some corn. The corn looked quite good, but on reflex I said, “No, corn season is over.”

“It’s just starting here,” he answered with a smile.

“But is it as good as Farmer Ted’s?” I asked a little peevishly, thinking of my New York State CSA farmer’s short growing season compared with Israel’s (but also of how fabulous Ted’s sweet corn was this year).

Another example of how localized my botanical knowledge is: Ask me to name a month for daffodils, and I would unhesitatingly say “April.” But there are daffodils coming up here now in October as the rainy season is just beginning.

So I’m listening and learning, and eating some mighty fine food. Today we stopped by a goat farm in the Judean hills to buy some cheese, and not far from there visited Soreq Cave with its impressive rock formations:

Afterward, at the souk, I was seduced by the unfamiliarity of yellow pitaya fruit …

…and raw olives that I intend to cure using my grandfather’s recipe (or my best approximation from memory).

Ricky says he will take me to some olive trees we can shake the fruit from. I’ll use what I remember of my grandmother’s recipe for those. The olive harvest season here runs through November. No olive trees back in Brooklyn - better make the most of them here where they are both local and in season.

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

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

Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a homely, lumpy-looking fruit with a fabulous taste and texture that seem absolutely tropical. But although they taste tropical, pawpaws are actually native to North America.

If you’re eager to taste pawpaw but missed the foraging season for it, you can order some from Integration Acres.

Some years the wild pawpaw crop is bountiful, other years it is scant. Alas, it was the latter in my usual pawpaw stomping grounds.

But apparently it was bountiful elsewhere, because I scored a couple of fruits at an NYC event this week. The event was part of the Lopate & Locavore series, and I got to meet up with foraging buddies Ellen and Janice there (thank you, Janice, for the tix!).

As part of the event, forager Tama Matsuoka Wong was selling and signing copies of her new book, Foraged Flavor. And if you got a copy of this very interesting book, you also got to take home some fresh pawpaws. Score!

Pawpaws seeds are big, but there aren’t too many of them and they are easy to remove. After scooping the pulp out of the skins with a spoon and removing the seeds, I nibbled some of the delicious pulp fresh. But I turned most of it into a custard that will be breakfast for the next several days.

(Okay, only for two days because I already ate one of the ramekins of custard for a snack today. Hey, I had to make sure it was good before I posted the recipe, right?)

Here’s the recipe:

Pawpaw Custard

Serves 3

1 cup pawpaw pulp (skins and seeds removed)

1 cup milk or half and half (I used milk because that’s what I had, but half and half would be really, really good)

2 eggs

2 tablespoons honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Puree all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor (I used an immersion blender because of the easier clean up).

Pour the mixture into 1 cup ramekins leaving 1/2 inch between the top of the food and the rim of the ramekin (the custard will puff up as it cooks).

Place the ramekins on a baking dish. Pour enough water into the dish to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake for 40-60 minutes until the custard has set in the center but is still a little jiggly.

Let cool completely before covering with plastic wrap and transferring to the refrigerator. To serve, drizzle a little extra honey on top, or…

I had a little extra pawpaw pulp leftover, so I put a couple of spoonfuls of that on top of the pawpaw custard. Yum.

Next foraging tour and feast this Sunday!

Leda’s Food Preservation info

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

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

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There are only a few weeks left to photograph the rest of the plants I need for the field guide I’m working on.

Most of them will go dormant for the winter soon. With that in mind, this past weekend I headed out to Shohola, PA to visit Ellen.

We set out in search of silverberry,

black walnuts,

watercress and more.

A foray with a foraging buddy is always fun, especially when it’s someone as knowledgeable as Ellen. Just as good, maybe even better, is getting creative in the kitchen afterward. We came up with Sassy Royale aperitif cocktails (champagne and sassafras twig syrup),

a main meal of goat marinaded in beet wine with a blanket of Japanese knotweed and Greek yogurt, roasted potatoes, and wild watercress salad with goat cheese, preserved lemons, and blackberry vinaigrette.

Dessert was a pear and California bay nut crumble spiced with ground magnolia buds, wild ginger, and spicebush berries with dulce de leche ice cream on the side.

I rolled into bed feeling as full as I do after a Thanksgiving celebration, and not regretting a single forkful.

My next foraging tour includes a wild edibles-inspired dinner afterward at The Farm on Adderley.

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

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

Vegetarians may want to skim past this first bit and pick up again near the tomatoes.

Today was Day One of Northeast Organic Farming Association - New York’s (NOFA-NY) month-long local eating challenge. Each day has a featured ingredient or challenge that they email out, and today’s was…drum roll, please…bacon.

I found the choice of bacon for day one amusing and wondered if NOFA-NY would take any flak from disgruntled herbivores. I also wondered, why bacon?

Well, it turns out that the Royal Bacon Society dubbed September 1, 2012 International Bacon Day. I swear I’m not making this up. In honor of the occasion, I’m reposting my recipe for homemade bacon.

But seriously folks, DIY is one way to keep costs down while you’re keeping it local. Pork belly from a local farmer is way cheaper per pound than already cured bacon at the farmers’ market.

Vegetarian friends, I hope you didn’t abandon this post by yet. The same principal applies to “value added” fruit and veggie products.

For example, it is now possible to purchase frozen locally grown tomatoes in winter to use in sauces and salsas. These products cost around $5 lb. Right now local, organic tomatoes are $1.50 lb at the markets near me, and I’ve seen them elsewhere as low as $1 lb. Granted, it takes more than a pound of fresh tomatoes to end up with a pound of home-canned, but I still come out ahead if I preserve them myself.

Even better and cheaper if you grew your own.

So can, dry or freeze some produce now, and save some money while sticking to your locally grown convictions this winter. And don’t get me wrong - I’m not knocking the farmers who are offering the value added preserved stuff. If you can afford it, go for it. But if, like me, you need to keep costs down, make your own.

Sounds great but you don’t know how? If you’re in NYC and want some personal instruction, I’m giving a food preservation workshop on Sept. 16.

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

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

This post is going to be a quick sharing of food preservation and foraging recipes and info because, well, that’s what I’m up to in these final days of summer. There have been some beautiful wild mushroom finds recently, including oyster

and cinnabar chanterelles

and more chicken.

In case you’re blessed with similar abundance, here is how to dry shrooms in your oven or (better) in a dehydrator.

I need a small mule or something to carry my weekly Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share home at this time of year, and this year does seem more abundant than last. Stuff I’ve been making with it:

Cantaloupe - Peach Preserves

Home-canned Roasted Tomatoes

Naturally Fermented Pickled Cherries

Okay, gotta get back to it. I still have green beans, beets, and peaches to can before next Tuesday’s CSA distribution!

Join me for some foraging tours and food preservation workshops if you’re in the neighborhood.

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 was going to show you this awesome dinner plate of  a Caprese salad with a mix of tomatoes and cheese from my CSA plus basil from my garden, the first tasting of my homemade bacon, and Farmer Ted’s corn. I started with an ear of Ted’s corn.

I ate the whole thing raw, standing there over my kitchen sink.

I had just husked one of the five cobs of corn that were in my share this week and nibbled a spot to see if it was sweet enough to do simple boiled corn-on-the-cob with it. If not, I knew a bunch of other cooking methods that would work better. I took one bite, then another. I didn’t stop until I’d eaten the whole thing.

The next cob of corn did make it into a pot of boiling water.

It went perfectly with the single slice I’d cut, the first slice, of my homemade bacon. I sizzled it up in a small frying pan. I’ve never made bacon before. This was my first batch that I’d cured at home from Lewis Waite Farm’s pork belly.

Homemade bacon and fresh, sweet corn…almost there. Basil from my garden, plus some crazily juicy dark purple and bright yellow tomatoes from Windflower Farm. Mozzarella from the guys up the street.

Oops. Took that pic before I’d picked the basil to add to the tomatoes, but not before I’d started eating.

That’s it. Corn, a strip of homemade bacon, and a salad for dinner. There’s not a restaurant in NYC serving better than what I ate tonight.

Wild Edible Plants tour in Central Park this Saturday

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

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

Can you guess which part of this summer’s vacation made me whoop with excitement?

Okay, I did whoop a little from the shock of the temperature of this cold water just above a waterfall in Yosemite;

And I was happy to be sous chef for Ricky’s yummy shakshuka at one of our campsites.

Having one’s toes nibbled on by a squirrel is fun,

though not as fun as the deer that crossed my path while I was foraging wild catnip, raspberries, and elderberry blossoms.

Hanging out with Ricky, friends, and family was really the whole point of my travels this summer,

which included going up north to Mt. Shasta, near where my mom and her husband live.

There were breathtaking views, loving company, and delicious meals throughout the trip, but I confess I whooped loudest when I found this chicken mushroom just a few feet away from the picnic table at one of our campsites:

Not saying that was the best moment of the trip, but it was an unexpected treasure find. I cooked it over our campfire and turned it into a pasta sauce.

Heading back to Brooklyn tonight.

Foraging tour in Central Park August 18

Food preservation workshop in Brooklyn August 25

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 participate in food porn: I photograph or describe my so-good dinner; I enviously “like” your similar postings on your blog or FB or Twitter. I promise to post my recipe for Sizzling Solanum Salsa because in the comments so many people asked for it (Now you’re wondering what Solanum I’m talking about, right? Stay tuned…)

And honestly, all that is really fun.

But tonight I had some tiny, baby new potatoes from the farmers market to do something with. What I found myself remembering was a meal I had over a decade ago in Holland.

I was finishing up 5 weeks of working in Rotterdam with two very close friends and colleagues I’d originally met in NYC. One of the people who’d been involved in the project we’d been working on was a sparrow-tiny woman named Ceclia. Or maybe it was Cecile (I remember her meal better than her name. Does that make me a bad person? Sigh).

The food was so simple and so good. It fulfilled every cliche about how if the ingredients are good enough they don’t need fancy sauces or cooking methods.

What I remember most are her potatoes. They were just boiled in their skins. She didn’t salt them but rather served the salt on the side. We ate them with our fingers, sprinkling the salt between bites. Not every potato is good enough to eat that way. Those potatoes were. No butter, no sour cream  - and I remember them 12 years later.

Does that mean that C.’s simple way of cooking was better than the decadent layers of ingredients and cooking methods I’ve been ogling and creating? No.

It means that food is complicated, even when it is simple.

It engages all five of our physical senses (aw, c’mon, tell me cooking bacon isn’t auditory, never mind popcorn).

It is laden with personal and cultural history.

It impacts the environment and our personal and communal economies.

It requires skills, or friends with skills (If C. had undercooked those simple potatoes, if she had overcooked them, would I still remember them as the benchmark of potato perfection?).

This past week, for the first time in over a decade, I achieved something that tasted like my memory of C.’s potatoes. I just boiled the small potatoes whole, drained them, and sprinkled them with salt.

But okay, they were a special variety called Adirondack Red that is beautifully pink all the way through, and…pics soon, promise.

So is there a conflict between “food porn” and simple food? I don’t think so. Just look at those raspberries…

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

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