If a reader hadn’t asked, I might have forgotten to post about my little apple tree. In the early spring I posted about trying to pollinate my Sundance apple tree. I pruned branches from another tree and put the branches near my flowering tree in the hopes that the bees would do the cross-pollinating. You can read about the process here. The good news is that it worked and I had 5 apples growing on my tree. I don’t have any experience with dwarf apple trees, so I don’t know if this is a decent number for the first year of fruit. I also wasn’t familiar with this variety of apple, so wasn’t sure how it would look when the fruit was ripe. This apple is one of the 5 from my tree. The fruit is sweet and crisp and delicious. I’ve always dreamed of having a small home orchard, and although 5 apples is a laughably small amount, it is a beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

This week was the first week of our CSA or farm share. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It’s also known as subscription farming.

In the winter, you buy a share of a farm and in return, you get a share of the produce. What’s great for the farmer, is that the payments come all at once (and are predictable), so they can purchase equipment, seeds and supplies for the next growing season. You and the farmer share the risk of a bad year, or the bounty of an excellent growing year.

What I like is that you get to relearn how to eat with the seasons. The beginning of the season has lots of greens. We got lettuce, oregano, leeks, sunchokes, and lots and lots of strawberries. I wish I could describe how aromatic and delicious these strawberries are. Everything is picked when it’s ripe because it doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles. Can you remember the insides of strawberries being red instead of white?

If you live in New York and are interested in participating in a CSA (for next season), click here to find one. We kind of got in through the back door with ours. It has a really long waiting list, but they offer a winter share with frozen fruits and veggies. Somehow participating in the winter share got us in and past the people lined up for just the regular summer share. Shh, don’t tell anyone.

While we were up in the Berkshires, we went to visit Gould Farm to see their maple sugar operation. My in-laws recently met a man named Steve who oversees the maple sugaring there. Gould farm is a pretty amazing place. It is a residential, therapeutic community dedicated to helping adults with mental illness. You can read more about them here.

The evaporator that we saw is powered by a wood fire. From the enormous woodpile behind the sugar shack, it was clear that a lot of wood is needed for the process.

The sap is poured into the far end of the evaporator and works its way through channels. What you can’t see, is that the underside of these channels are shaped a bit like an accordion, so a very large surface area gets heated by the fire. The tree sap ranges from about 2% to 5% sugar and when it’s finished it’s about 67% sugar. We were treated to maple tea, which is the sap that has cooked for quite a bit, but is still in the back half of the evaporator. It is sweet, but still thin like tea. As an extra treat, Steve brought fresh cream from their cows to add to it, which made it taste like ice cream.

There are various ways to know when the maple syrup is finished. You can use a hydrometer, a candy thermometer (it’s ready at about 7 degrees F above the temp of boiling water), or you can do a visual check. The syrup sheets off the ladle in a manner similar to making jam. It is something you can do at home, but we were warned that with the amount of steam that is produced, many homes have lost their wallpaper during the process.

The final syrup was temporarily put in large containers, to be bottled and ready for sale in a couple of weeks. We are definitely going back to get a bottle!

When you are interested in foraging, you really have to pay attention to the seasons. If you read about ramps in the winter, you are going to have to wait until spring to find them. Shopping at grocery stores seems to have made us forget that certain things grow at certain times of year. At least locally, that is. I had read about making acorn flour a while ago, but it wasn’t acorn season. I forgot all about it until I saw Stephanie mention it in her blog. I was going up to the Berkshires for the weekend and it was the right time of year for acorns.

We went on a hike and I brought a backpack along to gather nuts. I had no idea how many I would need, so I summoned my inner squirrel and kept gathering and filling my bag. When we got home, I weighed the nuts I had found and had 8lbs. After pulling off the tops and discarding the ones that had worm holes in them I had 6lbs. I read in a couple of places that you place the acorns in water and the ones that float aren’t viable. I tried that and almost all of mine floated. I decided to check inside and see what they looked like. Some were bad, but most were good, so I decided to skip that theory.

Now comes the gross part…grubs! Many of the acorns had grubs. The fat, white, wiggly things totally grossed me out, so I decided to bake the acorns at 170 degrees F to kill them. A dead grub is still gross, but a wiggling one is much worse.

After discarding the acorns that were discolored or had grubs in them I think I was down to about 2-3 lbs. Acorns are full of tannins, so you have to soak them for several days to remove the bitterness. I tried soaking them when they were chopped, but thought that the water wasn’t getting to the inside of the acorn meat. I ran them through a meat grinder to chop them smaller.

Directions for how to make acorn flour:

• Gather a ridiculous amount of acorns
• Discard any that have obvious problems (squirrel bites or worm holes)
• Bake acorns at 170F for 1 hour to kill grubs
• Shell acorns tossing out any that are discolored or have grubs. It is pretty obvious which ones are good and which ones aren’t
• Grind acorns in a food processor, or a meat grinder
• Wrap in several layers of cheesecloth and soak in water. You will need to do this for several days, until the meat isn’t bitter.
• Lay the acorn flour on a pan and either dry in the sun, or in the oven on the lowest setting. Make sure it’s completely dry or it will mold.

I will post some recipes within the next few days.

One of the signs that summer is ending and fall has taken over, is when we have to cut down our basil. Neil always makes a huge batch of pesto that we freeze and enjoy all winter. On Sunday, we had friends over and made a batch of pesto pasta, from some of the last of the pesto. I also harvested the first greens in my garden for a salad. I planted the mache lettuce in the fall and covered the planters with a plastic tarp. There they sat all winter under snow and in the cold. It is amazing to me that anything could grow at all. But grow they did and the salad was delicious. I adore mache greens and have taken to growing them because they are so difficult to find in the store. I have found them at Trader Joes in my neighborhood.

Mache salad with pear and walnuts

Toast about 1/3 c. walnuts. Peel and thinly slice a bosc pear. Thinly slice a shallot. Use a vegetable peeler and shave about 1/3c. parmesan cheese. Add everything to the salad.

Dressing: Mix 1T dijon mustard with 2T sherry vinegar and 1/4c. olive oil. I put them into an empty jam jar and shake it until it emulsifies.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was commenting on how unseasonably warm it was. Since then we’ve gotten colder with most nights below freezing and the ground feels hard under my feet. Neil wrapped the chicken’s run with plastic to protect them from the cold wind and they are spending a lot of time in their little hoop house instead of the larger (un-wrapped) enclosure.

I had many green cherry tomatoes left on the vine, which I didn’t want to go to waste. I did some searching online and found a few pickle recipes. I decided to make a recipe that didn’t use water-bath canning techniques, which just means that I need to eat them up sooner.

Adapted from John Kessler’s Pickled Green Cherry Tomatoes (or tomolives)

1 quart green cherry tomatoes or quartered large green tomatoes

1/2 bunch of dill (about 6-8 stems)

1/2 c. apple cider vinegar

2 t salt

1 t freshly cracked pepper

5 large cloves of garlic, peeled and thickly sliced

Optional: 1-2 hot peppers. I chose not to put them in because of my daughter, but I think it really would help the flavor.

Pierce the tomatoes all the way through with a skewer and then place in a clean quart-sized Mason jar. Add the dill sprigs and pepper.

Bring 1 1/2 c. water to boil with the remaining ingredients. Pour liquid into the jars and cover the tomatoes. Stir the dill and garlic into the tomatoes. Cover and bring to room temperature. Let the tomatoes absorb the flavor overnight in the fridge.

What I would do differently: The original recipe just said to pierce the tomatoes in the stem end. This made 1/2 of the tomato taste pickled and 1/2 taste like a sour un-ripe tomato. After piercing them all the way through, I let them sit another day. I think the longer they sit, the better. These aren’t “officially” canned, so they will go bad. Don’t let them sit around too long. I also thought they could use a little more flavor, so will experiment with the hot pepper next time. I thought they were interesting and definitely a good use for what would have just gone to waste. There are also recipes for friend green cherry tomatoes (cut in 1/2, dip them in some sort of flour or corn meal and then fry), but it seemed as though the breading just wanted to slip off the smooth tomato skins.

Actually I’m really getting jazzed to learn about canning, pickling and fermenting, so I think I’ll try some different pickling techniques next time.

My chickens are in the final stages of their molt. At least all signs point to that. Chickens begin the molt on their heads and kind of work their way down to their tail and wing feathers. Edie looks gorgeous and fluffy instead of mangey like she did after her bout with mites. I’m not walking into their coop to find loads of feathers these days. I think they should be well insulated for winter with all their new feathers.

However, when I check their nest box all I find are little fluffy feathers. No eggs. It’s been about 2 months with NO EGGS. I have to buy eggs from the store, which doesn’t suit me at all anymore. So instead of staring at an empty egg holder, I have decided to fill it with the gorgeous grape tomatoes that are still coming out of my garden. They are getting smaller and smaller as the days get shorter and cooler, but they are still coming. Winter is a mourning time for me when I don’t have tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, so I’m enjoying each and every one of these little treasures.

I keep taking photos of the beautiful tomatoes I’ve been getting from my garden. I said taking photos, not posting photos. Argh. I’m so behind on sorting through my photos!! I was lucky not to have the tomato blight that wiped out so many people’s crops. I bought a 6-pack of heirloom tomato seedlings this spring, but the names weren’t identified, so I don’t know what they are. I know the ones on the right are green zebra tomatoes, but the beautiful persimmon-colored ones are a mystery. I want to find out because they were absolutely sweet and delicious. The little cherry ones were so sweet, it was like candy from nature.

We’ve been getting shorter days (sob) and cooler nights, so the days of tomatoes are coming to an end. I have basil that needs to be cut and turned into pesto and lemon verbena that I have some ideas for. I planted some salad greens (a mesclun mix, mache and spinach), which are already coming up, so I don’t feel as though my garden has come to an end. I love the weather at this time of year, but it always brings a bit of melancholy with the shortening days and the approach of the winter cold.

BYELIZABETH LAZAROWITZ

Tuesday, July 14th 2009, 9:39 AM

It’s a rural lesson in an urban jungle.

Students at 10 Brooklyn schools will be toiling in the soil this summer and fall, growing vegetables to feed their classmates as part of an effort to get student-grown foods into the school cafeteria.

“We want to eat the stuff we grow,” said Aidan Israel, 7, a student at Public School 107 on Eighth Ave. in Park Slope, who has been helping cultivate peas, kale and basil in the school’s yard. “It tastes fresher than the stuff in the store.”

With its fall harvest, PS 107 – which is in mobile “earth boxes” while its new garden is closed due to a school renovation – will join a program started last autumn by the Department of Education’s SchoolFood department and the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Dubbed “Garden to School Cafe,” it began with 20 schools citywide – nearly half of them in Brooklyn.

Next year, the program, which lets school cafeteria staffers put kid-gardened produce on the menu, will expand to about 25 schools as part of a broader effort to source school food locally, said Billy Doherty, who heads the program for SchoolFood.

“It’s something that’s important in terms of teaching the kids how to eat better and connecting them to farming, to help them have an overall healthy lifestyle,” Doherty said.

Last week, PS 29 science teacher Tina Reres and a group of incoming prekindergarten students gathered around one of four long gardening beds built behind the Cobble Hill school. They tied up tomato plants, searched for bugs and then lettuce shoots that, if all goes well, will be part of a meal the school’s students will get to eat in the fall.

“It’s a chance to learn where your food comes from,” said Kristin Berman as her daughter Julia, 3, dug in the soil. “City kids don’t really know that.”

Some of the schools – like the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art in DUMBO – are combining food-growing with culinary lessons. Students in the school’s Teen Iron Chef program grew parsley and mint for tabbouleh and demonstrated how to make it, said Lynn Fredricks of FamilyCook Productions, who runs the cooking program. “For them to actually create the food itself is pretty amazing.”

Pesto pasta from school-grown basil was a big hit with kids at PS 29 last fall, Reres said.

But whether getting locally grown foods will really get kids to eat more veggies remains to be seen.

Mia Espinosa, 4, turned up her nose at the peas she had excitedly plucked from the PS 29 garden.

“She won’t eat anything green,” her grandmother, Carmela Panico, said, sighing. “Maybe next year.”

elazarowitz@nydailynews.com

On Saturday my friend Alison and I went on a wild edibles foraging tour of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Wildman Steve Brill was our very funny and knowledgeable guide. We had a big group of about 25-30 people and we raised eyebrows as we all bend down, picked some weedy looking plant and then put it in our mouths. I highly recommend any of Steve’s tours. I learned a lot about plants I’d never really taken notice of before. He shared tips for what part of the plant is edible, how to cook them, what time of the year you are most likely to find them, and their medicinal properties.

Here’s a list of what we found on Saturday. Alison took the notes while I took the photos. There was so much information, it would have been hard to do both!

1. Hedge Mustard
2. Poor Man’s Pepper
     a. good in stews and salads. Prevents cancer cells from developing.
3. Garlic Mustard
     a. very invasive! Eat a lot of it.
     b. Use it in pesto
     c. Root is also edible and tastes like horseradish
     d. Is in season well into May
     e. Flower bud looks like broccoli and the best flavor is when the plant is blossoming.
4. Lesser Celandine
     a. in the buttercup family
     b. eat it before it flowers. It’s toxic after it flowers.
     c. Best cooked w/ rice
5. Gout Weed
     a. Parsley and celery flavor
     b. Use it like parsley.
6. Kentucky Coffee Tree Seeds
     a. Seeds and green pulp are poisonous raw. Roast them about 1.5 hours at 300º. Grind them to       make decaf coffee.
     b. Can be added to hot chocolate and chocolate cake.
7. Star of Bethlehem
     a. Poisonous to eat
     b. Can be confused with field garlic. It has a distinguishing white stripe that field garlic doesn’t.
8. Japanese Knot Weed
     a. Related to rhubarb
     b. Peel the stem and eat it. Don’t eat the leaves.
     c. Makes a nice fruit compote. 1 part knot weed to 10 parts fruit.
     d. Short fat stems are optimal
     e. Has pretty, lacy flowers in the fall
9. Hercules Club (aka Angelica Tree or Devil’s Walking Stick)
     a. Shave the thorns off with a knife and steam the developing shoots like asparagus.
10. Red Bud Blossoms
     a. put them in salad or toss in batter and make fritters
11. Chickweed
     a. Eat leaves, stems and flowers raw or cooked
     b. Tastes like corn
     c. Loads of vitamins
     d. To cook: wash and chop into bite-sized pieces. Cook (steam the wet leaves) in a pot on low          heat until wilted. In a separate pot cook garlic in oil and toss together.
12. Mugwort
     a. It’s in the wormwood family
     b. You can make a tea to help with PMS
13. Field Garlic
14. Daylily
     a. Has tubers that look like potatoes.
     b. The leaves taste like green beans.
     c. You can eat the leaves, stems, tubers or flowers
     d. 1 in 50 people have digestive problems w/ daylilies. Gradually build up to eating them.
15. Sassafras
     a. Branches grow out at 45º angles from trunk
     b. Smells like root beer
     c. Wash the root, simmer for 20 minutes and chill the tea
     d. Can also use the cambium of the root as cinnamon
16. May Apple
     a. Poisonous except for the ripe fruit
17. Violet
     a. Use the leaves in salad
18. Burdock
     a. Delicious root. Cut the root razor thin on the diagonal, simmer it and put it in rice or a stew.
     b. Leaf has silver, hairy underside.