I just heard Mama say “Oh! A-HA!” and run outside. This bloomed just this morning. Oh, sweet Southern perfection in a cut glass vase. May you all have something as delicate and divine ushering in your summer weekend.
Category: Green
Bounty…
Oh the Bounteous Spread! Yellow squash, magda squash, cucumbers, young red onions, spring onions, new turnips, bright pink beets, savoy cabbage, new sweet corn… and Veuve Clicquot. All of nature’s good and honest yield, about to be consumed by Mama’n’Me.
everything but the bubbly came from Amy’s Garden– Mama’s amazing organic CSA (and, yes, of course she also got the flower share).
Up Nawth
Perfect timing that this postcard from Will arrived in my Brooklyn mailbox just as I was out the door to head south for a sojourn among the seagrasses, diamondwater, and, yes, kudzu ravines of my homeland. Sorry, Nawth, I’m outta here.
ps. that charming pre-war kudzu shack is roughly the footprint/size of my brownstone apartment (but with attic space and an, um, garden) what do you think they’re asking for it? $1800 a month? $2500? $74 confederate dollars? Let me know if pets are ok and we’ll talk.
Early Summer Offerings
Today I took my first cup of cold brew coffee out to the backyard to survey our small domain and water our little container garden and I was positively struck with early summer wonder. First off: the simple joys of homemade cold brew are not to be taken lightly and it is ever-so-much more enjoyable than I thought possible to drink it with a cuppow mason jar top. Right now there is a ton of (fabulous-yet-frustrating) construction going on in the backyard as our awesome landlord Bernie and his yappy yorkie Zeus put up new fencing, plant big lovely boxwoods, lay down a patio, occasionally spar at our window with Nipsey the Cat, and make a big mess everywhere including in the cucumber pots. In the midst of the construction chaos, ground strewn with power tools and trash, our little garden is still thriving. Is this a New York parable? Our Early Girls are putting out their first little green maters, late breaking broccoli is rearing its head, zucchinis are blossoming, nasturtiums are up, all of the little hot peppers are putting forth blossoms (the big one already has two peppers on it!), the first strawberries are almost ready to eat, and all of the herbs are thriving. It’s always the little things that matter most.
Garden Party
Sweetheart and I just returned from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s amazing annual plant sale with this little red wagon load of delectable goodies for the backyard! Early Girls and Kirby Cukes, Packman Broccoli and Medusa Peppers, Rosemary, Thyme, and Lavande de Provence… like all gardeners at the beginning of the season, out wagon brims almost more with hope than with bounty. Luckily my ever-lovin-horticultural Mama is coming next week for any course correction if we city mice have bitten off more strawberries than we can chew.
ps. I always love the Botanic Garden, every time you go it’s different depending on the weather and the season. Today, the bluebell wood was in bloom. 
After last night’s hard rain, the trees were silent except for the occasional drop of water and the flowers were like a quiet sea. It was truly beautiful.
Dip-Tet
By New York standards, our backyard is huge, an L shaped plot roughly the size of our entire apartment. We share it with our landlords and they (for reasons entirely beyond the gods of real estate and my understanding) just don’t give a fart about it. So. Sweetheart and I started the this-is-a-rental-but-what-the-hell-renovation-project last year by dismembering a regulation size basketball hoop that was back there with a Sawz-All. When I told my Mama that we got landlord approval to hire Kevin the Hatian (as it says on his flyer) to cart away the remaining 25 years worth of debris, detritus, and scrap metal away, she sent me this:
and said:
Unless you’ve had a tetanus shot since you graduated from high school (within the last ten years [ed. note: ouch]) your immunization has lapsed and it would be very prudent for you to get a booster before you start messing around in all that debris which very likely contains elements of rusty metal.
I can’t help it. I’m your mother.
Mama, don’t worry, in lieu of a prudent booster, I have an appointment to get a mani/pedi afterwards. Neither is covered by my insurance, but they don’t have groupons for tetanus shots (yet).
Cuppow!
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a life(style) changing product: CUPPOW! The idea is incredibly simple and totally genius. It’s slender plastic insert that turns any wide mouth canning jar into a travel mug. BAM.
Who doesn’t love drinking out of a jar? Who hasn’t spilled all over themselves doing so? I had to get a few for Miss McKay for her birthday. It seemed created for her: Cold brew coffee anywhere, pina coladas to go, hot coffee refills, champagne cocktails on a bike, mojitos in the back of a pickup truck. No frills, no spills, all thrills. Even better, the tiny company is run by American humans who just seem to really love coffee and want to bring manufacturing back to New England. Simple, elegant, affordable, sustainable, and local? Be still my Brooklyn heart.
Buy one here, you know you need it.
images not featuring Miss McKay from cuppow.
Feeling Alive
Chalk it up to multiple childhood readings of The Secret Garden, but I’ve always felt a kinship with plants. If you read this, you might have gathered that the dried up dead ole plant lurking in the brightest but apparently-not-bright-enough corner of my basement brownstone was making me feel dried up, ole, dead, and stuck in a dark corner. Just like when my college roommate killed my orchid by mistakenly watering it with vodka, the symbolism doesn’t go too deep there. After writing about the dying plant, I left the house to go to a meeting and returned to find Sweetheart had populated the window with two new, very green, very alive plants. The next day, it’s warm enough to have the windows open, the breeze is coming in bringing tidings of adventure, and it’s bright enough in here (at least for now) for the prisms I have hanging hopefully between the window bars like a hipster Polyanna to yield little rainbows. Sometimes all it takes is a little green and a little light.
Hornsby Family Egg Nog
For me, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without making a large batch of celebrated Hornsby Family Egg Nog (made from scratch, served with love, fresh nutmeg, and ideally tons of fried chicken and warm biscuits with Smithfield Ham). This year the batch was perhaps the best it’s ever been- which is in no small part due to by the glorious gift of Araucana Blue eggs straight from Jay and Katie Rose’s chickens. Araucanas are a South American breed that lay thick-skinned eggs with yolks the color of setting suns. The shells of their eggs come in a range of beautiful delicate colors: pale aquamarine and celadon, eau de nil, sky, and light dappled ochre. See above. The fact that these chickens have beards, are named after lady blues singers, and are presided over by the Grand Plumed Rooster Alicia Jr. just makes the funfetti toned eggs all the more party ready. Which is a good thing since the nog calls for 30 of them (we triple the recipe for our holiday party, soooo, yeah). Talking about the eggs brings up the antipathy that many people have for egg nog- maybe you’ve only ever had store bought (oof), maybe you went to a party where some poor fool made it with gin (travesty), maybe raw eggs give you the willies (no help or hope for you, my friend), but this version, with its hand-written recipe and various and copious brown liquors is surprisingly, almost unbelievably light and fresh, sweet and smooth, spicy, silky, and secretly very strong. Here’s the recipe, straight out of the Hornsby family cookbook, “From the Kitchen at the Hornsby House”, written out by my Great Aunt Marian.
Our family is one of barrel chested watermen-turned-oilmen-turned-land men, consummate entertainers, gentlemen raconteurs, merry pranksters, bon vivants, music makers and songstresses, and long time intimates of the marvelous stiff southern drink… when it would be Christmas at the Big House, laughter would shake the chandeliers, and instruments would be played until the wee hours. I always hope to have done them proud.
recipe notes:
– I use Benedictine and Brandy (B&B) instead of Brandy and Southern Comfort
– Tripled, the bourbon comes out to a handle, Jim Beam is more than satisfactory (though Maker’s Mark is sweeter).
– You’re left with the whites of the eggs, make a frittata!
Greene Hill Food Co-op: Open for Business!
After a few long years of hard, hard work and inspired perspiration this past weekend the beautiful and brand-spanking-new Greene Hill Food Co-op threw open its doors for the first time. The block itself seemed to roar with kale and a groundswell of happy, hungry humans with pure hearts and canvas bags. The idea of the food co-op is sort of communism-light: anyone can pay an equal, one-time, refundable share to join, everyone shares the work, and everyone enjoys the (literal, abundant) fruits of this labor in the form of gorgeous fresh produce, sweet and light loaves of locally baked bread, and chicken that perhaps wore a cowboy hat as it roamed the open range- all at reasonable prices. In a neighborhood where the food options are limited to the polarizing spectrum of corner bodegas where plantain chips are the only vegetable in sight and fancy-pants specialty food stores that have fresh figs and Humboldt Fog for $16/a quarter pound, this sort of place- where good food isn’t just well curated and lovely, but is sustainable, affordable, and available to all- is a jewel.
There are a few different options for membership plans, based on income: The Avocado Plan (where the well off can pay their share and also the share of someone else), The Lettuce Plan (where the comfortable can support themselves), The Carrot Plan (where the pretty broke can pay their share in installments), and The Apple Plan (where those who qualify pay a reduced fee and can make the membership investment in installments over the next five years- also the co-op takes food stamps). Sweetheart and I are in a weird place with this- being writers and musicians has us hovering essentially at the poverty line (eek)- but- we’re also participants in an active food culture, enthusiastic home cooks, the type of people who watch King Corn streaming on Netflix, have friends farming at Blue Hill and working for The Greenhorns, the type of people who went to Oberlin. In short: we are well armed with the righteous knowledge of food. We know how to provide ourselves with fresh, delicious meals from scratch and prioritize the ability/desire to choose to put a fair portion of our income towards eating (and living) well. Extra money doesn’t go towards physical luxuries, it gets put towards a stoop garden and non-agribusiness meats (and once- dinner at Chez Pannisse). Even though we may not have a cent to pay the rent, but we’re gonna make it, we may have to eat beans every day, but they’re going to be sustainable garbanzos. The Greene Hill Food Co-op is newly open, but the most exciting thing (in addition to a quart of Annie’s Goddess Dressing for $3.50, and the prettiest loaves of rye I’ve seen outside of Orwasher’s) is what this may mean for the future, for the neighborhood. The co-op gives a sense of ownership and personal responsibility over the food we eat, it makes the opportunity to pick healthy options not just readily available to all but totally desirable, and it shares the knowledge and power that comes from making your own food choices with everyone. It’s actually DOING something about it all instead of just reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and being abstractly horrified at pictures of factory farms. And, of course, we’re still taking members. Sign up here and let’s go grocery shopping.
Images including vegetables from the Greene Hill Co-Op’s Flickr, see more here.
Here’s an interesting, easily digestible article about food equality.
Feather By Feather 