Hip Chick Digs

Up the street from our apartment in Brooklyn is a community garden I have admired for awhile called 6/15 Green. Several community gardens are located throughout the New York area and it is always a delightful surprise to see them tucked in between tall buildings. This one has some fruit trees and many irregular-shaped garden plots focused on food production. (Click on the picture below for a larger view)

I was lucky enough to pass by recently when they were having an open house potluck. We didn’t stay to eat, but I did take a nice long walk through the winding paths to admire the plants I know and love. While there, I noticed some interesting gardening techniques.

A friend of mine actually did a major research project on community gardens of the US and shared some of her research with me recently. She mentioned that gardens in ethnically diverse areas will incorporate strategies people brought from this original homes outside the US.

This picture below was something she mentioned is common with community gardeners from Asia, although I know word has gotten out to the masses as well. It is a squash plant that is being trellised up over some Asian greens. The squash can grow bigger without taking up valuable ground space, while shading the Asian greens which would otherwise bolt in the direct hot sun.

Another cool thing that I am no stranger to is the three-bin compost system. We have a much more rustic version with ten bins at the Urban Farm, but this is a very tidy, well crafted design. The newest compost goes into the covered bin. Once it has partially broken down, it gets tossed into the middle bin. That aerates the compost, so it breaks down faster. It sits there for awhile until it is almost completely finished, then gets tossed into the furthest bin to finish up.

The great thing about a three-bin system is that you have three constant stages of compost: unfinished, partially finished, and fully finished. When you need compost for the garden, you empty that last bin and move the other two over into new bins. That first bin is then empty again and ready for a new compost pile.

They have wood slates on the front of their structure, which allows them to make the opening as high or low as they need based on the size of the pile and whether they need to get in there with a pitch fork.

Good ideas for just around the corner and a very productive garden for such a small space. It makes us look like land hogs out west!

My first experience with the Park Slope Food Coop was back in December when I was here in New York for a month. Jay had joined after realizing how awful New York grocery stores are. The produce is awful, the selection is meager and the prices seem enormous to our Northwestern eyes. A friend told Jay about the coop and convinced him to join.

They formed in 1973 and are the largest member-labor coop in the nation, meaning every member has to work a 2 hour and 45 minute shift every four weeks. They have over 15,000 members that represent 75% of their work force. It seems like a bit of organized chaos, but it works. Roughly 80% of their produce is organic, and there are lots of local options.

In order to join the coop, you have to attend an orientation meeting. Trying to reserve a seat in these meetings can be a multi-month, on-going process. I completely lucked out and happened to check their site for orientation dates right after they posted the new schedule, so I waited less than a week before becoming a member. I walked blissfully home from the orientation as their newest coop member.

I can’t have much of a garden this year because I am only living in New York for a couple brief months, but I can ensure I have access to local, fresh food. The coop is my ticket to easing the burden of not having a garden. I always get a dose of garden envy though as I walk to the store twice a week and pass front yard gardens. One in particular has filled the entire pavement between their brownstone and the sidewalk with squash and tomatoes. I will admit I snuck my hand between the gates to get the smell of fresh tomato on my fingers.

I prefer shopping at the coop during the workday, when fewer people are there. It is insanely crowded in the evenings and on the weekend. But I prefer to leisurely shop, admire the plump vegetables and drool over the cheese section. During my first shopping trip I spent $50 and walked out with a backpack and large canvas bag packed with food. I put it all on the table and snapped a picture to show you.

The only problem with the coop is that I visit there so often and leave every time with a bag packed with food. We haven’t thrown anything out - we eat it all. But I am not holding back when it comes to culinary treats. When figs are only two bucks, I feel compelled to buy them on every visit. If I can try a new type of French cheese for two bucks, I obviously need to get that too. A summer spent with mouths stuffed with figs and cheese is certainly not a bad way to live.

And where am I off to now? You guessed it - there is grocery shopping to do.

The road trip is over, for now. I was driving over the Staten Island Bridge heading into Brooklyn when my trip meter wound past 6,000 miles. What a long drive and how exciting to be home - however temporary that home may be.

We hauled my suitcase, my watercolors and my books up three flights of stairs. After a few days of getting settled in, we headed out on a Friday morning to visit my old park friend The Highline. It was a very different scene than I when I visited back in December. It’s great to see a public space so well used, with flowers and people everywhere you look. But I have to admit I did like the reclusive feeling I had when I was there in the winter and no one was around.

I am now cooking in a kitchen with 12″ of counter space and incredibly limited equipment. No measuring spoons, no mixing bowls, no whisk, let alone fancy mini appliances like a blender. Cooking here will be challenging, but they say a good cook never blames the equipment. New York is expensive though and I am determined to make us good food at home, so we can eat well without going into debit.

Searching for ideas, I discovered one of my favorite cooking columnists, Mark Bittman or “The Minimalist” from the New York Times, posted a story a couple years ago called Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 20 Minutes or Less. I made number 26 for us to take along to the park, where we had a lovely picnic lunch. Here is the recipe:

• Brown chunks of Italian sausage in a bit of olive oil
• Add in chopped onions and peppers
• Cook until sausage is browned and peppers/onions are tender
• Fill into sandwiches

As with most things in cooking, the better the ingredients the better the end product. We bought a rosemary and garlic baguette from Dean & Delucca, an upscale grocer, along with a small container of giant olives. The filling went into the baguette and the olives were a side snack. It was delicious and cheap! We even had people at the park ask us where they could buy one.

My summer posts will most likely involve recipes for simple cooking and some fun sight-seeing things related to plants. Although I am enjoying my time here, I had to admit to feeling a bit homesick for my garden and chickens.

Upon leaving New Orleans, a somewhat morbid part of me wanted to visit the Gulf of Mexico to either see the oil spill firsthand or catch a glimpse of the white sand beaches before they are gone. I stood on the beach in Mississippi days before the oil would start lapping up. It’s hard to imagine just how large of a catastrophe this has become.

It felt ironic that I later enjoyed a locally-fished shrimp and oyster po’boy for lunch. There were notes on menus about increases in pricing as fishermen anticipated the oil spill to effect fishing. I can’t help but think those are very conservative estimates. I can’t imagine really when those waters will be able to be commercially fished again and so much of the local cuisine is centered around seafood along the south.

With heavy thoughts to keep me company on the drive, I headed northeast through the rest of Mississippi and into Alabama. I stopped for the night in Montgomery with high hopes to see the Civil Rights Museum and a few other local attractions. I knew the South was more religious, but I didn’t anticipate everything - all the attractions in town plus almost all of the restaurants - being closed on Sundays. That left me with absolutely nothing to do, so I got an early start further east instead.

I stopped for lunch at the best soul food restaurant of my life in Atlanta, Georgia: The Busy Bee Cafe. I will never forget that meal! I was the only white person in the restaurant - something I have never experienced outside my trip to South Korea a few years ago. If you are within a hundred miles of Atlanta, you have to stop here. It was just amazing food. Smoky, richly flavored ribs, tangy fried green tomatoes, okra, cornbread and biscuits, sweet tea, and peach cobbler. I force-fed myself to the point of pain because it was so good.

In the Charleston area, I visited a historic plantation called the Magnolia Plantation. It is most noted for their collection of Camellias and Azaleas, both of which were not blooming during my visit. In terms of landscape history, it was interesting because the garden was originally planned as a formal French-style garden with boxwood hedges making knotted patterns. They were almost all replaced in favor of an English-style, pastoral design that became more popular.

What was the most fascinating to me during the trip was learning more about slavery life on plantations. Most slave quarters were burned after the Civil War and most plantations never talk about slavery or slave life on the plantation. If you ask, the common response is something like “Well, there were slaves, but they were treated well here.” Which, of course, is not true.

This plantation had a slave house dating from the 1850’s and similar buildings that houses “staff” after abolition. This small slave house is divided into two sides, with up to 12 people living on each side. There were gaps in the floor boards, walls, and ceiling. It must have been very cold when the temperatures dropped and very wet when it rained.

As a rice plantation, the work ended a bit earlier in the day than on tobacco or cotton farms. The slaves would be done around 3:00 in the afternoon and then supplemented their food with their own gardens and fishing and hunting. Of course the main house probably gave them less food as a result, but the unintentional biproduct was that the health and nutrition of the slaves was higher than among average slaves at the time.

I also found it interesting that African slaves did not place their crops in tidy little rows. Instead they organized their gardens like they do in Africa - using a version of the Three Sisters of corn, squash and beans. I found that interesting since Native Americans used the same or similar method. You can grow more food in the same-sized space with less resources. Currently they have a small, row garden but they are planning to install a traditional African-style garden in the next few years.

A couple books that were recommended for further learning were Black Majority, by Peter Wood, and Black Rice, by Judith Carney. This window into American history was probably the most interesting part of my journey through the South and I am eager to learn more.

It was now time to head north…

The car hiccup in Austin meant I was on the road a day later into New Orleans, but I was on the road once more. The nine hour drive was broken up with a stop at the Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site in Martinville, Louisiana.

I met some great new trees here that I would see throughout my drive in the South. They had graceful, white Crape Myrtle trees at the entry to the park. I didn’t realize Crape Myrtles could have such a perfect form, since many I had seen were more rangy. I also met Southern Live Oaks (Quercus virginiana), some of which were probably over 300 years old on this site. Tall Cypress trees grow well in the wet bayou as well and were used often for building construction.

This historical site included some buildings from the Acadian people who were moved from the Canadian areas around Nova Scotia down into Louisiana in the mid-1700s. Among other hardships, the climate is so different that they had to rediscover how to survive.

This particular site became a sugar cane plantation and I had a chance to tour the main house and some outbuildings. The outbuildings had been reconstructed, but gave a good sense of what tools people had to work with. I found it interesting that they used squash for pot scrubbers and hollowed out others for bowls or ladles. They took old corn cobs and wove them together to make brooms.

Back on the road, the landscape really began to change. The freeway became a long expanse of bridges after awhile that were taking us above the bayous below. Tall cypress trees shot out of the swampy waters. It was really gorgeous.

I got into New Orleans that night starving and worn down from the long drive. With a little help from Yelp!, I found a great restaurant in the French Quarter called Acme. I enjoyed a lovely, dark local beer with half a dozen oysters on the half shell. Oh momma… so good. I followed it up with étouffée, a Cajun dish that starts with rue, adds in fresh seafood (in this case crawdads) and gets poured over rice. Amazing.

I have to admit that I was not impressed with the French Quarter. It was a Friday night, drunk people were out en masse, tourists packed the streets, souvenir shops had horrible wares to promote, street performers of the usual sort were at every corner, and I could just sense that this was prime pick-pocket grounds. It reminded me of the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam though because the Red Light District is one small part of a really beautiful city.

The next day I explored the Garden District a bit and was entertained, but not blown away. The photo above shows the former home of writer Ann Rice. The architecture here is interesting, but having been to France to see it in its original form, I didn’t feel like I was seeing anything new necessarily.

I also found the residential landscapes pretty bland. Historically it is interesting because there are a lot of non-native, tropical plants that were brought in from the Carribean. One house after another had the same palms and lines of boxwood hedges, so I got a bit bored.

This Southern Live Oak does show something special about the neighborhood: it’s age. This old gnarly tree has eaten away at the curd and into the sidewalk. In such a young country, it is interesting to see signs of age. Overall I was impressed with Louisiana for their food, history and landscape, but I doubt I’ll be making a trip back to New Orleans.