Midwinter Locavore Update

or,

Dirty Hairy Salsify

The midwinter locavore is prey to soul-searing temptation at the grocery store: "DON'T touch those hothouse imported tomatoes -- we have parsnips back at the house!"

"It's been ages since we had a bag of potato chips...(long, sorrowful pause)...maybe I can make ... parsnip fries with salsa."

"No mushrooms for us, until we finish the damn salsify."

The parsnips have been the roughest part. Ben says, edge of menace in his voice: "I am ready to be DONE with parsnips." Peggy is dogged with the haunting conviction that they taste like pee (we do not want to know how she knows).

In comparison to parsnips, most of the other vegetables in our weekly box of locally-produced, organically-grown, seasonally-available midwinter vegetables are light and cheerful, and we greet them with comparatively glad cries:"Onions!... a teeny garlic!" "More turnips -- yummm."

Potatoes and the beauteous beet (both purple and golden!) are the gods of this weekly boxed assortment. Celeriac, peeled and used as a root-veg form of celery, is also lovely. Not to mention tart and crunchy big white radishes.

BUT below parsnips lie worse vegetable snakepits.

These are the salsifies. There's salsify, and then there's...black salsify, or oyster plant. The local farmers who are in this experiment with us to make a better world (and who have to suffer the email and verbal commentary on what they send out each week), have dealt us the black salsify hand in only one weekly delivery -- so far.

That week, I cooked both the salsify -- white tubers that arrived bearing their original soil -- and the black salsify -- black tubers with black skins -- and set bowls of both on the table for us to taste-test. Both salsifies take a lot of rugged preparation: you basically have to shave them (see photo). Cleaning off the dirt and excess skin and rootlets is detail work -- not quick. When you prepare salsify, you are worshipping Mother Nature at her most basic. Digging up and cleaning native sunflower tubers is just a little bit more onerous.

Ben has a frequent diagnosis of "It tastes like dirt!" (and he's a caver, so he knows), and when we sampled the two salsifies we heard that comment quickly, although we were fascinated by the oyster scent and flavor of the black salsify. The white has that 'slightly nutty' flavor found in so many marginalized yet nutritious foods: bland, starchy, filling.

This is Thursday afternoon: a new vegetable box looms, and there's excitement coming our way -- leeks!!

It will be St Michael's Day in mid-March (still a month distant). He's the patron saint of Wales, and the Welsh celebrate their rainy, blustery holiday with leek soup feasts. The Scots wash down their haggis with whisky at Burns night feasts: is there a liquor to brighten leek soup?

Actually this is great fun, and we are learning a lot and liking almost all of it. But we do look forward to the lighthearted joys of spring and summer crops (some of which we grumbled about last year) -- Swiss chard, spinach, and eventually the pinnacle: summer-grown tomatoes, green beans, and corn on the cob.

BUT for now: "Don't touch those tomatoes, we have a whole bin of carrots to work our way through before Thursday."

Becoming Locavores

Peggy and I went a-walking, out in the August morning recently. The sky was a cloudless blue and the air warm with meadow scents as Aurelia pulled us forward with her leash toward the trees across Hanshaw Road. We carried a plastic basket and scissors, in search of rumored wild fruits along the woodland edge.

Peg’s husband Ben had returned with reports of laden blackberry bushes by the path “just beyond the manure pile” in the Cornell field and along the tree line; I had found wild black cherry trees and a fruit-filled apple tree clustered together on the edge of a homely old field tucked into the woods. I had begun roaming through there in the late 1960s dreaming of a quiet retreat, and found an old stove and blue-spotted coffee pot tossed down the slope, suggesting that long ago others had shared my liking for the wooded slopes between creek and fields. Today, though neatened by the Cornell ag school and bordered by the Cayuga Trail, this secluded cove still feels like an old home place. (Is there a New York word for that Kentucky state of mind?)

Although not radical locavores, Peggy and Ben are well on their way. The choices they now make tend to be either local – or not at all. They bike and walk great distances, or use the bus. They sort and recycle every darn scrap, and have a compost heap for the rest. Their house is undergoing a major energy-conserving overhaul. Casual long-distance travel has faded away. Their food choices focus on what is in season and what is produced locally and or with a minimum of industrial inputs.

As part of these life-altering strategies, they have purchased a “harvest share” in Full Plate Farm Collective, the local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Each week they pick up a box of produce at Ludgate Farms, gathered from three local organic farms, and each week they come to terms with chard, spinach, beets, and other crops that ripen as the season rolls forward. This relentlessly fresh array of beautiful foods demands to be eaten, every single day – there is no rest from its neediness: “Eat me while fresh – and before the next box arrives!” Since June, the packaged and processed foods in Peg and Ben’s diet have in large part been replaced by vegetable-focused dishes supplemented with pastas, home made breads, local cheeses and the occasional dab of meat from the Farmers Market. (Not forgetting locally-made Finger Lakes wines and beers!)

Additionally a modest garden was started in the least-leafy, least-wet area of their big backyard. While stealthy gophers have taken the best stuff from under the fence, there has been lettuce, a few beans, cucumbers and one healthy pumpkin; and the promise of many pounds of tomatoes – if they would only ripen.

By mid-August, Peg and Ben were comfortable enough in their new vegetable-based habits to try the wild foods that grace roadsides and woods-edges during central New York’s glorious midsummer.

On this particular morning, Peg and I scrambled into a creekbed to grab green and red apples from the sunnier side of a big old tree on its bank, and snipped a half bucket of ripe wild black cherries. These became, respectively, deeply-flavored applesauce and a small bottle of cherry juice concentrate that shouted good health. Wandering along the woodland edge, we also gathered two cups of sublimely ripe blackberries.

What a haul! And our day of small, gem-like harvests had just begun. Peg and I and Aurelia took my car on the back route across the Cascadilla and Six Mile Creek valleys, up past Ithaca College to the heights where one of the cooperating organic farms, Three Swallows Farm, is situated. Probably the proprietors work far too hard most of the year to appreciate the wild romanticism of their view across the deep hidden valley with horizons of cool blue hills further on, and a glimmer of the deep blue coolness of Cayuga Lake far below.

We were there to pick stuff on our own sweet free time, and could glance up from plucking basil leaves to look at the cows in the field below, or pause between the long undulating rows of jalapeno pepper plants to gaze at other folks like us, ambling and plucking. A mother and daughter gathered a massive bouquet of zinnias, snapdragons and cleome, an outrageous blast of bright colors. The flowers were free after all so we overcame our Puritanical tendencies and collected our own bundle of bright sweet blossoms, laid carefully in our paper bags on top of piles of peppers (four different kinds), basil leaf heaps, and sharply-scented lemon verbena. The rows of beans were done, the okra was not in yet (and difficult for Peg to love), and the masses of hanging cherry and plum tomatoes were, like the ones in the backyard, not yet ripe. But we gathered in plenty for our needs.

Back at the house, scratched and sun-warmed by our day outside, we sorted our goodies, and topped off the collection with a visit to the backyard garden, adding several crunchy green beans and a cucumber to the day’s haul.

None of these beautiful foods were gathered in great quantities. We had enough basil leaves for one big pesto meal on pasta, with leftovers. The cherry juice concentrate was enough for five drinks added to wine or sparkling water (five amazing drinks). The blackberries went into a couple of servings of morning yogurt; the lemon balm made a nice small bouquet as did the fancy flowers. The apples made plenty of applesauce, lasting several days. We did have a heck of a lot of jalapenos. A few went into two fresh salsas that very night; most of the rest were frozen for individual thawing and use.

For all the time spent working at it on that breathlessly beautiful day, we did not collect massive quantities: we gained a few handfuls of most things. But you know, a little bit of intense flavor goes a long way. And, when you become immersed in the collection, harvest and preparation of locally, sustainably grown produce, the preparation becomes part of the meal: actually part of the food value. The entire process nourishes and sustains, so that you do not need as much to eat as when your food comes from packets and boxes and frozen microwave pouches.

Within a few days after our varied harvest, Peg and Ben had gone back across the road with Aurelia to gather another batch of even riper cherries. When I last checked, they had their eyes on apple trees, heavy with fruit, going unharvested across the Cornell campus and the city of Ithaca. There’s one next to the old schoolhouse, one on Triphammer Road next to a fraternity house, one on Campus Road next to frats and dorms, and one on Buffalo Street below Stewart Avenue. The harvest becomes the meal.

Remembering Bobby: "Shared Memory Alert!"

Art Bicknell
Oh, oh, oh! Shared Memory Alert! (and WE hadn’t even met, yet!). 1964—you’re in seventh grade, I’m in eighth. On the morning of RFK’s stopover, my friend Larry Heath (a staunch Nazarene and Goldwater supporter, following his parents’ lead, of course) gave me a bottle of candy pills proscribed to “chronic loud mouths” (I’d been following him around for days quoting passages from LBJ’s “My Hope for America”—God, I was obnoxious). I remember we all (well, not Larry) gathered in DeWitt Park, across the street from the school. I don’t recall having to get parental approval. I don’t recall his car or any kind of motor brigade—just dozens of us swarming all around as Bobby shook one hand after another—including mine. I remember he was smaller and skinnier than I’d imagined, and that his teeth were very yellow. (He must have been a heavy smoker). My friend Eddie Hart lost his footing, got trampled, and never managed to get a handshake. I remember feeling bad about that. I wrote all about this event in my 1964 diary (still have it), which also includes a tracing of the big toe of my left foot, age 13.

Remembering Bobby

A presidential election loomed in the fall of 1964, between Barry Goldwater, Arizona Republican and Lyndon Baines Johnson, Texas Democrat. In New York State, Robert F. Kennedy was running for Senator, reviled by some as a ‘carpetbagger’ and by many more as the natural heir to his fallen brother’s legacy.

I wanted to help elect these Democrats, so I and fellow 7th grader Anne devised a campaign of our own.

Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” cartoon strip ruled the comic pages, and his character Linus believed that, every Hallowe’en, the Great Pumpkin arose from a local pumpkin patch to deliver toys to children around the world. One day while doodling in school, I discovered that if you put black glasses and a cleft chin on a pumpkin, it looked remarkably like Barry Goldwater. The campaign to elect Barry Goldwater for Great Pumpkin was born.

One benefit of having a college-teacher dad was access to the mimeograph machines at his Cornell office. We used them to run off family Christmas cards and neighborhood “Nature Notes.” I devised a flyer urging people to support Goldwater’s Great Pumpkin candidacy, arguing that “If he is elected to G.P. perhaps he will lose interest in the Presidency (Yeh Yeh Yeh).” Those last three words are a “Beatles reference,” to that band whose presence saturated our lives.

Thank you to the long-suffering departmental secretaries who agreeably ran off copies of strange writings and drawings for Professor Lambert’s little girl.

With the hot pile of flyers clutched in my hand, I hung them up and displayed them everywhere I could. During a downtown political rally that my family attended, I wormed my way through the crowds in the small Democratic Headquarters office, ducking under the elbows and past the legs of full-grown people, stacking a heap of my flyers onto the table holding political literature, buttons, and bumper stickers for New York and national candidates, and then squirmed outside to the sidewalk.

In my zeal, I sent a copy of the flyer, with cover letter, to the New York Times, and gave one to Robert F. Kennedy when he came through Ithaca on his campaign tour. In my time capsule I have a good-natured thank you from the Times—and an indelible memory of Kennedy.

But first, let’s go forward in time, for a bit of back story.

In 2003, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came to Kentucky to bear witness to mountain-top mining and valley fill (reprehensible practices by the coal industry). I attended a fund-raising dinner in his honor that evening. When he made the rounds of the room shaking hands, I told him that I had once shaken his father’s hand. In his speech that evening, he began by saying that several people in the room said that they had met his dad when he was in Kentucky in 196().

No, no—it was not like that at all.

In the fall of 1964, DeWitt Junior High School students were abuzz with the news that Senatorial candidate Robert F. Kennedy would stop at our school to shake hands with students, on his way to the rally nearby at Democratic headquarters.

Our social studies teachers teased us: “Why would he want to meet YOU? You can’t vote!” and we would reply, spiritedly, “We will be able to vote, someday!”

On the appointed date, those of us with signed permission slips and supportive parents stayed after school and arrayed ourselves along the sidewalk outside, talking excitedly about when Kennedy’s plane would arrive and how long it would take him to get from the airport to our school.

I stood with my mom in the crowd, holding tight to the “Barry Goldwater for Great Pumpkin” flyer that I wanted to give to RFK. Sure, I knew this campaign of mine was a joke—but I also knew that it was a good joke, and I felt that he would appreciate it.

He was late, but not very. Suddenly around the corner and down the block, here he came, sitting up in the back of a convertible and waving to us as he approached. We small kids swarmed to the curb as the car pulled up, with our parents and teachers watching to make sure that we did not get hurt. No security or bodyguards. He sat high, and we got in close.

We shouted his name: “Bobby!” and he grasped our hands strongly, one after another. I shook his hand with one of my hands—and with the other, gave him the flyer. He took it and held onto it. Soon the car backed off from the curb and took off for the grownup rally, with us shouting after him.

As they drove away, his head was down—reading my flyer.
Yep, I can remember that anytime I want to. What a bright little window.

Election Day Aggravation (on being a one-l Hilary)

After voting for Hillary in the KY primary, I made my way to the post office and got in a long slow line.

Behind me was a big man with a deep, resonant voice that hummed into my brain as he talked endlessly on his cell to a woman whom I learned is suffering from depression, and for whom he had ordered online, "love that eBay!" and dropped off at her back door, six boxes of a "completely holistic, can't do you any harm" anti-depressant.

He further suggested that she stop taking her doctor-prescribed medication and shift to his cure; and then went on to tell her about his son's (don't know that for sure, as I was merely an unwilling listener) struggle with his parole officer and his license-loss for a DUI, and then on to many, many other topics in great and loving detail.

As the line we were in moved forward, I would jump ahead to get some space between me and his deep resonant voice directly into my ears, but each time he closed the gap to stay closely behind me.

This low-grade misery ended when I gained the head of the line and stepped up to the tall and handsome, grey-haired, U of KY basketball-obsessed woman postal clerk. The big guy moved to the other clerk.

"Well, how are you today!" The clerk boomed at me as she began to process my letters.

"I voted, so I feel good!" I replied, touching the "I voted" sticker on my shirt.

"Well, I didn't!" she almost-shouted, so that her voice could be heard by everyone in the place. "No one to vote for!"

OK, I thought, "no one to vote for" among Hillary, Barack, and McCain. That probably means deep religious right. I looked down at the counter and did not speak.

"Did you hear about Ted Kennedy!" she shouted, as she placed the label on my envelope. At that I looked up. She wanted a fight.

Looking her in the eye I said, "Yes, and that is terrible news to me, though I bet a lot of people around here think it's great." I had cut out her chance to smirk and do the right-wing anti-Kennedy nudge-nudge, or so I thought.

To undercut me, she took up the "thoughtful Christian" response, wide-eyed and loving. "My gosh, I know what you mean, but people really should be able to separate out a man's personal life from his political beliefs, you know?"

She was not taking this in a very logical direction, so she tried again, while we interpolated comments about adding one-cent stamps to my letters. "I remember when my husband was in college, and Jack Kennedy was assassinated, and the negative comments - "

At this bizarre attempt to show her sympathy for the Kennedys I interrupted her, trying to prevent myself from hearing more shit of this terrible type. I lowered my voice and said, "Anyway, seeing as how my first name is Hilary, I just keep my mouth shut around here to get along, you know?"

She did not hear me and shouted "What?" So I repeated myself, a bit louder. And then the big guy who had stood bellowing on his phone behind me, heard my remark and burst into new voice. "Wow, with that name I bet you aren't voting for Bama - Obama, Obama," he crowed from beside me.

I hunched down and looked at "my" clerk, who finally realized that maybe she should shut the hell up and get me out of there. I said, "You see what I mean," and she nodded in sympathy and gave me my stamps, as the guy, on his way out the door, shouted to the room, "She has to vote for Hillary, she doesn't have a choice, not a choice!"

I turned around wide-eyed to the line behind me to make my escape, and found one indignant woman shouting at the hastily retreating back of the big guy, "She does too have a choice!" The others in line stared back at me, mildly shocked at all this outcry. As I walked toward the door I saw a beautiful young black woman standing in line, with her "I voted today" sticker on her shirt.

I said, to her, "I voted too - and isn't it great?"
"Yes, it's WONDERFUL!" she replied with a friendly smile, and I went out into the fresh air.

To Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: Thank You for the Honor!

I just got back from voting. When I spoke my first name aloud for the gals to check it in the book, I wondered if I was breaking some sort of election law.
So just for humor I added, "With one l."

But they smiled, they had seen it all, and then I got to go into the booth and vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for President of the United States of America.

Electronic voting -- bad. You bet!
But nonetheless my heart lit up when I scrolled the clicker-thinger around and it filled the box with red to the left of her name.

I pressed Enter!
I got to do this wonderful thing!

I then made my two other votes - both for change, and against everything that Cheney and his toy stand for, gave a small cheer heard only within the immediate environs of the booth, and stepped away.

My face must have been shining with the joy of that moment as I walked out of the school cafeteria, past the ladies in their pearls sitting decorously near the door, and out into the morning air.

By the time I crossed the street back to my block, I was shaking and weepy.
I know that looks bad -- soft, sentimental, too human and girly.

Oh well - too bad for anyone who sees it that way.

I have wanted to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for President since the mid-90s.
I have a button somewhere that reads, "Hillary in 96" that was affixed to the visor in my car for many years.

This was finally my day to reach that long-awaited goal.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible (including though not entirely limited to, my own several fifty-dollar contributions).

I look forward to whatever happens next.

Is it me...or them?

In Lexington KY, I went to a nearby fancy Hillary event last night – “an evening with Hillary’s best friend” that was also featuring Chelsea and the inevitable Phyllis George and KY Dem party leader Jerry Lundergan (he looks like Count Dracula – sleek seal type) – and left after about a half hour.

It was the strangest reaction.

I went in, got my name tag (“one l, please”) and then went in the adjoining rooms to see people getting wine, and loading up on dainties (mostly deep fried!!!).

This is at the big place with white columns on N Lime that was a funeral home until a few months ago but has been redone as a for-hire party palace, complete with pompous bad little hunting paintings and such.

I saw that I was grossly under-dressed, or that was my first reaction.

I had my usual garb on, plus a Hillary Tshirt, and was carrying my backpack.

The women and men were wearing big-time party clothes, very elegant dresses, and the women were slathered in heavy makeup.

I got a small plate of vegetables to nibble on and walked into the adjoining ‘permanent tent’ to sit down, in front of a podium with big tv lights shining on it, and did some people-watching. They were talking up a storm, so excited and happy, with many girly screams of joys and little hugs and stuff.

Sure there were other modestly dressed people there but …maybe five total.

I watched the gals and guys flow in….the elusive Bluegrass wealthy, I realized, with whom my path has never before intersected….and these were the liberals among ‘em.

And then, after eating my vegs, while I still had time before the show started, I just – got up, discarded my plate, walked back through the intervening rooms and went out the door, got in my car, drove back over to my apartment.

I still don’t know what my reaction was all about.

It may be that I am, simply, for Obama but don’t yet know it; but it seemed deeper than that.

Right now I know that I had a great big YUCKO response to that scene.

Of course I will vote for Hillary in the primary on the 20th, but my estrangement is deep and total from the people who are the Democrat party stalwarts here.