Pawpaw on NPR!

Check out this great segment about pawpaws on NPR.  The link includes an audio segment and a short video.  I learned that Thomas Jefferson and Lewis and Clark all ate pawpaws!

A Bit About My Home

I have the great good fortune of living in the Holyoke Edible Forest Garden.  I moved here in the summer of 2007, when the garden was well underway, having been designed and maintained by my husband, Jonathan Bates, and our housemate, Eric Toensmeier (with help from many, many people, including members of the Western Massachusetts Permaculture Guild).  This is the mission they developed:

"Our urban forest garden is an intensively managed backyard foraging paradise, a megadiverse living ark of useful and multifunctional plants from our own bioregion and around the world. The forest garden is the unifying element of a larger permaculture design for food production, wildlife habitat, and social spaces that encompasses the entire property."

This is what the place looked like in the beginning, 2004:

Looks like your regular urban lot, and well, it is.  (Or should I say it was.)

Here's the same view, taken in 2008:

And a similar view in the summer of 2010 (note the persimmon tree on the left, the lotuses in the water garden, and the hardy kiwi arbor - three of my favorite things in the garden):

It's from this urban back (and front) yard that I get most of the things I write about in this blog.  It is a delight to live here.  May this blog inspire the creation of gardens like this in all places!  Food Forests For All! 

Giant Ground Sloth's Delight

But first, an update on the chestnuts.  I did go back for more, and collected seven pounds!  It was pretty fun.  I wore thick leather gloves to protect my hands.  Could have used some more bug spray.  But I was just in awe at how much food was on those trees.  Incredible.  We simmered the nuts in 120 degree water for 20 minutes in an attempt to kill the weevil eggs before they hatch.  Eating an itsy bitsy bug egg is one thing, but a full blown worm in my chestnut?  Uh, no thanks.  Now the nuts are spread out on beach towels on our kitchen floor to dry.  Our kitchen is always full of "projects".

But today I want to talk about pawpaws.  Asimina triloba, our beloved North American fruit.  When we were kids a lot of us learned the song, "pickin' up pawpaws, put 'em in your pocket", but that's as close as we ever got to an actual pawpaw.  Well, they are native to this region, easy to grow, pest free, and amazing!  (But really, I don't think you could fit them in your pocket.  Maybe one per pocket, unless you have some mighty big pockets.  They're about the size of a mango or large potato.)

What are they like?  Slice them open and you'll find loads of cream-colored custardy flesh surrounding a set of large dark brown seeds.  Describing the taste is something that has eluded many.  They taste kind of like melon-banana-fruitpunch-vanilla-floral-custard.  They taste like something from the tropics.  It's really mind blowing that they grow right here. 

Some ideas for cooking with them are to make them into a smoothy.  I like this best using frozen pawpaw flesh and milk.  I bet frozen yogurt would be great too.  If you used frozen yogurt you could use fresh pawpaws and still get that chilly, slushy texture.  I also like to make a baked pudding recipe that I found in Joy of Cooking.  Oh!  And this year Jonathan made pawpaw wine!  That will deserve its own post here.

And you can't go wrong with eating them fresh off the tree.  That's how giant sloths and other megafauna ate them.  Pawpaws evolved alongside these giant animals and that's why their seeds are so big!  Who else but a giant sloth, mastadon, or camel could eat a whole pawpaw and poop out the seeds?  Dude! 

Chestnuts. Sigh.

It's chestnut time!  Oh, what a wonderful time of year.  We've been closely monitoring the trees we collect from.  We went by them this weekend and gathered a small batch of nuts.  One of the branches had broken and so the nuts on that branch were open and ready for the taking.  We went by again yesterday and the other nuts are still not quite ready.  But they will be soon, and we are not the only people who know about this group of trees.  It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.  We want to be sure to get some, so we're going back this weekend to see what's shaking.

I fell in love with chestnuts while living in Budapest, Hungary during my junior year of college.  Vendors would roast them right there on the street.  They smelled so good in the crisp, fall air.  My host mother, Ilona, would make THE MOST AMAZING dessert: Gesztenye pure (chestnut puree).  Oh, it was heavenly.  And I just looked online and found a recipe, so I am definitely making it this year. 

But really, you don't even need a recipe for enjoying chestnuts.  Just roast 'em, like the Christmas Carol says.  They are nutty and sweet, creamy, and tender.  A perfect way to welcome in the fall. 

As they say in Hungary, Jo etvayot!  Bon appetit!

Yam Berries! Yam Berries!

The yam berries are ready!  We have a beautiful Chinese Yam (Dioscorea batatas) planted out front, and it is full of aerial tubers - little "air potatoes". 

I am thinking up ways to prepare them.  The simplest would be to boil them up and serve with butter, salt, pepper, and maybe some rosemary.  I'm also thinking about using them for a Spanish Tortilla.  Or maybe roasting them to make some little round "fries".  Seems like a fun snack food!  They're just about the size of a Junior Mint.  You could sneak some in your bag and take them to the movies!

I've read that the large taproot is a staple crop in Japan, and quite delicious.  But we don't really have enough plants to go eating their taproots.  So, we'll enjoy the "berries".  I'm waiting till next week to cook with them (we have a video shoot at our house and want to keep them on the vine for that).  I will let you know how my experiments turn out!

 (photo of taproot, leaves, yam berries, and pruners for scale)

Holyoke's Extra Famous Beach Plum Crisp

When we first made this a couple years ago we were ecstatic.  What great flavor!  We couldn't stop talking about it, and it's become an annual tradition: Holyoke's Extra Famous Beach Plum Crisp.  Why is it EXTRA famous?  Well, you'll just have to try it and find out. 

We have a beautiful beach plum in our backyard.  It's an improved variety of the kind you find near the beach.  It makes luscious little plums that we always have to fight the blue jays for.  We tend to have trouble with stone fruits here - they seem to attract pests - and the beach plum is no exception.  Bummer because they're so tasty.

You can get your own beach plum shrub from our nursery, Food Forest Farm.  Or you can forage for plums at your favorite New England or Mid Atlantic beach.

The recipe is simple and easy:

5 cups beach plums, pitted and halved
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup cold butter, cut up

Preheat oven to 375.  Spread plums evenly onto bottom of lightly greased 13" x 9" glass baking dish.  Mix lemon juice and vanilla in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over plums.

In a separate bowl, mix topping ingredients together.  Sprinkle evenly over plums.  Bake 35 - 40 minutes.

Here's a picture of me and Jonathan near the beach plum at our wedding in the forest garden.  Check out the beautiful fruits (and I don't mean us!)

(Photo by Becca Bock Hagen)

Kings, Chickens, and Other Neighborhood Finds

In my post about the bananas I mentioned that with an Edible Forest Garden sometimes you don't have to cook - you just give the products away and they come back to you as food.  Well, this post is about how sometimes you don't have to grow things.  You just treat your neighborhood as your garden, and forage away.

We live in an urban neighborhood, downtown Holyoke, so if you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.  Jonathan got the ball rolling the other day.  He loaded up his truck with some empty spackle buckets and went out into the world.  I was out playing violin and when I came home the house was loaded with foraged goodies.  In a shopping center parking lot, he found a cache of King Boletes!  At a city park he found Berkeley's Polypore!  At the side of the street he found loads of Concord Grapes!  And over at the cemetery he found two apple trees! 

My parents gave us a juicer last year for Christmas, so we brought it out and proceeded to make some fabulous grape juice and apple juice.  All for free!  I cooked up some of the King Boletes.  I sliced them to about 1/4 inch thickness, and sauteed them in olive oil and butter with some chopped garlic.  Finished them off with a dash of sea salt.  Wow.  So good.  No wonder they call it the King.  We had a simple dinner of sauteed mushrooms and fried eggs (thanks, girls!) with parmesan cheese. 

The information we found online about Berkeley's Polypore was not so inspirational as far as cooking it.  One article Jonathan found was talking about how you need to marinate it well in lots of oil, bake it, and then squeeze out all the oil.  Somehow that doesn't sound that appealing to me.  So, it's still in our fridge.

Jonathan's foraging has rubbed off on me.  Yesterday I went for a run on one of my usual routes - to the Dunkin Donuts and back.  I was running through a local park when something caught my eye.  Could this be Chicken of the Woods?  I decided to keep running till my turn around and then come back for it on my return trip.  When I got back to the spot, there it was, nestled at the bottom of an oak tree.  There was a big (20 inches in diameter) one and then a smaller pup (8 inches).  The pup seemed to be more tender, plus I was still 10 minutes from home and thought it might be hard to jog carrying a giant mushroom.  So I picked the pup and ran home, ipod in one hand, mushroom in the other (too bad I didn't get a photo of that to post here!).  I got some interesting looks, but hey, it's free, tasty food!  The plan for this afternoon is to make a chicken pot pie with wild mushrooms.  I can't wait.

Eating the Giant Lamb's Quarters

We are growing a plant that we call Giant Lamb's Quarters.  Eric brought it back from a trip to Colorado.  He met someone there who had found the plant growing in an urban lot in Canada and had brought it back to his garden where it had been self seeding for the past 10-15 years.  We had never seen a Lamb's Quarters with leaves that big, so we were eager to try it.  We don't know what species it is, but it is a member of the Chenopodium family, which is the same family that includes Good King Henry and Quinoa.

Jonathan brought some in today and we cooked it up for lunch.  Just a simple saute with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.  We cooked a mix of the large leaves and their soft stems.  It tasted delicious.  Kind of nutty, kind of beet-like.  We weren't sure how it would taste since it had begun to put on flower buds, and oftentimes that makes a plant turn bitter, but we were happy to find it still had a very delicate flavor.

Food Photography

I love looking at cookbooks and food magazines, especially when there are photos.  The photos always get me interested in making the dish.  I want to have photos in this cookbook. 

I don't normally take many photos in my life.  I prefer to write about my experiences, rather than capturing them on film.  But I love looking at pictures, so I think I will try to develop my photography skills.  We are in need of a new camera anyway, so we'll look for one that takes good close up shots, with good focus and vibrant colors. 

I was just looking at this Intro to Food Photography and it has some good tips.  Their first tip is about good lighting.  I'm not sure how to create good lighting, but I will try!  I remember when I worked at the violin shop I would take pictures of the violins for the website.  It was so hard to get the lighting set so that it brought out the shine and richness of the varnish and so the flash didn't bounce of the wood.  I wonder if taking pictures of food is any easier? 

I have been looking at Aran Goyoaga's blog "Cannelle et Vanille" for a long time.  Her work is an inspiration to me.  I see she offers food styling and photography workshops.  Hmmm....  I wonder if there's someone local I could work with and learn from.

Banana Leaves

One of my favorite things about our Holyoke Edible Forest Garden are the banana trees growing in front of our house.  People are always surprised to see them growing here.  They grow tall each summer, with big tropical leaves spreading out to cover our front porch.  Our climate is too cold for them to fruit, but we love them for the look.  Below is a photo of my housemate, Marikler, with our front tropical garden.  The banana trees are to the right and bottom of the photo.

Our neighbors love the banana trees for the leaves!  One day I came home from work and pulled into the driveway to find a neighbor standing there with a machete in his hand.  He said it was about to frost and asked if he could cut the leaves.  He wanted to give the leaves to his sister to make pasteles.  You can find out more about pasteles here.  He offered to bring us pasteles in exchange for the leaves.  What a great trade.  That's the thing about edible forest garden cooking.  Sometimes you don't even have to cook!  You just grow cool things, give them away, and people bring you fully prepared food.