"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Today, many of us appreciate roses as something to be admired in a solely visual sense. What with modern plant hybridization, the vast majority of rose varieties commercially available have little to no fragrance. But Shakespeare was right in noting the sweet scent of the rose as its most distinctive and valuable attribute (Romeo and Juliette, II, ii, 1-2). According to Carla Emery, “the scentless rose is a modern reality” and one definitely worth avoiding if you want to do more than look at your rose plants. Though they may be thorny, fragrant roses have a lot to offer in the kitchen and for arts and crafts. Carla Emery suggests sticking to “old-fashioned” roses like Damasks, Bourbons, Centifolias, Albas, and Gallicas to use in potpourris, rose jars, beads, and food.

But what exactly is it about the rose that we can find useful? Emery focuses on the hips and the petals.

Rose Hips—These are the round orange-to-reddish “fruit” formed after the flower of a rose has bloomed. The hip is the seedpod of the plant. Some hips are better tasting and bigger than others; Carla Emery recommends Japanese rose varieties, sweetbriar eglantine, or wild rose hips for their generous size and doses of Vitamin C!

Rose Petals—These are a bit more obvious: the petals of the blooming flower contain oils you can use for scent or flavor. Harvesting rose petals takes a bit of attention, though:

Gather just when the rose has fully expanded. If you wait a day longer, until they start to fade, they will have lost some of that precious fragrance. Gather in the morning after the dew has dried, but before they have gotten really warmed by the sun. Dry before proceeding by pressing them gently between layers of cloth. Dry them in a dehydrator or on a muslin cloth laid over a screen in an airy, shady place.

Here are a few ideas to make the most your old-fashioned roses:

Rose Hip Tea

Boil dried coarse-ground rose hips with water, about 1 T. for each cup of tea. The longer you boil, the stronger your tea. Mash the hips with a spoon to get out all the juice, and strain. Sweeten with brown sugar or honey.

Rose Brandy

To flavor sauces for cakes and puddings, gather rose petals while the dew is on them. Fill a bottle with them. Then pour into the bottle a good brandy. Steep 3 to 4 weeks. Strain and rebottle.

Rose Petal Honey

This recipe was a favorite of Martha Washington’s. Bring 2 pints of honey to a boil. Add 1 pint rose petals. Let stand 4 hours. Heat again. Strain into jars.

Damp Rose Potpourri

Dry the rose petals just until they feel leathery — 8 hours or overnight. Use ice cream-type salt that is coarse and not iodized. Layer salt and rose petals in the bottom of a glass jar, 1⁄4 c. salt to 2 c. petals. Add some orrisroot, too. Keep a lid on the jar and open only when you want to let out some fragrance.

GERRY RAFFERTY: RIGHT DOWN THE LINE

It seems reasonable to draw this to people's attention, since its subject was a key part of an influential if short period of my life. I haven't seen any advance version but I think it includes some use of a photograph of Gerry and his producer Hugh Murphy that I took in a small studio in Worthing in 1980  -  they were there co-producing Richard and Linda Thompson, if memory serves. Right Down the Line will be shown on BBC 4 TV later.

The Magical Fruit

Fact: The peanut is a bean, not a nut.

Fact: The chickpea is also a bean, not a true pea.

Fact: The soynut is the seed from a bean plant, not a nut.

Confused? I was too, until I took a little time to get to know the legume family—the large group of healthy and tasty foods to which all of the above belong.

Legumes are part of the family Leguminosae, or the “pea” family. Legumes all have clusters of fruit that matures in pods. Beans are actually just a small subgroup of this huge category. There are about 200 edible species of legumes cultivated worldwide, with about 1,500 different varieties from snap peas to lima and runner to lentil, soy and black-eye. There are so many different types of legumes that it is difficult to tackle them all in one post, but here are some key facts true of all legumes that can help to clarify what they are and why we should eat them!

Carla Emery says that legumes are incredibly important foods. And when Carla Emery says something is important, I listen. Here’s why:

• Since most of the common legumes are nitrogen fixers, they are great for renewing fertility in a crop rotation following heavy feeders, and they make perfect “green manure.” Till legume roots into your soil along with the leftover coffee grounds from the last post!
• They dry easily and store well under the simplest care, even increasing their protein value in storage.
• Together with a grain, they make a complete protein. So, after grains, beans are the most important food on the planet. So don’t neglect your beans, especially when grains are present in a meal.

A bit about combining beans and grains. All over the world beans are regularly eaten in combination with a grain, creating a complete protein combination essential to all human diets. Both grains and beans are good foods, but no bean or grain by itself contains all the amino acids necessary for human health, unlike meat and dairy (and mushroom) products. For example, corn is low in lysine and tryptophan, 2 essential amino acids. Beans are rich in lysine and tryptophan but lack zein, which corn can provide. So grains and beans together are as good as drinking milk or eating steak (an important detail for vegans or vegetarians to consider). But they must be eaten in the same meal for it to work. You get the same result with corn and bean stew (succotash), baked beans and bread, beans with barley or rice, beans and pasta, or corn chips and bean dip.

Besides providing you with a complete protein in a meal, legumes can have quite long-term health benefits, since consuming legumes regularly can reduce your risk of both heart disease and cancer. In fact, Carla Emery says that eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day reduces you cancer risk by half.

For a healthy and tasty snack, try dipping corn chips in your own homemade hummus!

Hummus—made from the “garbanzo bean” (as it is known in Spain) or “chickpea” (in England). This legume is actually grown all over the world in warm climates and is prominent in national dishes from India, Italy, the Middle East and Latin America.

2 cups precooked garbanzos

1 garlic clove (or 5, if you boil them ahead for a milder taste)

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup lemon juice

Puree garbanzos and garlic. Add olive oil and lemon juice. If it seems too thick or dry, thin by adding a little water. Chill before serving.

Change it up! Try adding sesame oil or tahini for a nuttier flavor. Or add roasted bell peppers or sun-dried tomatoes and spread on crackers or wheat bread for a perfect protein!

BOB DYLAN'S US TOUR ENDS

Bob finished the first US leg of this year's touring last night at the House of Blues in Boston, Massachusetts. His set introduced no song previously unplayed on the tour, and it began as follows:

1. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
2. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
3. Things Have Changed.

Clearly they haven't lately.

OCCASIONAL PICTURES NO. 78

photo © Duncan  Hume, 1992

 

Wake up and smell the coffee

For many people, Seattle is synonymous with Starbucks. And sure enough, my fellow Seattleites and I are avid drinkers of this satisfying beverage, and even boast ownership of the birthplace of famous Starbucks Coffee from Pike Place Market. However proud we may be of our city’s role in the modern celebration of the coffee bean, it is easy to forget the origins of the plant and the process required in order to hold that fragrant, steaming mug of caffeine in our hands. Thankfully, we have Carla Emery to fill us in.

The coffee plant is native to east Africa. It looks like a small tree or shrub and grows up to 8 feet tall in a pot (up to 15 feet outdoors). A dwarf variety gets only 3 feet tall. Coffee can be grown in a temperate-zone garden if you transplant to a container and bring inside for the winter. The coffee plant is quite ornamental with its scented white flowers and shiny dark green foliage. The coffee plant can’t survive a frost and needs some shade to protect it from excessive sun. It can be grown outdoors in the California coastal area from about Santa Barbara on south.

Planting

Keep seeds dry before planting. Plant coffee seed on the soil surface in a sand-peat or half-organic mix. Keep warm (about 85 ̊F) and allow a sizable time (a month or more) for germination. Once well started, transplant outdoors or to 4-inch pots. Grow potted coffee in well-drained soil; situate in a sunny window. Young coffee plants grow best at 70–75 ̊F. If you have trouble with brown leaves, it means you’ve been watering too much, need to move the plant to a larger pot, or both.

Harvesting

For flowering and fruiting, the plants need 55–58 ̊F night temperatures. Without those conditions, the plant will just grow bunches of lovely dark green glossy leaves — no flowers, no beans. Also be cautious with pruning. Cutting off the top does no harm, but trimming branches eliminates your crop, since flowers and beans grow there. The white flowers evolve into 1⁄2 - inch fruits that are first green and then red, purple, or scarlet when ripe. When ripe, harvest them.

Using

Each pod contains 2 coffee beans, which you rescue from the outer pulp, dry, roast, grind, and soak in very hot water to make your beverage.

If you live outside of the ideal temperature zone or just don’t have the time or means to maintain your own coffee plant, there are other ways to localize your participation in the coffee industry—for example, garden maintenance or composting.

If you buy coffee and cook it at home, you can use the leftovers to give back to the earth in your own garden. “Coffee grounds are a first- class, environmentally harmless deterrent to ants. To keep ants out of your house, or any other building, just lay a solid 3-inch layer against your foundation all the way around. To deal with an anthill, surround it likewise with a sizable ring of grounds. Grounds will also prevent cutworms (as do wood ashes). Just dig a shallow ditch around vulnerable plants and pour grounds into it. As they break down, they’ll also add fertility to the soil.”

Coffee grounds are also a great addition to your compost pile. “Earthworms love them and will quickly turn them into rich humus. And a manure/grounds/leafy mulch mixture added to poor soil will practically instantly make it fertile.” Carla Emery warns that consuming the large quantity of coffee it would take to produce grounds for a large garden could be a strain on your pancreas. She advises not to drink all the coffee yourself, but “contact a business that brews coffee in quantity, and ask them to let you take all those unwanted coffee grounds off their hands!”

OCCASIONAL PICTURES NO. 153

BOB DYLAN
Piano Player, 2009
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)

You can find this, plus other images, on one of the pages of the Gagosian Gallery website. The gallery is also announcing the forthcoming publication of four different versions of Dylan's new book of paintings The Asia Series  -  that is, there are four different front covers, so that completists will have to spend four times as much money.

THE ELVIS ATLAS

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the publication of my co-authored book THE ELVIS ATLAS: A Journey Through Elvis Presley's America, published in US hardback by the now-defunct Reference Division of Henry Holt in New York. I was e-mailed, recently, by someone in the Dylan world, to say he had noted that a new edition was to be published by Chartwell Inc., a subsidiary of Music Sales Inc., on September 15th.

This was news to me. Having looked into it, such a thing was indeed being advertised (and pre-orders taken) on Amazon.com  -  and with my name misspelt on the front cover  -  yet when I contacted the publisher, who passed me on to the original packager's agent, I was then told the whole project was only a possibility. I have asked, now, whether this possible republication will repeat the many dozens of errors that were included in the original edition (which went to press when I was on holiday, so that I had no opportunity to proof-check it). I hope not. Perhaps having made the new putative publisher aware of all these errors (as well as the new one of my own name being misspelt) they will back off and not publish it after all. That would certainly be cheaper than bothering to correct everything.

Amazon, to their credit, were very quick to correct my name on the link at the top, but not of course in the publisher's blurb below it...

I'd love to see a decent new edition of the book out, naturally; but this seems unlikely to be it.

Fun Facts About Fowl

Let’s talk about birds—geese, specifically. When I think of ideal household pets or livestock, geese are not the first creatures to come to mind. Actually, until about a week ago, I thought of geese only as large, flapping, non-cuddly producers of gooey droppings. Thankfully, Carla Emery has forced me to reconsider this opinion. If you are feeling similarly on the fence about these great waterfowl, here are a few fun facts that may help sway you in their favor.

Geese are basically a hardy cash crop.

Believe it or not, geese can thrive on no more than grass. “In fact, except in winter, geese fare quite well with very little care. It’s not unusual to see them foraging through snow. They are extremely resistant to disease and parasites, and they need only a little shade in summer and a bit of shelter against extreme cold. Waterfowl are actually hardier in resistance to poultry diseases than chickens and seldom suffer disease when kept in small flocks. (However, when waterfowl are raised in very large numbers in a small area, they, like all animals under those conditions, are more likely to be affected by disease.)” Geese are generally raised for their meat, but will also lay eggs for an amazing number of years. (Carla Emery also suggests that this could be an example to us on the benefits of plain living and moderation.)

They can moonlight as watchdogs

Geese often form strong attachments to their owners and can manifest this connection in useful ways, like sounding the alarm when a predator or unfamiliar visitor enters the scene.

“Sylvia Nelson, Hillsdale, WY, wrote me, ‘Our first batch of geese, gray Toulouse, imprinted on me and just worship me. We also have a few white Embdens and 2 crossbreeds, hatched out last season, our first successful hatching. Toulouse and Embdens are supposed to be gentle, but a couple of years ago we learned how fierce they can be. My husband woke up one night, with a terrible ruckus going on in the duck and goose yard. He looked out, and saw a fox in the yard. We had seven geese at the time, and each one had a mouthful of fox, and were each pulling in a different direction. The next morning we found a couple of scratches on the geese, no missing geese or ducks, and chunks of fox fur all over the yard, plus a 1-inch-square piece of hide. The fox never returned!’”

Geese are classier animals than you might think.

Carla Emery points out that certain goose breeds carry themselves with a certain amount of grace, and that they look nearly as lovely on the water as swans. Additionally, geese tend to act fairly conservatively in regards to mating.

“Geese generally choose partners in the fall. Once the groupings are established, it is difficult to add more geese. Geese do not mate on first encounter like so many other animals. If your proposed partners are new to each other, you’ll have to allow them time to get acquainted. Many ganders do not change partners easily. Previous companions have to be completely absent for as long as a month before such a gander will accept one or more new ones.”

Since geese are such low-maintenance, useful livestock, I am forced to reconsider my aversion to their size and droppings and admit that their desirable qualities make them entirely worthwhile to keep. Geese can make a fine roast for a holiday dinner, and their eggs can be prepared just as you would use one from a chicken (though they are considerably larger, so you use fewer). Goose feathers can be plucked from a live or butchered bird and used to make pillows, quilts, beds, clothing, and even quill pens!

If you’re still not convinced, just wait until your mouth starts watering over one of Carla Emery’s favorite goose recipes!

Braised gosling

This is a delicious way to prepare a bird that has just reached roasting size. Use a roaster with a rack at the bottom of it. Put a chunked carrot, an onion, a turnip, a pared and cored apple, and a stalk of celery on the grating. Lay the bird on that. Rub salt, pepper, and a little sage on it. Pour some boiling water in the side. Cover and roast at 350 ̊F, 15 minutes to the pound. Baste with butter.

To make the gravy, remove the gosling when done, and mash the vegetables by pouring them and the cooking liquid through a sieve into a bowl. Skim away as much of the grease as possible after it has set a moment. Chop the cooked giblets (except the liver, which you discard), and add them to the broth. Put about 3 T. of the goose grease into a frying pan. Thicken with flour, then add the broth gradually, stirring the lumps out before adding more liquid, until it has all been added. Season your gravy to taste. Serve the bird on a platter, the gravy in a bowl. Have mashed potatoes ready to pour the gravy over. Applesauce, and green peas or lima beans will complete a wonderful meal.

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Marcus Evans - The place of Innovation for the world

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BOB, BOY & 1937 HARMONICA

Nice story (and pictures) here on BobLinks, drawn to my attention by John Carvill, about events at Dylan's Nashville concert on August 1st.

That is one big harmonica, too.

Garlic: more than vampire repellant

I am not terribly concerned about vampire attacks for one simple reason: I love garlic. I put garlic in almost any savory dish from scalloped potatoes to homemade hummus to scrambled eggs. And I’m not talking about a single clove here or there—I go through probably one or two heads of garlic per week. One way to demonstrate the potent and enduring nature of my love for garlic is this: when my dad and I make garlic bread together, we plan ahead and make one loaf bursting with garlicky goodness for ourselves and another designed for normal human beings who prefer the taste of bread with a hint of garlic. Personally, I just can’t get enough of it.

Carla Emery might not be as overly enthusiastic as I am about garlic, but she has some good information about the nature of garlic and its multitude of uses.

“Garlic is a hardy perennial (though usually grown like an annual), the strongest member of the onion family in its sulfide of allyl content — that good stuff that acts as wormer, disinfectant, etc. Shallots, its closest relative, are basically a mild-flavored garlic variety. Like shallots, garlic blooms (pink flowers), but it may or may not make seed depending on the variety and circumstances. Instead garlic is usually propagated by garlic bulbs or “heads” that grow underground (roots go as deep as 2 feet). Each head is made up of a cluster of smaller ones, each called a “clove.” Garlic is a type of onion, a semihardy perennial that, since it’s not damaged by frost or light freezing, can be left in the garden over winter in the Pacific climate — or can be dug up and stored like onions. It’s grown both for the kitchen garden and for commercial sale (it yields a good profit from a very small acreage). Store-bought garlic is usually too dry to plant. Buy a cluster of garlic cloves from a plant nursery or mail-order source.”

A few interesting facts about garlic:

If your garlic tastes bitter when cooked, it means you cooked it over too high a heat. Many cooks throw onions and garlic in the pan together, but garlic takes less time to cook than onion, so make sure to give the onions a few minutes before adding garlic.

There is a cure to garlic breath! Carla Emery suggests chewing on raw parsley or celery leaves.

Garlic can be used as an insect repellent. Carla Emery says, “to fight insects and plant blights, blend several garlic cloves with some water and 1 T. cooking oil or soap emulsion. Strain. Dilute to 1 qt. and spray on. It works very well but must be done very often if you’re in a serious battle situation.”

Garlic is good for you. And that goes beyond adding it to everything you cook (like I do).

“Garlic has genuine antibiotic properties. Garlic juice, lemon juice, and some sweetening mixed in a cup of warm water are good for a sore throat. Garlic juice applied to ant bites helps make the pain go away. For a patient with a chest cold, mix garlic juice and a vapor rub ointment. Smooth that on a square of cloth, cover with another cloth, and place on chest. Garlic is also a diuretic that thins blood and lowers blood pressure. To prevent travelers’ dysentery, eat a clove per day. It has been used to treat patients (humans and animals) who need worming and has no toxic side effects. To worm a large cat, give one crushed clove each month. So whether you use it for medical or culinary reasons, have at it!”

If you’re a fan or garlic or just looking for a tasty power food, try an easy recipe at home!

Quick Garlic Soup

Heat 12 cloves crushed garlic for about 8 minutes in 3 c. rich milk.

Roast Garlic Spread

Cut the tips off a whole head of garlic (don’t peel or separate cloves). Wrap the head in foil; bake at 350 ̊F until cloves get soft and pulpy. Squeeze the mush onto crackers, toast, or good fresh bread. From The Good Food Guide, edited by Lane Morgan (Sasquatch Books, 1992).