Whenever I find myself landing at West 14th Street and 8th Avenue, I visit with the gnomelike creatures living in the nooks and crannies of the subway platforms of the A,C, and E lines and the walkway between those platforms and the L.

Many of them are carrying bags spilling over with coins; others are sneaking under the gates.  They amuse me with their avarice and naughtiness.  Are they reminding us of the Boss Tweed era, when all politicians were scoundrels, or are they commenting on the current state of things?  I sometimes find myself pondering these questions when I’m down there, but mostly I just smile at their pranks.

These little cartoonish folk (are they people or animals or a combination?) are the brain children of Tom Otterness.  The installation, which he calls “Life Underground,” was completed in 2004 and launched the sculptor’s successful career creating public art.  At www.tomostudio.com, you can find out what fun he’s been having.

I had the chance to visit Otterness’ studio in Long Island City a few years ago when he kindly opened it to the public as part of Open House New York (www.ohny.org).  Otterness told us that he had trouble ending the project.  “I just kept adding more figures until my wife put her foot down and told me ‘no more!’”

When Otterness wanted to seat one of the underground characters on a bench, the Transit Authority told him he could do so only if he purchased an extra bench for the platform–and he did!

These cartoonish gnomes sometimes bring to mind Sondheim’s made-for-television “Evening Primrose,” a haunting tale of menacing mannequins that come to life each night when a fancy department store goes dark.  I wonder what havoc these little folk wreck when we’re not looking…And why are they all bald and androgynous?

Yesterday morning I ventured out to see how the weekend deluge had affected the park, and to get some exercise before it started raining again.

The lushness was astonishing, so much green in so many forms:  glistening leaves, duck weed on the lakes, moss on the rocks.  But the special, unexpected treat was the reflections in the ponds and puddles.

Here is some of the beauty that I saw in the Ramble:

This afternoon I finally made it down to the Hi-Line to have a look, and I am very happy to report that it’s a uniquely magical place.  Climbing up thirty or so steps puts you above the street at about the level of the third floor of surrounding buildings, so you are above the fray while still aware of the very urban surroundings.  This leaves you better able to appreciate the architecture and get long vistas of the Hudson.

The original steel structure on both sides has been spiffed up and is handsomely geometric.  When visiting Chicago, I’ve always been jealous  about how that great city managed so well to preserve and integrate its industrial past with the present.  Now New York City has done the same.

Some of the original railroad tracks have been left in place and the slats along the way create miniature gardens for the plantings of Piet Oudolf, the brilliant landscape architect who designed the gardens at Battery Park (see my prior blog of that title).   Starting at Gansevoort Street, the plantings are subtle, with low grasses predominating. As one moves north, the miniature gardens become brightly floral, more plentiful, and luscious–but always with a sense of wildness that had been characteristic of the abandoned hi-line (which I was lucky enough to see about five years ago during Open House New York).

Only about 1/3 of the proposed route is open, from Gansevoort to 20th Street.  I can’t wait to go back and see how it develops and changes with the seasons and time of day.  The bumblebees are already feasting on the nectar of tall yellow floral spires, and I suspect that there will be butterflies before long.  For humans, the hi-line is a user-friendly park, and many people already seem quite at home on the modern, handsome benches–as if the hi-line has long been there, as indeed it has (www.thehighline.org).

My camera batteries gave out before I did, but here’s what you’ll see shortly after entering into this unique garden walkway from Gansevoort.  (The closest subway stop is the C or E to 14th Street.)

When I was in my teens, my dad planted a Japanese maple in the front of our “little box” suburban home.  It seemed rather exotic for the block, but it was a pretty tree and for me, that tree was what a Japanese maple was all about.

I supposed if I’d given the matter any thought, I would have realized that it was just one of many varieties.  But I didn’t consider this until one day in April when I visited the Steinhardt Garden in Westchester, thanks to a program called Open Days run by The Garden Conservancy (see my blog roll).

It was raining fairly hard that day, a fact that disappointed me until I saw how magnificent Japanese maples of every shape and hue looked in the rain.  There was, in this part of the garden, a very sweet melancholy, something like the melancholy created in Venice when it rains–a combination of a certain muted light, the rain itself, and glistening beauty beyond imagining.

I learned after taking the photographs below that the gardens were created by the plant and landscape specialists Gayatri Carole Rocherolle and her husband Jerome.  Gayatri’s book, THE LANDSCAPE DIARIES:  GARDEN OF OBSESSION documents the decades it took took to create the Steinhardt gardens, including the remarkable collection of maple trees.  Indeed, the couple searched far and wide for the most unusual shapes, colors, and varieties of maples.

I still have fond memories of the Japanese maple that stood elegantly out of place in front of our small house. But how thrilling and rewarding to keep discovering that the world is so much larger than the front lawn of one’s childhood.

Whenever I step into a train marked World Trade Center, I feel a jolt of sadness and memories of that magnificent, bright, clear, and desperately painful September–not only the 11th, but the weeks that followed–come flooding back.  A few months ago, when the tulips were still in bloom, I took a different route downtown, the Lexington Avenue line to Bowling Green.  Still the sadness was there.

But when I arrived, my mood changed from sadness to a feeling that was larger, richer, and deeper–more all-encompassing.

The southern tip of Manhattan is a highly evocative place under any circumstances, but the gardens designed by Piet Oudolf have added something magnificent to this piece of earth that is as old as the city itself, transforming the shards and ashes of my city’s history into a vista of sweeping beauty.

Curious about ferments?  About microfauna? About employing life in service of itself?  Come learn 5 simple ferments — in one beautiful night — with kindred world-changers — in a lovely, community-provided space — including time both during and after, to talk freely, and of things that bubble. (For more info, see www.natureworks-ny.net)

Recently I received the above e-mail announcing a workshop that focuses on preparing fermented foods. The e-mail reminded me that without my conscious intention, fermented foods–like sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt, and miso–had complete dropped out of my diet.

Culinary traditions all over the world include some form of fermented food and, according to Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Wisdom (www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/lacto.html) they play a vital role in the maintenance of good health:  The ancient Greeks understood that important chemical changes took place during [lacto-] fermentation…Like the fermentation of dairy products, preservation of vegetables and fruits by the process of lacto-fermentation has numerous advantages beyond those of simple preservation. The proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and increases vitamin levels. These beneficial organisms produce numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic and anti-carcinogenic substances.

I’m heading to the kitchen right now to make miso soup–miso being one of my favorite fermented foods!

Miso Noodle Soup with Arugula

If you have both dark and light misos on hand, use half of each for a more complex flavor.   Take care that you don’t boil the soup once you’ve added the miso; high heat destroys the vital enzymes in miso.

Serves 6 as appetizer

2 ounces bean thread (cellophane) noodles
3 ounces fresh shiitake
2 teaspoons safflower oil
3 scallions, thinly sliced (keep white and green parts separate)
1 small carrot, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced on the diagonal
Large handful baby arugula
1 teaspoon grated ginger
4 to 6 tablespoons dark miso, to taste
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
Tamari soy sauce (optional)

Place the noodles in a bowl with ample warm water to cover.  Set aside.

Meanwhile, trim the mushrooms and wipe off grit with a damp cloth.  Snap off stems and chop finely.  Thinly slice caps; set aside.

Heat the oil in a soup pot.  Add the scallion whites, mushrooms, and carrot, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms begin to soften, about 2 minutes.

Add 5 cups water and bring to a boil.  Drain the noodles and add them to the pot along with the arugula, ginger, and scallion greens.

Use a fork to blend 4 tablespoons miso into 1 cup warm water.  Turn heat to low and stir into soup.  If the soup doesn’t have a rich miso flavor,  ladle out some liquid and dissolve another tablespoon or two of miso into it; then stir into soup.  Add toasted sesame oil and tamari to taste.

One recent spring evening, The Sweetie and I were walking around Carroll Gardens and were startled to come upon these exuberant mosaics.  I’ve been lucky enough to see the ancient Byzantine and Roman mosaics in Ravenna, Tunis, and Piazza Amerina, Sicily, and while I appreciated their great beauty and craftsmanship, they did not evoke the visceral surprise and delight I experienced that evening at 108 Wycoff.

LEMONY RYE BERRY AND RED CABBAGE SALAD

Serves 6 to 8

In this colorful salad, chewy whole rye kernels contrast with crunchy red cabbage and verdant dill.  You can use any type of cooked whole grain kernels for the salad–farro, kamut, spelt, quinoa–you name it.

The puckery lemon vinaigrette is punctuated by pungent flecks of caraway seed. The salad is substantial enough for a light lunch and holds up well on a buffet table.

For the salad:
4 cups cooked rye berries
2 cups finely chopped red cabbage (about 6 ounces)
1 small carrot, grated
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill

For the dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon mild paprika
1 1/4 teaspoons whole caraway seeds, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, combine rye berries, cabbage, carrot, and dill.

In a mini-processor or bowl, thoroughly blend oil, lemon juice, paprika, caraway seeds, and salt.  Toss dressing into salad.  Adjust for salt.  Let salad sit for 10 minutes before serving.

I used to be a Manhattan snob, looking down on Brooklyn… that is… until I started spending time there.  I’ll never forget my first visit to Park Slope, when I gawked at all of the gorgeous brownstones with their stairs and stained glass still intact.  What a fool I’d been not have bought a house there in the early seventies, when it was still affordable.

Well, I didn’t…so I have to be content with visiting.  A few weeks ago I got off the subway at Atlantic Avenue and wandered for a hour or so.  Here’s a glimpse of the richness and diversity in a ten-block radius of that great borough.

Three cheers for Brooklyn, USA!

Knowing my interest in plants, Sally Placksin, the esteemed writer and host of the long-running radio show “What’s the Word?” (www.mla.org/radio) passed along the delightful news that there is a Yiddish-English dictionary of plant names.  It was compiled by Yiddish linguist Mordkhe Schaechter and published by YIVO Institute for Jewish research (www.yivoinstitute.org).

On the YIVO site, I came upon the following in a description of the book:  …‘potato’ is regionally known as búlbe, búlve, bílve, kartófl(ye), kartóplye (!), érdepl, ekhpl, ríblekh, barbúlyes, zhémikes, mandebérkes, bánderkes, krumpírn, etc. One town in Galicia, Sanok, at a crossroads of languages and cultures, boasts five different synonyms for ‘potato; such examples display the richness of the Yiddish language and its regional diversity.”

Reading the description, I became very nostalgic about my gram, who was born in this part of the world and loved potatoes.  How well I remember her delicious potato latkes, but given her own way, I think she would have been very happy to eat plain boiled potatoes with a little sour cream every day of her life.

Had I known about the five different synonyms for potato when she was alive, I would have asked her all about the differences.  She had a great memory about the early days and loved to tell stories.

According to Taylor’s Pocket Guide to Old-Fashioned Roses, these posies have a long history going back at least to the ancient Greeks.  Indeed, Sappho referred to them as the “queen of flowers.”

I thought I didn’t like roses, that is until I realized that the ones I’d always known were hybridized to be huge, abundant, pest-resistant, and long-lasting.  Along the way, these roses had lost their fragrance so I never found much to recommend them.

While becoming a docent at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I became aware of the Cranford Rose Garden’s collection of old and climber roses.   June is “rose month” at the Garden, and there is indeed a riot of roses in bloom.  Yesterday I took my camera around the border beds where the older varieties are planted, many of them delicate flowers with a circular pattern of unfurled single petals.

I still feel heady from their lovely fragrance. Wish there were some way I could send it along with these photos.

Any film with a title like this would have to grab me, but I knew before seeing it that the documentary was not about the cooking pot for which I write recipes.

I first heard about Pressure Cooker through Facebook from the director’s dad, Richard Grausman, whom I’ve known since his book AT HOME WITH THE FRENCH CLASSICS came out in 1988.  Soon after, Richard stopped writing cookbooks (although this one is still in print!) and became passionate about making it possible for inner-city kids to become chefs.  To this end, he began fund-raising with great determination and set up an organization called C-CAP, Careers Through Culinary Arts Program  (www.ccapinc.org) to provide teaching training, scholarships, job training, and career advising.

His daughter, Jennifer, directs this fine documentary (www.takepart.com/pressurecooker) which portrays the nitty gritty of daily life in a Culinary Arts program in a a Philadelphia ghetto high school, where students come from broken homes and shoulder huge responsibilities like caring for disabled siblings and doing all of the household cooking and cleaning.

We closely follow three of the students, but the real hero of the film is the teacher, Wilma Stephenson, who arrives before dawn and never stops.  Wilma’s tough-love approach to teaching gives these kids the determination to keep going despite very difficult odds.  Like a good therapist, she holds a vision for their future outside of the ghetto even when they don’t see a way out, and acts alternatively as nurturing mother and parental disciplinarian, the latter often with a kind of excessive badgering that made me (and the students) wince.

But mostly it’s her huge heart that bursts off the screen, and the kids see that huge heart shining through the curmudgeonly carapace.   At the end of the documentary, we witness a pressure-filled cooking competition after which many of her students receive scholarships (and I had a good cry).  These students are currently pursuing their dreams of becoming chefs and perhaps one or two of them will one day open their own restaurants.

It’s a great story, well told, and by extension we all leave the movie remembering how one person can really make a difference. Go Richard!  Go Jennifer!  Good job!

p.s. If you’d like to offer support or learn more, check either of the websites above.

Thanks to The Sweetie, who did all of the driving, I visited two private upstate gardens on Sunday, both open to the public as part of the Open Days program of the marvelous Garden Conservancy (see my blog roll).  One of the gardens, famous and much talked about, left me cold:  it lacked cohesion and the many beautiful plants, shrubs, and trees did not combine to create a memorable work of garden art.

But the second garden we visited was just the reverse: a memorable marvel to behold.  When I approached the garden of Robin Magowan and his wife Juliet Mattila in Salisbury, Connecticut, I felt as if I were entering a world apart where the thousands of tiny details added up to a land of enchantment filled with surprise and delight.

Although everything about the landscape was full of charm and discernment, the rock gardens were behind and to one side of the handsome house.  At every turn, miniature alpine plants poked out of the crevices between pavers and rocky hillocks.  The large, porous limestock rocks, Mr. Magowan told me, were from a nearby quarry.  This was difficult to believe since they looked ancient, at least as old as the white cliffs of Dover.

There is something so satisfying about passing through a garden gate, a marker that sets a space apart.  This one, opening onto the geometry of irregular tiles bordered by alpine plants, is made of branches and especially fetching.  The arbor above is an added treat:

Here’s a close-up of the tiles bordered by carpets of flowering alpine plants:

Exiting from this back-of-the-house garden, I walked about 100 paces to approach the front of Mr. Magowan’s writer’s studio.  There I saw a magic mountain of rocks and plants.  Mr. Magowan told me that the gardens were designed by the eminent Czechoslovakian botanist Joseph Halda.

Beyond the rocky hill is a carp pool (look to the right) surrounded by trees, shrubs, and additional alpine specimens:

Here are close-ups of two more special treats:

Would you agree with my calling these rock gardens a magnificent obsession?

Photo courtesy Hudson Valley Seed Library

Our world is changing so fast that I often have trouble taking it all in and knowing which way to turn. While saving seeds from one year to the next is about as old as agriculture, we can now become a member of a library to check out seeds rather than books.

One such library is the Hudson Valley Seed Library, www.seedlibrary.org, which focuses–as the name suggests–on gathering and saving seeds for plants that are native to the Hudson Valley or thrive in that region without putting the gardener or the earth through contortions.

It’s a locavore’s dream come true. For a mere $20, members receive 10 Garden Packs of their choice, discounts on additional Garden Packs, a monthly e-mail helping them time their garden tasks for the region, and discounts on Hudson Valley Seed Library events. Members who save seeds from the plants they grow may return them for credits toward their next year’s membership.

For those who live in the NYC area, there is a lecture/workshop this Sunday, June 7 from  4pm – 6pm at 208 West 13th Street.  It’s called Seed Saving: True Food Security with Ken Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library.  There will be slides and hands-on activities focusing on New York heirloom plants and the importance of preserving their genetic diversity.

Seeds are tiny miracles, each one containing all of the genetic information and nourishment that a plant needs to grow into something edible or beautiful to behold. I’ve always loved libraries, and becoming a member of a seed library seems like a fine idea to me.

And sowing seeds, then watching them grow, strikes me as a good way to slow down in this fast-changing world.

Last night I saw a fine documentary called FRESH (www.freshthemovie.com) in which farmers using brilliantly conceived, sustainable growing methods were celebrated for the heroes they are.

The film, directed with great sensitivity by Anna Joanes, portrays the palpable joy of farmers like Joel Salatin in rural Virginia and Will Allen in urban Milwaukee who are finding ways to farm that create high-quality food profitably and chemical free.  It was thrilling to have Salatin, Allen, chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill, and nutritionist/organic gardener/author Joan Gussow emerge after the screening to take questions.

The film and panelists received a standing ovation.  It was a thrilling moment, full of hope that we are on the cusp of great and long overdue change in American agriculture. (For more details on the growing grassroots movement towards sustainable farming, a great site to visit is www.eatwellguide.org.  I subscribe to their informative blog, The Green Fork, on an RSS feed.)

Before viewing the happy pigs, cows, chickens, and sprightly salad greens of these two featured farmers, I had to close my eyes during those moments when the devastating conditions of factory farming were screened.  A few times in the film, we witness a vacant look in the eyes of an average-Joe farming couple caught up in a nasty procedure that “grows” chickens inhumanely.  During the interviews, two beloved poodles cuddle on their laps, a visual that brilliantly captures the irony and tragedy of an animal-raising system that splits human psyches asunder.

On my recent trip to Utah, I met a farmer hero like Salatin and Allen by a combination of chance and determination.  Despite the magnificent scenery all around us, The Sweetie and I were beginning to languish about the fourth day into the trip.  Looking forward to eating well prepared, real food means a great deal to both of us, and we were having a rough time finding anything healthy to put on our plates.  There were fat people and fast-food restaurants all around us, and we’d run out of the wholegrain bread I’d brought along for breakfast…

So when we were served a complimentary appetizer of fresh, lightly picked vegetables at a delightful restaurant called Cafe Diablo in the tiny town of Torrey, we immediately asked their source and were told about Randy Ramsley’s Mesa Farm Market Bakery and Cafe in nearby Caineville.  In addition to wanting to see those veggies at their source, it so happened that Randy’s farm was right on scenic route 24.

So the next day, we headed for his place and traveled for what seemed like hours through variably gorgeous and desolate landscapes before suddenly out of nowhere there appeared this shack on the right side of the road:

It was about 4 p.m. and the place looked very closed, but I spotted a silver-haired man at the back and decided to knock on the front door.  Someone opened the door and there was Randy, who turned out to be the farmer and just about everything else at the moment.

Once inside, the place looked pretty barren of veggies and sandwiches, so we asked for some iced coffee.  Randy said he thought that could be done and proceeded to grind some fair-trade beans and make us a fresh batch, which proved to be the best coffee we had on the trip.

Once revived, I spotted some freshly baked loaves and was thrilled to learn that some were made of wholegrain flour.  Good, that would be breakfast and maybe part of the lunch for the next few days.  Randy had already delivered his organic salad greens and other vegetables to Cafe Diablo and another terrific restaurant called Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder (yes, there is a Boulder, Utah), so we couldn’t buy any of those, but we had a chance to chat as we sipped the fresh brew.

“How did you end up farming on this desolate stretch of road?” I asked.

Randy was hiking through the Caineville area, spotted the land, and knew it was going to be his job to farm there. “We are farming in the heart of the Caineville Badlands,” he explained to us (and in further detail on his beautiful web site www.mesafarmmarket.com).  “These badlands are some of the ‘baddest’ badlands in North America. Yet we grow what we believe to be some of the most heavenly tasting organic fruits and vegetables on the planet.”

Through hard work, creative genius, and a belief in his mission to provide high quality food to those who can’t otherwise get it, Randy and his co-workers have developed a method of farming sustainably in the Utah desert at the same time as he improves the soil in these badlands. He uses a type of drip irrigation developed in Israel and maintains a herd of goats to do the weeding.  The goats digest the weeds, and drop their fertilizing pellets onto the soil.  Little by little he’s developing a small artisanal cheese business based on the goat milk.

On his 50 acres, he also has an acre of fruit trees.  In the middle of it is a chicken coup.  Randy explained that the 50 or so chickens eat garden waste, bugs, weeds, and fallen fruit. They provide eggs as well as nitrogen rich fertilizer in their pellets.

When Randy delivers his bread and fresh vegetables to the restaurants he serves, he collects their waste vegetable oil and turns it into biodiesel fuel, then uses this fuel to run the pumps and tractor.

It’s a circular system like the ones described by Salatin and Allen.  Nothing is wasted, the soil becomes richer in nutrients each year, and people get to eat the healthiest food they’ve ever tasted.

Meeting Randy was a highlight of our trip to Utah.  We came away knowing we’d met someone who was doing the work that he loved and was meant to do, and we were the richer for the experience.  As for me, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any living heroes and I feel very lucky to have met three of them in the space of one week.

Randy's "tunnel" of lettuces; photo courtesy of Mesa Farm Market.

I’m still reeling from the vast open spaces of Utah and noticing with a kind of sweet sadness the ways that my fellow New Yorkers use small, confined spaces to bring pleasure and beauty to themselves and others.  Except for those lucky few who own town houses or garden apartments, New Yorkers are forced to make miniature gardens in containers or window boxes, often raising that endeavor to a fine art.  Landscape architects also do a fine job of planting stunning borders in front of tony buildings.

Seen at 2 pm on the Prospect Park subway platform.  The reverse side of the cart had more drums plus a computer hanging off its back.  How were they going to get it up the stairs?

Seen parked in front of a synagogue on the Upper West Side around 3 pm:

All photos copyright Lorna Sass, 2009

Ever since I began learning about cactus and other succulent plants, I have longed to see the desert in bloom.  So far I haven’t managed to get the timing quite right.

When I anticipated our recent trip to Utah, I had visions of monumental mountains and gorges dancing in my head.  I never realized how many high desert wild flowers would manage to add bright splashes of color to the arid land–so dry that my nose began to feel itchy and crusty within a few days.

How these wild flowers manage to survive in such parched earth I do not know, but I do know that they bring a delicate, soft, and gentle beauty to the otherwise formidable, towering, majestic landscape.