Flatbush Gardener: December 2008

2008-12-31

2008 Wrap-up

A young raccoon in my backyard in Flatbush, Brooklyn in June of 2008. My post about them was in the top five of 2008, measured both by visits and number of comments.

It was a year of great changes and terrible losses for me. I began 2008 by taking classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden toward a Certificate in Horticulture, which I hope to complete by the end of this year. I remain involved in the gardening activism of Sustainable Flatbush, both in the Gardening Committee, and in the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. I organized a Brooklyn Blogade, a meeting of bloggers, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and helped with the 2008 annual Blogfest. I also lost two of my best friends: my cat, Spot, at the beginning of the year, and my father, Jerry, just four weeks ago.

To see out this old year and welcome in the new one, I thought I'd review and recap some of what I've written for this blog during 2008, and your responses to it.

Overall stats

Number of posts published: 236 (averaging 2 posts every 3 days)
Busiest month: April, with 38 posts (more than 1 per day)
Slowest month: November, with only 10 posts (1 every 3 days)

22,896 people visited this blog during 2008. There were 32,073 visits, an average of 88 per day. About 70% were first-time visitors.

Greatest Hits of 2008

The most popular content on the blog.

By visits

According to Google Analytics, from which I've collected these stats, "unique page views" are the number of visits during which a page was viewed. Page views are higher, since the same page may be viewed multiple times during a single visit. Unique pageviews, however, doesn't distinguish multiple visits from the same person or IP address.

(Magi)Cicada Watch, about the Brood XIV Magicicadas, which unfortunately have been extirpated in Brooklyn, 2008-05-21, 763 visits
Flatbush Rezoning Proposal will define the future of Victorian Flatbush, my report on a public hearing and analysis of the proposal, 2008-06-13, 483 visits
Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 405 visits
Sources of Plants for Brooklyn Gardeners, 2008-04-29, 367 visits
These two posts, both of them memorials, are close enough to call it a tie:
- 90 Years Ago: The Malbone Street Wreck, 2008-11-01, 310 visits
- Steven Earl Clements, 1954-2008, 2008-11-14, 307 visits

Special mention goes to my tutorial on the OASIS mapping service. Although I wrote it in February of 2007, almost two years ago, it was the third most popular page during 2008, with 433 unique page views. It's got "legs".

By comments

It's interesting to me that my two most commented posts this year were both obituaries. It's been a year of big changes in my life.

Spot, 2008-02-23, 14 comments
Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008, 2008-12-01, 12 comments
Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 11 comments
Snake in the Garden , Prospect Park, about a guy ripping branches off a cherry tree, 2008-04-26, 10 comments
Three-way tie, with 9 comments each:
- Brooklyn Bear's Carlton Avenue Garden, 2008-08-19
- Kensington Blogade, 2008-03-10
- Cortelyou Crocuses, 2008-03-06

2008-12-23

Important update to Brooklyn Mulchfest 2009

I just found out - by accident, not by any NYC announcement - that two important components of the annual Mulchfest that I thought were lost this year due to budget cuts are back in:

You can drop-off trees at Greenwood Cemetery at the 5th Avenue & 25th Street Entrance from 8 am to 4:30 pm daily from January 1 thru 9, and until 2 pm on January 10. Also on January 10, from 10 am to 2 pm on Saturday, a tree chipper will be on site and Master Composters from the Brooklyn Compost Project will be available to answer all your composting questions.

The Department of Sanitation will collect trees left at the curb for composting starting Monday, January 5 through Friday, January 16. As always, you must remove all lights, ornaments, and stands from your tree before setting it out at the curb for collection.

I've updated the original post, which has all the details, including a map of chipping and drop-off locations.

Brooklyn Mulchfest 2009

Recipe: Soft Molasses-Spice Cookies with Cardamom

No photos (yet) for this recipe. My motivation for this experiment was making use of a spice that was new to me: cardamom.

Cardamom

A couple of weeks back, on the recommendation of a friend of ours who's a professional chef, I picked up some ground cardamom (alt: cardamon) for baking. I'm unfamiliar with this spice and had never used it before this recipe.

It's intensely fragrant; even closed, the small baggie of loose cardamom I bought at the Flatbush Food Co-op has been perfuming our kitchen and dining room. It smells like Christmas gingerbread. The scent has strong citrus tones, and at first I thought it might be in the Rutaceae, the Citrus family. But it comes from the Zingiberaceae, the Ginger family, which also makes sense.

The plant is Elettaria cardamomum, a mono-specific genus native to a wide range in southeast Asia. (Some authorities separate the Sri Lankan population as its own species.) The fruit is a pod, a capsule containing multiple seeds. The spice is made from the ground seeds.

Credit: JoJan (Wikimedia Commons)

Elettaria cardamomum under cultivation. Credit: Rhaessner (Wikimedia Commons)

Searching for recipes on the Web, I found that cardamom is a common ingredient in many recipes from Nordic countries. I'm not familiar with Nordic cuisine, so I wouldn't be able to judge so well the success of my baking endeavor. Cardamom also shows up in many gingerbread recipes, so I fell back on something more familiar to me to try out: molasses spice cookies. Once again, King Arthur Flour provided the basic recipe which I tweaked to make use of my available ingredients.

Ingredients

KAF provides weight equivalents for the volume measures in many of their recipes. I use a kitchen scale and weigh bulk ingredients like sugar and flour whenever possible. It's much faster, more accurate, and leads to more consistent results. It also reduces cleanup, since fewer measuring cups are involved! This is especially convenient for liquid or sticky ingredients like the molasses in this recipe.

I used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose, sifting it and leaving out the coarsest remaining bran to give it a finer texture. Since I had "robust" molasses, and I was using whole wheat flour, I increased the total amount of spices. I also added vanilla, allspice, and of course cardamom, none of which were in the original recipe. This created a complex taste, where none of the flavors overwhelm, but I think I would miss any I left out.

Yield: About four dozen (48) cookies

2 sticks (1 cup, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
7 ounces (1 cup) sugar
6-1/4 ounces (a little more than 1/2 cup) molasses, robust flavor. (6 ounces would have been 1/2 cup.; the extra 1/4 ounce was a mistake on my part, but I recorded it as what I did.)
2-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cardamom
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 extra large eggs (original called for large)
14 ounces whole wheat flour (not sure of the volume equivalent)
sugar, for coating (This gives the outside of the cookies some crunch. The recipe calls for coarse or even pearl sugar, for more crunch. I'd use them instead if I had them.)

Preparation

Let the butter come to room temperature, if possible, for easier creaming.
Preheat the oven to 350F. (Be sure you have an accurate oven thermometer! I had a devil of a time baking in our horrible kitchen until I bought a thermometer and discovered that the oven dial was off by 100F!)
Prepare a small bowl with some of the sugar for coating the cookies.
(The recipe calls for greasing baking sheets or lining them with parchment. Since I have some well-seasoned, non-stick baking sheets, I didn't bother and it wasn't necessary.)

Mixing

Cream together the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy.
Beat in the the molasses, salt, and spices. (Here's where you can taste-test to adjust if needed. I added the spices at 1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon at a time to make sure I didn't over do it. I ended up with 1 teaspoon of each, as listed above.)
Beat in the baking soda.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating until they're mixed well into the batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and mix well.
Slowly stir in the flour. (This is something I've learned recently. Stirring the flour in at low speeds keeps the cookies tender. Beating the flour in at higher speeds makes the cookies tougher.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and mix well.

This is a fairly soft, wet dough. Although I didn't try it this time, I bet you could refrigerate the dough for a few hours, or even overnight, to set up before baking.

Baking

Using a tablespoon cookie/ice-cream scoop, create a small ball of the dough. (A scoop is the fastest, easiest way to get a consistently sized, professional looking, batch of cookies. You could also just use two tablespoons.)
Drop the dough ball onto the coating sugar. Coat thoroughly.
Place the coated dough ball on the baking pan. Space them evenly, and leave plenty of space for them to spread. (The recipe says leave 2-1/2" between them, which sounds about right.)
Bake for at least 10, at most 11, minutes at 350F. (With experience, your nose and eyes are the best guides here. When they smell like they're just starting to burn, and the edges are visibly just darker than the center, they're done.)
Remove the pan and let it cool for 5-10 minutes.
Move the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. (But try at least one with a glass of cold milk while it's still warm!)

Other recipes on this blog

Links

Soft Ginger-Molasses Cookies and Ginger Syrup, Recipes, King Arthur Flour

2008-12-21

Stand Still / Dona Nobis Pacem

Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.

It's the longest night and shortest day of the year for my half of the world. This season's Solstice (Winter in the Northern hemisphere, Summer in the Southern), occurred at 12:04pm UTC on December 21, 2008. That was 7:04 AM Eastern Time, my time zone, about six hours ago.

The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.
- Solstice, Wikipedia

It feels like winter. It's cold outside, icy and frozen over the layer of snow we got on Friday. We will get a deep freeze tonight.

Later this week, I will see what's left of my family of origin for the first time since we flew back from North Carolina a little more than two weeks ago. It feels like it's been much longer than that. It will be a bittersweet reunion. We are incomplete for the first time, and for all the seasons to come.

The days start getting longer again, earlier sunrise, later dusk. It feels like more than a metaphor this year.

Lots of "it feels", which really means, "I'm feeling." Sometimes that's the work to be done. To stand still. And simply feel.

If, like me, you can't read music cold, this page has a little MIDI file which bangs out the tune so you can follow the score.

2007 December (Winter) Solstice

Links

Solstice (Wikipedia)

2008-12-19

Happy Holidays

The MTA thwarted our plans to attend a concert of a women's choir this evening. So Blog Widow and I turned back and walked around our neighborhood, taking in the snow-beings and holiday lights.

Enjoy this slideshow of my Flickr set of photos from the evening. For best viewing, click the play button, then click the icon with four arrows in the lower-right to view it full-screen on a black background.

2008-12-18

Winter Storm Watch

A Winter Storm Watch is in effect for Brooklyn and the south shore of Long Island for tomorrow, with the possibility of 6 or more inches of snow:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN UPTON [New York] HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY MORNING THROUGH FRIDAY EVENING.

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OVERSPREAD THE REGION FRIDAY MORNING...AND COULD BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES IN THE AFTERNOON. THE SNOW MAY MIX WITH SLEET AND RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON...ESPECIALLY ALONG THE SOUTH SHORE OF LONG ISLAND. THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 OR MORE INCHES.

2008-12-17

"Proud to be from ... somewhere ... over there ..."

Update: Yup, the Eagle corrected the opening paragraph! Guccione was now "born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn," intersection unknown ...

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle has a daily, On This Day in History, that features different interesting Brooklyn historical events. Today's historic event is ... the birthday of Robert Guccione:

Robert Sabatini Guccione was born on Argyle Road and Flatbush Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on December 17, 1930. Bob well remembers his childhood Brooklyn home and is always proud to respond “I’m from Brooklyn,” when asked where he was born.
- Proud To Be From Brooklyn, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2008.12.17

Okaaaay, except that Argyle Road - aka East 13th Street - and Flatbush Avenue never intersect. They run parallel to each other, nine blocks apart.

View Larger Map

So, proud to be from Brooklyn, sure, maybe even from Flatbush. Just doesn't remember "his childhood Brooklyn home" as well as he thinks he does.

I notified the Eagle via the email address on their Web site. Hopefully they will correct it soon.

Links

Proud To Be From Brooklyn, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2008.12.17

2008-12-16

Grief and Baking: Peppermint Swirl Meringue Cookies

Updates 2014-12-13: Simplified the baking temperature and time, and added notes about portion sizing.

Yesterday it was hard for me to do anything. Although the weather was perfect - 60s and partly sunny - for planting the bulbs I have yet to get into the ground, I could not bring myself to go outside. It's only been two weeks since my father died, and I was feeling his absence deeply and sharply yesterday. When I wrote that "there's so much of him in me," I didn't appreciate how much I would feel a loss of my own self, a void left standing where "the library burned down." It reminds me of the hole in the sky where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. The absence is palpable.

By the end of the day, I was feeling a little better, and I thought that surrendering to my winter baking mode would help. I was prepared to make some basic chocolate chip cookies, but Blog Widow came home with a box of soft, store-bought ones. I experimented with something new, and here's what I came up with:

I call these Peppermint Swirl Meringue Cookies, an elaboration of a basic meringue recipe from King Arthur Flour. KAF is my favorite source for all things baking. I was happy to find that the Flatbush Food Co-Op carries several varieties of King Arthur Flours in the well-stocked baking section of their new location.

I've made meringues many times before, but Blog Widow has never cared for them. He likens their texture to styrofoam, and I can't disagree. The best way to eat them is not to bite into them. Instead, let them dissolve on the tongue, releasing a burst of the flavoring baked into them.

Part of last night's experiment was to see if I could achieve a texture that would satisfy Blog Widow: crisp and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. The KAF recipe suggested that I could accomplish this simply by baking them for an hour less than usual. This worked beautifully. Here's a single, intact meringue cookie, the same one in the center foreground of the photo above:

And here's the same cookie broken open (shattered, really!) to show the chewy, slightly gooey, interior:

Perfect. And baking these did help lighten my spirit.

Meringues are more confection than cookie. The basic ingredients are just egg whites and sweeteners: no fat and no cholesterol. Since there's no flour, they're also fine for folks avoiding gluten.

I use dried, powdered egg whites in recipes calling for them. It saves the hassle of separating them, and I don't have to figure out what to do with the yolks. However, dried egg whites can have an off, eggy taste. You want to make sure that the flavoring is assertive enough, without being too aggressive, to balance the recipe.

The classic flavoring is vanilla, but anything can be used. I thought I would make some red and green meringues with different flavorings for each color, such as cinnamon for red, lime for green. But a tip in the KAF recipe suggested coloring just half the mixture and swirling them together. White plus red stripes just screams candy cane, so peppermint was the flavor I went with. (If I had spearmint flavoring, I would also try green and white stripes.)

Here's how I made the cookies in these photos, presenting the basic KAF recipe with the slight adaptations I had to make along the way. The basic KAF recipe presents lots of possible variations, even adding nuts to the meringue, so check that out for other creative options.