ITS TOO DARN HOT

I was going to tell you about a book that has eluded me for many years until yesterday when I stumbled upon i t in Clunes. Its called Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, http://www.culinate.com/books/book_excerpts/Stalking+the+Wild+Asparagus one of the early 20th century forager-writer-cooks. Way before the word locavore entered our culinary lexicon Euell was out there picking, cooking and extolling the virtues of “weeds” such as Calamus, Scarlet Sumac and many more including one of my favourites Purslane.

Then I thought I better alert you to the inferior form of Purslane being sold commercially by the recherché providores and show you the preferred culinary form that we love to see self-seeded each year in our garden.

But while taking the photos of the different forms of purslane it occurred to me that while we were getting into the succulents, I had better describe Aptenia    possibly the most common but not as yet trendy succulent that many of you will already have in your gardens.

 Aptenia is all over the garden and as I was stalking it with the camera I noticed that the nasturtiums were making seeds and I had better remind you of the succulent seed pods Nasturtiums make. When young and moist they are such a treat in salads. But no sooner had I clicked a couple of these I realised that I had never written about the plant they were growing under, the Jostaberries, those little but abundant thornless gooseberry blackcurrant crosses that were just ripening, and to tell you how easy they are to grow. But as soon as I had I taken my eye off these I noticed that the black nightshades needed pulling out, or did they instead need picking? Deadly nightshade? Or Black nightshade? Wonderberry? or Blunderberry? But if I started on this I would have to remind you of Luther Burbank http://www.scribd.com/doc/938177/Deadly-Nightshades-PDF and how he was nearly undone by these nightshades. While on the solanaceae I realised that I had posted on Tomatillos and Cape Gooseberries before, but I had forgotten to water or write about the ground cherries, that other Physalis, possibly the finest one of all. Then the hose started to get a life of its own and dragged me to the Lime and Lemon Verbenas that also desperately needed to be watered and then they started to complain that they too have never had their own entry here. But neither had the Drip Still described by Euell in Stalking the Wild Asparagus that lets you distil the essence of such elusive aromas as the Verbenas with simple pots and bowls that are found in every domestic kitchen. But I cant tell you about that either because it’s too darn hot........