It is five days past the equinox, the first day of Spring, five days since my wife and I began our self-quarantine, and two days since the official lock-down of New York City due to the coronavirus plague.
As a writer, I am lucky to have chosen a profession I can continue to practice from home. Sally, a photographer of the natural world, not so much. In our modest-but-light-filled apartment, we are getting along nicely and, with our stocked rations and our cooking talents, eating and drinking perhaps a little too well. It is a good thing, our friends tell us, that we are those rare New Yorkers who eat nearly every meal at home. Why do we do it? Because we dine like royalty for far less than we’d spend eating outing out and, dish-for-dish, it’s usually much better.
But this isn’t a blog about eating, not exactly. It is about producing a mind-blowing abundance of delicious nutritious food in the extremely limited space of a small New York apartment. And doing it without turning the place into a mad botanist’s lab or plant-hoarder’s den.
I have always kept a garden of some kind and started fermenting wine and pickles at age 14 when I was growing up in the Sierra foothills of Central California. Last April Sally and I sold the small Tuscan farm whose derelict vineyard, olive grove, truck garden, and orchard I single-handedly resurrected from neglect and worked in yearly and daily cycles for 11 years wonderful years. In September we moved into our small Chelsea apartment, in Manhattan, our favorite town. Now I am turning what I’ve learned over the last fifty years into delicious living things in the smallest imaginable space. And into the words and images of this blog, where I will pass on what I know – and what I’m still learning – to you.
Today’s harvest: The first Japanese turnip of the spring.
Today’s harvest: The first Japanese turnip of the spring.
