Soul Food...

You know it's going to be strange when I submit a blog post with a title like that.

This started when a friend on twitter, who lives in China, casually commented on a vegetable with an odd, hard to translate (i.e., cryptically idiomatic) name. The photo he enclosed of the feast he was having included a beautiful vegetable that I thought might be one of their local fresh pickles (fresh in the sense of being pickled only for a few days or weeks, rather than the truly long-term pickling processes, and/or fermented products such as kimchee, etc.). The colors reminded me of amaranth, but it was clearly a sliced root vegetable with the texture / appearance of a daikon radish, and the colors of a watermelon candy - pastel pink, a ring of white, and an edge of pale green. It certainly looked tasty, but he reported a name [ 心灵美 ]  that translated as "beautiful soul" - so you can see why it became a tantalizing msytery. Still, many favored dishes and foods have poetically unhelpful names, like "空心菜" ["hollow heart vegetable"]. She apparently suggested to him that it was a carrot. I was pretty confident it was not, and when he said it tasted more like a radish, I had hope.

I started searching around on variants of radish (not terribly helpful) and then tried adding the characters and vegetable, and eventuauly found a hilarious artist in Beijing who uses vegetables to create collages. Enjoy the image here:

[courtesy of this site: http://www.parisbeijingphotogallery.com/main/cn/juduoqiworks.asp ]

The title translates to "soul kiss radish" and as you can see is a funny homage to Klimt. It's worth poking around the rest of the site to enjoy the images, it really is sweet.

From there I was able to do a little further searching and figure out that unless you use the full "心灵美萝卜" it won't appear in the vegetable category of words. I also found that in the States, (somewhere at least - no where I'd ever seen it but...) it's called Watermelon radish. By whatever name, it looks delicious and I think I'm going to have to see if I can grow some.
Enjoy the 'soul food'!

Winter starters

Hopefully, at least. It's always a gamble starting seeds in January/February, but I like to do it. When I was at C-Mart in Chinatown last weekend, seeing these seed packages inspired me just a little. We'll see what happens.When I've done this in the past, I used those little fairy lights to supplement what light they got. It helps - but of course I need to choose my containers wisely too. I used containers last year that were much too small, and they dried out too quickly as a result. Poor little seedlings couldn't tolerate the conditions. This year, hoping to get the balance right...and maybe get a few edibles out of it too. I'm hoping to get an early start on those eggplants - but I'm also realistic about the fact that it's just too cold. On the other hand, the other two packets just might do alright. We'll see. Watch this space for updates, I guess.

Fugitive Colors

{originally written for posting on 10/4/10}
What do murex snails, fugitive dyes, and my purple beans this season all have in common? Stay with me here, I'll get to it.

I've been reading a number of books about color. How is it used in dyes, paints, pigments, and even in food; where did we get the original dyes that we now take for granted through modern chemistry? Why do some fade ("fugitive") or change color over time or exposure to light? How do I know which type of paint I'm buying when I fill my palette?

Some of these questions are issues covered in varying depth when you attend art school; there's a great reference book on nearly all art materials that helps us discern the right material for the project, depending on lighting conditions, indoor or outdoor work, the anticipated lifespan of the piece, etc. Among other handy issues it covers is the fact that the

American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has a ratings and testing system for artists' paints and dyes, so that you have some idea of the lifespan, color-fastness, and toxicity of the material you'll be using. One of the more memorable seminars I sat through as a freshman at art school was when a speaker came from

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)  to speak with us about our relative exposure to toxic materials. Artists' materials (whether it's paints, photo processing chemicals, solvents, pastels, plaster and clay dust, glass or metal fumes from blast furnaces, etc.) are simply not rated for our exposure levels. Those ratings were developed based on a casual exposure (a few hours per year, for example) rather than how many hours per DAY a working artist will be using any or all of these materials. It was discouraging to learn how hazardous everything was, but on the other hand at least I learned that I can take some sensible precautions to minimize the risks. All professions have hazards of one kind or another, and I was glad someone in the program had sensibly gotten someone to address the topic for us. 

That said, The Artists Handbook of Materials is the reference book I was talking about. It's not a narrative but a dry, utilitarian reference book when you have a project to plan.  

The other titles I've been reading are all about the history of the use and development of pigments. I started by reading

Color: A Natural History of the Palette  which is a great read that discusses how each of the various hues were found (stones, shells, plant extracts and fermentation, and even the 'tears' from certain snails) and stabilized in order to color fabric and affix images from the stone age onwards. The royal purple was a truly exorbitant dye to manufacture, and the city that first specialized in its production had a monopoly. Aboriginal paintings are considered by their artists to be a very sacred act of creation of the subject of the story - invoking the life form or spirit that is depicted - and the substitution of another source of ochre or natural pigment - even if it has the same color - is unacceptable in the extreme, partly because what makes that ochre sacred is the journey taken to obtain it in the first place - complete with remembered and recited history songs. More recent stories include the development of stable chemical dyes and pigments, and the artists who did - or did not - care to use non-fugitive paints.

Next on the reading list is Mauve, and then maybe Madder Red and then Indigo.

Part of what launched me on all this color history research was my curiousity about what causes some plants to develop such gorgeous, if unusual, colors - like purple string beans, red carrots, and so on - only to lose that color once you cook them. I love growing the funny colored vegetables, but it does seem a shame not to be able to keep the color. Certainly if you've ever made potato salad with those "Peruvian Blue" potatoes, you'll get a purple salad! Likewise, you'll get a real strange surprise if you make cole slaw and the only cabbage you have on hand is the red variety. (Don't do this. Trust me. It tastes just as delicious - but the color is so disturbing. I had to put up with jokes about Pepto-Bismol all through dinner that night.)

I think I'll continue to read about vegetable dyes through the winter. If you have any other titles to recommend, drop me a line.

Three bean plants

beans growing, originally uploaded by Margo and George.

So we had some of our strange winter weather this weekend: abruptly sunny and warm (for us, at any rate: 50 - 60 degrees F). I took advantage of the warm weather to meet up with the Duchess of 78A to set up some higher fencing in preparation for the coming growing season. I'll be doing a little excavating in order to improve our gate/door situation as well. Happily I found some adequate lumber at the local Dome Hepot. At $1.15 per 1x3x8, it serves our purposes just fine. Add a staple gun and some deer-fencing mesh (the sturdy kind, not the wussy thin kind) and we're in business. Happily the weather held during our project, and then each of us scurried off for other plans that day.

In the indoor containers for seedling starters, the peas and peppers are up, and the beans seem to be pretty happy growing in the cola bottle. I'll be snipping an extra hole for that third plant to emerge; not quite enough room now for it to squeeze between the stems of the two others already coming up through the sprout.

I planted some of the potatoes I'd had leftover that sprung eyes before I could use them; they've gone into a pot outside my window that was going begging. I have some more containers to fill with starters, when I find the time.