mar 07 newsletter

good cateress, newsletter. March/April 07

Last year as I began to formulate the possibility of a newsletter in my mind, I had always known that the topic for the March newsletter would be my grandmothers Nettle Soup. It was part of our family lore. In the early Spring we could not drive from Whippingham to Wootton on the back road that ran through Brocks Copse without my mother looking at the side of the road, where the new Stinging Nettles were about 4 - 6 inches high. Nettle Soup she would say with a shudder.

In the depression of the 30’s and then into the war years with its rationing, each Spring, on Sunday afternoons after church, my grandmother with her young family would head by bike to Brocks Copse specifically for the young nettles.

Brocks Copse is a dark wooded area with the old road running through it, so named for its badgers. However I always thought it was a foxy place, dark and rather like the wood Beatrix Potter wrote her story of the fox. I would go there to pick the pale yellow wild primrose, that makes the nursery bred Primula seem such a tawdry upstart. The hedgerows would be full of pussy willow and catkins, later in the Spring there would be some of the few remaining wild daffodils. We would never tell where these precious remnants of flowers that at one point had been a carpet of bobbing yellow reminiscent of Wordworths daffodils in the Lake District; people had dug up the bulbs for their gardens, where they had for the most part died. On the bend of the road there is a lone house, my aunt Janette had stayed with her Grandmother here as a child, she remembered there being no electricity and the house was lit by candles and paraffin lamps.

So, as a family they would head out to pick the dreaded nettles. My grandmother made the soup as a Spring tonic to clean the blood of the winters ailments. Apparently the soup was hugely cleansing and we were always led to believe that we should be grateful that we were not made to drink this awful concoction. Although my mother wanted us to understand clearly that in case of the apocalypse and we survive this was an easy source of nutrition.

Last summer while visiting dad he had given me my grandmothers recipe book. I already had my mothers, in which at about the age of 10 I had began to write my own recipes. There in Mahala’s book was the infamous recipe for Nettle Soup, I read it, it seemed rather like Spinach soup and I did wonder what all the fuss must have been about. As I am rarely in England at this time of year, I have not tried the recipe for lack of young stinging nettles. I have never seen them growing here in the US as they do in England, where you cannot walk in the Country without being stung around your ankles, and you pray for the lowly Dock leaf to be somewhere nearby so you can rub the dock leaf on the sting to ease the stinging rash.

So I was really surprised to open both Martha Stewart and Gourmet magazine this month and find recipes for Nettle Soup. Clearly Carl Jung's collective unconscious is much in play.

We are slowly inching our way towards my favourite time of year. I have already began to prepare the soil for planting my garden here in Harlem. There are signs of growth, although my first daffodils bloomed on New years day and all through January and now look like a mess, others are budding. The chives are up and the Clematis are sending forth their first green shoots. My Basil and Tomato seeds are in their peat pots on the windowsill.

Then there is the 127th Street Playlot. I have become involved with the Playlot through the Block Association and working with the Abyssinian Development Corp. The Playlot has a couple of childrens play frames, empty planters and tree’s, the magnolia is getting ready to bloom. We have just won a small but significant grant from Citizens for NYC.

The award ceremony was one of my great moments in NYC. There were awards large and small given to various groups from all five boroughs, all made up of people from all walks of life and nationalities, interested in improving their neighborhoods and exchanging information abut where to get more help. Ranging from places like East New York Farms, an amazing endeavour in Brooklyn that has rescued abandoned lots and literally turned them into a neighborhood farm, to groups like our Block Association who are just beginning to make that change.

We have a difficult time ahead of us. We began with a clean up day on Saturday and we can now see what we need to do. We have a lot of empty beds but hopefully with the help from various New York charities we can get plants, tools, soil. In the summer we hope to have Yoga and calisthenics, art and music classes.

I have heard it said many times that one person can make a difference and for me, West 127th Street is where I would like to do that.

Happy Passover. Happy Easter