Grill your scapes on a hot grill, turning several times with tongs, till they begin to wilt and are charred in bars. Toss them with a little lemon juice and olive oil or butter. Drape them artistically over meat, fish, a roasted vegetable platter, or just about anything you have coming off the grill.
A Tale of Two Peppers
Here are the stories of two peppers… one sweet and one hot.
Both were selected by Slow Food International for their Ark of Taste, which features foods that should not be lost to our cultures and our kitchens.
JIMMY NARDELLO’S sweet frying pepper is a long, slim, bright-red, slightly wrinkled pepper that looks hot but it’s not. It is just incredibly full flavored raw, steamed, roasted, but most especially fried. Brought from the southern Italian village of Ruoti by Jimmy Nardello’s mother in 1887. Very prolific and hardy.
THE FISH pepper is an extremely ornamental plant, suitable for pot culture on a sunny deck. The variegated, twisted green and white leaves and peppers seem to splash in the breeze like jumping bait. The peppers pack considerable heat and full flavor and are complimentary to seafood, especially shellfish. They may be harvested when pale colored so as not to create ‘specks’ in a cream sauce, or they may be allowed to ripen through orange to red. This pepper has been a specialty of the African-American community in Baltimore since about 1870.
Whatever process Slow Food used to select these peppers, it works. They are fabulous, vigorous, productive plants and yield pretty peppers with flavor that you will dream about all year long. Highly recommended.
More Cute Baby Pix
The two little goat brothers tell each other what’s what:
The piglets have food fights like healthy piglets should:
Spinning Human Hair – the Betsy Project
One hot summer’s day a young woman visited our farm. Her friends were delayed by car trouble, so we chatted. I was spinning – she was fascinated – and thus began the Betsy Project.™
It was all her idea. She had cancer; chemo and radiation had made her hair fall out and it had regrown. Now she was facing further treatments. Would I spin her hair after it fell out again?
Some people think this project is morbid, but that was not her approach. She was an artist, very creative, and she had in mind to make an heirloom for her daughter.
We discussed options – hair must be blended with another fiber – and details such as length, heft, and color. I spun it with cinnamon alpaca, and the final result was a surprisingly soft, gleaming, springy yarn.
My last contact with Betsy came with a note, saying ‘I have never before seen my mousy hair as beautiful.’
What more could an artist ask? And like all art, what purpose can it have? Just to say, in the face of the void that life has meaning. That everything is connected forever, if only by a thread.
And there her friends were, probably, by the side of the road in the August heat, saying ‘durn the durn car, why did it have to break down NOW?’
If you, or someone you know, is interested in getting your hair spun, please get in touch with Rebecca.