First of all, what are these things anyway? Definitions vary, but if you order a spritz (pronounced “spriss” in Italy) in a bar or restaurant what you’re likely to get is a low-alcoholic, bubbly drink that is at least slightly bitter, and sometimes very bitter.

The word itself comes from the German spritzen, meaning “to spray.” There is a long history of proto-spritzes (or at least the dilution of wine)  extending back to ancient times. Classicist James Grout tells us in his Encyclopaedia Romana that in the Roman empire “wine almost always was mixed with water for drinking; undiluted wine (merum) was considered the habit of provincials and barbarians.”

That seems to have been the reaction of the Hapsburg occupiers of northeastern Italy when they tasted the region’s wines in the nineteenth century. Italian wines were stronger, less acidic, and probably saltier than the Rieslings and Grüner veltliners of Austria, and to make these wines what they regarded as palatable the Austrians would order them diluted with soda water. At least, that is the origin legend surrounding the drink.

Spritzes are often made with prosecco, which also comes from northeastern Italy.

In their book Spritz: Italy’s Most Iconic Aperitivo Cocktail, with Recipes (Ten Speed Press, 2016) Talia Baiocchi and Leslie Pariseau distinguish three types of spritzes (or pseudo-spritzes):

• classic: “the simplest of the formulas, containing just a few ingredients: wine or prosecco, soda water, a bit of citrus, and a bitter element like Aperol, Campari, or in some cases, an amaro like Cynar”;
• modern: “draws on new garnishes, fresh juices, and alternatives to the classic Italian liqueurs”; and
• cousins: “while they maintain the same philosophical sensibilities (bitter, low-alcohol, bubbly], they do so with unorthodox ingredients (egg whites, beer, muddled fruit).”

The traditional spritz is my focus  here. My history with spritzes dates back to at least 2010, when my wife, Carol, and I booked a rental in Venice’s Cannaregio sestiere. After we checked in, our host took us to a little place in the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo (still one of my favorite Venice locations) for spritzes. This was something like our third visit to Venice. Aperol spritzes had been around at least since the 1950s, but now, suddenly, they were everywhere.

We also spent time on that trip in places in the Veneto like  Verona, Padua, and Mantua, as well as in the Alto Adige, where I was press checking a book in Trent. And in every one of them all sorts of people, from ladies in heels to laborers in boots, were gathering before dinner to share the same bitter, fizzy, rosy concoction. It’s a small world Aperol. The image above was taken in the central piazza near the Duomo in Trento (in very poor light) — you can see at least six spritzes on the tables.

The main ingredients in a Venetian spritz are white wine; Aperol, Campari, or Select (a local Venetian amaro that tastes like a blend of the first two); and bubbly water (acqua frizzante). Amari are, or course, bitters that can be drunk on their own as aperitifs, as opposed to “bitters” proper, which are used as flavorings to be added to drinks (like the angostura bitters that, along with vermouth, turn whisky into a Manhattan). The ingredients in these amari are closely guarded secrets, though my local liquor store says that Aperol, for example, employs “a subtle blend of bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb and an array of herbs and roots, using a secret recipe that has been unchanged since 1919.”

The basic recipe of a traditional spritz is simple. Following are two variations:

• 2 ounces bitter liqueur
• 3–4 ounces prosecco
• 2 ounces soda water

• 3 ounces white wine (preferably something like a soave or pinot grigio)
• 1-1/2 ounces Aperol or other bitter liqueur
• 1-1/2 ounce soda water or prosecco

The first recipe is from Baiocchi and Pariseau. The second is from the New York Times, which advises garnishing the drink with a green olive (“Gently stir all liquid ingredients over ice in a tumbler and add olive”). In my experience in Italy slices of orange were more common garnishes. But according to Baiocchi and Pariseau, the drink is “always garnished with a skewered olive and a slice of citrus.” I guess that was the style during their ten-day research trip (presumably a year or two before their book was published).

Here’s a great how-to video on making a traditional Aperol spritz:

For a less traditional variant, consider the recommendation of Liz Rubin, Category Manager for Wine, Beer, + Spirits at San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Markets:

“I love a bitter amari (Faccia Brutto Alpino or the Fred Jerbis Bitter) with a dry prosecco and a good splash of Meyer lemon, makrut lime, or even oro blanco grapefruit. I’d even go so far as to make almost a daiquiri, with equal parts liqueur and tart citrus juice, then add just a splash of prosecco to slightly cut the bitterness. If you want to make a more traditional, or mainstream spritz with Campari or another aperitivo that has a more candied bitterness, I like 1.5 ounces liqueur to 2 ounces sparkling with just a teaspoon of your fresh citrus juice of choice.”

Okay, I’m ready — make me a spritz! Or, in Venetian, fame un spritz, as Sir Oliver Skardy & Fahrenheit 451 say in their popular song of that title. In the song Skardy presents his own garnish request. The song begins Fame un spritz, fame un spritz, famelo bon co ‘na fetta de limon, which I believe in Venetian means “Make me a spritz, make me a spritz, make it good with a slice of lemon.” (The spritz in the video does include skewered olives.)

You could do worse.

Staghorn ferns comprise eighteen species in the  genus Platycerium of the polypod family (Polypodiaceae). They are native to Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia. This one lives by the “tree fern path” on the north side of the Australasian collection area at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley.

These ferns are epiphytes, meaning they grown on the surface of another plant — in this case a tree fern — taking their nutrients from air, rain, and debris on the host (phorophyte) plant. (Sometimes gardeners attach them to boards or baskets. See A Piece of Rainbow’s “How to Grow, Mount and Propagate Staghorn Ferns” if you are interested in doing this.)

Tree ferns are ancient plants thought to have originated in the early Jurassic, when they served as food for dinosaurs. I think the host plant here is probably a fern in the Dicksonia genus, likely Dicksonia antarctica, known as the Tasmanian tree fern. It grows to about 15-20 feet tall.

James Fong, horticulturalist of the Australasian Collection at the botanical garden, has made a charming short video introducing the garden’s collection of tree ferns:

While collectively members of the genus Platycerium are all known as staghorn ferns, after a perceived resemblance to deer antlers, their shapes vary a good deal. Those with thinner fronds are sometimes called elkhorn ferns.

These ferns have two types of fronds. Wide basal fronds press against the host to protect the fern’s roots from damage or drying out. Sometimes they are shaped so as to catch and retain rain water. Fertile fronds bear spores on their undersides that enable to plant to reproduce. The two types of fronds  can be seen in this Wikimedia image by a user called ProjectManhattan:

In their native habitat staghorn ferns can get large and imposing as they grow out from their hosts. Most grow in tropical forests where they are adapted to dappled sunlight. Therefor in gardens (in US horticultural zones 9 and 10) they should be placed where they will get plenty of indirect light. At the UC Botanical Garden this specimen (which I think is probably Platycerium coronarium)  is growing in the partial shade of its host tree fern and other trees.

The photo at the top of this post of a staghorn fern growing on a tree fern was taken June 16, 2018 with an Olympus EM=5 camera, using Olympus’s great “plastic fantastic” 40-150mm F4.0-5.6 lens at 66mm, ƒ/7.1, 1/160, ISO 2500. Despite the high ISO, I like it so much that I have a print of it on my wall.

Originally native to the arid southwest of North America, the resourceful house finch (Carpodocus mexicanus), is now found in every U.S. state. After nesting, the finches gather into sizable flocks — ours are particularly fond of hanging out in the Pineapple guava (Feijoa). They are attractive little birds with a pleasing sort of bebop jazzy song (performed by the male). You can listen to it at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Bokashi system: pail with tight lid and spigot, cup for Bokashi tea, implement for pressing down food waste materials, and Bokashi starter.

Fermentation is the bacterial and fungal process of decomposing sugars that gives us wine, beer, cheese, salame, pickles, kimchi, and so much more. Recently I made a post about making homemade ginger beer, a process that uses wild bacteria to ferment ginger brew. (The bible for kitchen fermentation is Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation.) Today I would like to talk about using fermentation to safely convert the valuable nutrients in kitchen waste into effective fertilizer for the garden.

Beginning in the 1970s, Dr. Teruo Higa, professor of horticulture at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, began developing a fermentation system for recycling kitchen waste in the landscape. The technique he developed, called Bokashi, is often referred to as composting, but it is different from conventional composting. Conventional composting is an aerobic decomposition process that produces high temperatures by massing nitrogen-bearing materials in such a way that air can circulate through them (so it requires turning the materials to aerate them). It can take a long time to complete, and may attract pests. Additionally, according to a talk I heard from a compost expert at Annie’s Annuals and Perennials (which has a great Saturday lecture program), composting at the home garden scale — especially if materials are added a little at the time, as is usually the case — is ineffective at producing the high temperatures needed to remove all plant pathogens and weed seeds. It is really just a process of rotting.

Bokashi is an anaerobic system. Layers of food scraps — which can include cheese, fish, meat, etc. — are alternated with a special Bokashi mix in an air-tight bucket. The Bokashi mix is a delivery system of a blend of lactic acid bacteria, called Effective Microorganisms, or EM. As Dr. Higa explains in a paper he wrote about the system, it is “a mixture of microbes, using the very common species found in all environments as extensively used in the food industry–namely Lactic Acid Bacteria, Photosynthetic Bacteria and Yeasts.”

After the bucket is filled with alternating layers of food scraps and Bokashi mix, the mixture needs to sit for a couple of weeks before being used in the garden. At that point you have a few choices. You can bury it in soil. You can add it to a comventional compost bin. Or you can use it in containers (fill the container a third full with potting soil, add an equal amount of the finished Bokashi and food waste material, mix, and top with potting soil).

The Bokashi system I purchased looked like this out of the box:

Bokashi kit unpacked.

To understand the Bokashi process, it’s helpful to watch some videos. I watched a bunch so you don’t have to. These are some of the better ones:

Lish Fejer of Green It Yourself provides a good overview of the Bokashi method:

Here’s another overview. While I didn’t get my system from Peaceful Valley, who are based in Grass Valley, California, I have bought from them with good results.

If you want to make your own Bokashi starter, Al Pasternak of My Vancouver explains the process.

Finally, Dougal Pollock shows what happens to the Bokashi mixture after it is dug into the soil.

And there you have it. Bokashi: An organic system for recycling food waste, benefiting the home, the garden, and the planet.

This seven-minute film taken from the front of a San Francisco streetcar going the length of Market Street toward the Ferry Building is said to have been shot four days before the earthquake and fire of 1906, and to have survived because it was sent by train to New York for processing before the quake.

(According to a comment from happykt, “From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered … it was filmed only FOUR DAYS before the Great California Earthquake of April 18th 1906.”)

Virtually all of the buildings shown (except the Ferry Building itself) were destroyed in the quake. The video is a fascinating glimpse into early 20th century San Francisco. The street scene is lively and chaotic, and many details are fascinating.

Stevieboy74 writes in a comment on the video, “A snapshot in time of people going about their everyday lives, people with worries, concerns, duties, ambitions, all of which matter no more but have in some small way contributed to the life we live and experience today. All the people in this footage are now gone, but what they were doing at that time was just as important and contributory as what we are all doing today, right now. In another 112 years we will become them, long forgotten but having played an equally important part. Footage like this is so important, simple grains of sand in the infinite expanse of time that would otherwise be lost and forgotten forever, but we have the privilege of seeing.”

The accompanying music is “La femme d’argent” from Airs’ Moon Safari album, selected by UTube user cleaverb.

I thought I’d begin with the mildest of our peppers, the pasilla bajio. According to Gardening Know How

This chili’s name in Spanish literally means “little raisin.” This is a slight misnomer, since the pepper is much bigger than a raisin, usually reaching 6 to 9 inches (15-23 cm.) in length and 1 inch (2.5 cm.) in diameter. It’s the color of the pepper, which turns a very dark brown when it matures, that earns the plant its name. Pasillas can be harvested green and immature to make sauces and salsas. They can also be harvested mature and dried. It’s in this form that they are used, along with ancho and guajillo chiles, to make the classic Mexican mole sauce. As chilies go, pasillas are not particularly hot. They have a Scoville rating of 1,000 to 2,500, which means they are equal to less hot than a mild jalapeno. As they mature and become darker in color, they also get hotter. They mostly have a rich, pleasant, almost berry-like flavor.

Quick pickling is simplicity itself. In essence you just cram everything in a jar and cover with a mixture of water and vinegar. Then eat in a day or two. Quick pickling is a great way to easily preserve produce.

I picked a batch of peppers that I thought would fill a twelve-ounce mason jar. I chose a mix of ripe and less ripe peppers. The greener ones add more crispness, the riper ones a bit more heat.

After rinsing the peppers (all our produce is organic) I removed the stems and sliced them. Slicing is optional, but it gives a stronger flavor as the slices soak up the brine better than whole pickles would. It turned out I had too few peppers for my jar so I added some more, ending up with about half a pound for the twelve-ounce jar.

I put the peppers in the jar and added some spices. This is a place to experiment. I used black mustard seeds, cardamom seeds, and garlic powder. My secret ingredient was a couple of dashes of Old Tom’s Aromatic Bitters. Since you don’t have these (I don’t sell them, but I do list the ingredients at the link), you could substitute angostura bitters, if you would like to try this. I think it adds subtlety and complexity.

Then I boiled a cup of water with half a cup of distilled white vinegar, along with a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Apple cider, white wine, or rice vinegar could also be used. White vinegar provides clarity and doesn’t affect the color of the pickled peppers, but some people find its taste harsh compared to alternatives. (I’m fine with it.)

Pour the boiled liquid over the mixture. It’s best to stuff the jar full so that everything is well submerged rather than floating on the top. I heated the jar in a pan of hot tap water so that the boiling liquid would not cause it to crack.

That’s all there is to it. It’s said that the quick pickles are ready for eating in four hours, but I think waiting a day or two is better. They will keep in the refrigerator for two or three months — but they’re not likely to last that long! You can use them in a soup or salad or as a garnish. They would be good with nachos or tortillas. They would even work in a Bloody Mary. Enjoy!

It’s not much deserved since I have been not been very active as a blogger for some time, but it’s still nice, and maybe will inspire me to be a little more active again. (In fact, I’m about to start a post about quick pickling pasilla bajio peppers–stay tuned.)

Our Western Hop Tree is about three years old now and is looking good, getting ready to produce its many fragrant cream-colored flowers. They will be set off beautifully against its glossy deep green broad leaves. The plant is in the citrus family, and it produces light green fruits, which are said to be “acid” and “tonic” (I have not tested this). Las Pilitas calls its look “prehistoric woodland.”

We were fortunate to find our specimen in a small (D-16) container at Watershed Nursery in Richmond. A shrub or small deciduous tree to about fifteen feet, it’s one of our favorites. We like that it’s hyperlocal, being endemic to just a small strip around the San Francisco Bay and the Sierra foothills. It needs support from local gardeners, and it will repay them with a uniquely beautiful plant.

The hop tree is a good habitat plant. It’s a host plant for many native butterflies, including the Two-Tailed Swallowtail, the Western Tiger Swallowtail, the Giant Swallowtail, and the Western Giant Swallowtail, among others. It’s also popular with native bees. The native insects it attracts in turn attract many birds.

The tree is drought tolerant. It should not be overwatered. A chaparral and woodlands plant, it’s said to like full sun to part shade, but ours got a bit fried in our incredible later summer-fall heat wave last year (though it recovered over the winter), so I think it should be sheltered from the harshest sun and heat.

This is a great plant. I’ll pick up one or two more next time I find some available.

Shown is the pod, or fruit, of Sacred Datura, Datura wrightii, a species native to California and elsewhere in the southwest and northern Mexico. Other common names of the plant are Western Jimsonweed, California Jimsonweed, Sacred Thorn-Apple, Tolguacha, and Toloache. D. wrightii is one of several species in the datura genus. One was said to have been the Hindu deity Shiva’s favorite flower. (I will talk about the flowers in another post.) Another was used in Haitian zombie potions. (For more, see the Wikipedia link below.)

Eventually the pod will turn brown and harden. Then it will crack and disperse some hundred seeds in a wide area. The seeds can be dried and planted. Some healers have used Datura wrightii seeds to treat ailments like asthma or as a pain reliever, or for its hallucinogenic and visionary effects. Do not try this. Like all parts of the plant, the seeds are quite poisonous — a fatal dose is about 15-20 seeds.

Link: “Datura” at Wikipedia.