The Big Dig

We have a backyard.

Not too many people in Brooklyn are lucky enough to say this. It's a mess but it's coming along. And it's all ours. We don't have to share.

The photo above is what it looked like the first day I looked at the apartment. One corner was covered by a moldy old rug, the rest of the yard with weeds and buckets full of broken glass.



Since then, much work has been done, mostly by Noel. We have pulled all kinds of artifacts from the dirt: shoes, scrunchies, bottle caps, hangers, clothes pins, matchbox cars, cigarette butts, army men, sticky traps, dry wall, batteries ... the list goes on. One of my favorite discoveries was the bottom portion of a cat's jaw bone next to a set of plastic vampire teeth. I almost wish we had saved some of the best stuff to put on exhibit at a housewarming party!

All of this amazing junk is being removed to make way for sugar snap peas, sweet and hot peppers, radishes, parsnips, heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, brussels sprouts, butter leaf lettuce, herbs, sunflowers, and butterfly bushes.

I can't wait to walk outside in the morning, pick a fresh, deep wine-colored tomato from our yard and have it with sea salt and pepper, and maybe a fresh egg from the farmers market. I can't wait to make pickles with cucumber and herbs that we grew ourselves. And I can't wait to have people over for dinner! Grilled eggplant bahn mi with sweet pepper relish and fresh cilantro? Yes, please.

So, very soon, I'll be cooking about as locally as it gets: with ingredients grown 15 feet from my kitchen. I feel very lucky. And I'll gloat and gush all about it here, very soon.