sweet cyanide
Lots of things have come up since that last post in early July that were destabilizing and distracting enough to keep me from being able to worry about this blog - sorry it's been so long. My shop closed, I had to find a new one, almost lost the apartment, then didn't but the landlord died suddenly, and young. I banged out a piece of furniture for my sister's wedding present. There are other things, but in the end, I've been too busy to be working on any bloggable projects, until last weekend.
Ever wonder why Robitussin's got that godawful chemical cherry flavor?
The reason that maraschino cherries are flavored like almonds and that almond flavor doesn't actually, well, taste like almonds, and the reason you can't eat apricot, peach or cherry seeds or cherry leaves, bark, or laurel leaves is all because of cyanide.
According to the cyanide page on wikipedia, cyanides in plants are usually bound to sugar molecules- cyanogenic glycosides defend the plant against herbivores.
Cyanide has that lovely almond scent, and is actually in pure almond extract, made from bitter almonds, at the supermarket. You'd probably kill yourself if you drank an entire bottle of McCormick, but I'd like to see you try. It's nasty stuff, full strength. I'm scratching most of the organic chemistry here except that artificial almond flavor is benzaldehyde, which also smells like almonds, is apparently easy to synthesize, and is also the essential oil of bitter almonds. It turns up as well as cyanide and glucose when the glycosides in bitter almonds react (in the presence of water) to the enzyme emulsin, which also happens to be in bitter almonds. Go figure.
Cherry trees also contain cyanide everywhere except the in the fruit, and cherry bark was traditionally used as a cough suppressant (I don't think Robitussin has any real cherry tree bits in it, but it explains why they stuck with that horrible flavor). I'm pretty sure the idea is that low levels of cyanide inhibit metabolism in smooth muscle cells - basically you're intentionally drugging your trachea and lungs so they won't be capable of spasming in reaction to whatever ickiness it is you got. Other plants, far less dangerous, can be used as expectorants, but this is the only one I've read about so far that actually stops a cough by shutting down your metabolism. I made the mistake once of digging into a bag of apricot kernels before i knew much about cyanide, and would have ended up in a coma if I'd eaten more than a small handful. There was a tiny little line at the very bottom of the bag that said something about how you have to boil the seeds for 15 minutes before you can eat them. I'd gotten it in chinatown, where things like that don't usually have much information on the packaging.
So what the hell has this got to do with anything? Well-
I've known for a long time that the hill's got a lot of apple trees, from some old orchard that used to be here, as far as I'd heard. I'll research it and get back to you. I wish I could remember who told me about the trees. A few blocks away from the house there's a big park on the back of the hill with a lot of overgrown, basically abandoned land. It's full of apple trees as well as lots of other plant life that's just about completely ignored by everybody. There are a Lot of wild black cherry trees, I've found out.
Somehow or another, I got it into my head last weekend to walk down there and see if I could scavenge anything. There are tons of apples, most of heirloom varieties and one kind I was told last year by a farmer out in central MA was discovered on Mission Hill (as in it had never been found anywhere else in the world) and I recognized them last weekend. They look like apple-shaped green/brown pears with really tough skin.
Good apples are 20-25 feet in the air (I'm working on that) but I also found a ridiculous number of crabapple trees, blackberry canes, wild roses, wineberries, hawthorn and serviceberry or 'saskatoon' bushes, a hazelnut tree, and another tree with weird shriveled, formerly sticky nuts I cracked at home and tasted - strong almond flavor - wild apricots. I had to spit the nut out, but now I'll know where they'll be next summer so I can get them before they dry up. There were also wild roses everywhere, which means a ton of thorns, but rosehips are good for you, and apparently so are hawthorn leaves and berries, and stinging nettles, which are hell to walk through in shorts, but one of the most healthy things to eat, once the sting's been steamed out of them.
There is some poison ivy, but I've been running through it my whole life and never had a reaction - and I'm not about to question my luck.
I brought home about 8 pounds of crabapples and made jelly for the first time last weekend, and cooked a pot full of wild black cherries into sauce tonight. Cherry wood is one of my favorites, and learning about wild black cherries being edible included a lot of warnings about cyanide in the leaves. Reminded me of all the other things i already knew about the poison.
Crabapples are incredible if you take the time to cook them. I took home a few regular apples, but a lot of the ones I could reach weren't really ripe yet, and were too difficult to get off the tree. I've never seen a hazelnut tree before, and the nuts are all green and look like little dragon heads, but eventually they'll start to ripen and I'll try to grab them before they fall to the ground.
The long term goal of all this is to learn to can things so I can preserve good food from the farmer's markets in the summer, and also to be better acquainted with fruit and other things that grow wild in the northeast that I can find and use. Local fruit and vegetables are usually a lot better than the stuff in the supermarket, and backyard gardens and wild food taste even better than that. Anyone who's ever had a backyard tomato knows what I'm talking about.
Buying fresh, good quality produce, especially leafy green stuff, can be expensive and difficult. The stop and shop down the street has a pathetic produce section. I've only been reading about wild green edible plants that grow in the northeast for a few nights, and it's amazing already how many things I recognize from the backyard and the woods that I thought were just weeds, but are actually well known, sometimes cultivated in other countries, full of all kinds of vitamins and antioxidants and things you can only get in just-picked food.
And it seems like the biggest reason no one knows or cares about this stuff is because we've all grown up with a supermarket (or at least a corner store) in the neighborhood. Why bother making rosehip or crabapple jelly when you can get vitamin c in orange juice from florida and jelly premade? why dig up burdock roots when you can get artichokes shipped from california? Or fiddleheads, or japanese knotweed, or garlic mustard leaves, or sheep sorrel, or yellow dock, or wild carrot, or stinging nettles, or amaranth? I saw these and a lot more in a book last night, and was able to find them all (except fiddleheads - those are early spring) today down the street in less than 5 minutes. Sure, I know this all sounds like hippie talk, but remember not that long ago when most people around here would scoff at whole grain bread or salad made from anything other than iceberg lettuce? Hippie shit, right? Humans are idiots, incredibly adept at unlearning so much hard-won knowledge. I feel like my time is much better spent getting my legs scratched up in the woods learning all this stuff than sitting inside watching tv or something. If I keep it up, I'll be eating well. And you'll be getting homemade jelly at christmas.
Iphoto's pitching a fit. No photos for now. I'll get to it eventually.
Ever wonder why Robitussin's got that godawful chemical cherry flavor?
The reason that maraschino cherries are flavored like almonds and that almond flavor doesn't actually, well, taste like almonds, and the reason you can't eat apricot, peach or cherry seeds or cherry leaves, bark, or laurel leaves is all because of cyanide.
According to the cyanide page on wikipedia, cyanides in plants are usually bound to sugar molecules- cyanogenic glycosides defend the plant against herbivores.
Cyanide has that lovely almond scent, and is actually in pure almond extract, made from bitter almonds, at the supermarket. You'd probably kill yourself if you drank an entire bottle of McCormick, but I'd like to see you try. It's nasty stuff, full strength. I'm scratching most of the organic chemistry here except that artificial almond flavor is benzaldehyde, which also smells like almonds, is apparently easy to synthesize, and is also the essential oil of bitter almonds. It turns up as well as cyanide and glucose when the glycosides in bitter almonds react (in the presence of water) to the enzyme emulsin, which also happens to be in bitter almonds. Go figure.
Cherry trees also contain cyanide everywhere except the in the fruit, and cherry bark was traditionally used as a cough suppressant (I don't think Robitussin has any real cherry tree bits in it, but it explains why they stuck with that horrible flavor). I'm pretty sure the idea is that low levels of cyanide inhibit metabolism in smooth muscle cells - basically you're intentionally drugging your trachea and lungs so they won't be capable of spasming in reaction to whatever ickiness it is you got. Other plants, far less dangerous, can be used as expectorants, but this is the only one I've read about so far that actually stops a cough by shutting down your metabolism. I made the mistake once of digging into a bag of apricot kernels before i knew much about cyanide, and would have ended up in a coma if I'd eaten more than a small handful. There was a tiny little line at the very bottom of the bag that said something about how you have to boil the seeds for 15 minutes before you can eat them. I'd gotten it in chinatown, where things like that don't usually have much information on the packaging.
So what the hell has this got to do with anything? Well-
I've known for a long time that the hill's got a lot of apple trees, from some old orchard that used to be here, as far as I'd heard. I'll research it and get back to you. I wish I could remember who told me about the trees. A few blocks away from the house there's a big park on the back of the hill with a lot of overgrown, basically abandoned land. It's full of apple trees as well as lots of other plant life that's just about completely ignored by everybody. There are a Lot of wild black cherry trees, I've found out.
Somehow or another, I got it into my head last weekend to walk down there and see if I could scavenge anything. There are tons of apples, most of heirloom varieties and one kind I was told last year by a farmer out in central MA was discovered on Mission Hill (as in it had never been found anywhere else in the world) and I recognized them last weekend. They look like apple-shaped green/brown pears with really tough skin.
Good apples are 20-25 feet in the air (I'm working on that) but I also found a ridiculous number of crabapple trees, blackberry canes, wild roses, wineberries, hawthorn and serviceberry or 'saskatoon' bushes, a hazelnut tree, and another tree with weird shriveled, formerly sticky nuts I cracked at home and tasted - strong almond flavor - wild apricots. I had to spit the nut out, but now I'll know where they'll be next summer so I can get them before they dry up. There were also wild roses everywhere, which means a ton of thorns, but rosehips are good for you, and apparently so are hawthorn leaves and berries, and stinging nettles, which are hell to walk through in shorts, but one of the most healthy things to eat, once the sting's been steamed out of them.
There is some poison ivy, but I've been running through it my whole life and never had a reaction - and I'm not about to question my luck.
I brought home about 8 pounds of crabapples and made jelly for the first time last weekend, and cooked a pot full of wild black cherries into sauce tonight. Cherry wood is one of my favorites, and learning about wild black cherries being edible included a lot of warnings about cyanide in the leaves. Reminded me of all the other things i already knew about the poison.
Crabapples are incredible if you take the time to cook them. I took home a few regular apples, but a lot of the ones I could reach weren't really ripe yet, and were too difficult to get off the tree. I've never seen a hazelnut tree before, and the nuts are all green and look like little dragon heads, but eventually they'll start to ripen and I'll try to grab them before they fall to the ground.
The long term goal of all this is to learn to can things so I can preserve good food from the farmer's markets in the summer, and also to be better acquainted with fruit and other things that grow wild in the northeast that I can find and use. Local fruit and vegetables are usually a lot better than the stuff in the supermarket, and backyard gardens and wild food taste even better than that. Anyone who's ever had a backyard tomato knows what I'm talking about.
Buying fresh, good quality produce, especially leafy green stuff, can be expensive and difficult. The stop and shop down the street has a pathetic produce section. I've only been reading about wild green edible plants that grow in the northeast for a few nights, and it's amazing already how many things I recognize from the backyard and the woods that I thought were just weeds, but are actually well known, sometimes cultivated in other countries, full of all kinds of vitamins and antioxidants and things you can only get in just-picked food.
And it seems like the biggest reason no one knows or cares about this stuff is because we've all grown up with a supermarket (or at least a corner store) in the neighborhood. Why bother making rosehip or crabapple jelly when you can get vitamin c in orange juice from florida and jelly premade? why dig up burdock roots when you can get artichokes shipped from california? Or fiddleheads, or japanese knotweed, or garlic mustard leaves, or sheep sorrel, or yellow dock, or wild carrot, or stinging nettles, or amaranth? I saw these and a lot more in a book last night, and was able to find them all (except fiddleheads - those are early spring) today down the street in less than 5 minutes. Sure, I know this all sounds like hippie talk, but remember not that long ago when most people around here would scoff at whole grain bread or salad made from anything other than iceberg lettuce? Hippie shit, right? Humans are idiots, incredibly adept at unlearning so much hard-won knowledge. I feel like my time is much better spent getting my legs scratched up in the woods learning all this stuff than sitting inside watching tv or something. If I keep it up, I'll be eating well. And you'll be getting homemade jelly at christmas.
Iphoto's pitching a fit. No photos for now. I'll get to it eventually.
posted by dirty bird at
5:16 PM
3 Comments
