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Cake and Eat It

No season in New York is complete without a trek to Joe’s house, and aroma-tidbit time.“When do you want to come for geranium-jasmine cake?” he asked.Well, of course I answered as any sane person would: “As soon as possible please!"And so I went the other night, up to visit him at the north end of a bare and wintry Central Park.The cake was flavored with geranium absolute (yes, absolute, deal with it) with rose filling and jasmine sambac frosting. I mean please.Need I say anything about thes …

Tuberose in India

One summer, about 2006, I had the pleasure of visiting a Tuberose farm near Pune. Indian farm plots are quite small--this one was about an acre I think. Marigolds were planted along the edges, and interspersed with the tuberose.Like asparagus, tuberose grows as a single long stalk; not on a bush or tree. There is no relation to Rose--the Latin binomial is Polianthus tuberosa whereas roses all belong to the Rosa ssp.In India, tuberose flowers are primarily used in temples. In fact, about 8 …

Welcome 2022--Let's try something new

The last two years have been device-intense, and that's a mixed bag. On the one hand, aren't you glad we had it?  But enough already. Enough with the constant scrolling. Not only does it take our attention away from our actual lives, but it allows us to be manipulated and spied on, to become an actual product for those giant companies like facebook to sell our data to other giant companies.I'm not saying we should all stop all of this, because we quite obviously can't. But we sure as hell c …