Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Finocchio! How Gay

It's that time of the year, and I want to share it with you.
In Northern California (and probably many other places), wild fennel has gone to seed.
I collected wild fennel pollen last summer, but not this year. (I still have some of last year's — seems an ounce of fennel pollen goes pretty far.)
However, there are still plenty of seeds to gather, and I gathered some a couple of days ago.
Anybody interested in a Share Package? This is an idea I came up with for sharing surplus bounties of herbs, leaves, salt, spices, whatever you have a little extra of.
I'm trying out the idea of tagging it with a Technorati tag of Share+Package. Go check Technorati and see if anybody else is playing along with this scheme. That is, if you have abundance to share, please join the game.
(I do want to add that Technorati is not a really reliable way of getting information. I just checked. What a dud. Still — let's try.)
As for me, I will happily mail a nifty envelope full of wild fennel seeds to — oh, gosh, up to 10 people. Get my e-mail address by clicking on the enigmatic remark under my profile.
Technorati Tag:

9 comments:

Dagny said...

Thank you for solving a mystery. I always wondered what those seeds were that I ate as a kid. They grew in abundance in El Cerrito and we would munch on handfuls as we walked down the street.

Ilva said...

And I always wondered about the etymology of the finocchio of your title! I wish someone could tell me..

Anonymous said...

I'm sure you will fill Ilva in, but meanwhile do you remember the gay nightclub in North Beach called Finnochio's?

A little of any kind of fennel goes a long way, something I wish more people would consider before over-seasoning.

Civic Center said...

I received a Share Package of laurel leaves and it's one of the loveliest gifts of my life. I still haven't used them BUT I WILL. Cookiecrumb isn't kidding. She wants to gift you with magical herbs through snail mail (an edible term in itself).

cookiecrumb said...

Dagny: That's sort of like the breath-freshening plate of seeds at an Indian restaurant. Yums.

Ilva: Well, of course you know finnochio means fennel in Italian. But it's also good-natured (I think, I hope) slang for "gay." Or are you being naive? :-)

Kudzu: Oh yeah.

SFMike: Aw, shucks, dude. xxx

Guy said...

Your cheese bomb picture is haunting me.

Biggles

cookiecrumb said...

Biggles: Because it's so out of focus? Oh lordy, I tried and tried. These damn condos don't have enough windows.

Ilva said...

no I just wonder WHY it means gay, the etymology of that specific use of the word as a term for gay! I have wondered for years, trying to figure out any kind of connection but I have never come up with something useful...

cookiecrumb said...

Ilva: I just don't know the etymology... (Yikes, and I spelled it wrong in my post title! Fixed.)