Making whistle/musical instrument from lovage

[Amaranth]

Kally asked about what to do with lovage. For food uses I'd second the soup suggestions.

A friend told me that in the 1920-40s in Europe that people used to make a recorder/flute/whistle-like instrument from them since they have hollow stems. She was a small child when someone last made one for her and doesn't remember how they made it.

Does anyone know how this was traditionally done?

[Gina]

No, but I know how to make a temporary one-note horn from the hollow leaf stem of a zucchini plant. It can be quite loud and sounds similar to a cow moo. To our delight, my Italian-born father used to make these in summer and actually had the kid from next door convinced there was a cow in our city back yard - the poor deceived kid even came over with a rope to catch it. That humored my dad immensely.

The sweet memories of youth. :)

[Amaranth]

Gina, I'd love to know how to do that too. Is it possible to describe it, or would we need photos?

[Gina]

I'll try to describe it since my own squash plants are not so large that I want to cut a leaf from them to illustrate. I will later after they are larger. But here goes.

Cut a leaf plus the long hollow 'stem' (petiole) from a zucchini or other squash. After scraping off some of the prickles, very close to where the leaf-blade is attached, cut the blade from the hollow 'stem' with a sharp knife. Make sure to leave part of the leaf base so that the hollowness isnt visible -there will be a miniscule flare. In other words, the end is still sealed over with plant material, but the blade is gone.

Then through the center of this 'sealed end', make a perdendicular cut about two inches long. With your finger, slightly and gently 'pry' this apart. You want the tissues to be slightly apart, but not damage the 'horn'. This will take practice to get right - a video would be ideal here. ;)

That's it. Now you are ready to put that in your mouth, completely covering the slit so air can't escape wrongly when you blow. Blow slowly and deeply - more from the lungs than the mouth. It might take a few times to get used to it, but a deep sound will emerge. If you blow and get a sound, but it suddenly stops, it means the two halves of the slit has 'sealed' together again. Just gently flick it apart again. The 'horn' will work until it wilts or breaks, which isn't all that long.

Silly, fun, old-world stuff. Little kids love it.

I'll see if I can make a primitive diagram in paint. ....edit: Sorry, I couldn't get it to load.

[Gina]

I found a blog that shows some photos of the process. Glad to see it's not a totally lost art. :)

They cut their slit only an inch. Ours were longer, but you can experiment. The best photo is seeing how close to the top you remove the leaf blade from the 'stem'. We also used to use straighter 'stems'.

(I would imagine making a whistle from lovage would be very similar.)

http://acornpies.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-make-squash-horn.html

[puglogic]

I love this thread, because I love things like this. As soon as my squashes and/or lovage are big enough, I'm all over it.