Archive for 'dandelion'

Foraging Unfamiliar Ground (for Radio)

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 7:19 am  
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first burdock 350x262 Foraging Unfamiliar Ground (for Radio)

Digging burdock root deep in the brush with Jim Pullen of KGNU. Photo by Butterpoweredbike.

As wild food foragers, we sometimes find ourselves on unfamiliar ground. A trip somewhere new can be both exciting and intimidating. What is there to forage here?

This was the situation in which my co-foraging friend, Butterpoweredbike, and I found ourselves two weeks ago in the dry, windswept hills northwest of Lyons, Colorado. We’d been invited there by the landowner, Cheri Hoffer, after she heard of our plight to find a plot of private land on which to forage with KGNU producer Jim Pullen, who wanted to tape us foraging for radio.

Together, we drove the long, rough, dirt road there wondering whether we’d made a mistake. Neither of us was familiar with the habitat; everything seemed to be brown, and the media was on its way. What were we going to find? Crap.  Read the rest of this entry

There’s No Foraging Like Snow Foraging

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 9:53 am  
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colorado rockies october 2011 262x350 There’s No Foraging Like Snow Foraging

October snow hovers in the high country.

It’s mid October and it just keeps snowing here in the high country at 11,000 feet in Colorado Rockies. You’d think foraging season were over, but it’s not. 

Two days ago I awoke to a steady snow and found myself unable to focus on work. By noon it stopped but the wind kicked up; the way it whipped around the house inspired Gregg to curl up by the fire and swear he’d stay inside all day. I felt exactly the opposite, however: I needed to go outside.

It’s hunting season so the hand-me-down pink bell bottom cords and orange puffy vest were in order. It was hat and gloves weather too with all that wind. 

The mining road was vacant and the snow plentiful. I reveled in getting fresh tracks as I hiked through 3”- 4” deep swaths of pow. At a switchback I clambered over the fallen tree trunk that obscures the footpath to the secret meadow, which I descended brushing snow off the low bushes as I went. 

There were many non-producing low juniper shrubs en route but eventually I found the one I was looking for, which I’d spied a few days prior. It is the most fruitful creeping juniper shrub I’ve ever found, and despite the snow it was still laden with plump, blue berries.  Read the rest of this entry

The Last of the Dandelions

Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 11:37 am  
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dandelion flower stalks 350x262 The Last of the Dandelions

Surely dandelion flower stalks are good for something..

The last of this batch, that is, in the refrigerator.

And it’s not just dandelions, either; I’ve run out of my entire fresh bounty of wild edible plants, having spent my Fourth of July weekend embroiled in other pursuits—a tandem, costumed A-Basin snowboarding pond-skim with Gregg being one of the highlights—plus entertaining old friends-turned-gypsies who rolled into town in their beat-up RV as well as working an intensive new summer job writing A&E stories for our local paper, The Summit Daily, the noon deadline for which I have one story to go but can no longer resist taking a break to draft this short piece about dandelions.

So as I was saying, I ran out of wild edible plants—and to some extent, things to say and words with which to say them, so I’ll try to use just a few words now.

This exciting entry is about what we had for dinner last night, which was turkey burgers, oven-fried red potatoes with finely chopped dandelions, and “dandelion noodles.”

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Elkslkip Green Curry to Die For

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011 at 6:14 am  
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elkslip green curry 350x313 Elkslkip Green Curry to Die For

Green curry with elkslip and dandelion flowers.

Thai curries are among my absolute favorites, but until last night I’ve had very little success with them. What a wonderful coincidence that the same night I decided to sacrifice my latest batch of elkslip (Calthus leptosepala) for an experiment with a normally-unsuccessful-dish (especially because Gregg made me promise while gathering the elkslip leaves that we’d make then into dip) that it would turn out so remarkably well.

I can’t take credit for the green curry paste, which is manufactured in Thailand by Namprik Mersri Ltd. We picked up a can of it last summer at Bangkok Asian Market in Fort Collins, Colorado. That stuff is extremely spicy, so I mixed spoonfuls of it with a can of coconut milk until it was to my liking—which ended up being fairly spicy with just under half a can of curry added.

My recipe also calls for a handful of finely chopped dandelion flowers. These were a last minute decision and it would probably be just fine without them, however, I really liked the way they added a hint of golden yellow to the otherwise green curry.  Read the rest of this entry

Dock and Dandelions Are My New Staples

Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 9:10 pm  
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whole dandelions 350x296 Dock and Dandelions Are My New Staples

I steamed these beautiful dandelion specimens whole.

Collecting dock and dandelions has become almost second nature to me this season. I use ‘em up and then when I’m out walking the dogs I notice a dandelion here or a dock patch there, snip or pull and voila—they’re in my bag and back to the house at the ready for whenever I need them. This season there’ve been few gaps in the dock and dandelion provenance. Many thanks to mother earth for these free, organic staples.*

Dock in Alfredo Sauce with Pasta

“Every time we eat dock for dinner, we’re saving $3 on a bag of spinach,” I tell Gregg, who sautéed and served a good-sized batch with Alfredo sauce over pasta the other day. “Not to mention there’s less likelihood of getting salmonella!”

“I love dock,” Gregg responded. (As we have seen, however, pretty much anything in cream sauce seems to do the trick.)

The western, large-leafed dock (tentative ID: Rumex occidentalis) that grows in wet areas near our house makes an excellent vegetable. It takes only a few minutes to collect a decent amount from a good patch, and it’s easy to wash. Just chop it up and it cooks real nice!  

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Wild Beach Pea Stir Fry with Dandy Flowers

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 7:07 pm  
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Lathyrus japonicus 350x262 Wild Beach Pea Stir Fry with Dandy Flowers

Lathyrus japonicus on the shore in Old Lyme CT.

I ran into an old high school friend at the beach in Connecticut the other day. She was busy chasing around her two toddlers who kept trying to pick the pretty purple flowers in bloom amidst the dunes. “Don’t pick those flowers,” she admonished. “Don’t go in the grass. We need to keep the dunes healthy.” She was right, of course—because sand dunes and the plants therein often play an important role in protecting the land against storm surges—but at the time I was glad she hadn’t seen me picking pea pods from those same dunes just a few hours earlier! 

The purple-flowering plant that captured the children’s attention was also the one that had captured mine—Lathyrus japonicus, the wild beach pea. Lee Allen Peterson (1977) puts the range of this plant as the east coast of the United States south to New Jersey, in addition to the shores of the Great Lakes, Oneida Lake, and Lake Champlain. Plants for a Future, the U.K. based “resource and information centre for edible and otherwise useful plants,” expands the range to include sandy coasts from Alaska to northern California, western and eastern Europe, and eastern Asia/China.  Read the rest of this entry

Whole Spring Dandelions Delight

Thursday, May 12th, 2011 at 10:31 am  
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dandelion shoot tangle 350x332 Whole Spring Dandelions Delight

A whole spring dandelion dug from the Denver dirt.

Yesterday another foot of snow fell at the house, which lies at 11,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. So much for the few hints of green that were beginning to poke out of the dirt. Fortunately, Gregg and I scored some small spring dandelions last weekend at his parents’ house, which lies much lower at 6,100 feet in Aurora, on the outskirts of Denver.   

Weeding Dandelions with Love  

Gregg’s step-dad Jim was kind enough to let me weed dandelions from the part of the back yard where he doesn’t spray poison due to its proximity to the fish pond. We have a symbiotic relationship in that way—he needs edible weeds removed from his carefully tended landscape, and I want to eat them.   

Have you ever weeded dandelions out of a lawn by hand? It’s not so bad if the soil is soft. Between the soft soil and the long metal hand weeding tool Jim supplied me, it was simply a matter of carefully extracting the dandelions—taproots, leaf stalks, leaves, buds, and all.  Read the rest of this entry

Dandelion Spinach Salad with Red Cabbage and Clover Petals

Friday, October 1st, 2010 at 5:47 am  
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dandelion clover spinach salad 350x262 Dandelion Spinach Salad with Red Cabbage and Clover Petals

Dandelion spinach salad with red clover petals and red cabbage, delicious!

Ok, I can’t stop myself—I must boast about yet another rousing success with these delicious fall dandelions I keep finding up on the mountainside. Whereas I served the last batch finely chopped in a yummy marinated salad, I served these latest dandelion greens chopped coarsely and fresh-tossed with baby spinach, red cabbage, red clovers, and a delicious soy-based homemade dressing. Gregg was very impressed.  

Without further ado, then, here is the recipe: 

Salad Ingredients:

  • Baby spinach greens
  • Dandelion greens and leaf stems, coarsely chopped
  • Red cabbage, coarsely chopped
  • Red clover flowers, finely chopped

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Two Variations on Marinated Dandelion Salad

Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 8:06 am  
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marinated dandelion salad asian 350x301 Two Variations on Marinated Dandelion Salad

Marinated dandelion salad option 1 involves soy sauce.

Not to go overboard on the fall dandelions or anything, but last night’s fresh marinated dandelion salads came out so good and were so fast and easy to make that I figured I’d write up a short post about them. The recipes start out the same and then it is simply a matter of picking one sauce or the other depending on the recipe you’re going for. 

Ingredients: 

  • 1.5 cups dandelion greens or thereabouts
  • 1.5 cups red cabbage or thereabouts
  • 1 medium onion
  • Soy sauce (option 1)
  • French dressing (option 2)

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Fall Foraging in the Colorado High Country

Sunday, September 26th, 2010 at 8:05 am  
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gooseberry currant co 260x350 Fall Foraging in the Colorado High Country

Tart purple gooseberry on a spiny bush.

We had a great hike on Pennsylvania Mountain near our house in the Colorado high country yesterday afternoon. My intention was just to go for a short jaunt because we both have non-wild-edible-plants-related work to get done. So we headed up to one of our usual spots—an old mining road that starts where the county road ends. I brought pint containers just in case we found some late-fruiting currants—which we did, but not until the hike’s dénouement, like some sort of juicy pot of red gold at the end of the rainbow, because it was definitely a rainbow of a hike.

Starting out I was a little on edge because it occurred to me we should have worn orange on account of hunting season, but then we found a few currants hanging off bushes in the valley shade and my mood improved, even though we only found enough to whet our appetites for more.  Read the rest of this entry

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