Archive for 'juniper'

11 edible plants on North Tenmile Creek trail in Frisco

Sunday, September 16th, 2012 at 7:40 pm  
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fireweed fall 350x233 11 edible plants on North Tenmile Creek trail in Frisco

Fireweed is a little tough for outright consumption right now, but the fall leaves make a decent tea.

Last week I led my first-ever wild edible plant hike, from the North Tenmile Creek trailhead in Frisco. The hike was done through Colorado Mountain College, and instead of announcing it here or on Facebook, Gregg and I just went with it. Everyone was local and nobody had heard of this website before.

I marched the crew like a drill sergeant to 20 or so wild edible plants and regaled them with my vast knowledge on each one as we traveled up the trail a short way to the dam at the creek and back, for a total round trip of 1/2 mile in 1.5 hours.

Overall I think it went pretty well. On my feedback sheets I got mostly 5′s with a few 4′s. The chief complaints were that the participants wanted a handout, wanted the tour to go longer, or wanted it to have taken place during peak foraging season. Read the rest of this entry

Adding a Wild Zing to Venison with Flavors of the Forest

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 6:36 am  
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wild flavored venison 350x262 Adding a Wild Zing to Venison with Flavors of the Forest

Venison grill fare: Wild dry-rubbed steaks and kabobs marinated in ginger rosehip vinaigrette.

If wild is a flavor, then venison is it. I can remember days not too distant when the taste of deer was too much for me—too gamey, too foreign, too reminiscent of Bambi’s mother. Enter my brother-in-law, hunter extraordinaire, and suddenly before I know it a hunk of gifted venison is in my freezer, taunting me. How the heck am I supposed to eat that stuff again?

What worked for me back then in Los Angeles works for me still: Bathe the extra gaminess away with one or two days soaking in buttermilk in the refrigerator prior to rinsing, patting dry, and undertaking additional preparations.

Never mind how hypocritical this sounds as I write it, but this time, after painstakingly removing the “wild” from the venison, I then added it back in with the following preparations. Here are the wild things I did with our recently-thawed cache of venison steaks: Read the rest of this entry

A Bathtub Gin for the Wild Edible Plants Enthusiast

Friday, May 13th, 2011 at 5:34 am  
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steeping gin 262x350 A Bathtub Gin for the Wild Edible Plants Enthusiast

Juniper and coriander steeping in vodka to make gin.

Perhaps one day I’ll get into distilling my own spirits, but until that day comes, I did find a lazy’s man’s gin recipe on Ehow that involves wild edible plants. 

According to the website of the now-defunct Gin & Vodka Association, gin flavorings (referred to as botanicals) include juniper as the mandatory and dominant flavor, in addition to any or all of the following: coriander, angelica, orange peel, lemon peel, cardamom, cinnamon, grains of paradise, cubeb berries, and nutmeg. Additional gin botanicals are listed at Tony Ackland’s site on the home distillation of alcohol. 

The wild edible plant I used in my gin is juniper, of course. We have tons of it growing in the back yard and I’ve collected juniper “berries” (which aren’t berries at all, but rather cones) on numerous occasions, so I have a collection of these dry, hand-picked “berries” in the closet. (Another botanical on the list—angelica—also grows in parts nearby, but I have yet to positively identify and harvest any on account of the similarities it bears to poison hemlock and water hemlock, both of which are highly toxic. So, I’m biding my time until I’m 100% positive about angelica.)

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