Archive for 'recipes'

Wildman App Makes Foraging with Technology Likely

Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 5:40 am  
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brill wild edibles app 233x350 Wildman App Makes Foraging with Technology Likely

Wild Edibles app by Steve Brill and WinterRoot. Image nabbed from iTunes.

Steve Brill recently released “Wild Edibles,” an iPhone app that helps foragers identify and use edible wild plants. The free version, Wild Edibles Lite, contains 20 common plants, while the full version costs $7.99 and offers “165 edible plants, 52 minor look-alikes, 719 images, and 162 vegan recipes.” The release is compatible with iPhone (iOS 3.0 or later), iPod touch, and iPad, with an Android version currently under development by the software’s creator, WinterRoot LLC. 

Considered to be one of the foremost experts in the foraging field, “Wildman” Steve Brill has held wild edible plant tours in and around New York City since 1982 and published several books on foraging and wild food preparation. He is perhaps most well known for his 1986 arrest by undercover NYC park rangers for eating a dandelion in Central Park. 

I don’t own an iPhone myself, but I downloaded the free version onto Gregg’s phone the other day to take a look. Even though Wild Edibles Lite only contains 20 plant entries, there are still several plants in there that I don’t yet know, despite the fact that I own Brill’s comprehensive 1994 guide, Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not-So-Wild) Places. (Informative and thorough as that book is, it’s big to be toting into the field and I find the black-and-white botanical illustrations hard to match up definitively to the actual plants—so I often reach for something smaller and in color instead.)  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

Zen and the Art of Acorn Processing

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 6:20 am  
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acorn meats skinned 350x262 Zen and the Art of Acorn Processing

Acorn meats with testa removed.

After a long, cold winter working two jobs on top of my reckless pursuit of other passions, I came back to my wild food obsession fully the other day over a handful of acorns.

The acorns were from last fall’s visit to Connecticut. Mom and I gathered them on an ill-fated hike before getting lost in the 1,000 acre forest behind my childhood home—a forest I once knew every inch of that is now riddled with confusing new paths from an abandoned housing development.

Mom had in fact collected some acorns for me earlier that fall, but apparently they require refrigeration or immediate drying (Thayer, 2010) lest they begin to rot. So when I visited in October of 2010, we tossed out the first batch and gathered a second in the forest behind the house (before leading ourselves astray and walking in circles, in the rain and growing darkness, for the better part of an hour).

I refrigerated that second batch until my departure for Colorado, then carried it on the plane in a cooler bag and commenced to drying the acorns on a cookie sheet in front of the woodstove here at 11,000 feet in the Rockies. They were supposed to dry to the point that they rattled in their shells. When that didn’t happen, I considered throwing them out. Instead, I forgot about them for about 7 months. 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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Expectorating with Sticky Gumweed

Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 8:50 am  
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sticky gumweed buds 350x266 Expectorating with Sticky Gumweed

Sticky gumweed buds look like cups full of resin.

Sticky gumweed is so distinctive; it’s difficult not to notice when it’s blooming, which in the Colorado foothills ranges from late July through early September. 

Also known as curly-cup gumweed or curly gumweed, both the “sticky” and the “gumweed” descriptors in these common names for Grindelia squarrosa refer to the gooey resin on the upper parts of the plant. The buds present as cups of the sticky white stuff, while the flowers sit atop “overlapping rows of backward-curling, sticky involucral bracts,” as Plants of the Rocky Mountains (Kershaw, et. al., 1998) describes them. It is in the resin that Grindelia’s medicinal properties reside. 

Collecting Grindelia buds and flowers is a sure way to get covered with the stuff; fortunately, the resin has a delicious sweet smell to it. Wildcrafter Ryan Drum describes even previous years’ desiccating flowering gumweed stalks as having “a faint wonderful odor of vague incense.” He cautions against letting fresh buds and flowers heat up too much during the collection process, and recommends the use of well-ventilated paper bags for doing so. Read the rest of this entry

Jellies and Jams, My Currant Obsession

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 5:58 am  
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wild black currants 350x262 Jellies and Jams, My Currant Obsession

Wild black currants with distinctive Ribes leaves.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I absolutely love making jellies and jams!  

Mind you, this is a complete about-face from how I felt about them yesterday, especially after Gregg read aloud the brochure that came inside the box of MCP pectin and it said we had to “Measure ingredients exactly” because “ALTERING RECIPES or INGREDIENTS could cause a set failure” (the caps are MCP’s emphasis) while I was failing to get my first-ever jam to set. I felt like Julie Powell about to throw a fit over a Julia Child recipe gone wrong. What do you mean I have to measure the ingredients exactly? I near wailed as one nervous boyfriend tried his best to disappear into the background.

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Soapberry Pepper Jelly…A First on Several Fronts

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 10:16 am  
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soapberries foaming 350x288 Soapberry Pepper Jelly...A First on Several Fronts

As the name implies, soapberries foam up when cooked.

My mother always told me not to eat wild berries I found growing in the woods, and I have long heeded her advice with the exception of easy ones like blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. That is, until recently, when I found a guide to wild edible berries at our local Fairplay, Colorado public library entitled Wild Berries of the West, by Betty B. Derig and Margaret C. Fuller (2001). So far, every berry I discover in the wilds here in the Colorado Rockies I can find in that book. It’s wonderful! 

My most recent discovery is Sheperdia canadensis, also known as soapberry, soopolallie, or Canada buffaloberry. According to Plants of the Rocky Mountains (Kershaw et. al., 1998), S. canadensis is a spreading, deciduous shrub with small, bran-like, rust-colored scales on the undersides of leaves and young branches. The juicy, translucent berries are born on the female plants only, range from red to yellow, and feel soapy to the touch. 

The nickname “soapberry” comes from the berries’ saponin content, which is an ingredient in many commercial foaming agents (Derig and Fuller) and the fact that the berries foam up when beaten (Kershaw) or cooked.   

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Wild Huckleberry Masterpiece

Monday, September 13th, 2010 at 5:52 pm  
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huckleberries rocky mountains 350x203 Wild Huckleberry Masterpiece

Rocky Mountain huckleberries foraged near Fairplay, Colorado

The high country huckleberry season (Vaccinium species) is winding down now, but it was such a success at its peak that I feel obliged to write about it. This is because not only did we find the berries plentiful (and literally in our very own back yard at 11,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies), but also because Gregg used them to make what was quite possibly the best wild edible dish I’ve had yet to date.

Colorado Huckleberries

I ate huckleberries last fall in New Hampshire that looked and tasted very much like blueberries, but the local huckleberries near Fairplay, Colorado are very different. When plentiful in mid-August, our back yard berries were translucent and ruby red, dangling like tiny gems from the lush, green, low-lying plants that carpet the forested areas behind our house. I tentatively identified them as grouse whortleberries (V. scoparium), which I read about in Wild Berries of the West by Betty B. Derig and Margaret C. Fuller. Even as of yesterday there were a few ripe patches out there, although the remaining berries seem to be purpler. (Whether that means the reds eventually turn purple or the purples ripen later I couldn’t tell you. Suffice it to say that the fruits range from red to blue-purple in color.)  Read the rest of this entry

Roseroot is Edible, Who Knew?

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 8:24 am  
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roseroot flowering 350x262 Roseroot is Edible, Who Knew?

What I believe to be roseroot, or Sedum rosea.

I first noticed roseroot on a high-country hike above Fairplay, Colorado as Gregg and I were scrambling up a rock face, off-trail as usual. The plant is distinctive and attractive—tiny, blood-red flowers atop a fleshy stalk with spirally overlapping (Peterson, 1977) succulent, white-green leaves—and so I photographed it to look up later in Plants of the Rocky Mountains, a flora identification guide we obtained recently from The Printed Page bookshop in Denver.

Plants of the Rocky Mountains by Linda Kershaw, et. al. (1998) is not specific to edible wild plants, but when I found the plant in question in the picture index followed by the entry, lo and behold, I also discovered that our local roseroot is edible. (A quick perusal of the new guide revealed that edibility information is included for many of the plants, to my very pleasant surprise. Come to find out that Linda Kershaw also authored Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies, a guide I have yet to obtain.) What luck!  Read the rest of this entry

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