Archive for 'rosehips'

Granola Bars with Rosehip Raisins & Wild Seed

Thursday, April 11th, 2013 at 6:31 am  
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rosehip granola bars 350x262 Granola Bars with Rosehip Raisins & Wild Seed

A nummy granola bar square made with oats, rosehips, and evening primrose seeds

For two years I bugged my friend for her grandmother’s granola bar recipe. “Erica! I finally found my granola recipe!” she emailed one day, and that was two years ago.

So last night, approximately four years after the idea’s inception, my long-hewn plans finally came to fruition when I recreated the bars—with much adaptation due to the lack of traditional foods in the house, and a couple of new wild ingredients added in, of course.

These chewy wild granola bars have some stuff in them that’s real good for you, and other stuff that’s not so much good for you—but they make a ridiculously delicious pocket snack. And of course they can be adapted for all manner of wild seeds, fruits, and nuts.

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Late November foraging in the Denver low country

Sunday, November 25th, 2012 at 12:31 pm  
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highbush cranberry CO 350x262 Late November foraging in the Denver low country

The stinkier of the highbush cranberries, these guys are turning into sauce whether I stink my fiance out of the house or not, by golly.

Well, Denver’s not low country exactly — Mile High City and all— and the part where my friend B and I like to forage is one of the higher points in said low country, but it’s still low compared to the upper reaches of Colorado where I live, even though we moved down from 11,000 feet to 9,800-feet or so this summer.

Still, it’s supposed to be winter up here now, and most of the plants think it is, so it’s not ideal for food foraging aside from cold weather finds like pine needles for tea and flavoring or willow bark to sooth the ever-present, new-job-related headache from which I suffer.

You’ll understand why I’m so excited, then, that—after hightailing it from work to Denver for Thanksgiving and driving home to Summit County the next day only to discover I left my computer behind and had to go back to the fiancé’s parents’ house for it —I had opportunity to visit and forage food with Butter B, wildcrafter extraordinaire, and wound up going home with sacks upon sacks of wild stuff to eat.

That’s right: It’s November, and foraging season down Denver way is still kicking. Below is what I came home with yesterday. It’s stuff you might be able to spot, right now—and, upon absolute positive identification (of course), get busy with in the kitchen yourself:

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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

Salvation in the Form of Salad with Ginger Rosehip Vinaigrette

Monday, February 20th, 2012 at 5:39 pm  
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salad rosehip ginger vinaigrette 350x269 Salvation in the Form of Salad with Ginger Rosehip Vinaigrette

Last week’s spinach, iceberg, and sauteed tofu salad with Ginger Rosehip Vinaigrette.

Why didn’t anybody tell me how much pain follows surgery? Here I’d pictured a scary hospital visit followed by a rosy home-bound ever-after in which I didn’t have to work and played with my toys, happy as a wounded clam.

No so much. Visits to the bathroom on crutches have felt like a knife slicing flesh and bone in my inner knee region, accompanied by a dull ache in the place where some deceased angel’s tendon now acts like an ACL for me. Mealtime means crackers because I can reach them from the bed and they settle the stomach from this bottomless cocktail of oxycontin and vicodin I’ve been imbibing.

The crackers are starting to get to me, the crumbs itching my bum in the bedsheets where I lay. Crackers from breakfast to dinner for 4 days straight—until last night, when I finally ate a big dinner topped off with a bowl of ice cream and then popped a pain pill only to wake up near-vomiting in the night.

Surely all this talk of pain and vomit is getting you in the mood for my yummy Ginger and Rosehip Vinaigrette? Read the rest of this entry