Do prickly tumbleweeds pile on your house or nearby fence lines? If so, dinner may be close by. Before the spines firm up, you can boil the green shoots and tender branch tips of the developing plants for a mild, spinach-like green. Our prickly tumbleweeds belong to plants … [Read more...]
Processing Lamb’s Quarters Seeds into Wild Grain
Have you ever wondered how to process lamb’s quarters or goosefoot seeds (Chenopodium species) into an edible grain? Sure, you can eat small amounts without processing, but if you want to make a bulk grain or eat it regularly, you’ll want to remove the indigestible dry plant … [Read more...]
Quickweed greens
As the season for abundant leafy greens wanes, I find myself more and more obsessed, tiptoeing daily around my yard and garden to fill my bowl. I steam greens and eat them with eggs for breakfast, fold them in great quantities into omelets, whiz them into pestos and green … [Read more...]
Fruiting forward
We went for wild plums in the cold, misty morning, gathering them with fingers freezing and lethargic, my feet squishing in icy, wet boots. It was worth enduring the thorny thicket, the musky scent of catnip tall around us, to come home with 20 lbs or so of plums, without making … [Read more...]
European highbush cranberry glaze
Call me a “bitter-plant apologist,” but I’m pretty pleased with myself for this, my first foray into cooking with Viburnum opulus, the highbush cranberry that is the escaped ornamental cousin of the much-celebrated native species. Says Sam Thayer in The Forager’s Harvest … [Read more...]
