We had a beautiful walk today with a wonderful girl scout troop. We walked on the Trillium Trail outside Pittsburgh, PA, where hundreds of native trilliums were in bloom. (Trillium is not an edible plant that I know of…but it is gorgeous!)

Trillium (not an edible)

We did identify native edible and medicinal plants such as bloodroot, May apple, fiddleheads, wild ginger, spring beauty and trout lily.

Wild Ginger

We also saw some of our “weed” edibles such as the invasive garlic mustard and Japanese knotweed, chickweed, cleavers, ground ivy/creeping Charlie.

Also seen: violets (purple, yellow and white), stinging nettles, wood nettles (stings!), cleavers, broad leaf dock and jewelweed.

And one of the girls spotted this robin’s nest, complete with tiny hatchlings.

Baby Robins

What an amazing day in Western PA!

Make sure to join us on our walks this Saturday, April 21, 2012 at 1 and 2 pm at the Frick Park Earth Day Celebration! It’s at Frick Environmental Center on Beechwood Blvd…the festival runs from 11:30 to 4. Hope to see you there!

~ Melissa

ramps

This week your share contains 3 new items: ramps, trout lily leaves and wild mint.

I want to take this time to stress to you how carefully and sustainably we harvest your produce, especially foods like ramps and trout lily, which are native and not invasives (such as knotweed and garlic mustard.)

Ramps take time to become established. We pick with permission, extremely carefully and leave the bulbs so the plants can continue their life cycles. Our intention is to disturb the ramps as little as possible. That being said, they are quite a celebrated plant with ramp festivals happening all over West Virginia in the upcoming weeks (end of April beginning of May.) Last Thursday’s Post-Gazette (the one in which we were featured) had a bunch of recipes using ramps, be sure to check them out.  Here are a couple ramp and morel festivals which were listed in the Post Gazette.

Trout lilies are also a native plant and were harvested carefully and with permission. We picked the leaves for your share this week (the little root tubers are also edible.) We recommend adding them to salads.

Wild mint is extremely flavorful. I made a gluten-free tabouli (using rice, you could also use quinoa or wheat products such as bulgar, cous cous or cracked wheat) and it was delicious. Instead of parsely I used chickweed. Instead of scallions I used the onion grass. You could even add garlic mustard (I would have but didn’t have any on hand.) Truly a delicious wild dish! (Recipe below.)

Wild, Gluten-free Tabouli

This week your share includes:

• ramps
• trout lily
• wild mint
• chickweed
• garlic mustard
• onion grass
• dryad’s saddle - make sure to cook before eating!
• Japanese knotweed
• stinging nettle
• deadnettle

We’re almost done with the Japanese knotweed season! To have knotweed on hand once the season ends you can:

1. freeze it: cut it into thin rings and freeze it (you can blanch them first or not)
2. tincture them: chop and fill a jar with knotweed stalks, then cover with 80 or 100 proof vodka. After 6 weeks the resulting tincture will be a more medicinal way to get the benefits of knotweed (resveratrol among other compounds).
3. pickle them! If you’ve made pickles before do it the same way,  using knotweed stalks in place of cucumber spears. Or follow the wild fermentation recipe below.
4. make a soda! (see info below.)
5. Add to homemade sauerkraut

Fermenting food is a healthy way to preserve it. You do not cook the food, thereby preserving all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes, and fermentation causes healthy microbes to colonize the food and is very healthy for your gut.

To make a soda you need to have a “ginger bug” starter on hand. This is good to make and then keep in the refrigerator…you may want to make a naturally fermented and fizzy soda out of one of the many plants you’ll receive this season!

To make the ginger bug:

• 3 cups water
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh ginger (unpeeled)
• 2 Tbsp sugar (organic is best)

To a glass jar add the above ingredients and stir well. Cover with a cloth and leave on the counter for 2 days.

After two days, add 2 tsp chopped unpeeled ginger and 2 tsp sugar each day for a week. Stir a couple times a day. Keep covered with a cloth on the counter (not refrigerated.) It should get fizzy and taste like gingerale. It is now ready to use. If you are not ready to use it simply cap and refrigerate until ready.

To make Japanese Knotweed Soda:

Chop and boil 2 quarts (or as much as you have, doesn’t need to be that much) knotweed into a strong tea for at least 10 minutes in a gallon of water. Add 1 1/2 cups sugar. Cool to body temperature (or room temperature). Strain plants out and add a cup of ginger starter. Mix and cover with cloth, leaving on the counter for a couple days. Once it becomes fizzy and less sweet, bottle and refrigerate. Corks are best to cap bottles with - the carbonation builds even in the fridge and it’s better for the cork to fly out than for the bottle to explode (which has happened to a friend of mine.) These sodas are delicious.

Replenish your ginger bug: add another cup of water, 2 tsp ginger and 2 tsp sugar, stir and refrigerate until ready to use again.

We’ve made sodas from: yellow dock, dandelion, black locust flowers, nettles/ginger, even cacao nibs! I will definitely be making Japanese knotweed soda soon.

Naturally fermented knotweed pickles:

• fresh Japanese knotweed stalks to fill a quart jar
• spring water, 1 quart
• 2-3 Tbsp sea salt (between 1/2 and 1 Tbsp salt per cup water)
• 2 peeled garlic cloves
• 1-2 Tbsp dill seed (optional)

Mix salt and water until salt dissolves making a brine. Add garlic and dill to bottom of  jar. Fill with knotweed stalks and cover with brine. Cover jar with cloth or the top. Leave on counter 1 - 7 days, tasting every day after about 3 days to see how sour the pickles are. This is a no-cook natural fermentation method to make pickles and can be used for cucumbers as well.

Recipe for Wild Gluten-free Tabouli

• 2 cups cooked rice or quinoa
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup chopped chickweed (or 1/2 cup chopped chickweed and 1/2 cup chopped garlic mustard)
• 2 - 3 Tbsp chopped fresh wild mint
• 2 -3 Tbsp chopped onion grass

Mix all ingredients together. Enjoy!

Remember to cook your dryad’s saddle (and all wild mushrooms) first before enjoying.

And make sure to check out CSF member and Pittsburgh Magazine Columnist Leah Lizarondo’s recent column: Girl Gone Wild. You’ll find her delicious recipes for garlic mustard/nettle pesto and chickweed crepes.

Also, nettles season is coming to an end soon (once they flower they will not be great to use.) If you’re out of ideas or can’t get to all your nettles, consider drying them or even freezing them. Here’s an inspiring blog post I found when searching the web….lots of great ideas on how to store wild edibles!

Enjoy your share!

~ Melissa

Our first walk of the year was so much fun! We had great weather and lots of enthusiastic people. We identified at least 12 wild edibles (including Dryad’s Saddle, an edible mushroom that everyone got to take home.) Unfortunately we didn’t find morels…but join us on Saturday for our Earth Day walks and who knows what we’ll find!

discussing wild edibles at a wild edibles walk in Frick Park

We found and discussed:

Dandelion

dandelion flowers

Plantain

Plantain

Chickweed

close up of chickweed

Japanese knotweed

Japanese Knotweed

Dryad’s Saddle

Dryad's Saddle

Purple Archangel (Purple deadnettle)

Lamium purpureum, purple deadnettle

Violet

violet

Broad Leaf Dock
Burdock

Burdock

Nettles

stinging nettles

Cleavers
Garlic Mustard

Garlic Mustard

May Apple

We discussed making:

• Dandelion Wine
• Plantain Oil and Salve - to soothe the skin and ease itching, rashes, stings, poison ivy/oak, bug bites, etc
• Latkes (potato pancakes) with nettles and garlic mustard
• Garlic Mustard Pesto
• Garlic Mustard “Horseradish”
• Steamed Deadnettles
• Roasted Dandelion and Burdock root for coffee substitute
• Drying plants and roots
• Making tinctures

Our next walks are this Saturday at the Frick Park Environmental Center for their family-friendly, free, Earth Day Celebration! The festival is Saturday April 21, 2012  from 11:30 to 4, and we will lead two walks at 1 pm and 2 pm.

Hope to see you there!

~ Melissa

Welcome to Food Under Foot!

Many of you are finding us today from the wonderful article published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. If you are new to the site, make sure you sign up for our free newsletter (which includes five free ebooks) in the green box on the right hand margin.

Also, you may have noticed a May 28 walk listed in the newspaper. Unfortunately that was last year’s walk. The good news is: there are walks scheduled even sooner, including our first walk this Sunday! Many more walks will be scheduled this year as well (hopefully including one with Leah!)

Wild Edibles Walks

This Sunday, April 15, 2012. 11 am

Join us for our first walk of the season! We’ll be hunting for morel mushrooms as well as identifying all sorts of wild edibles, so come with a basket or paper bag in case we find some morels!

Where: Parking lot by Frick Park Clay Tennis Courts (Braddock Ave.) See Map

800 South Braddock Ave, 15221

When: Sunday April 15, 2012, 11 am

Fee: $10/person, $15/couple or family (kids under 10 are free), checks or cash only please

Questions: (412) 381-0116

Earth Day Walks in Frick Park

Saturday, April 21, 2012. 1 pm and 2 pm

Join Melissa Sokulski of Food Under Foot at Frick Park’s 2012 Earth Day Celebration! This free celebration takes place at Frick Environmental Center on Beechwood Blvd Pittsburgh, PA from 11:30 to 4 pm. Our free walks will be at 1 pm and 2 pm. Hope to see you there!

Where: Frick Park Nature Center

2005 Beechwood Blvd. Pittsburgh, PA 15217

When: Saturday April 21, 2012, 1 pm, 2 pm

Fee: Free

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Enjoy the site! There is lots of great information here. If you are on facebook make sure to follow us over there. And please sign up for our newsletter (right margin, green box) so we can stay in touch.

Thanks!

~ Melissa Sokulski

Welcome to week 2!

New this week: Morel mushrooms, Cattail shoots, curly dock and chickweed.

morels

In this week’s share you will find:

• morel mushrooms
• cattail shoots
• Japanese knotweed shoots
• nettles
• curly dock
• deadnettles
• garlic mustard
• chickweed
• cleavers
• mint

Morels

As with all wild mushrooms, you must cook morels before eating. They can be sauteed, grilled, boiled in soup or sauces, or cooked just about any way you can imagine!

Morels are a prized mushroom: they can not be cultivated and are only found for a few weeks in the spring. They can be dried and eaten throughout the year (they reconstitute beautifully.) I love sauteing the morels in butter with onions, and eating them over rice or with eggs (or tofu.) I like to top (gluten free) toast and/or pizza with sauteed morels and onions. I have made quiche with morels. The more complex the dish the more you may lose the flavor of morels, especially if you are unfamiliar, so I recommend starting simply and getting to know the wonderful flavor of these mushrooms.

Chickweed

chickweed

Chickweed is a wonderful green: fresh and delicious. I love to use it as the base for my salads, but it can be simply added to lettuce-based salads as well. Whatever kind of dressing you love will go wonderfully on chickweed. It also tastes divine as is…not bitter in the least.

Chickweed can also be cooked (similar to spinach) and can be added to soups or served alongside a main dish as a cooked green.

Chickweed can be found year round even up north, even in the snow. If you know where your patch is just check under snow in December and you’ll find it. In the hot summer months it keeps its fresh non-bitter taste. This is truly one of my favorite wild greens.

Curly Dock, or Yellow Dock

Similar to broad dock which you had last week, curly dock can be used topically as an antidote to nettle stings (crush and apply fresh leaves). Curly dock is also a tasty green itself. Slightly sour and a bit bitter, it can be eaten raw but it is more often used as a cooked green.

This green - along with other docks and sour wild greens such as sorrel and wood sorrel, and greens such as spinach, lambs quarters and amaranth (wild and cultivated) - have a bit more oxalic acid in them than others so they should not be eaten in excess by people prone to kidney stones (in the same way spinach should not be eaten in excess in that situation.)

Cattail shoots

cattails

In this field of cattails the main thing you can see are last years cattails, the heads covered with fluff (which can be used as excellent insulation in survival situations, as well as stuffing for pillows, etc.) But when you get up close and look down, you’ll see new shoots coming up. These shoots are referred to by some as “Cossack asparagus.” Peel back the tough green outer leaves until the white inside remains. This can eaten raw or steamed or sauteed.

steaming cattail shoots

Nettles

I posted the recipe for Nettle Broccoli Quinoa Quiche, and I also made a delicious Cream of Nettle Potato Soup, based on CSF-er Michelle’s description of her “Cat Pee Soup.”

Cream of Nettle Potato Soup

• 2 potatoes, peeled, chopped (they don’t have to be peeled if organic, but my potatoes were sprouting, so…)
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• Nettles, chopped
• 6 cups water or vegetable (or mushroom) stock
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• dash of organic whole milk or cream (for vegan cream soup, simply remove and blend some potatoes and soup, this will give the soup a white creamy texture.)

1. Saute onion and garlic with salt in oil until onion is translucent, 5 minutes.
2. Add water or broth and chopped potatoes.
3. Cook until potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes.
4. Add nettles, salt and pepper to taste.
5. Cook 10 minutes more until nettles are wilted.
6. Turn off heat and add a dash of cream or milk. To keep soup vegan, remove about half of the potatoes and some stock and blend until creamy, return to soup.

Enjoy!

Deadnettles/Purple Archangel

I’m still loving deadnettles (purple archangel) in smoothies and as a steamed green. How have you been enjoying it? Another week of fun and creativity with purple archangel!

Japanese Knotweed

Ticks love me. It is not pleasant. Being out in the woods a lot I’ve found many crawling on me and have already had to pull a couple off. I am hoping that Japanese knotweed is as good for you and effective against Lyme disease as I hear it is. My favorite drink this spring is my Japanese knotweed, cucumber, apple juice. If you have a juicer I urge you to try it.

Raw, steamed or sauteed, this shoot is edible, tart and juicy. Add it to stir-fries or salads, made a sweet sauce with it or add it to baked goods. And send me your wonderful recipes and I’ll pass them along!

Garlic Mustard

Did you make pesto last week? Maybe a vinegar? If you tried one then try the other this week! Or add it to salads (it is so good in salads). The leaves and flowers are edible and taste like garlic/mustard. And though they are not as durable cooked as other greens, they can still be cooked lightly and enjoyed. I added them to potato pancakes last week (with nettles) and it was a true treat.

Cleavers

Melissa making green smoothies at a workshop in Chalk Hill, PA

What did you do with your cleavers last week? I had mine in smoothies and I loved it! That’s why I’m including it again…I just can’t get enough of it in smoothies! It totally kicked out nettles for top green in smoothies (as much as I love nettles, I can’t take them in my smoothies lately…especially not after having the clean green taste of the cleavers.) Just add cleavers to your favorite fruit smoothie. Start with just a little, this green is hardly detectable (except for its color) and you’ll soon find yourself adding more and more. Here is a smoothie I’ve been making lately:

Cleavers Smoothie

Blend together:

• 2 bananas
• 1 orange
• 1 cup frozen mango
• handful (or two) cleavers
• ice
• water (you can add juice or sweetener such as dates, agave or maple syrup as well, but I find it unnecessary, especially with ripe bananas.)

Mint

I’m not sure if your mint this week will be Creeping Charlie again, or peppermint, catnip or lemon balm! It depends where I forage tomorrow. But I love to include something herby and flavorful in the share. I will update this section as soon as I know.

Have fun and enjoy your wonderful, flavorful, nutritious and lovingly foraged food!!!

Love,

Melissa

gluten-free nettles broccoli quiche

Recipe: Gluten-free Broccoli Nettle Quiche
by Melissa Sokulski

Preheat oven: 375 F

“Crust”: one cup or so of cooked quinoa (you can also use brown rice or not use a crust.) Spread quinoa over the bottom of pie pan.

1 cup broccoli, chopped
1 large bunch stinging nettles
1 small tomato, chopped (optional)
1/2 onion, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
6 large eggs
1/4 c milk (or water or soy milk, etc.)
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

• In a shallow pan, steam broccoli and nettles in a little water (covered) for about 5 minutes until broccoli is bright green and nettles has completely wilted.

• Remove from pan and when cooled a bit, chop nettles into small pieces and broccoli into smaller pieces.

• Saute onion in oil (can add some salt) until onion is translucent. Add nettles and broccoli. Turn off heat and mix in chopped tomatoes.

• In bowl: mix eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

• Spread grated cheese on top of quinoa, add the veggies next, pour the egg mixture over top (pour slowly, allowing egg to sink in.)

• Use fork to poke quiche to bottom of pie pan so that egg mixture can run all the way down, this will hold crust together. Poke all around quiche.

• Bake until top is browned and egg no longer jiggles, about 45 minutes.

This is delicious! I brought it to a Passover Seder (quinoa is not a true grain and can be eaten during Pesach.) Of course it is wonderful anytime.

What are you making with nettles these days?

Enjoy!

~ Melissa Sokulski

Week 1's share. Absent from photo: cleavers.

Welcome to week 1 of the Community Supported Foraging!

I am posting the newsletter on the blog so that if you are following (or foraging) along you can read about the suggestions and recipes of what is current wild and available.

Also, we may be able to make more shares available at some point so this way you can follow along and see if you would like to join in.

We had a couple surprises in this week’s share: young dryad’s saddle mushroom, which turns out to be delicious when it is young and tender like the ones we found and creeping charlie or ground ivy, which we found in abundance at Wild Red’s Gardens, who have graciously offered to let us forage there.

I am so happy to be able to include edible wild mushrooms in this week’s share. To me that makes the share extra fun! An important note about wild mushrooms:

Dryad's saddle

WILD MUSHROOMS MUST BE COOKED BEFORE EATEN!

in other words:

DO NOT EAT WILD MUSHROOMS RAW

or:

ALWAYS COOK WILD MUSHROOMS

Ella serving dryad's saddle, sauteed in butter

I recommend when first trying a new mushroom to simply saute it in butter, making sure you like the flavor, before adding it to a dish. Dryad’s saddle is tender and delicious this early in the season, but later it will get tough and bitter. I’d never enjoyed its taste until finding these young ones in the woods. At this stage, they rival morels. They are in fact known in some circles as “The morel hunter’s consolation prize.”

In this week’s share:

• Dryad’s saddle mushroom(fresh)
• dried reishi mushrooms
• stinging nettles
• broad dock leaves
• cleavers
• Japanese knotweed stalks
• purple archangel (purple deadnettle)
• violet flowers
• onion grass
• creeping charlie/ground ivy
• garlic mustard

Read The Rest of This Post »

Japanese knotweed juice with garlic mustard/nettle potato pancakes

Happy April!

I feel like spring is really here with the abundance of wild edibles around.

The juice above is Japanese knotweed stalks, cucumber and apple (juiced in a Jack Lalanne Juicer)

Japanese knotweed stalks, leaves stripped off

So delicious and super nutritious: Japanese knotweed has the highest natural concentration of resveratrol, an anti-oxidant which is good for the heart and brain, is anti-aging and anti-cancer. Supplement companies used to use grape skin to make resveratrol supplements…no more! Now they use Japanese knotweed (usually the root). What a great way to use this terribly invasive weed.

Japanese knotweed’s newest use is as prevention and treatment for the symptoms of Lyme disease, which is why I may drink this juice every day that the stalks are available. I am in the woods a lot and am often pulling ticks off me (yuck!) I’m also going to tincture the root soon (it’s best to do when the plant is not flowering, so early spring and fall): I will dig up the roots (which are orange/yellow in color), clean them, chop them and add them to a glass jar that I fill with 100 proof vodka, which is 50% alcohol. I will take pictures and post what I do step by step. For more information on treating Lyme disease with Japanese knotweed and other natural remedies, see Stephen Buhner’s book Healing Lyme: Natural Healing And Prevention of Lyme Borreliosis And Its Coinfections

By the way, the above juice is truly yummy: sweet and tart and incredibly thirst-quenching!

The potato pancakes are a bit more decadent:

1 large potato, peeled, grated
1/4 onion, grated
1 egg
1/4 cup flour (I use gluten free flour such as buckwheat or rice flour)
handful garlic mustard chopped - use more if you want!
large gloved handful of stinging nettles, blanched to remove sting and then chopped - use more if you want!
1/4 cup grated spicy Jack cheese (optional, yummy)
salt
pepper
olive oil for cooking

Mix all ingredients in large bowl.
Lightly coat frying pan with olive oil (rather than deep frying, you can also bake these at 375 til browned, 30+ minutes)
Spread a tablespoon of batter into pan (fits about 3 at a time in my cast iron pan).
Cook on medium high (turning down if oil begins to smoke) for about 3-4 minutes until browned, flip and cook another couple minutes.

Can serve with applesauce and sour cream or just enjoy as is…so tasty!

CSF-ers can look forward to all the wild ingredients in this weeks share, and others can find these ingredients in plentiful amounts these days…at least here in Western PA!

Love and nettle stings,

Melissa