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

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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

nettles

We’re back!

As you probably noticed, we have not posted in a while…even though spring has come so early and wild edibles have been bursting forth from the ground! That’s because our computer broke (boo!) and then when we finally got a new one it would not let me do blog posts (I finally realized I had to upload and work through Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, though I have no idea why.)

So now we’re back and like spring we are bursting with excitement and lots of information!

First: our CSF (Community Supported Foraging) is about to get up and running! Our first pickup will be Thursday April 5, ONE WEEK FROM TODAY! How exciting! We realized if we waited until May to begin we would probably miss morels, fiddleheads and all sorts of early spring treats.

Don’t fret if you missed the boat on the CSF for this year (we only offered 10 shares for our flagship year)…we are still offering wild produce locally through Green Circle Farm’s weekly produce list. (And we may even offer our very own “list” soon, we’ll see how it goes with the CSF and Green Circle Farm.)

Our friend Erika at Green Circle Farm offers a weekly abundance of all sorts of things: raw milk, raw butter, grass fed beef and other sustainably raised animals, free range eggs, produce from the Pittsburgh Public Market, she even had wild ramps this week available (and not even from us!) Visit her website to be added to her list (you get a weekly email, place your order by a certain date and then pick up at one of various locations around Pittsburgh.)

Also, we will have a weekly newsletter for the CSF-ers with info about the wild plants and recipes, and we will post those newsletters here on our blog. So you’ll get lots of yummy recipes and tidbits of info of what to do with all the amazing food and medicine popping up right under your feet all season long.

Second: WALKS!

We have heard you loud and clear: you want walks and more walks this year. We are working on our schedule, and it even includes a MOREL HUNTING WALK this year!! Oh yes we did! I hope you will all join us. The full schedule will be up soon but I will let you know this: we will be offering two walks again at Frick Park’s Earth Day celebration this year. The date is Saturday, April 21, 2012 and our walks are at 1 pm and 2 pm. Be there!! This is a super fun, free, family-friendly celebration of nature at the Frick Environmental Center on Beechwood Blvd in Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh) PA. The festival itself is from 11:30 to 4. You will be overwhelmed (in a good way) with fun and music and arts and crafts and food and walks and more!

Third, now is the best time of year to get started on a Wild Ally!!! Did you do one last year? Pick another one for this year! An ally is a wild edible plant that you study, learn from and enjoy intensely over the course of the season. I have created a workbook of exercises for you to do with your ally. I really find this is the best way to get to know (and love) wild edible plants (and medicines!) Our workbook is STILL pay-what-you-choose, so make sure you grab one today!

As you have probably noticed, wild plants are up early and in great abundance this year! I was out yesterday and in addition to all the nettles, deadnettle, garlic mustard, onion grass, wintercress, chickweed, and dandelion that are out, I saw fiddleheads, Japanese knotweed shoots, burdock and have heard the murmurs of early morel mushrooms in the wind.

Let’s get this party started!

Coming up in this blog (I have so much for you…trying to get caught up!)

• What to do with all this (yummy) Japanese Knotweed

• CSF Newsletter “0″: making a Ginger Bug starter for wild sodas

• Walk schedule, including our all new Morel Hunting Walk

• “I smelled ‘em before I saw ‘em….Nettles”

• And so much more!! So stay tuned my friends!

Walk with care and don’t forget to look up sometimes; there are some amazing birds out there!

Love and nettle stings,

Melissa Sokulski of Food Under Foot

The groundhog saw her shadow today and scurried back under ground for 6 more weeks of winter, but truthfully, here in Western PA winter has barely begun.

Lamium purpureum, purple deadnettle

I went out foraging and found gorgeous flowering Lamium purpureum (purple deadnettle) and delicious garlic mustard, which I made into pesto. It is divine. (I plan to steam the deadnettle later.)


garlic mustard pesto

I feel we could almost start our CSF (Community Supported Foraging) shares now! But we’ll wait until end of April, when the bounty is really overflowing and we can add delicacies such as morel mushrooms, young spruce tips and violet flowers to the mix!

Recipe for Garlic Mustard Pesto



garlic mustard

* 2 cups garlic mustard leaves, washed and patted dry
* 1 small garlic clove, peeled
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 2 Tbsp pine nuts, lightly roasted on stove top (can roast walnuts in place of pine nuts)
* 3 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
* 1 Tbsp lemon juice
* sea salt to taste

In a food processor, blend garlic and garlic mustard while drizzling in olive oil.

Stop and add pine nuts, cheese, lemon juice and a little salt and blend again.

Taste and add salt if you feel it needs it.

I mixed some into gluten-free pasta with more roasted pine nut and a chopped tomato. It was excellent!

Here’s to wild foods!

Melissa Sokulski
Food Under Foot

Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com

Just a quick note…if you tried emailing about the Community Supported Foraging and didn’t hear back from me, please contact us again!

The email links I added did not work - so sorry!!

Please send me an email to: Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com if you are interested in a share of our new Community Supported Foraging.

Sorry for the inconvenience! Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,

Melissa Sokulski

Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com

(412) 381-0116

basket full of mulberries

Have you heard of CSA - Community Supported Agriculture?

According to Wikipedia, “A CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farming operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. CSAs usually consist of a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables and fruit, in a vegetable box scheme, and sometimes includes dairy products and meat.”

This year, Food Under Foot is trying something new: Community Supported Foraging! Our trial run will consist of 10 lucky people/families (the first 10 to sign up) and every week we will forage a box of delicious wild foods for you to pick up and take home. We will also provide a newsletter and recipes with suggestions on how to use this bounty of amazing, wild foods.

We will forage from safe unsprayed areas far from major roads. Depending on the time of year, your box may contain:

• fresh morel mushrooms
• stinging nettle greens
• Japanese Knotweed Stalks
• Burdock root (wild Gobo)
• dried reishi mushrooms
• dandelion greens and root
• wild salad mix (chickweed, violet leaves and flowers, clover leaves and flowers, lambsquarters, purslane, daylily petals)
• mulberries
• raspberries
• blackberries
• paw paws
• fiddleheads
• milkweed buds
• lambsquarters
• purslane
• plantain leaves and seeds
• black walnuts
• crabapples
• wild apples
• chicory greens and root
• onion grass
• lemon balm
• chicken mushroom
• hen of the woods (maitake) mushroom
• puffball mushroom

The list goes on and on! And since we are starting with a small group, we will be extra responsive to your feedback and suggestions!

It’s a 20 week season starting at the end of April (week of April 30) and going into October (it will be 20 pick-ups total, but there will be missed weeks when we are out of town…we will get you the exact schedule as you sign up.)

Based on the CSA model, you pay the farmer/forager up front, and we supply you with a week’s bounty of produce for 20 weeks! There should easily be enough produce each week for 2-4 people to enjoy.

The price is $450 for the whole 20 weeks which is just $22.50/week! The pick up location will be on the south side of Pittsburgh, but depending on who signs up and where you are located we may be able to add more pick up locations.

If you are interested please let us know as soon as possible! You can pay by check or paypal, we’ll send you the details once you contact us: Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com or call (412) 381-0116.

Maybe there’s a recipe from Food Under Foot that you’ve wanted to try - perhaps a morel frittata or homemade nettle pasta, but haven’t been sure of wild edible identification, or haven’t been able to locate morels/nettles or found the time to harvest them? Now is your chance to have a box of the freshest most vital wild food picked just for you every week!

Morel Mushroom Frittata

We’re so excited to be offering this to you. We’ve been asked to forage for restaurants and private individuals and it occurred to us to make this service available to you - our Food Under Foot family. (Why should restaurants always luck out? ) And many of you know that when you buy wild mushrooms, especially morels, you will pay $30 or more for a pound. We hope to offer you at least a pound per box during morel season (depending on what the season for morels is like, of course.)

One week’s typical box in early spring may contain:

• fresh morels
• fresh nettles
• purple deadnettle
• Japanese knotweed stalks
• garlic mustard
• onion grass
• salad mix (chickweed, clover flower and blossoms, dandelion greens, violet flower and leaves, garlic mustard greens)
• burdock root
• dried reishi
• fiddleheads
• spruce tips
• and anything else yummy we come across while out foraging for you!

We hope you are as excited as we are about this new offering for 2012.

Thank you!!

Happy foraging!

Melissa Sokulski

Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com

(412) 381-0116

I’ve been reading a lot of wild edible foraging and recipe books lately, and I figured I’d share them with you.

Most recently I have been reading The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes by Connie Green and Sarah Scott. Although some of the recipes in this book aren’t a gluten-free vegan’s cup of tea (Stir fried dandelion greens with duck fat and garlic), the descriptions of the wild edibles and the stories she tells about them are fabulous.

In fact, just her introduction alone is worth the read: how Ms. Green got into foraging foods for restaurants. Ms. Green explains that in the 1980s it was hard to sell anything foraged to any restaurants: the only two chefs who acknowledged her chanterelles were French - one denied they could even be chanterelles because he felt they didn’t grow in this country, the other preferred his tinned chanterelles from France, feeling they were superior to fresh American chanterelles.

I love Ms. Green’s and Ms. Scott’s out of the box thinking when it comes to using the wild edibles such infusing vodka with evergreen needles and the incredible sounding: “Connie’s Favorite Persimmon Pudding with Brandy Hard Sauce.”

Many of the recipes are certainly from and for gourmet kitchens…and I have a few friends who I know would love to get their hands on these recipes and work their culinary magic!

For me - who loves simple plant-based cooking and wild edibles foraging - there is plenty for me in this book. I can’t wait to try the basket-grilled morels over a fire this spring - a simple recipe of butter, garlic, salt and pepper which Ms. Green describes as “simply the best way to cook morels” and the Fresh Mulberry Ice Cream, though I will adapt the recipe replacing the sugar with a natural sweetener like agave or maple syrup, and the half and half with home-made cashew milk, though I have no doubt her original recipe is divine.

The pictures in the book, both of the wild edibles and the recipes, are gorgeous. Full page spreads of morels roasting over a fire, freshly picked lobster mushrooms, huckleberries flowing out of the bag and onto a plate.

I can’t get enough of this book: reading about her experiences and what she has to say about the plants, drinking in the color pictures, ruminating over the recipes.

This is definitely a great one to have on the bookshelf!

Happy Foraging!

~ Melissa

Randomly drawn winner from about 100 entries

Thank you so much to all the participants of the reishi giveaway!! We had over 100 people enter! It was so interesting hearing from you all! We had people enter from Australia, Canada, Cyprus…and all across the US from here in PA to Texas, New England, California, Michigan and tons of places in between.

Your wild edibles ideas were so fabulous that I have to share some…and I will do so in upcoming blog posts (keeping your names anonymous for privacy…I’ll use initials or just first names and where you are from.)

We’ll have another giveaway in February and other big news to share coming soon as well.

Thanks again and congratulations to Laura of Fort Erie, Ontario Canada who won the mushrooms (she has been contacted and they are being mailed out right now.)

Happy Foraging!

Melissa from Food Under Foot