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Sometimes we find our food under foot in the yard, sometimes in the woods, sometimes growing right out of a bag!

We’ve seen oyster mushrooms growing off dead or dying trees and logs, but for the first time we grew our own oyster mushrooms from a bag of cottonwood fluff. At our amazing local mushroom organization’s (the Western PA mushroom club) meeting last month, we received a bag of the cottonwood fluff and an inoculation bag of oyster mushroom spores.

After boiling the cottonwood, draining it, and letting it cool, we mixed in the spores and put it back in the plastic bag (to retain moisture.) Once we saw some mushrooms budding a couple weeks later, we cut some holes into the bag, and a week later: voila! Oyster mushrooms!

I mad a delicious mushroom gravy to top lentil burgers.

First we harvested our mushrooms:

Then I sliced them and sauteed them with chopped red onions in olive oil.

I added 2 Tbsp whole wheat flour and mixed to coat, then I added 1 1/2 cups water, salt, tamari and pepper to taste. I simmered and stirred until the sauce had thickened, adjusting seasoning and adding a little more water if it got too thick.

Delicious! What do you make with oyster mushrooms? Do you find them wild? Have you ever grown mushrooms? We’d love to hear! Please let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Melissa Sokulski, herbalist, acupuncturist

Birch Center for Health and Food Under Foot

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On our last morel hike, we found four small black morels, and some larger yellow morels. This time we added them to a potato kugel. The flavor of the morels was somewhat lost in this dish, so it wasn’t the best way to showcase the morels. But it was delicious, so I wanted to share it with you!

A Kugel is a Jewish dish made traditionally with pasta or potatoes and eggs. It is often sweet but can be savory like this one.

Morel Potato Kugel.

• Morels, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups chopped spinach
• 2 Tbsp butter or olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• 4 potatoes, cubed and steamed
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup grated cheese, such as cheddar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Peel and cube 4 potatoes and steam them.

Saute chopped morels, onions and spinach in butter for about 15 minutes, until onions are translucent and morels are wilted.

Mix four eggs with 1/2 cup milk, yogurt or cream, salt and pepper.

Mix eggs, potatoes and vegetables together and pour into a 9 by 13 baking pan.

Sprinkle a cup of shredded cheese on top.

Bake about 45 minutes.

I hope you enjoy the kugel!

Have you found morels this year? What do you like to do with them? What else are you eating this spring? We’d love to hear from you!

~ Melissa Sokulski

Food Under Foot and Birch Center for Health

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Today I want to share with you a delicious recipe I made using the morels we gathered at morel madness! (Actually, we weren’t as lucky on the evening hike as we were in the morning, but we had generous hikers and camping neighbors who actually shared the morels they found with us!!!)

Morels must be cooked to neutralize their toxins. Eaten raw, morels will make you sick. Even when you cook them, you should avoid consuming alcohol when eating morels, as this also is known to cause problems.

Morels should also be cut in half lengthwise. Always cut morels open to make sure they are 100% hollow inside. Edible morels are 100% hollow…poison look-alikes will have chambers or cottony filling, that is a give away! Double check every mushroom by slicing it open. Also, there are sometimes bugs inside so you’ll want to get those out of there!

Recipe for Morel Mushroom Frittata:

• Morels, cut in half lengthwise and cleaned
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 2 cups spinach (or use a wild edible like lambs quarters or nettles), chopped
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 5 eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• pepper to taste
• 2 Tbsp milk, cream, or half and half
• 1 cup shredded chedder (or other favorite) cheese

1. Turn on broiler.

2. Crack eggs into bowl, add milk or cream, salt and pepper and whisk. Set aside.

3. In a cast iron skillet, melt the butter and saute onions and morels until morels are soft, about 15 minutes. (Medium heat.) Add spinach and cook another minute until spinach wilts.

4. Pour in egg mixture and cook until bottom sets but top is still wiggly, about 5 minutes.

5. Put cheese on top and put in broiler for a minute, until browned.

Serve immediately and enjoy! (Also good cold.)

~ Melissa

Food Under Foot
Birch Center for Health

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Yes, fresh nettles (Urtica dioica) sting. The sting I got the other day felt like a bee sting. The sting is from a chemical made by the plant, not from a pricker, so if you cook it, blend it or dry it you’re safe.

I gathered some nettles the other day, and put some into a delicious green smoothie (recipe below) and the rest I dried to use as tea.

In my first pot of nettle tea (delicious!) the nettle looked so good and bright green when it reconstituted, that I chopped it up and made a miso soup with it! It was sooo good. Next time I’ll have to remember to take pictures of that.

Here is the green smoothie, which is actually purple due to blueberries:

Green Smoothie with Nettles

2 bananas
1 cup frozen mangoes
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
handful (a careful handful…don’t get stung!) fresh nettles
2 cups water

Blend until smooth and enjoy!

We use the vitamix for our green smoothies…if you don’t know about this blender, please check out our video about it…and you’ll also find a coupon for free shipping on this page.

Thanks, and enjoy the spring!

~ Melissa Sokulski
Food Under Foot
Birch Center for Health

--> Today I harvested garlic mustard for the spicy white roots to make a horseradish-like condiment.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is an invasive plant, brought to America in the 1860’s as a culinary herb. It spreads like wildfire and often will displace native mustards and cresses. Many parks hold days where people can come volunteer to pull out garlic mustard so it doesn’t take over other native plants. This is one weed no one will mind you pulling!

Now is a great time to use garlic mustard: the leaves are tasty and not too bitter, as the weather warms the leaves get more bitter and lose their spicy garlic mustard flavor.

To make the condiment, harvest the entire plant, and wash the roots well. The roots are white and have a horseradish-like smell. They will taste spicy.

I chopped the roots:

I blended the roots in a food processor with a bit of salt, a couple teaspoons of water and about 1 tsp apple cider vinegar and blended until it looked like horseradish: (It stung my eyes! Pretty spicy…)

Here it is, in a jar:

According to Chinese Medicine, the spicy or pungent taste of horseradish and garlic mustard enters the Lung meridian, and is known to clear the sinuses and help the body get rid of respiratory infections. (For more on Traditional Chinese Medicine and health, visit our sister website Birch Center for Health.)

Here in Pittsburgh, wild edibles are just emerging from the ground. Today we also found nettles! What is popping up where you live? We’d love to hear from you!

Thanks!
Melissa Sokulski, acupuncturist, herbalist
Food Under Foot

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Walking around some Pittsburgh parks today after a beautiful stretch of warm days…and we indeed see signs of spring!

We saw some garlic mustard rosettes bursting from the ground:

Garlic Mustard is an invasive plant, brought to America as a culinary herb in the 1860’s. In Pittsburgh, many parks have volunteer days spent pulling this invasive herb out. By all means pull it up from your garden…but don’t be so quick to throw it in the compost! This is a delicious plant and early spring is when its flavor is at its best.

The leaves become bitter as the weather gets hot, so they are best collected in early spring and summer. Leaves can be collected either from the ground rosettes (pictured above) or from the stalk. Garlic Mustard leaves become more triangular when the plant bolts, and the leaves come up the flower stalk of this small four-petaled flower (unlike dandelion, whose leaves stay on the ground as the flower stalk is sent up).

Flowers and chopped leaves can be added to salads for a nice pungent garlic flavor.

Now is the time to collect the roots, when no flower stalks are present. These are very spicy and taste like horseradish. The root can be chopped and steeped in apple cider vinegar for a spicy condiment.

In the fall the seeds, which have a mustard flavor, can be collected and eaten.

I love to make pesto using the garlic mustard leaves:

Raw Garlic Mustard Pesto

1 1/2 cups garlic mustard leaves
1 1/2 cups spinach leaves
juice of 1/2 - 1 lemon (to taste)
1 clove garlic (or more to taste)
1/2 cup pine nuts or walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
salt or tamari to taste

Blend above ingredients in food processor or blender and enjoy.

Here is a copy of my article on Garlic Mustard, published last year in Natural News.

Enjoy the spring!!

Melissa Sokulski, herbalist, acupuncturist
Food Under Foot
Birch Center

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Another way I like to prepare burdock is to add it to delicious homemade sauerkraut! Fermented vegetables are an incredibly healthful way to prepare and keep your fall harvest into the winter. Because the vegetables are kept raw, all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes are kept intact. The live cultures that naturally live on cabbage and other vegetables breakdown the vegetables, making them easy to digest and also stocking them with probiotics which are beneficial to the body, especially the gut and immune system! (For more information about the health benefits of fermented vegetables, and health in general, check out our sister blog over at Birch Center for Health.)

First, I find the burdock plant that looks like this:

Notice it is still green and leafy and alive! Burdock is a two year plant, so this is a first year. The second year plants turn brown in the fall as they die, and you’ll notice they are covered with burrs, which is where their seeds are. (They stick to you as a way of spreading their seeds far and wide!)

Dig up the long tap roots (get as much as you can, they are difficult to eradicate!) Here is one that is already washed, but not yet peeled:

Once peeled with a regular vegetable peeler, I grate the burdock along with cabbage, cucumbers and apples. I also added sea salt and small pieces of wakame, which is a sea vegetable. (You can grate the veggies by hand, but I used my food processor.) I added them all to a bowl and massaged the salt into them. Add plenty of salt, taste it once it’s mixed and make sure you like how it tastes.

Finally, stuff the mixture (and all the juices it released when you were mixing it!) into a canning jar. You can top with larger pieces of cabbage leaf, rolled and pressed down to keep the kraut below the juices so it can ferment properly and not mold. You can also use burdock leaves or grape leaves for this purpose.

Cap the jar and label with your ingredients and the date. Leave your vegetables to ferment at room temperature. Uncap daily to make sure the veggies are pressed under the juice, and taste everyday. After 4 to 7 days, they kraut should reach a taste you like. (You can even keep them out longer if you like more sour flavored sauerkraut.) Put it in the fridge to stop (or slow greatly) the fermentation. It will keep practically indefinitely!

One book we love about making your own natural cultured veggies is called Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, by Sandor Ellix Katz.  (You can browse our recommended books Here at Amazon).

Also, in Book 1 of our 5 eBook series (which you can get for free by signing up in the green box to the right!), has a recipe for fermented veggies with Burdock which you don’t want to miss, so make sure you sign up today! The book also has great pictures and information about identifying and harvesting burdock, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Thanks so much!

~ Melissa Sokulski, L.Ac.

Food Under Foot

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If you are in the Pittsburgh area and interested in raw foods as well as wild edible plants, please join us in Schenely park this Sunday, October 4 at noon (the Steeler game is not until 8:20 pm this Sunday, so you won’t miss a thing!)

This event is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Raw Food Meetup Group, so if you’d like to attend (it’s a free event), please join the meetup group (there is no charge to join) and RSVP on the meetup invitation page. This way you will be contacted if there are any last minute changes (weather!), and given the full information about the whereabouts and who to contact with questions. We hope to see you there!!!

If you are new to raw foods: this is a potluck, so please bring a dish containing only raw (uncooked) fruits and veggies…a simple fruit salad is always welcome (no canned fruit, though, only fresh.) If you are feeling adventurous, check out some of the many raw recipes on sites like www.goneraw.com or the wonderful recipe page of the All Raw Directory. If you are really inspired, you may want to check out some of the raw “cook” books we recommend in the raw food section of our bookstore.

Here is a simple recipe I am preparing tonight:

Garden Fresh Tomato Salad

5 Garden Tomatoes, chopped
1 clove garlic, pressed (or finely chopped)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil (or you can use fresh thyme or oregano)

Mix all ingredients together well and serve…delicious!

Hope to see you soon!

~ Melissa