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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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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

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As promised, here is the recipe for the delicious paw paw slushie I made with the amazing stash of paw paws harvested from the trees I found in our neighborhood (with the owner’s permission, I should add!)

First, I peeled about four or five paw paws with a regular vegetable peeler, and put them in a colander (yes, one of them does have a bite out of it! I couldn’t resist.):

These paw paws were so ripe and soft, I just began to mash them by hand (the ultimate aim is to separate the seeds (which you should not eat - they may be toxic) from the fruit:

Here’s how they look all mashed up:

I had the colander in a larger bowl (both the colander and bowl are actually part of a salad spinner…I did not use the top to spin it, just mashed the fruit through the holes by hand):

I put the mashed paw paw fruit in a blender (I used our vitamix) with a bit of water and a lot of ice. It was actually very rich, like an icy pudding, so I added more water to my taste…I was in the mood for something to drink. You can experiment and see what you like:

It made a lot…I saved the extra in a glass jar in the fridge, and then added it to my smoothie the next morning…I had a green smoothie with bananas, paw paws, frozen mangoes, collard greens, spirulina, water and ice. You can watch here as I make a similar green smoothie using wild lamb’s quarters from our garden.

I hope you enjoy! Please let us know your experience with paw paws by commenting to this post!

Also, if you enjoy these type of posts, please make sure you sign up for our free newsletter (you’ll find the sign up box in the right margin, it’s a green box with blue feet.) You’ll get five free ebooks, detailing five different wild edible plants, with great pictures and information on how to identify, harvest and use some very common plants, complete with recipes! Please sign up now…thank you!!

~ Melissa

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Another edible mushroom we found on our hike with the Western Pa Mushroom Club was a bolete called Old Man of the Woods.

Boletes are mushrooms that grow up from the ground, and the underside has pores instead of gills. The Old Man of the Woods has characteristic black bumps along the top and stalk and has white to gray pores underneath. When bruised or cut, the mushroom eventually turns black. (Beware of boletes which bruise blue quickly, these are often poisonous.)

This mushroom was positively identified for us by members of the club, and we carefully wrapped it in wax paper and placed it in our bag with our other edible mushrooms (the chanterelles).

We’d heard the Old Man is a tasty mushroom, as long as you don’t mind it turning everything black as it cooks. In the books, though, we found it was “edible” but not worth eating. We decided to try it.

We sliced the Old Man when we got home

and sauteed it in olive oil, red onions and salt.

It did turn black. It is a meaty mushroom, though had a bit of slimy-ness to it. All in all, it was very good, reminiscent of portebellos.

A couple good mushroom guide books are National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms (National Audubon Society Field Guides), and Mushrooms Demystified
), which is especially good for those on the west coast.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan has a wonderful chapter about mushrooms in it as well, be sure to check that out.

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Green Smoothies are all the rage.  And for good reason.   Full of Raw and often Wild Greens they are packed with healthy minerals, vitamins and medicinal compounds.   The embodiment of  the Raw Food and Whole Food ideals they are touted for providing enzymes and compounds found only in plants.   When Wild Edibles are used in the Green Smoothie, we are utilizing plants with which we co-evolved.  This co-evolution developing compounds in the plant that nourish us and heal us.

The taste of the Green Smoothie is earthy and tastes like spring, like Nature.  In a sense, it tastes Green.

Today, I mixed it up.  Into my Green Smoothie, containing the usual  suspects including Plantain, Dandelion, Clover and all, I added Wild Blackberries and Huckleberries picked this season, and frozen overnight.  It’s not necessary to freeze them, but it made the Smoothie ice cold and somewhat thicker.   I added to it some cold brewed Green Tea.

The taste was entirely transformed and quite interesting.  Not surprisingly the Berries took front stage, but the Green Tea made it taste lighter and refreshing and kept the Berries from dominating.   I could taste subtle notes of the Wild Edible Greens, like old friends that quitely and reliably stand behind you and “got your back”.

The Cold Brewed Green Tea addition was a nice transforming addition and stretched my smoothie out giving me another glass, which is always appreciated on a hot summer day.

• What ways do you Mix-it up with your Green Smoothies?
• Let us know by clicking the Comments below.
• To see Melissa make a Green Smoothie, check out her video here: Melissa Making Green  Smoothie.

Enjoy,

Jason

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I was vegging on the couch after a long day out and about.  Longing for a nosh, my mind went to Potato Chips –  a habit from years of a commercialized diet.  Luckily I had purged my home of such processed temptations.   I began to shake… withdrawals from Western Junk food.   I was jonesing for a Crunchy-Crispy snack.   I needed a fix.

Luckily I remembered the Wild Edible Recipe Melissa gave me to put into the Newsletter.   The recipe uses Wild Greens to make a Crisp that has so much flavor and zip that it makes the Potato Chip look like a “Couch-Potato” Chip.

It more that satisfies, it nourishes and inspires.   It is Healthy, organic version of a Chip using Wild Herbs and Edible Greens found foraging.   When made with a dehydrator, it is a delicious Raw Food alternative to the potato chip.  You’ll never go back.

The chip is a mix of foraged Wild Edible Greens,  coated with sauce made of Lemon, Garlic, Chili powder and other spices, then dehydrated into a Crisp.  It’s a Raw Food Chip!

I won’t repeat the full details here.  They are available to the members of the Food Under Foot Family.   You can join the family for Free, by subscribing to the Newsletter. When you join you get this recipe and dozens of others AND the 5-part Wild Edible Series eBook which contains wild edible recipes (including raw food recipes), Wild Edible Plant identification information, instructions on making Wild Herb Medicinal Tinctures and Salves and much more!   All this and the Newsletter are FREE.

You’ve enjoyed the Food Under Foot website — you’re going to LOVE the Newsletter and eBook, which goes into greater detail on Wild Plant identification and Edible Plant and Wild Herb education.   The price can’t be beat — it’s Free.   It’s simple — Just put your First name and Email in the Green and Blue box at the TOP-RIGHT of the page and you are on your way — just check your email.

Hope to see you there.   Please join, you’ll get the 5-Part Series and the Crisp Recipe.

Experiment with the recipe, using different greens and seasonings and report your findings here.   COMMENT on this post to share your successful adventures with this recipe.

Take care,

Jason

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The other day I went to visit my friend Trish, and on the way into her house she began picking dandelion greens for our lunch salad.

Really? I thought.

Before I go on, I should say Trish makes the most delicious food of all time. She is a gourmet raw food chef to the nth degree. She has never missed, as far as I have tasted (and I’ve tasted a lot of her stuff!)

So she sent me back out to get more dandelion greens, but I couldn’t believe it, so I brought her back lambs quarters instead.

Well, Trish soaked some walnuts in agave nectar (a sweetener made by adding enzymes to agave juice/gel, to break it down into simple sugars…it looks like honey), sliced some strawberries and mixed the strawberries, walnuts and extra agave in with the washed and torn dandelion greens (and lambs quarters.)

The result? Let’s just say I was embarrassed to have doubted her genius (and brought her back lambs quarters when she asked for dandelion greens.) Delicious!

A few days later the strawberries were ripe in our garden and I decided to make the salad again. I substituted maple syrup for agave (only because I didn’t have agave, believe me, I will not doubt Trish again!), and put the salad together.

The juice of the strawberries mixes with the maple syrup to make the sweetest strawberry-like dressing, and the bitterness of the dandelion greens is totally cut (but their incredible nutrition is still intact!)

Enjoy this simple, fantastic salad. Thanks, Trish!

~ Melissa