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Autumn is an excellent time of year to harvest burdock root.

If you haven’t received our eBook all about Burdock, including how to identify and harvest burdock, and recipes and projects using burdock, please sign up for our free newsletter on the right margin.

Aside from being an excellent vegetable (called Gobo in Japan), burdock root is used medicinally to cleanse the blood.

Some reasons that blood may need to be “cleansed” include:

• parasites
• toxins from cigarette smoke or pollution
• toxins from alcohol or junk food
• bacteria or viruses, including chronic viruses from things such as Lyme’s disease
• heavy metal exposure, like mercury, lead, or arsenic

This time of year you’ll find burdock, a biennial plant, in both phases: one being the brown dead plant covered with burrs that stick to your clothes (do not harvest these roots, they are dead - pictured below), and a plant with a rosette of green leaves, still close to the ground, with no flower or seed stalk. This is the first year plant, and it is from this plant you want to harvest the roots (shown above).

We harvested some burdock root the other day, and prepared it three ways:

• dried for use as a tea


Sliced Burdock Root Drying on a Dehydrator Tray

• tinctured in alcohol


Sliced Burdock Root Steeping in 100 Proof Vodka, Before Blending

• fermented with cabbage in cultured vegetables (also known as sauerkraut.)


Shredded Burdock Root, Cabbage, and Seaweed Fermenting on the Counter

Over the next few days, I’ll post step-by-step pictorials of how I made the above remedies. The sauerkraut is absolutely delicious! The recipe is in our free e-book, so please sign up (green box to the right) if you haven’t yet!

Happy Harvesting!

~ 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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Yesterday, I was walking home from a friend’s house in the South Side Flats, on the way up the hill Ella and I came across Paw Paws! (Asimina triloba)

We couldn’t believe it: just that morning we were hiking in Frick Park searching for some, to no avail.

Paw paws are a delicious, native, tropical fruit, that actually grow up into Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan…I think even in Toronto! Hardly anyone knows about them, because they have such a short shelf life that they can’t be sold in supermarkets (though if you’re lucky, you may find them at a Farmer’s Market, as we did recently in Charlottesville, VA.)

Now is the time of year, and when they have just fallen naturally from the tree (as above), you’ll find the fruit to be soft and delicious.

The inside of the fruit is bright yellow, with large hard dark seeds. Here is one that Dave cut open:

The taste is similar to a mix of a banana and mango, and very flowery (though there are many types, or cultivars, each tasting a bit different.) You actually need two trees of different cultivars together to get fruits. In this yard, there were three trees growing in a row (below are two.)

You don’t eat the skin or seeds, the seeds are big, round and black, and are quite easy to avoid. When you find them this ripe, you can just pull them open and eat the flesh right out, spitting the seeds (or eating around them.) Tomorrow, I’ll show you in detail how I made a delicious slushie with the paw paws.

Up close you’ll see the leaves are large and tropical-looking leaves (they are described as “alternate, deciduous, simple, 7-12 in long, 3-5.5 in wide, usually broadest near tip” by Elias and Dykeman in Edible Wild Plants.)

The fruits look a bit like mangoes, are light green and grow in clusters from the trees. They soften when they are ripe, and naturally fall off the tree. They then turn yellow and brown as they ripen further.

To propagate paw paw from seeds, keep the seeds moist, and they need a cold time (cold, wet stratification), at least 100 days in the refrigerator, before they’ll sprout. You can keep them packed in sphagnum moss or peat moss in a plastic bag in the fridge. (Or, you can plant them in the ground in the fall, and hope, and let the cold moist stratification happen naturally.)

Dave and I found some tiny seedlings at the foot of these trees, and they already had quite a long taproot. Paw paws are usually found in bottomlands, in rich deep soil along rivers. We transplanted these to our yard, but also put seeds in the ground nearby (and some in the fridge) in the hopes at least a few will take.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how I made this delicious Paw Paw Slushie:

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Autumn is here! And with it come two of my favorite wild edibles: Black Walnuts and Paw Paws! We were lucky enough to find both yesterday (and me without my camera!), but I’ll get some pictures and post them as soon as possible. (Below are some pictures of the paw paws we found last year.)

For now, please enjoy the video below from last year, which shows Ella and me cracking (and eating) black walnuts. The walnuts in the video have already been hulled (they have green hulls, when you find them on the ground, they really look like tennis balls at first glance) and dried.

To hull them, step on the walnut with your foot (wear shoes!) and then take the walnut out. You’ll want to wear gloves! The yellow stain will turn black and will stain your hands and anything else you get it on. (We’ll post pics of how to do this.)

Sometimes you’ll find worms under the hull, I usually discard these walnuts! Also, get the hulls off when they are still green - they’ll turn black eventually and give the walnuts a bitter taste.

Then, just set them out to dry, but don’t leave them outside or the squirrels will make off with your stash!

When they’re ready, you’ll have to crack into them and eat them, and that is what you’ll see below.

Enjoy!

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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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On our first hike with the Western PA Mushroom Club we found many many mushrooms, including edible chanterelles!

Chanterelles are delicious mushrooms that in the east grow in the summertime (in the west,  they are a fall/winter mushroom.)

Chanterelles are trumpet-shaped and have ridges or folds instead of gills (a gilled look-alike is the Jack O’Lantern, which is indigestible to us and will make people very sick.) The smooth chanterelle barely have ridges at all and instead have smooth sides.

Chanterelle smell vaguely of apricots. They also grow alone or possibly in twos or threes, but never in a whole bunch, as the Jack O’Lanterns often do. The Jack O’Lanterns (which glow in the dark) grow from dead wood (however this can be tricky, as they could be growing from a dead root underground) whereas the chanterelles grow from the soil (but can be right next to dead wood). They both grow in the woods, look for the egg-yolk colored chanterelles under the dead leaves lying on the ground. Finally, according to the book Mushrooms Demystified (amazon link), Jack O’Lanterns will never have white flesh.

It is often recommended to dry-saute the chanterelle first to let it release the water, then adding butter and a small amount of shallot (so as not to overwhelm the delicate taste of the chanterelle.)

We dry-fried once, but the other time we sauteed it in olive oil (it released it’s water fine), added some salt and garlic, and added back a bit of water as it cooked so the pan did not dry out. Delicious!

Chanterelles (like many wild mushrooms) need to be cooked at least 15 minutes to detoxify the mushroom, making it safe and digestible.

We learned not to refrigerate extra chanterelles – keep them in paper bags outside of refrigeration and they should last a couple weeks. When refrigerated, they will turn dark and slimy, releasing water into the bag.

We dehydrated chanterelles for future use. We sliced them thinly and laid them on the dehydrator tray (or you can put them in the oven at a low temperature.) We were told they reconstitute nicely.

Finally, we’ve heard you can preserve them in whiskey or scotch, soaking them in a jar with the alcohol for a month or so, then get rid of the chanterelle and the whiskey will become chanterelle-flavored. You can do this in vodka or wine as well, and then can add to cooking to infuse the dish with a chanterelle flavor.

Here is a recipe for the chanterelle omelet we made for Ella (she ate the whole thing!)

• One egg – cracked into a bowl and beaten with a splash of water
• 1 Tbsp red onion
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• salt
• 2 Tbsp grated pepper jack cheese
• 2 Tbsp sauteed (as above) chanterelles

• In a small pan over medium high heat, saute the onion in olive oil with salt about 5 minutes.
• Pour egg so it spreads over the bottom of pan and let it cook through until bubbles appear and it is no longer runny.
• Add the cheese and mushrooms to one half the egg, and fold the egg over in half, omelet style.
• Enjoy immediately.

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We had a great time going on a wild edibles walk with students of Pittsburgh’s SCA (Student Conservation Association.)
We knew we wouldn’t find any along the south side river trail, so we brought along some beautiful sky-blue chicory, which is in bloom all along the roadsides and all over the city these days.
We sampled herbal tea which had chicory in it, and discussed it’s use as a coffee substitute (drying and roasting the roots.)

(You can read more about chicory in my article in Natural News here.)

We did have some great finds along the south side trail that day, including:

• Dandelion
  
  

  dandelion leaf rosette

• Burdock
• Garlic Mustard
• Purslane - delicious succulent plant, high in omega fatty acids
  
  

  Purslane - High in Omega Fatty Acids

• Lamb’s Quarters - delicious “wild spinach” (please sign up for our newsletter (top right) for lots more info about lambs quarters!)
• Japanese Knotweed
• Mugwort
• Staghorn Sumac (which we all sampled the sumac lemonade we had made for them, see previous post.)
  
  

  Staghorn Sumac - we soaked the red clusters in water for a lemony drink

• Poisonous Crown Vetch - the variety Penngift was made in Pennsylvania, to plant along the highway to prevent soil erosion…with limited results. The soil continues to erode, and while cows and other ruminant can safely eat the plant, which is high in nitroglyceride, it is poisonous to horses and other non-ruminants. It spreads very easily as well.
• Wild Carrot - which, though edible, we do not eat because of it’s similar appearance to the very deadly Water Hemlock and Poison Hemlock
  
  

  Queen Anne's Lace/Wild Carrot

• Mullein - an herb which benefits the lungs, and often smoked by Native Americans for that purpose
  
  

  First Year Mullein basal rosette

• St. John’s Wort - an herb used to treat depression
  
  

  St. John's Wort

Here are some pictures of what the kids and adults of the SCA:

If you’d like more information about scheduling a wild edible walk for your group, please visit our wild event page. Or you can call Melissa at (412) 381-0116, or email to Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com.

Thanks!
~ Melissa Sokulski, Herbalist
Food Under Foot

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And from the desert we head back east…

Yesterday we gathered staghorn sumac, to make a lemonade-type of drink for the kids from Pittsburgh’s Student Conservation Association (SCA) to sample on their walk today. (I’ll post more pictures and information about all we saw on the walk early next week.)

Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) grows in bright red clusters on a shrub or small tree (which spreads “like a weed!”) The staghorn sumac has think, densely hairy branches and twigs (giving the appearance of a stag’s horn.) You can pick the fruit clusters in summer, fall, even into winter, as long as they are still vibrant red. They are high in Vitamin C (so we use cold water when making the lemonade, so as not to destroy the vitamin) and have a sour lemony taste. They can also be dried and used as a lemony spice, common in Middle Eastern recipes.

Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) has white fruit, please avoid all white fruited sumacs!

Here is how we made the lemonade. It’s very simple:

Above are the sumac clusters on the table, and below I’ve put them in a jar.

Fill the jar with cold water (cold water preserves the vitamin C) and let it sit overnight. In the morning, strain and add sweetener like honey, agave nectar or maple syrup to taste. You could leave out the sweetener as well, it tastes refreshingly sour, like lemon water.

The walk today was so much fun! The kids (and adults) were great - a wonderful enthusiastic group. I’m excited to share with you all we saw!

~ Melissa Sokulski
Food Under Foot

**If you want more information about scheduling a wild edibles walk for your group, check our wild events page. Or you can call Melissa Sokulski at (412) 381-0116, or email to Melissa@FoodUnderFoot.com. Thanks!**