Before going raw, I made some scrumptious flower fritters with red clover blossoms and dandelion flowers. They were incredibly easy to make. They were inspired by my friend Vanessa who told me she’d made some with dandelion flowers: just mix egg, flour and milk for batter, dip the flowers and fry. Then drizzle with maple syrup.

I used coconut milk and buckwheat flour (to make them gluten-free and dairy-free), fried them in olive oil and voila: pure yumminess!

Red Clover and Dandelion Flower Fritters

Recipe: Flower Fritters

Batter

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (you can use any milk)
• 1/2 cup buckwheat flour (you can use any flour)

Mix ingredients together.

You’ll also need:

• red clover blossoms
• dandelion flowers (you can do one or the other or both)
• olive oil
• maple syrup

Dip flowers into batter, covering the flower with batter.

In a small pan (or pot) with olive oil, drop battered flowers. Flip when browned (this only takes a couple minutes.)

Remove onto cloth or paper towels to drain excess oil.

Serve drizzled with maple syrup.

Enjoy and Happy Mother’s Day!

~ Melissa

In your share this week:

• plantain leaves
• burdock roots and stalks
• red clover flowers
• nettles
• violet leaves
• lemon balm
• creeping charlie

Plantain leaves are excellent to eat (raw in salad or in soups or stir-fried). I also love to coat them with a special dressing and dehydrate them a la kale chips. If you get our newsletter you have seen this recipe for plantain crisps, but I will also include it below.

Plantain is also a wonderful medicinal plant. The leaves are used fresh from the yard, crushed and applied to bee stings, nettle stings, or bug bites. You can also make an oil by chopping the leaves (or cutting into small pieces with scissors) and covering them with olive oil. Let it steep for a couple weeks then strain the leaves out saving the oil. This oil is excellent to take the itch away from bug/misquito bites and even poison ivy! It is safe to use on children and animals as well. To make the oil faster, place chopped plantain and oil in the blender and blend well, strain and it is ready to use. You can also gently heat the plantain and oil in a crock pot (on low) or oven with a pilot light for a couple days. Sometimes leaving the plantain in the oil too long will cause mold, so I like the faster methods of blending or lightly heating!

To make a salve, just take the strained plantain oil, gently heat on the stove (double boiler) or in a crock pot) and add some grated beeswax. Stir until beeswax melts, remove from heat and pour into a container with a wide mouth (so you can reach into it.) I also like to add lavender essential oil as it cools. Lavender is also helpful to take away redness and itching. When it cools it will become harder. Depending on how much beeswax you add is how hard it will get. I usually just add a little so it’s not too hard. (I like to scoop it up and apply liberally to poison ivy rashes!)

Recipe: Plantain Crisps:

• 1/2 cup cashews, soaking makes them softer
• water to cover cashew, use sparingly in blender and add more as needed. You want a fairly thick sauce.
• onion, 1 Tbsp, chopped
• garlic, 1 clove
• lemon, juiced or 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• tamari, 2 Tbsp or salt to taste
• 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)

In a blender place cashews, water, onion, garlic, lemon juice or vinegar, tamari or salt, and nutritional yeast (optional.) Blend until creamy.  Pour over plantain leaves (or kale leaves) and massage until fully covered. Place on dehydrator tray and dehydrate on 115 until crispy (about 6 hours.) If you don’t have a dehydrator you can use your oven on a low temperature until dried and crispy. It will probably take less than an hour in the oven.

Burdock Root, also known as Wild Gobo

Burdock root is a very popular vegetable in Japan, where it is known as gobo.  If you get the newsletter you’ll have received an entire ebook on Burdock! (If you don’t get the newsletter just sign up in the green box on the right, it’s free and filled with awesome information!) Burdock root is a tonic which brings great strength. The roots can be juiced, eaten raw, cooked in soups or stews, or sliced and dried for tea or roasted (and then ground) for a coffee substitute.

Here are some links to this blog for things I have done with burdock:

• burdock info page
• burdock juice
  
• burdock tincture
• dried burdock root
• fermented veggies with burdock

Recipe: Burdock Juice

Zesty, Lemony Burdock Juice

Ingredients:

• 3 apples
• 3 inches burdock root
• 1/4 lemon, including peel
• ginger root

Run all ingredients through a juicer and enjoy!

Here is a recipe for Kinpira Gobo, a traditional Japanese dish.  In this dish, you peel and cut the burdock root into strips, and saute it (often with carrot cut similarly), and season with tamari, mirin (a sweet Japanese wine), sake and sesame seeds.

Last week I battered and friend the red clover blossom, and it was delicious! To keep it dairy and gluten-free, I used an egg, coconut milk and buckwheat flour for the batter. I simply dipped clover blossoms (and dandelion blossoms) in, and fried in olive oil. Then I drizzled the fritters with maple syrup and enjoyed!

Red clover blossom and dandelion fritters

I have been using the violet greens and flowers in salads and on sandwiches.

This week I plan to dry some nettles to have as tea, and also I’ve been enjoying the nettles in a simple potato soup:

Recipe: Red Lentil, Potato, Nettle Soup

Red lentil, potato, nettle soup

• potatoes, chopped
• nettles, blanched (in the soup water) and chopped, then re-added to soup at end
• onions, chopped
• garlic, chopped
• red lentils
• salt
• pepper
• water

Heat the water until boiling and add nettles to blanch (removes sting). Remove nettles and chop, saving the broth for the soup.

Add red lentils, potatoes, onions, garlic and boil until potatoes and lentils are soft.

Add salt and pepper, return chopped nettles to soup.

Ideas for lemon balm:

• Add to smoothie
• dry for tea
• steep in honey for a delicious flavored honey

Creeping Charlie makes its return from week one. This is a mint found commonly in yards and gardens. It has a refreshing sharp minty taste. It can be dried for use as tea, added to smoothies or added to dishes (like tabouli) or rice for a minty bite.

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

It was December 26 when I took these pictures around my neighborhood here in Pittsburgh PA. The ground is still not frozen and plants like dandelion, chickweed and purple dead nettle are actually flowering! Goldenrod, too…you’ll see the pictures below.

It would be easy to make green salads from all these edibles…a survivalist certainly would not starve! Greens are loaded with vitamins and minerals, and even have good amounts of protein.

Here are some of the edibles we found walking around today:

Deliciously mustardy bitter cress. This was all around the neighborhood. It is great in salads or even in stir-fries, and there is plenty.

Bittercress...deliciously mustardy, great in salads and growing abundantly!

Below is purple dead nettle, Lamium purpureum. An edible plant not related to nettle, it gets its common name because the leaves look a bit like nettle but the plant does not sting (hence “dead”.)

Purple dead nettle - with flowers! In December! Not related to nettles, but sort of looks like it. Does not sting, hence the name.

Here you will find a flowering dandelion! There were a bunch around the neighborhood, along with lots of gorgeous green leaves. This one next to another basal rosette of bittercress.

Flowering dandelion plant, next to a flowering bittercress.

Garlic mustard…you’ll find this throughout winter, along with the onion grass, below.

Garlic mustard

Onion grass

Looking for something heartier? You can still dig burdock root as long as the ground isn’t frozen and you can find basal rosettes of burdock leaves:

Burdock leaves...the ground is still not frozen so the root can be dug.

Add the flowers of these goldenrod - along with the yellow dandelion flowers, purple red clover and dead nettle flowers, white chickweed and bitter cress flowers that we saw today - to your salad and your family will think you’ve traveled to spring and back!

Goldenrod, flowering!

There was more…should I overwhelm you or save it for tomorrow’s post? Mallow, clover, plantain, chickweed…

‘Til tomorrow…happy foraging!

Melissa Sokulski from Food Under Foot

Dandelion Wine

It’s just past the solstice, the darkest part of the year, time to remember the freshness of spring by opening a bottle of dandelion wine!

Remember back in May?

We put up a few bottles of wine after gathering a gallon of dandelion flowers…

Dandelion Flowers for Wine

We steeped the flowers and simmered the tea with cloves, oranges, lemons, and raisins…

To add to wine

It fermented for weeks until it was ready to be bottled.

And now, to welcome back the light and remember the spring, we opened the wine…huzzah! It is delicious (if you like super sweet wine )

Cheers!

We will definitely make more again next year.

~View the Original Post on Making Dandelion Wine

And now today, December 26, we were walking around the neighborhood and what did we see?? Dandelion flowers in bloom!

Dandelion in bloom December 26 in Pittsburgh, PA.

More on what else we saw to follow. Hint: lots of edibles!!

‘Til then,

Happy Foraging!

Melissa Sokulski from Food Under Foot

We are in the process of making dandelion wine! Or should I say…the wine is made, it just needs to ferment some more before we cork it and let it rest until winter solstice.

I read quite a few recipes for how to make dandelion wine, and solicited your favorites on our facebook page (please join us on facebook!) I combined them together to do what I did. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to let you know whether this is the most amazing dandelion wine ever or not….I did take a sip as we were pouring it into bottles and I will tell you it is still very SWEET! Maybe that will mellow in time.

Here is the recipe:

• 1 gallon dandelion flower heads (I kept the greens on, I read to do it both ways (pulling the yellow petals off of the green necks and just using the petals…I used the whole thing.)
• 1 gallon water (I was going to use more but it turned out both my largest pot and largest crock could only hold a gallon, so that’s what I used.)
• 3 lbs sugar (organic sugar cane is what I used.)
• 1 packet yeast (photo below)
• 2 organic oranges, with rinds peeled and saved, the orange sliced (photos below)
• 1 organic lemon, with rinds peeled and saved, lemon sliced (photo below)
• handful of organic raisins
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 Tbsp whole cloves

a gallon of dandelion blossoms

2. Boil a gallon of water and pour over the dandelion blossoms. Cover loosely and let tea steep for 2 days.

3. Strain tea (reserving liquid of course! You can compost the flowers at this point) and return to the stove. Add 3 lbs of sugar, lemon and orange rinds, cinnamon and cloves. Bring to boil and simmer for about an hour.

rinds of two organic oranges and an organic lemon

boiling the tea with sugar, rinds, cinnamon stick and cloves

4. Pour from pot into crock and add the sliced oranges, lemons and raisins.

steeping the fruit in the boiled tea/sugar/spices

5. Once it has cooled to body temperature, sprinkle a packet of yeast on top.

yeast packet

yeast sprinkled on top

6. Cover with a cloth and let sit 3 days to a week (I did 3 days). When you put your ear close to it you can hear it fizzing (crackling.)

covering with cloth for a few days (you can hear it fizzzzz)

7. Strain (reserving liquid!!!!). I first strained it through a colander to get the big stuff out, then strained it through two jelly bags.

8. Let sit another day, covered with the cloth (will let extra “stuff” settle to the bottom.)

9. Pour into bottles, leaving some room at the top. Cover bottles with balloon which will indicated (by inflating) that quite a bit of fermentation is still taking place. You can poke a pin hole in each balloon so that it doesn’t get too full and pop or fly off the bottle.

10. Once the balloons stop inflating, you can cork the bottles and store in a cool dark place for at least six months.

Balloons inflating as the wine continues to ferment.

Dandelion was my original wild ally! And though I made dandelion wine back then, it was 20 years ago. If you make dandelion wine this year, be sure to let me know how it turns out!

Enjoy!!!

~ Melissa

stinging nettles

I have chosen nettles as my wild ally this year…have you chosen your ally yet? There are lots of plants popping up out there: dandelion, chickweed, violent, nettles, burdock, garlic mustard.

We relocated some nettles to our backyard last year, and this year an abundant crop has sprung up. Yesterday Ella and I harvested some young nettles, steamed them, blended them with egg and kneaded them into buckwheat flour to make our own gluten-free buckwheat nettle noodles!

Here is what we did:

1. Harvest young stinging nettles. You’ll need three cups of chopped fresh nettles (which will steam way down) for the pasta. *When harvesting and chopping fresh nettles, you may want to use gloves to avoid being stung.*
2. We are gluten free so we like to make our own flour, which we do easily in our Vitamix. Today we ground buckwheat groats into flour and used 2 cups, plus extra for kneading on.


buckwheat groats ground into flour using our vitamix

3. Place steamed nettles and two eggs into a blender and mix.
4. On a table or in a bowl, make a pile of flour with a well in the middle.
5. Put the nettle/egg mixture in the well and mix/knead into the flour
6. If too sticky, add more flour.
7. Place dough ball under wet cloth and let it “rest” for 15 minutes.
8. Cut about a fourth of the dough off and roll it out on a floured surfaced as thinly as possible. (If you have a pasta maker by all means use it!) Cover the dough you are not rolling with the wet cloth.


rolling out the pasta

9. Cut into strips and set aside as you continue to roll and cut all the pasta.
10. Place the pasta in boiling water and cook about 3 minutes (fresh pasta does not need much time to cook.)
11. Drain pasta. I returned it to the pot and added some butter, fresh chopped tomatoes and salt while I sauteed the rest of the veggies, which I then mixed in.
12. In a separate pan in butter, saute 1/2 large onion, 1 clove garlic, 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms and 1 cup chopped fresh nettles. (You may want to use gloves while chopping the nettles.)
13. Mix into noodles, add salt to taste and enjoy!

I hope you enjoy this recipe! This vegetarian recipe can easily be made vegan by substituting olive oil or earth’s best margarine for the butter. I’ll be sharing lots more things I do this year with my wild ally, nettles. If you haven’t gotten a chance to check out The Wild Ally Workbook, please do!

You’ll also find a video review of vitamix blenders here, along with a coupon code for free shipping!

Have a great day!

Melissa Sokulski
Food Under Foot

Thank you so much to all the people who joined us in Beaver for our wild edibles walk!

Our group assembling in front of Three Rivers Yoga Beaver

Thanks, too, to Andrea of Three Rivers Yoga Beaver for being such a wonderful host and making us feel so welcome! It was so nice seeing old friends and new faces. We hope to go back there this fall and do another walk, or perhaps a workshop making and sampling some edible creations! Stay tuned!

We found some great edibles on the walk: (for more info on any of these plants, use the search box on this blog - you’ll find tons of information!)

• Plantain - leaves are edible, as are the seeds, which can be used just like psyllium seeds (which are from another variety of Plantago…P. psyllium or P. ovata. The one pictured is P. major.) Leaves can also be crushed and placed on bites, stings, cuts or rashes (”Fairy Band-aids”.) Here is how to make plantain oil.
  
  

  Plantain, Plantago major

  
  
  

  Plantain seeds, use as you would psyllium seeds

• Purslane - this succulent edible plant has appreciable amounts of omega 3 fatty acids (like fish oil and flax seed oil)
  
  

  purslane

• Dandelion - see our Dandelion page for lots of information on dandelions!
• Lambs Quarters - also known as wild spinach, this relative of quinoa is high in protein and has more calcium than kale
  
  

  Lambs Quarters - Chenopodium album

• Burdock - see our Burdock page for more information on Burdock
• Wild Carrot/Queen Anne’s Lace…which although is edible we do not eat due to its close resemblance to its deadly relatives: Poison Hemlock and Water Hemlock.
  
  

  Wild Carrot Flowers

  

  Wild Carrot Root - smells like a carrot!

• Poke Weed - only edible in the early spring, when it first shoots from the ground, though herbalists use tiny amounts of the tinctured root and/or berries to treat cancer. (The root and berries are generally considered poisonous.) The berries are used as a dye for fabric.
• Acorns/Oak Tree - many acorns are bitter, because they are high in tannins. Boil the nut meats in water, refreshing the water as it turns brown until it no longer does. Now you can dry the acorns and eat them whole or grind them into flour, which is how the Native Americans used them.
  
  

  Acorns in a White Oak Tree

• Sumac, with which we love to make a lemony drink, but steeping the red fruits in cold water overnight.
  
  

  Sumac

• We also discussed the differences between Red Clover and Crown Vetch (one edible, one poisonous)

Two of our favorite books on wild edibles are:

• Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide to Over 200 Natural Foods
• Stalking The Wild Asparagus
  (this is not a field guide, but has some great information on how to use wild plants.)

If you would like our five free ebooks, please make sure to sign up for the newsletter on this website (right margin.)

Please stay in touch by signing up for our newsletter and ebooks.

Also, make sure you visit our sister site: Birch Center for Health, for more information on our Pittsburgh Acupuncture Center, and great information about alternative health and wellness.

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Oh yes! We mentioned the Vitamix - the Blender we love to use! As readers of Food Under Foot, you are able to get free shipping when you order your vitamix right from the company! To see more about this blender and get your shipping code, just visit our blender recommendation page.

Thanks again!

Melissa and David Sokulski

Food Under Foot
Birch Center for Health