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This week’s share:

• morels
• garlic mustard
• red clover flowers and leaves (new this week!)
• violet leaves and flowers (violet leaves are new!)
• black locust flowers (new this week!)
• apple mint (new this week!)
• lemon balm
• burdock stalks
• nettles
• chickweed

Yeeehaaa!  The sweet smell of flowers is in the air. You may have noticed the black locust trees in bloom - either by sight or smell. These delicious flowers are the only part of the tree that is edible. They smell magnificent and taste like honey. I enjoy them as a snack as is (raw) and added to a smoothie. One Food Under Foot follower emailed to tell me she enjoys them tempura style! My favorite fermented soda ever was made with black locust flowers! See newsletter 3 for info on making the ginger bug starter. Then pour boiling water over the locust flowers, add some sugar, when it cools to room temperature strain and add some of the ginger bug starter. Cover and let sit a couple days for a fizzy fermented healthy beverage.

Red Clover flowers and leaves are also new this week! I never realized how amazing red clover flowers smell until I had them all the table dividing them into shares this week. Wow - yum!

These are gorgeous large blooms! One thing you’ll notice about these flowers are the oval leaves underneath the flower in sets of three. There is a look-alike to clover (which is not yet blooming, but it will be soon) called Crown Vetch and you definitely do not want to eat it! Crown Vetch contains high amounts of nitro-compounds that can cause heart attacks. Not only is it unsafe for humans but for horses as well (ruminants such as cows can safely eat it). Crown Vetch was planted all along Pennsylvania highways and is extremely common and invasive. Vetch leaves are very different from clover, however. Clover leaves occur in sets of three, vetch leaves are in pairs: 15 to 25 pairs of oblong leaflets. The picture below shows white crown vetch, which could be mistaken for white clover, but there is also purple, which is similar in color to red clover.

Ideas for Red Clover include:

• Raw in Salads
• Saute in stir fry
• tempura style!
• pull petals out and add to cookie or pancake batter
• smoothies (of course)
• soup
• dried - blossoms can be dried and used to make a tea which balances hormones (mainly women)
• dried - blossoms can be dried and ground into flour (mix with regular flour in recipes…adds protein!)
• fermented soda - see week 3 newsletter for information on making a ginger bug starter. Then add the starter to sweetened red clover tea to make a naturally fermented soda.

Violet Leaves are new also, though you have gotten the flowers before. This little mix is great in salads or smoothies. Violet leaves and flowers are both very high in vitamin C.

I believe apple mint is new to your share as well. Doesn’t it smell just like apples? Mmmmm. You can dry this mint to save and have later as tea, or make tea with it now or add to salads or dishes which call for mint. It’s great in smoothies! I love adding apple mint to smoothies almost as much as I love adding lemon balm (also in your share) along with other greens such as chickweed.

This may be the last week for morels! We have been out there looking high and low for you, every chance we get! Phew! Many people have reported this is a slow year for morels but we have done ok. Just multiply what you have gotten in your share ten times - not too bad! I hope you have enjoyed them! And who knows…maybe it’s been “slow” because they are not even fully out yet - it’s only the beginning of May! We will still be out there scoping the forests and hills for morels until at least mid-May, so hope is not lost for a banner amount in your share! *Remember to always cook wild mushrooms before eating!*

Some tips for this week’s share:

• try using garlic mustard leaves in place of lettuce on sandwiches and burgers
• if garlic mustard or any green gets wilty, soaking in ice water revives (thanks Rhonda!)
• If you find yourself with too many greens, remember you can dry them or freeze them
• a great way to save garlic mustard is turning it to pesto and freezing the pesto in ice cube trays
• you don’t need to peel the burdock stalks if you cook them: just boil them and they will get soft and the bitterness goes away
• remember to always cook wild mushrooms before eating!

Here are links to some recipes we’ve posted previously using things that are in your share. (All recipes are vegetarian and gluten-free!)

• Garlic Mustard Pesto
• Potato Pancakes with nettles and garlic mustard
• Burdock stalks in gravy
• Morel Frittata
• Nettles and Broccoli Quiche
• Morel Potato Kugel
• Leah’s Chickweed Crepes
• Homemade Nettle Pasta
• Nettle Potato Soup
• Making Fermented Sodas (including the ginger bug starter)

And remember you can search our blog (search box upper left) or  check back to previous newsletters for ideas.

Enjoy this week’s share!!

~ Melissa Sokulski

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Welcome to Week 4 of the CSF!

New this week: Burdock leaf stalks, onion grass bulbs, catnip and lemon balm.

In your share this week:

• Burdock Leaf Stalks
• Catnip
• Lemon Balm
• Purple Dead Nettle
• Onion Grass with Bulbs
• Garlic Mustard
• Chickweed
• Japanese Knotweed
• Nettles
• Morels

What a fun share we have for you this week!

We’ve been out hiking the hills and forests of Western PA and we do indeed have more morel mushrooms for you this week! Remember to always cook morels and all wild mushrooms before you eat them! I have been enjoying morels sauteed in butter with onions and eaten with eggs, or in fried rice. In fact, I made some wonderful fried rice with morels, nettles and cat tails the other day - yum!

The Burdock Leaf Stalks are new this week. (They look like huge stalks of celery.) They taste very bitter if you eat them raw due to their outer skin. However, I found by boiling them in water (I added salt to the water) for 20 minutes (then throw away that water), they are no longer bitter and they are no longer stringy. (If not cooked enough they are pretty tough.) You don’t even need to peel them! If you’d like to try them raw I recommend peeling them - it is just the outer skin that is bitter.

I made a delicious dish with a good sauce by cooking the stalks:

1. Wash stalks
2. chop them into small pieces, about 1 -2 inches (smaller than in the picture below…I made it a couple times and I liked it better when the stalks were a little smaller than shown.)
3. put them in a pan and cover with water
4. simmer with lid 20 minutes
5. save stalks, throw out water

Then:

1. Melt butter into that same pan (you can use olive oil to make vegan)
2. Added 2 Tbsp of buckwheat flour (I used buckwheat so it’s gluten free, you can use whatever flour you like)
3. Mix over medium heat
4. Add a little water and mix the flour in evenly, keep adding water slowly and mixing until it becomes a thick sauce
5. Add salt and pepper (and Parmesan cheese if you want, optional.)
6. Once sauce is done add burdock stalks back in and stir until coated.
7. Serve with the sauce.

This week we also finally made homemade nettle pasta again! We had run out of eggs so we just omitted them and made vegan pasta instead. I added a little water to the steamed nettles while blending them, and then mixed (by kneading) the nettle/water mixture into buckwheat flour (again so it was gluten free, you can use regular flour if you wish.) It came out great!

Catnip is an herb which is beloved by cats as well as people! You will find this soft-to-the-touch mint in your share this week. As a tea (you can boil it fresh or dry it first, then steep) it acts as a muscle relaxant and induces relaxation and sleep. I have mine hanging to dry in my doorway and my cats are going CRAZY today!

The Lemon Balm is also a mint, this one very lemony. I like to add the leaves to tea (fresh leaves or dried) and salads. I think lemon balm also makes a delicious pesto. Try slicing the leaves and floating on top of a lemongrass soup after it’s done cooking. Very delicious.

This week we found a gorgeous field of onion grass (at Wild Red’s Gardens in Morningside.) You’ll find we harvested the whole plant this time: bulb as well as green.  You can cook the bulbs as you would any onion bulb or shallot. Use the greens as you would chives. They can also be dried if you find yourself with an abundance!

You’ve seen all the other wild edibles before…check back to previous newsletters for ideas. I have been using garlic mustard leaves on sandwiches (in place of lettuce) and I love it!

Please remember to send me any pictures and recipes that you make with your wild edibles…I’d love to pass them along to the rest of the share!

Enjoy your share this week!

~ Melissa

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Welcome to Food Under Foot!

Many of you are finding us today from the wonderful article published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. If you are new to the site, make sure you sign up for our free newsletter (which includes five free ebooks) in the green box on the right hand margin.

Also, you may have noticed a May 28 walk listed in the newspaper. Unfortunately that was last year’s walk. The good news is: there are walks scheduled even sooner, including our first walk this Sunday! Many more walks will be scheduled this year as well (hopefully including one with Leah!)

Wild Edibles Walks

This Sunday, April 15, 2012. 11 am

Join us for our first walk of the season! We’ll be hunting for morel mushrooms as well as identifying all sorts of wild edibles, so come with a basket or paper bag in case we find some morels!

Where: Parking lot by Frick Park Clay Tennis Courts (Braddock Ave.) See Map

800 South Braddock Ave, 15221

When: Sunday April 15, 2012, 11 am

Fee: $10/person, $15/couple or family (kids under 10 are free), checks or cash only please

Questions: (412) 381-0116

Earth Day Walks in Frick Park

Saturday, April 21, 2012. 1 pm and 2 pm

Join Melissa Sokulski of Food Under Foot at Frick Park’s 2012 Earth Day Celebration! This free celebration takes place at Frick Environmental Center on Beechwood Blvd Pittsburgh, PA from 11:30 to 4 pm. Our free walks will be at 1 pm and 2 pm. Hope to see you there!

Where: Frick Park Nature Center

2005 Beechwood Blvd. Pittsburgh, PA 15217

When: Saturday April 21, 2012, 1 pm, 2 pm

Fee: Free

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Enjoy the site! There is lots of great information here. If you are on facebook make sure to follow us over there. And please sign up for our newsletter (right margin, green box) so we can stay in touch.

Thanks!

~ Melissa Sokulski

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It’s morel season in Western PA! We are fortunate to have found about 100 morels this year, mostly the half-free (also called “snakehead morel” or “peckerhead morel”) and some black morels.

Morels (Morchella species) are delicious edible mushrooms, though they must be cooked. They are absolutely, always 100% hollow inside, which is one way to make certain you have a morel and not a false morel. Another way is that the cap is attached to the stalk, either at the bottom (black and yellow morels) or mid-way, with a bit of a skirt (half-free.) In false morels such as verpas (which are inedible) the cap is attached to the top.

Look for morels under elm and dying elm trees. Tulip poplar is another tree under which morels can be found. Also ash, sycamore…I heard a saying recently, “You find them where you find them.” But we always look for elm or tulip poplar groves when seeking out morels. If you are not familiar with these trees, you can google images for them.

Here you will see how hollow morels look inside. There is no question that they are 100% hollow! If you are not sure, throw it out!

The picture below is NOT A MOREL! It is an inedible Gyromitria, or false morel. They typically come out a little before the true morels appear, but they remain out during morel season. They are NOT HOLLOW inside.

If you are in Western PA, the Western PA Mushroom Club is hosting Morel Madness this weekend! Check it out, it is a great program with slide shows and ranger-led hikes looking for morels.

We have made some truly delicious dishes this year with morels, pictures and recipes are coming up.

If you haven’t signed up for our free newsletter, please do! The sign up box is on the top right (green box with the feet inside). You’ll receive 5 free ebooks as well!

Happy Hunting!

Melissa Sokulski

**Did you know our new e-workbook is pay-what-you-choose? Author and herbalist Melissa Sokulski has put together a workbook of what she feels are the best ways to learn about wild edible plants. Check it out today!**

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We have lots of campers here at Food Under Foot! Hello to you all! Thanks so much for your emails. We love camping, too, and camping is a fantastic time to find and use wild edibles.

There are some things to be aware of: not all parks want you to pick plants, so find out the rules at each park. Some parks do not mind if you pick invasive weeds like garlic mustard, burdock, nettles, Japanese Knotweed (etc) and will even spray or pull these themselves, so it’s worthwhile to ask. We’ve come across parks where they don’t want you to pick any plants (but mushrooms were ok there), to others who will say weeds such as the ones mentioned above are ok.

We also never pick endangered or protected plants like Trillium, Ferns, or Goldenseal.

When we do harvest plants to eat we only pick what we will eat immediately, so as not to overpick or waste anything. When we are harvesting something like garlic mustard or burdock root from places where they tell you it’s ok (sometimes they’ll be thrilled!) we sometimes do pick more to dry or use later.

Lately we have found the best wild edibles camping! Chickweed, violets, lambs quarters and garlic mustard make wonderful salads. We usually bring a bottle of salad dressing, but really these wild edibles are so fresh and delicious you could eat them plain!

These flavorful edibles also make a good trailside nibble if you get hungry on a hike. Also wild berries will be in season soon…those are always fun to nibble while camping!

Other wild edibles such as morel and other edible mushrooms and nettles are excellent sauteed, and can be eaten over rice or pasta.

Roots such as burdock are excellent cooked into soups or with rice, giving a rich earthy flavor.

Some wild edibles you can find while camping are great as medicines, too. If you get stung by a bee look for plantain (some call it fairy bandaid) to chew and place on the sting.

If you get stung by nettles, you’ll likely find burdock or yellow dock leaves nearby…chew those and apply to the nettle sting.

Poison Ivy? Go back into the woods and look for jewelweed, crush and apply this plant to your itchy rash. Plantain will also work to take the itch away.

Wild edibles are full of nutrition and medicinal properties and are excellent to use while camping!

We’ll be sure to bring you more camping adventures as the season progresses (we’re going again later this week!) Make sure you let us know about your camping wild culinary adventures as well!

~ Melissa Sokulski

Food Under Foot
Birch Center for Health

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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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We finally found and tasted edible morel mushrooms!

Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Western PA Mushroom Club (this is an amazing club…weekly hikes, monthly meetings and special events) we had a great weekend learning about morel and other edible mushrooms!

Three hikes were led by experienced park rangers and mycologists, and we actually found morel mushrooms!

The event is at Mingo Creek County Park near Washington, PA. We camped and got the chance to meet friendly people. Two slide shows, three hikes, an astronomy program at the planetarium, bonfire, roasted marshmallows…you couldn’t ask for a better time!

We sauteed the mushrooms with butter and onions and they were delicious.

Tomorrow you’ll find my recipe for the delicious morel frittata I made!

~ Melissa

Food Under Foot
Acupuncturist, Birch Center for Health
Pittsburgh, PA