-->

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

-->

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

-->

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

-->

Thanks to everyone who joined us on the Wild Edible Walk today! It was such a beautiful day, and we saw some wonderful wild edibles, such as dandelion, burdock, garlic mustard, onion grass and Japanese knotweed!

I’ll post more on that tomorrow…but for now, here is the recipe for the Raw Apple Dandelion Cookies:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups apples (about 4-5 apples)
• 1/2 cup pecans
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice (or cinnamon)
• 1/2 cup dandelion flower petals, plucked off the green collar

1. In a food processor, pulse the first five ingredients until you have small pieces, but not so much that it becomes too wet and mushy.
2. In a large bowl, mix in dandelion flower petals into the batter:
   

   Dandelion Apple Cookie Batter

3. Form into cookies and place on dehydator.
4. Dehydrate at 105 for 8 hours.
5. Refrigerate if you don’t eat them all right away - enjoy!

** If you haven’t received our free eBooks (the 5-Part Wild Edible Series), please sign up today on the box to the right. Part 2 is a 17-page eBook on Dandelions…full of pictures, description, uses and recipes. Please join today.

Thanks again so much!

~ Melissa

-->

Dandelion Flower for Raw Food Cookies

Welcome to our Raw Food Friends from Pure Jeevan!  And Thank you Wendi, for helping them find us. Here’s Melissa’s DANDELION FLOWER COOKIE RECIPE that’s a must have for Wild Edible Fans and Raw Foodists alike.   It is included in The Wild Edible Series, Part 2 - Dandelions.

DANDELION FLOWER COOKIES - RAW FOOD
Ingredients 1 1/2 cup soaked cashews 1/4 cup agave nectar or raw honey 1 cup dandelion petals — Pluck the yellow petals off the green collar and stem 1 Tbsp lemon juice (about 1/2 lemon) 1 Tbsp lemon rind 1/2 tsp vanilla extract smallest pinch of sea salt	This Healthy Raw Food Cookie Recipe is included in the Wild Edible Series.  Part 2 on Dandelions includes 3 other recipes (Dandelion Flower Fritters/Pancakes, Dandelion Green Saute, and another Raw Food Entree!), a dandelion vinegar, a medicinal tincture, and everything you’ll need for Identification, Harvest, and Preparation of Dandelions. if you don’t have a dehydrator and are not so concerned about eating raw, try cooking at a low temperature in the oven, for less time. Blend everything except dandelion petals in food processor until smooth. Mix in dandelion by hand, mix well. Form into cookies on dehydrator tray. Dehydrate at 105 for about 6 hours, flip and dehydrate another 2. Cookies will still be a bit moist.
Batter (left), Dandelion Flower Petals (right) dandelion flowers mixed into batter cookies on the dehydrator tray

-->

Breastfeeding has long been known to be good for mother and baby. La Leche League International lists many benefits, including that breast-milk is easy for the baby to digest, and has natural antibodies protecting the baby against bacteria and viruses. Now a new study by the University of Pittsburgh has shown that breastfeeding protects women from heart disease, heart attacks and strokes as well.

Published in the May issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the study finds that if a woman breastfeeds for one year or more, she is ten percent less likely to have heart attacks, heart disease or strokes. Dr. Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the study says, “Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, so it’s vitally important for us to know what we can do to protect ourselves.”

The study found that even one month of breastfeeding lowers the rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, all of which lead to heart disease. Yet Dr. Swartz points out, “The longer a mother nurses her baby, the better for both of them.”

Dandelion is excellent to promote lactation. Herbalist Susun Weed recommends women begin taking dandelion - either by eating the leaves, drinking the root tea, or as a tincture - the last two months of pregnancy and throughout the time they are breastfeeding.

Dandelion, thought of as a weed to most people, is blooming everywhere this time of year. There are many ways to use dandelion to benefit from it…whether trying to promote lactation, cleanse the liver, or just adding more nutrition to your diet.

The yellow flowers are like sunbursts, atop hollow, smooth stalks. The leaves - which are elongated and toothed - stay in their basal rosettes on the ground.

** Make sure you sign up for our newsletter (top right) - our second eBook is all about Dandelions! **

In the early spring or fall, when flowers are not present, the leaves are the least bitter and can be eaten. The long taproot can also be harvested at those time, and chopped and dried to be boiled into tea, or roasted and ground into a coffee substitute.

Once the flower blooms the leaves become very bitter and are unpalatable to most people. But the flowers are delicious!

Once collected, use right away or the flowers will close and become downy fluff. Pluck the yellow petals off the green collar and stem (which are very bitter.) The petals can be added to salads, sprinkled on soups or stir fries, or even mixed into batter for pancakes or cookies.

The flowers can also be steeped in apple cider vinegar for a few weeks, and then the vinegar can be used on salad. (See our video on mugwort, which includes making mugwort vinegar, and make the dandelion vinegar the same way using dandelion flowers instead of mugwort leaves.) And of course, many people love to make dandelion wine with all the abundant blossoms!

For Another Great Recipe, check out this blog post:  Dandelion Flowers Raw-Food-Cookie