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

It usually hits me mid April. But even though it was a warm spring, my unstoppable desire to “go raw” again didn’t hit me until last week. So here I am, mid May, morel season is over (thank goodness: wild mushrooms must be cooked!) and I have “gone raw.”

By raw I mean I am eating only raw fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds. So lots of green smoothies, fresh juices, and yummy wild salads. But sometimes I do crave something…more. More savory and tasty than a smoothie or even a salad (though I have some delicious dressings that get me out combing my yard and neighborhood for wild delights!)

Yesterday I found a recipe in Brigitte Mars’s book, Rawsome, for Palak, which is a curried spinach dish. I substituted raw nettles for the spinach, changed a few other things and I can not even begin to convey its deliciousness.

Raw Curried Nettles with Flax Crackers

Raw and Wild Recipe: Indian Nettle Curry

inspired by Palak, from Rawsome by Brigitte Mars

• 1/2 cup soaked cashews
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1/2 inch fresh ginger root
• 1 clove garlic
• 4 cups fresh nettles
• 1 Tbsp chopped onion
• salt, tumeric, coriander, cumin, cayenne to taste

Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and puree.

I made the flax crackers as well, although those these can be purchased at food coops or health food stores (or even health food sections of regular grocery stores.) If not eating all raw, this dish would go well on rice or pasta, or even spread on sandwiches (or pizza!) Raw veggies would be excellent dipped in it.

Hope you are enjoying spring!

Love and nettle stings,

~ 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.

gluten-free nettles broccoli quiche

Recipe: Gluten-free Broccoli Nettle Quiche
by Melissa Sokulski

Preheat oven: 375 F

“Crust”: one cup or so of cooked quinoa (you can also use brown rice or not use a crust.) Spread quinoa over the bottom of pie pan.

1 cup broccoli, chopped
1 large bunch stinging nettles
1 small tomato, chopped (optional)
1/2 onion, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
6 large eggs
1/4 c milk (or water or soy milk, etc.)
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

• In a shallow pan, steam broccoli and nettles in a little water (covered) for about 5 minutes until broccoli is bright green and nettles has completely wilted.

• Remove from pan and when cooled a bit, chop nettles into small pieces and broccoli into smaller pieces.

• Saute onion in oil (can add some salt) until onion is translucent. Add nettles and broccoli. Turn off heat and mix in chopped tomatoes.

• In bowl: mix eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

• Spread grated cheese on top of quinoa, add the veggies next, pour the egg mixture over top (pour slowly, allowing egg to sink in.)

• Use fork to poke quiche to bottom of pie pan so that egg mixture can run all the way down, this will hold crust together. Poke all around quiche.

• Bake until top is browned and egg no longer jiggles, about 45 minutes.

This is delicious! I brought it to a Passover Seder (quinoa is not a true grain and can be eaten during Pesach.) Of course it is wonderful anytime.

What are you making with nettles these days?

Enjoy!

~ Melissa Sokulski

Week 1's share. Absent from photo: cleavers.

Welcome to week 1 of the Community Supported Foraging!

I am posting the newsletter on the blog so that if you are following (or foraging) along you can read about the suggestions and recipes of what is current wild and available.

Also, we may be able to make more shares available at some point so this way you can follow along and see if you would like to join in.

We had a couple surprises in this week’s share: young dryad’s saddle mushroom, which turns out to be delicious when it is young and tender like the ones we found and creeping charlie or ground ivy, which we found in abundance at Wild Red’s Gardens, who have graciously offered to let us forage there.

I am so happy to be able to include edible wild mushrooms in this week’s share. To me that makes the share extra fun! An important note about wild mushrooms:

Dryad's saddle

WILD MUSHROOMS MUST BE COOKED BEFORE EATEN!

in other words:

DO NOT EAT WILD MUSHROOMS RAW

or:

ALWAYS COOK WILD MUSHROOMS

Ella serving dryad's saddle, sauteed in butter

I recommend when first trying a new mushroom to simply saute it in butter, making sure you like the flavor, before adding it to a dish. Dryad’s saddle is tender and delicious this early in the season, but later it will get tough and bitter. I’d never enjoyed its taste until finding these young ones in the woods. At this stage, they rival morels. They are in fact known in some circles as “The morel hunter’s consolation prize.”

In this week’s share:

• Dryad’s saddle mushroom(fresh)
• dried reishi mushrooms
• stinging nettles
• broad dock leaves
• cleavers
• Japanese knotweed stalks
• purple archangel (purple deadnettle)
• violet flowers
• onion grass
• creeping charlie/ground ivy
• garlic mustard

Read The Rest of This Post »

Japanese knotweed juice with garlic mustard/nettle potato pancakes

Happy April!

I feel like spring is really here with the abundance of wild edibles around.

The juice above is Japanese knotweed stalks, cucumber and apple (juiced in a Jack Lalanne Juicer)

Japanese knotweed stalks, leaves stripped off

So delicious and super nutritious: Japanese knotweed has the highest natural concentration of resveratrol, an anti-oxidant which is good for the heart and brain, is anti-aging and anti-cancer. Supplement companies used to use grape skin to make resveratrol supplements…no more! Now they use Japanese knotweed (usually the root). What a great way to use this terribly invasive weed.

Japanese knotweed’s newest use is as prevention and treatment for the symptoms of Lyme disease, which is why I may drink this juice every day that the stalks are available. I am in the woods a lot and am often pulling ticks off me (yuck!) I’m also going to tincture the root soon (it’s best to do when the plant is not flowering, so early spring and fall): I will dig up the roots (which are orange/yellow in color), clean them, chop them and add them to a glass jar that I fill with 100 proof vodka, which is 50% alcohol. I will take pictures and post what I do step by step. For more information on treating Lyme disease with Japanese knotweed and other natural remedies, see Stephen Buhner’s book Healing Lyme: Natural Healing And Prevention of Lyme Borreliosis And Its Coinfections

By the way, the above juice is truly yummy: sweet and tart and incredibly thirst-quenching!

The potato pancakes are a bit more decadent:

1 large potato, peeled, grated
1/4 onion, grated
1 egg
1/4 cup flour (I use gluten free flour such as buckwheat or rice flour)
handful garlic mustard chopped - use more if you want!
large gloved handful of stinging nettles, blanched to remove sting and then chopped - use more if you want!
1/4 cup grated spicy Jack cheese (optional, yummy)
salt
pepper
olive oil for cooking

Mix all ingredients in large bowl.
Lightly coat frying pan with olive oil (rather than deep frying, you can also bake these at 375 til browned, 30+ minutes)
Spread a tablespoon of batter into pan (fits about 3 at a time in my cast iron pan).
Cook on medium high (turning down if oil begins to smoke) for about 3-4 minutes until browned, flip and cook another couple minutes.

Can serve with applesauce and sour cream or just enjoy as is…so tasty!

CSF-ers can look forward to all the wild ingredients in this weeks share, and others can find these ingredients in plentiful amounts these days…at least here in Western PA!

Love and nettle stings,

Melissa

Late fall nettles growing around our compost container

There’s still lots of wild food out there (well, depending on where you live)…here are some ideas on how to incorporate it into your holiday meals.

In Western Pennsylvania, you can still find oyster mushrooms, perhaps hen of the woods (though it’s a bit late…but maybe you still have some around you recently harvested), nettles, dandelion greens, burdock root, chickweed, recently harvested black walnuts and hickory nuts and more. There are lots of ways to incorporate some of these yummy foods.

These days our meals tend to be vegan or vegetarian and gluten-free. So here are some ideas:

• Add burdock root to lentil sweet potato stew.

• Make candied black walnuts to top this raw cranberry sauce, you can find the recipe for this dish here.

Raw Cranberry Sauce in Orange Halves, topped with Candied Nuts

Wild Mushroom Stuffing (gluten-free, vegan)

• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 2 cups wild mushrooms (oysters or maitake/hen of the woods)
• 2 stalks chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped nettles (sure, why not! If you don’t have it you can omit or add spinach or parsley instead.)
• 2 cups cooked rice, quinoa, or cut-in-little-pieces gluten-free bread
• salt, pepper
• dried sage
• dried thyme
• olive oil
• optional: nutritional yeast or parmesan cheese (not vegan)
• optional: grated cheddar cheese (not vegan) or grated vegan cheese like Daiya brand, which usually melts.

1. Saute onions, garlic, mushrooms and salt in olive oil until soft, at least 5 minutes.
2. Add chopped celery and saute a few minutes more.
3. Add nettles until wilted.
4. Add pepper, sage and thyme and rice (or quinoa or bread. If adding bread you may need some water.)
5. Stir all together over heat, adjusting seasonings, adding nutritional yeast or Parmesan cheese if you prefer.

My favorite way to eat this stuffing this fall is in baked squash: either delicata or acorn squash.

To bake squash: Cut in half (lengthwise for delicata) scrape out seeds (and save seeds to roast: we are foragers! we do not throw away the seeds! We may save some to plant next year…but the rest we roast!) Rub squash with olive oil and place face down on oiled baking pan, baking at 350 for 20 - 40 minutes until soft.

• Put stuffing in squash, top with cheese (optional) and reheat in oven until cheese melts.

To roast squash or pumpkin seeds: wash off squash debris, coat with olive oil or melted butter, add salt, spread on baking tray and bake while squash is baking 10 -15 minutes, stir up, spread again and bake 5 to 10 more minutes, until dry and crispy.

Enjoy your holidays!

Stay safe, stay wild.

~ Melissa and the folks at 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