Can you hear the trees awakening? It’s maple syrup time for the farmers and foragers setting out to tap the maple trees! Even though the land around us continues to be covered with a deep blanket of snow, there’s a shift in the trees. With warmer days and cold, clear nights, the trees are stretching their hibernating …
Broths! This may seem like the newest food trend but alas – herbal and bone broths have been in simmering on the stoves of healing kitchens across the globe and across time. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, broth is a key component to building yin deficiency and nourishing the body, and the Jewish bubbe knows that chicken …
From firs to pines to spruces– these favorite evergreens adorned many homes for the holidays with their fragrant boughs. Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to take down the trimmings– but wait! The boughs can serve an additional purpose: Before directing that greenery out to the compost or to the curb for recycling, …
Spent time in the woods gathering autumn olive berries yesterday from trees still heavy with ripe fruit. I hope we can reimagine these delightful fruits as life-giving and nourishing because of their abundance (or invasiveness, depending on perspective). The rain, falling leaves and dark day’s weather were symbolic of the slow transition to winter; these …
Early spring is bursting with all its wild edible glory right now. The woods are filled with fiddleheads, trout lily, morel mushrooms, wild ginger, field garlic, dock and white lettuce leaves. The fields have violets in bloom for salads and sunshine yellow dandelions ready for dandelion wine. Invasive edible plants like Japanese knotweed and garlic mustard still have …
How do you forage and cook stinging nettles? Gather young stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) in spring, from April to June, and again in the fall, in damp, nutrient-rich soil by rivers, streams and lakes. Wear gloves, cook or dry the leaves to remove the sting, and use them like spinach, as in the nettle and …
My writing sabbatical starts today. Diving deep into my next book.#Foraging #EdiblePlants #TimberPress #MidWest
One of my most favorite, divine and seductive flowers is the Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica, Caprifoliaceae). It is a rambling vine that loves to climb and appreciates hot, dry waste places. It blooms right about Solstice — which I find apropos as it is a delightful plant with which to celebrate the sun’s highest point of …
What is the adage, “A weed is a plant that is growing where you don’t want it?” Abundant in areas of disturbed soil – at the forest’s edge, along roadsides, and on river floodplains – the Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata, Brassicaceae) is deemed by many as a noxious, invasive species, choking out native vegetation and spreading wildly across …