Wild Foods: Spring

Empowering you to learn to identify plants when out walking. In the last 10 years there has been an explosion of recipes and ideas, and some amazing sites to browse and learn from.

Southern Pomo. Annual Calendar. From Sonoma State, Dr. David Perry

These are ones easily found/grown in Cali:

• CALENDULA

• YARROW

• YERBA MANSA

• CHAMOMILE

• ELDERBERRY

• ECHINACEA

• ANGELICA 

• NETTLE

Beautiful Sites:

• The Wondersmith, Extravagant and artsy, wonderful write ups intertwined with history

• Grow Forage Cook Ferment 

• The Wondersmith 

• Farm and Forage Kitchen 

• A Forager’s Feast 

• Wild Plant Guide 

• Nutrition content

• Database dude: PlantID.net, based in marin, pictures and descriptions of wild plants based on location! (and other things that look like it. 

• Hunter Angler Gardner Cook – Hank Shaw, Nettle recipes, great site

• Gather Victoria - more magical, gorgeous, things you wouldn’t make everyday, but seasonal beauties, can go to spring, esp for fancier ideas or to be inspired, gets way into the history

• Wild Harvests Blog 

• Backyard Forager - East coast

• Eat The Weeds, in Florida, chickweed bread recipes

Books:

• Edible Wild Plants, John Kallas, detailed on common Spring Greens, 20 pages on dandelion or mallow. 

• Foragers Harvest and Nature’s Garden by Samuel Thayer, sometimes you are lucky to get a paragraph of information, not many people going AS in depth as this guy!

• Wild Remedies - Rosalee De La Foret - many you can grow yourself

• California Foraging: Judith Lowry, Lowry seeds, can buy seeds, bulbs and plants from her, not so much recipes, but 120 plants that can be eaten in Cali, can find unusual things like grasses

• The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Bauder: Check out his social medias! So fun to watch

Turkey Tail Mushrooms

• tail end of season, easy to identify

  • grows on wood, has turkey tail bands of color. Bottom surface fine white pored spongy surface (needs to be white). One slightly purple, and get green as they get older. 

  • come out in early winter, could be some good fleshes in April. No versions are poisonous

  • This is the FRUIT of the mushroom, not hurting it by harvesting, body of the mushroom is in the log/wood. annually fruiting

    • great for broth, or dry and powder them up. 

    • start w small amoutns to see how it blends in and how you like the taste

    • can also grind it up and slurry it to make PAPER!

  • They are shedding the spores, this is the reproduction mechanism to release the spores out into the air

Reishi powder and astragualus, started puttng in tea dna coffee. Immune system is so intellegent, but with stress and anxiety, and not sleeping well, want to support us. This is one of those mushrooms in that way. If only know 1, can know this one.

Dandelion: Tooth of the lion, dante lion

Jo Robinson, 2013, Breeding the Nutrition out of Food,

• Amt of Antioxidants per 100g fresh weight, like 1 cup

  • Dandelions: 6.89

  • Spinach: 0.89

  • Red Leaf: 0.23

  • Romaine: 0.21

  • Iceburg Lettuce: 0.17

• What produce and apples are better, some have hardly any nutrients and others have a lot more. We haven’t bred anything out of dandelions, wo reason we should bring wild foods into diet. Don’t need platefuls, but need diversity! Nice to have other flavors.

• Also wrote Eating with the Wild Side, other book by her

• Officionale in scientific name, officially recognized as a medicine when named

  • Chicory cosely related with bitters, great for digestion and liver detoxifying, stilumating bile flow so digesting well. 

  • recipes for Dandelion wines

    • fritters with the flowers

    • leaf is one of our strong diuretics

    • the root has even stronger tonic properties

• You dont need a lot of bitter at once to have an effect

  • there are lookalikes, they are not poisonous, but not as medicinal

  • dandies have 1 flower per stalk, no branches. and leaves are smooth and jagged, they look like teeth. 

    • Hairy leaves are Cat’s ear, and more rounded

  • Cna eat a raw leaf

Plantain Leaves and seeds

• one name is “white man’s footprint”. can eat, but would prolly want to saute it, not really handfuls, just add a little bit to spinach. can have a strong flavor, not quite as much as dandlion. 

• astringent, mucousy, can chew it up, and if a sting, can put that on the bite, and put bandaid on it, helps draw out toxins and helps it heal. Infused oils, so great for a salve. 

Wild Radish, blooming now, pickle these!

Flowers are completly edible, mustardy kick, mildest part of the plant, near the coast they have a little saltiness to them. Pascal uses the leaves, they are tougher, great if you like mustard greens. Annual

You Grow Girl Recipe: Pickled Radish Seed Pods (Lemon Verbena)

• 1/2 lb radish seeds

• 1 c white vinegar or ACV

• 1/2 c water

• 1 Tbs pickling salt

• 1 tsp sugar

  • To each 1/2 pint jar (above makes 3)

    • 1 small clove garlic

    • 1 sprig fresh lemon verbena

    • 10 black peppercorns

    • 1 strip lemon peel

Yellow Dock - great for skin issues

• Can get a little bitter, leaves can get long

• Great for Skin issues, bc organ of elimnation, and if liver not working well, skin is overworking, great for back acne

Cleavers- Stick to you! great lymphatic

• Great for lymph, which is part of IS to keep things moving

• Preserve in ice cube trays to prserve, or make a tincture

• Used by milk maids to make collander, pour milk through to get big impurities out of it. can also be great for making cheeses (Pascal loves the non-dairy cheeses, quick ferments

• Pick before flowering. Seeds are all little and sticky, so nice to harvest them. want to let them seed so they cme back every year, but good reason to weed them out of the main paths and use them

Three Cornered Leek

• See more in gardens. when break it, smells like garlic

• whole plant can be used, can make a wild pesto

Sheep’s Sorrel

• Lower growing, super sower, Look like sheep heads Ears and face

• pesto is easy way to use

Chickweed and Miner’s Lettuce

• Chickweed: single line of hairs on the stem, little white flowers

  • nice simple, mild wild green, can eat a bunch

  • can also be made into a a salve for cooling inflammation and skin irritations, itching

  • more popular for medicinal properties

• Miner’s lettuce (right): have cute little black seeds, little capsules and squeeze them for the seeds

  • young first leaves totally linear, then go round

  • helpd the 49’ers miners not get scurvy during the gold rush

Mallow - Slippery soothing tea (great for when talking a lot!)

• Marshmallow is medicinal in europe

• Now great to harvest leaves, as get hotter, back of leaves get “rusty” and not as pretty

• Nice white, fibrous root

• Mucilaginous, slippery, soothing, thickening, GREAT in teas. always have demulcent tea w mallow when talking a lot

• Once it flowers, get little cheese wheel pods, and when green can just eat them

Nettle

• Nutritionally: raw has 1g fat and 7g fiber

  • down to no fat and 3g cooked and salted

• Fibrous, can make string out of it

• Add to pasta flour and cut back on water to make it super crazy green!! bc deep dark green

• the sting is therapeutic

• blanch, drain and dry. use that water as hair rinse, to water plants

  • possibly could freeze or just roll it to break up the stinging cells

• Nettle in, dock out is old phrase. dock helps iwth the stinging quality, can chew that up if stinging, they grow next to each other

Nettle Pesto

• 2-4 Tps organic hemp seeds, pine nuts, walnuts, or other seeds of choice

• 4-5 oz blanched fresh nettle leaves and stems

• 1-3 oz grated parmesan

• 1/2 to 1 tsp sea salt

• 1-2 garlic cloves

• lemon

• 3/4 c EVOO

  • If make a bunch, freeze into ice cube trays and take out when want it

Milk Thistle

• Seeds support liver function, hard to harvest bc of big horns at the top!

• we know how amazing the seeds are for liver regeneration

  • pharma approved for use for mushroom poisoning

• in 1492’s quoted for saying the use of milk thistle seeds, lamebtng as the world doth decay, all these great things going out of use like milk thistle leave, like they had their own version of fast food coming through

• They are spiny, some fold them over and cut off teh spines, then totally edible raw or sauteed, pretty mild. Stronger flavor when flowering. by the time they are flowering, youre not really eating the leaves, so now is a great time to get them. 

  • masage with olive oil and lemon and salt, like a kale

• A nice green, but doesnt have same constituents as the seeds. just takes a little bit of effort to get around the spikes

• Need gloves to pull it out, not hard to pull out when young and can recognize them. 

• Easy to confuse with italian thistle, but the flwer is very different. see it in more places. flower is smaller and less seeds

  • bees love these when flowering. similar to artichoke which is also a thistle, and if really wanted to, can eat the heart under the pink and spikes, like an artichoke, but so much work for so little food

Honeysuckle

• I used to know these as a kid! put the little drop on my tongue

• removes toxicity in japanese culture, used when indications of fever and infections to clear heat

  • can make a tea out of it, teh flowers really sweet scented, get them right as they open, and can just make jasmine tea or suck on teh tubes to get a little nector. they dry up to hardly anything. abundant and beautiful 

• recommended for COVID bc moves heat out

Elderberry

• blue is native, on the coast are the bright red berries, they all have the 

• leaves and twigs, dont want to eat the berries raw, cooking them so heat and dryng them to remove the cyanoglycocides that make you nautious, and those are more of what makes you nautious. indiginous knew how to cook it and work with it. 

• Dont want to harvest all teh flowers or you wont get the berries

• now all sold out, so nice to be planting more of these

• stems to make flutes, bc hollow

• ederberry wine

• the flower is in a lot more historical books. 

• wise old german stories of crones who will cross you if you dont ive her respect

• can find these at native plant nurseries to grow yourself

  • harvest berries in september, best way to get them off is to freeze them and break them off, otherwise tedious. then dry or put into syrups by cooking down then adding sugar to preserve it

Douglas Fir

• Infused herbal honey recipe: take the green tips, wont take all teh tips here, take one tip here, another somehwere else, be judiciousl, chop and cover with honey. label it. herb floats to the top. Keep turning it over. infuses with connifer flavor, piney

  • little pink climbing roses, only bloom once, but can also put in a jar fresh with honey over them, can do with lavendar, rosemary, garlic, things with aromatics. 

  • warm it up if solidifies then strain out. 

  • flavor comes out quickly, can sit for a year or so. only thing that doesnt keep flavor is with fresh ginger, the honey flavor dissipates

• new spring green tips, most common connifer, single needles all the way around stem. can eat the tips at this stage, sour, v-C falvor, tea with fresh green tips, can pickle them. want them when soft

Purslane

• comes up in th esummer, (june, july) likes the heat more. can find at farmers market. 

• looks like a succulent, closer to teh ground. 

• crunchy, sour, super high in omega 3 fatty acids, maybe THE highest source, mroe V-E than spinach, more betacarotene than carrots. 

  • a little mucilagenous, can pickle them or as crunch into the salad. usually graze on it. 

• middle eastern purslane recipes: tons of them: salads, breads… vinagrette type dressing, have with tomatoes, feta

  • like seaweed classes, asian say cook with potatoes

Cattail

• different qualities in parts

• grows near water, water source needs to be clean

• they die back to root stock every year, can dig down to root stock. the brand new white shoots are super tasty, hard to get to, have to muck around in teh water. 

• can break off teh greens, and at base, first 6 inches, peel off outer layers, cucumbery mucilaginous quality. 

  • can bake the shoots. younger rizomes can be peeled, chopped and baked. just starchy, not much flavor

• Favorite part is the pollen, fun thing to gather, top top male part, 

  • part that makes the hot dog are female, top parts were all al male parts shedding pollen. near the coast, start looking in May/June, (find pathces off teh road) just a week or so to see VERY top parts, bend over and tap into bag, and gather pollen. at right time, can get a cup of pollen. bring home, in shallow dish, put a leaf in tehre, bc little bugs that want to crawl out, so leave out for a few hours. Then label and freeze for baking. not so good raw. see as half cattail, but just a Tbs of pollen to pancake or muffin, beautiful yellow color and butter flavor.

  • it is pretty live, so can go bad in teh fridge, but not in freezer

• female part can be steamed and eaten like corn

• little green stocks look like green onion

• roast or bake the rizomes, the sticks. starchy, but can add garlic and salt. 

Geophytes

• Garlic/onions/Tiger lily, Mariposas

• in teh 1900’s, patches so thick in Mendocino County, 200 plants per sq foot. mountain valley so crowded that it looked like a blue lake

Blue Dicks, Indian Potato, Dichelostemma

• They love fire

• “Indian potatoes”, can be eaten raw, boiled, or baked

• can grow in your yard

Soap Root

• Could harvest, but CANNOT eat raw, bc rich in sapponins, have to heat, low cook over long roast. mild starchy flavor. 

• tufts of hair around bulbs that you can make brushes out of

• wrap in soap root leaves and slow cook over edge of fire worked really well

• great to crush up for remedy after poison oak

Blue Camas

• Edible vs poisonous (most right, death camas which does grow around here)

• can create on your land to harvest later, to broaden ideas of wild food

Pinole Plants, Chia

• native cali plant, can harvest your own chia

Red Maids

• related to miners lettuce, tiny bright fucia color in teh grasslands

• when fires burned to grow red maids, harvested and dried for seed

• in flower from July to September, and the seeds ripen from August to October

• Leaves and young shoots - raw, cooked or used as a garnish. The leaves contain oxalic acid and so some caution so dont OVERDUE it

• Seed - raw or ground into a meal as a piñole. The seed is very small and fiddly to harvest, bc ripens over several weeks. Rich in oil and was often collected in large quantities by native North American Indian Tribes