Happy Spring
Amazing what one finds growing underfoot!!
Welcome to my new foraging blog!
Since I began foraging for the Community Table Restaurant when they opened in 2010, folks have been contacting me about learning how to forage and create their own healthful and tasty dishes with wild edibles at home.
Besides a new botanical immersion program where folks come out for lunch and foraging with me (see the link above to my FORAGING CLASSES page for more info), I’ll be posting here as time allows on the wild delicacies one might find in their own neighborhood.
I’d like to begin with a spotlight on the traditional green tonics which grow abundantly right underfoot at this time of year. They are truly gifts of nourishment! These wild foods that many consider pests like stinging nettle, dandelion and chickweed are packed full of nutrients for our winter-weary bodies.
Check out my recipes page for a yummy and nutritious version of spanikopita that I borrowed and tweaked from one of my favorite herbal mentors, Rosemary Gladstar.
Most coveted by foodies at this time of year are those wild cousins of our modern onion, the wild leek or ramp. These are the celebrities of most wild food enthusiasts.
They’ve become very popular in the gourmet world but I suggest folks indulge in them sparingly and with gratitude. A little known fact amongst ramp connoisseurs is that ramps take over 6 years to germinate from seed and then another another 2 -4 years to mature!!
Once the bulb is gone, so is the plant!
Rare delicacies indeed!
A good rule of thumb for future enjoyment of these early spring delicacies is to be sure that only the leaves are harvested while the bulb or life of the plant remains in the ground, especially if harvested in wild colonies!
These wild spring ephemerals are not only elusive in some areas of the world but endangered as well as many of the plants that grown in community with them. So please folks, let’s partake of them with a measure of gratitude and respect for their precarious growth habits and habitat decline.
Here’s a wonderful link to some folks who are doing their part to ensure ramp availability for our future generations. www.rampfarm.com Check them out to learn more about cultivating your own!
Bon Appetit!! ~Alicia