Edible wild plants, bees and other health stuff

Jerusalem artichokes soup

B. — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:40:46 +0000

A couple of days ago, I made this wonderful soup with Jerusalem Artichokes I had in the fridge and wild leek.
Click to view slideshow.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs jerusalem artichokes
5 tbs orange juice
2 tablespoons butter
1 wild leek, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 1/4 cups vegetable stock
2/3 cup milk
2 tbs chopped cilantro (optional)
2/3 cup plain yogurt (optional)
Grated zest of half an orange (optional)

Directions:
Place peeled jerusalem artichokes in a large saucepan, add 2 tablespoons of orange juice and add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook until the artichokes are tender (about 20 minutes)
Mash the artichokes.
Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add the wild leek and garlic and fry over a low heat for 3 minutes or until the leek is tender. Set aside a tablespoon of tender leek for garnish.
Stir in the mashed artichoke, stock, milk and remaining orange juice.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for 2 minutes.
Blend the soup with a hand held blender for 1 minute until smooth or run through a food mill.
Garnish with the reserved leeks and serve.

At this point, the soup is already delicious.

These following steps are optional and will give the soup more ‘body’.
Return the soup to a clean saucepan and stir in the reserved leeks, cilantro, and yogurt and heat through.
Serve with the grated orange zest.

More snow…

B. — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:16:38 +0000

A look out our window yesterday:

The day before yesterday, we got some maple sap from my brother in-law’s tree. I use it for making tea and soup. Just the thought itself that this sap came straight from the tree, is invigorating;-)

In the meantime, I’ve been working on labels for my jellies, they’re not finished because I need to find a way to stylize pictures of my dandelions and such and use them in adobe Illustrator.
I really really dislike working with Illustrator!

Spring cleaning

B. — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:06:58 +0000

Yesterday was another day in the garden, it was still pretty windy but that’s what you get when you live on a hill.
I was mostly busy digging up all the Jerusalem artichokes and sorting them. Some were damaged pretty bad, eaten by worms and mice or were damaged by my garden shovel, some were already sprouting but most of them are still good to eat.
I also took some time for spring cleaning, but I didn’t get too far.

I took a picture yesterday of the watercress sprouts I have growing indoors:

Oh and the day before, I made Queen Anne’s lace jelly from dried flowers. The flavor is pretty much the same as when you use fresh flowers but the color is yellow/brownish instead of pink. I’d like to not use any food coloring so I better stick to fresh flowers.

Today is an indoor day because it looks like this:

Nice day in the garden

B. — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:11:35 +0000

It was a busy gardening day, at least most of the day. I had to make a cheesecake for my brother in-law’s birthday so I did that early in the morning, then my sister skyped me and asked me all kinds of questions about herbs, which took me a while to answer.
Finally at 11 am, I was ready to put on my boots, strap on my knee pads, put on my gloves, and get to it.
I dug up most of my Jerusalem artichokes today and plan to store them. Tomorrow I’ll put half of them in a big tub of sand and keep them in the cellar, and the other half go into gallon bags with paper towels in them, and stored in the fridge. I’ve read that both methods work but we’ll see which one will work the best and keeps them fresh the longest.
It’s a lot of work to make sure you get all the tubers out, but if I want a fairly neat row again this year and enough space so I’ll get nice big tubers, it’s worth the effort. And it’s fun too, I think, it’s just amazing how many you will find!

I decided to plant a row of tubers along the west side of my garden as well because it’s always very windy. So I hope one row is enough to function as a windbreaker.

I also spotted these little Daylily shoots today:

Jerusalem artichokes and Elderberry sapling

B. — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:48:04 +0000

Wow, it’s a gorgeous day! The sun is shining and it’s 55 degrees.
I just took a walk in my garden and dug up some Jerusalem artichokes which we’ll have for dinner tonight.

And near the Elderberry that I transplanted last year

I found this little Elderberry sapling:

Wonderful isn’t it?

Today I’m working on a painting but tomorrow I plan to spend all day outside, it’s going to be even warmer!

Winter sowing and growing Belgian endives from 1st year Chicory roots

B. — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:42:13 +0000

Last year, I winter sowed a lot of seeds and had a high success rate. This year, I don’t really need to sow anything but I’m thinking of moving some things around in my garden, adding some new edible wild plants, and I really like the process of winter sowing.
I like to buy and harvest seeds, making and preparing the mini greenhouses, the whole activity is fun. It’s fun just knowing that in a few weeks, little plants will start to grow because you provided the right environment for them.
So, this week, I got some potting mix, aluminum baking pans with lids, cut open some old milk jugs, went through my seed collection and sowed seeds of the following plants:
Wild strawberry
Stinging nettle (yes, we need more!)
Queen Anne’s lace (because I plan to make a lot of Queen Anne’s lace jelly this year)
Chicory (I’m going to put these together with the dandelions instead of a separate bed)
Shepherd’s purse (put these on several different spots in my garden, I just love the flavor of the leaves)
Wild lettuce
Wintergreen (they didn’t do so well last year)
Jewelweed (I’m going to put these where I had my Chicory last year)
Gooseberry
Evening primrose
Autumn olive (husband’s going to be mad lol)
Sowthistle
Dandelion (the more the better)
and I could have sworn I harvested a bunch of Burdock seeds last year for sowing but I couldn’t find the bag anymore, so I walked outside in the snow to harvest some more seedpods. The sun was shining and the light reflecting on the snow was so bright that it hurt my eyes.

I’m going to keep a close eye on my Chicory this year because I really want to grow Belgian endives from their first year roots.

Every book tells me that Chicory is a perennial and that it will not grow flowers in the first year, but all of my chicory plants had flowers in their first year and I couldn’t use their roots for growing Belgian endives. I tried but it didn’t work.
If my new batch starts growing flowers in their first year again, I will sow more seeds by the end of Spring, and see if that will keep them from growing flowers in the first year.

So, when I succeed I will show you how to grow Belgian endives.

Workshops and tours for 2011

B. — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:16:34 +0000

Dear foraging friends and foraging friends-to-be,
It’s almost Spring and many wonderful edible wild plants will soon start to appear. Nature has the habit of providing plants when and where they are needed, so Spring is the time for harvesting plants that will strengthen us after a long cold Winter. We’ll find Dandelions, Wild leek, Burdock and lesser known plants that will make great ingredients for wholesome dishes.
The great thing about edible wild plants is that new plants become available every month, and my tours and workshop change accordingly.
I look forward to sharing my knowledge again this year, at our house in Liberty, PA (zipcode 16930).
Last year workshops were held monthly, but this year I am planning tours throughout the month and will offer some flexibility for workshop dates.

Tours will include a field trip/garden tour and a beverage
cost: $15 per person

Workshops will include a field trip/garden tour and a cooking session followed by a lunch.
cost: $25 per person
If you want to do a tour on a day when a workshop is scheduled, you can of course choose to participate only in the field trip/garden tour.

For convenience, workshops can be arranged on Fridays as well if requested ahead of time.

April schedule

Tour on Friday April 22 Time: 9-11

Tour on Saturday April 23 Time: 9-11

Tour on Friday April 29 Time: 9-11

Workshop on Saturday April 30 Time: 9-12:30

May schedule

Tour on Friday May 20 Time: 9-11

Tour on Saturday May 21 Time: 9-11

Tour on Friday May 27 Time: 9-11

Workshop on May 28 Time: 9-12:30

For questions and registration, please e-mail me at foragingtours@gmail.com

Edible wild plant workshop

B. — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:42:05 +0000

Fields, forests and yards can provide an abundance of edible plants and fruits. For those wishing to learn how to identify edible (and healthy) wild plants, I offer a one-of-a-kind class through Pennsylvania College of Technology’s North Campus Wellsboro. The class will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 25, at my home near Liberty and the cost is $29. The class includes a field identification session with a return to the kitchen to explore recipes and methods of preparation for tasty meals and beverages.
For more information, or to register, call the North Campus at 570-724-7703 or visit online at: www.pct.edu/wdce/northcampus.htm.

Testing your drinking water

B. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:10:00 +0000

If you live in Pennsylvania, own a private well and you want to have the water tested before a gas company is going to drill in your area,
this is what you do:
Go to this page and select a commercial laboratory in your area because they’ll have to come to your house to take a sample:
Look for a laboratory with the following codes:
M = Microbiology
TM = Trace Metals
NM = Inorganic Non-Metals
Contact the laboratory and order a water test for predrill parameters.

This is a list with the parameters as targeted by the Department of Environmental Protection bureau (DEP):

But this list is not completely up to date.
These parameters have been used historically by the Bureau of Oil and Gas but it has come to light that the Dissolved residue (4th parameter) and the labs have been told by the DEP not to run this test any longer.
A commercial water testing lab will have a list of all required parameters as well.
The lab we chose has also began to analyze for Arsenic because it is documented in earlier testing from the PA cooperative extension to be in Gas well Flowback.

We chose Seewald Laboratory.
More information about water testing and drilling:

http://water.cas.psu.edu/ws_testing.htm

The cost for this test at Seewald is $320 plus a sample fee of $35.

Our garden

B. — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:05:25 +0000

Had I done a better job with the growing heights of certain plants, this garden would have been photogenic, but it isn’t this year.
So, I took pictures of some of the plants and flowers as well as some residents and frequent visitors of our garden.
Hope you like it:-)
Click to view slideshow.