2018. It was early Spring, and I was at a new spot, hoping to get a morel or a hundred, but I hadn’t been planning on bringing home any mustard greens, especially big, juicy leaves like I’d expect in early Summer. Big juicy leaves are what I saw though, and they made me hungry. All…
Leafy Greens | Basic Profiles
Miner’s Lettuce
Miner’s lettuce is one of the best wild greens you’ll ever taste, but, if you don’t have a place to harvest, it can cost you an arm and a leg. It was a real annomaly for me trying to find it in growing wild in the Midwest. Plenty of foraging books describe the green, but…
Horseradish Leaves
If you’ve ever seen horseradish growing, you might have wondered “can I eat the leaves?”. The answer is yes, definitely. Horseradish leaves are a great example of finding underused parts of plants to enjoy, I mean sure, everyone is familiar with jars of horseradish you find on grocery store shelves, but the leaves create different…
Common Amaranth: Amaranthus retroflexus & Friends
For me, amaranth is the king of greens to pick in the mid to late summer. Come July, the lamb’s quarter at the farm is probably wanting to go to see soon, and unless I continually cut it down, it will. I still usually get a good blend of greens until early August, but during…
Wood Nettles
If you know and love stinging nettle like I do, you’re going to love wood nettle or Laportea canadensis, for a couple different reasons I’ll get into, not least of which is their flavor. First though, I think it’s interesting to know some of the different characteristics that differentiate it from the nettle most people…
Sochan
Sochan, pound for pound, is one of the best greens I’ve eaten and to sweeten the deal, is one of the cornerstones of traditional, and severely under-documented Cherokee cuisine. You might be thinking, Alan, I’m a forager, and if it’s as great as you say, what is sochan and why haven’t I heard of it…
Violets
Common violets, or Viola odorata, are a great, unassuming wild flower, but they have a lot more use than in a bouquet or as something to enjoy on a trail: you can eat them too. For me, violets are one of a lot of greens I pick in the spring, along with sochan, nettles, ramp leaves,…
Watercress
Watercress, a.k.a. Nasturtium officinale You’ve probably heard of it, maybe even seen it in a nice grocery store, but, if you’re unfamiliar with harvesting your own watercress or cooking with it in general, I hope I can share a couple points to help you enjoy it. Watercress is one of the building block plants of…
Cow Parsnip
“It makes ye go blind!” “It can only die from a silver nail through the root!” “Eat wild parsnip? Never! There’s only poison parsnip!” “It’s all over the roads and trails, storm the woods! kill it with fiyaaaah!” These are pretty much the sayings and overall feeling conveyed by the well intended but torch-wielding public…
Lamb’s Quarters / Wild Spinach
They taste great, run 8$/lb wholesale, yield multiple rounds of crops in the time regular garden plants give a single one, and, they’re weeds. They’re lamb’s quarters, and if you appreciate good food, you should be familiar with them. Along with nettles, these were one of the first wild green that I picked and ate….
Chickweed
Chickweed, which one was that again? When I started researching plants I could forage they all looked the same. Almost every guide and piece of literature I had would mention it, but I couldn’t seem to find it anywhere. Eventually I figured it out, the key was having someone show me exactly what it was,…
Galinsoga
2017 to me was the year of the plant. Working with my network and connections I was able to bring in more wild-harvested product by weight than any restaurant I know of. One week in the Spring I remember I clocked us going through 50lbs of nettles alone. The hardest plants to get my hands…
Kale Sprouts
Imagine for a moment the wonder that could be if Brussels sprouts and kale had little babies. Now, contain your excitement, because it is a thing, and has been for a number of years. They also go by the name of kalettes, and they’ve been popping up all over the place, from conventional grocery stores to Trader…