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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Foraging

The Mali Mushroom Project

This year I got to be part of a fun project: remote teaching about mushrooms with Villagers in Mali through Winrock International and USAID, with a special thanks due to my dear friend Judy Moses of Shepherd Song Farm, whose idea it was to figure out how to keep their Farmer to Farmer outreach program…

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My Top 5 Foraging Guides

Foraging guides by Sam Thayer

One of the most common questions I get asked is: “What are your favorite books on edible plants?” or “What are your favorite foraging guides?” Back when I started foraging, I didn’t even think to look at Facebook groups and other social platforms, which I think have added a lot to the wild food world….

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The Wild Harvest | Episode 3: Early Summer

The wild harvest foraging show episode 3 early summer

Episode Three of The Wild Harvest show is here: another dose of nature from the woods, rivers and fields of Wisconsin straight to you. Foraging meets culinary tradition: Cucina Povera Differing from Episodes One and Two, Episode Three has an underlying theme: Italian poverty food, or la cucina povera. If you’ve been following along with…

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Tinpsila Harvest

Timpsila, prairie turnip, Pediomelum esculentum, Psoralea esculenta

I turned off the gravel onto the road–ghosts of tire tracks barely noticeable through summer’s tall yellow clover, it gave me the feeling the clearance of my city slicker “little Honda that could” might not be enough for what was to come, the caravan of trucks I was following having no problem. But, I’d just…

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Dames Rocket / Hesperis matronalis

Edible foraged dames rocket basal leaves or Hesperis matronalis

In the early spring, and I mean early, before the nettles, before dandelions, ramps and sochan, there’s dames rocket, or Hesperis matronalis, although it also goes by: damask-violet, dames-wort, dame’s gilliflower, night-scented gilliflower, summer lilac, sweet rocket, mother-of-the-evening, winter gilliflower, dame’s-violet, and queen’s gilliflower, and more. Whatever you call it, it’s a fantastic edible spring…

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Permethrin: How to Not Get Lyme Disease

Permethrin spray to kill ticks with lymes disease

Most of us are inside right now, but come May there will be more things to inspect for than morels. I’m talking about the growing legion of tick borne diseases: Lyme, Bebiosis, Erlichiosis, Tularemia Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and STARI the disease carried by the lone star tick, and possibly the worst of all of…

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Guide to Black Walnuts

How to crack black walnuts

Like a lot of other people, I have memories of tripping and stepping on ugly, gooey black walnuts in the yard when I was growing up. They were a serious pain when I had to mow the lawn, and I thought they were weird, not food–no way they could actually be related to regular nuts…

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Cerulean Black Trumpets

Craterellus caeruleofuscus or the cerulean black trumpet mushroom

The best part of hunting mushrooms are the random things you stumble across. You might be getting skunked, with not a mushroom to be found, then out of nowhere a pile of somethings jump out to save the day, or, more likely, you just find a fungus that you have no idea what it is,…

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Hunting the Minnesota Matsutake: II

I got a fever, and the only prescription, is more matsutake! Bonus points if you read that with Christopher Walken narrating. Hunting matsutake in Minnesota, or the Midwest in general seemed like an unknown thing until a few years ago, with the exception of a few talented experts I know of like Tavis Lynch from…

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Wild Caraway

Wild caraway

Wild caraway (Carum carvi), is another great addition to the growing list of amazing plants and herbs I never thought possible to be picked in the wild. It’s a thing though, and if you come across some, like me, you might fall in love. I knew nothing of caraway until I read about it in…

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How to Freeze Wild Mushrooms

Sous vide, frozen wild chicken of the woods mushrooms

If you’re a mushroom hunter, even a beginner, you’re going to have excess shrooms, and that’s a good thing. But you’ll want, and need to have some solid methods for preserving them in your bag of tricks to make the most of your harvest. Drying and pickling are my favorite methods. But, if you’ve ever…

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Chrome-Footed Bolete

The Chome-footed bolete, or Harrya chromapes, Tylopilus chromapes, Leccinum chromapes

My friend has one of those private land patches, the kind you keep to yourself. Typically we might try to go there together specifically for black trumpets during the season, and the picking is incredible–calling it hunting is not even the right term when you bring a scissors instead of a knife. Some years it’s…

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Highbush Cranberries

Highbush Cranberries or viburnum trilobum

Highbush cranberries are the most disgusting, stinking, fetid-scented foraged fruit I’ve ever tried, or at least they were until I found out the truth about them, and the ignorant conspiracy hiding thier true flavor from the public. I mean seriously, what would you ever want to make with a fruit that tastes like the essence…

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foragerchef

Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, the roadkill is t Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, the roadkill is too specific a term for me—I don’t limit myself to vehicular-harvested meat. 

However you feel about the topic, grab some popcorn and head over to the comment section on my blog (link in bio) for the 🔥personal stories from readers have shared from around the world. 

There’s the kid who brought home a nutria after school, a wife getting 4 deer with the same car, a train hitting a herd of elk, a bear named squish, living in a house with weasels, and more. 

#budgetgourmet #gleaning #scavenging #meatismeat #roadkill #freefoods #finderskeepers #wastenotwantnot
Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberr Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberry cultivars (3 types!) on me before the last snowfall and I honestly don’t even know where to start after processing them. I’d already made jams and hot sauce already and I have enough for a year. 😅

Great time to practice the cold-juice which ensures the juice isn’t bitter. 

Anyone else have any ideas? 

You can still find some on the shrubs if the birds didn’t get them up by the north shore. 

#highbushcranberry #winterforaging #birdberries #sweetnectar #foragerproblems #juiceme #embarassmentofriches #wildfoodlove
100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw v 100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw vegan snacks, but when I read about Euell Gibbon’s wild hackberry candy bars I had to try them. The  originals were just crushed hackberries and hickory nuts, but, I’ve read that Euell grew to dislike the crunch of hackberry seeds later in life. 

Here’s the thing though, if you sift the hackberry flour, you get a fun texture, with no worries about cracking a tooth. 

These are equal parts ground hackberries, dried wild blueberries, and hickory nuts, with a splash of maple syrup to bind.

The end product is a shelf stable, nutrient-packed bite filled with protein, carbohydrates, fats and natural sugars infinitely adaptable to your local landscape.

The texture is chewy and nougat-like, and now I’m curious to see how they’d perform baked in recipes that use frangipane or almond paste. 

#euellgibbons #energybars #hackberry #crushin #paleobreakfast #tradionalfood #wildfoodlove #rawfoods
Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and c Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and chokecherry gastrique is one of the dishes @credononfiction and I filmed for @headspace. 

I cook hackberry milk with cornmeal and maple syrup, whip some egg whites and fold them in, then bake. Eats a bit like crust-less pumpkin pie, if pumpkin pie came from a tree. 

#hackberry #souffle #wildfoodlove #chokecherry #blackwalnuts #brunching
Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made f Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made from ground hackberries and water. I grind the berries to a meal, then simmer with 3x their volume of water, strain through a chinois (without pressing) season with maple and a pinch of cinnamon. Tastes like pumpkin pie in a glass, also a decent cooking medium. 

#hackberries #nutmilk #foraging #wildfoodlove #celtisoccidentalis
Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of b Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of both. They also contain protein, fat, and carbs, and the oldest evidence of humans enjoying them goes back 500,000 years. Right now is the best time to harvest them in the Midwest as the leaves have fallen. The full break down and introduction to them is in my bio. 
#hackberry #celtisoccidentalis #winterforaging #wildfoodlove #traditionalfoods #manbird
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