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…
Foraging
Tinpsila Harvest
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…
Dames Rocket / 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…
Permethrin: How to Not Get Lyme 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…
Guide to 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…
Cerulean Black Trumpets
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,…
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…
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…
How to Freeze Wild 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…
Chrome-Footed Bolete
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…
Highbush Cranberries
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…
Cryptotaenia canadensis / Mitsuba / Japanese Parsley / Honewort
If you’ve ever wondered if there was a plant to forage as a parsley substitute, and from there, if it would be worth picking, the answer is yes, and yes. And to sweeten the deal, the plant is widespread, at least around me. It’s goes by the name of Mitsuba, wild Japanese parsley or Cryptotaenia…
The Blue Chanterelle
I remember a time when I knew the word chanterelle, a type of golden mushroom French chef’s loved, and, that was it. Even after I cooked my first ones in a restaurant, I still only knew the golds. I knew nothing. I don’t think I could’ve ever imagined how complex and beautiful Nature’s chanterelle palette…