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
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…
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…
Ramaria botrytis
Ramaria botrytis. These are the best coral mushroom for the table I’ve eaten in the Midwest, and, most importantly, by far the easiest species to identify (they’re pink!). There isn’t a lack of coral mushrooms in my area, but really good ones can be tough to pin down. With the exception of another yellow variety…
WildFed: The Pigeon Hunt
Pigeons were the first fowl domesticated by man, but we’ve moved a long way from what they used to be: companions used for communication, and sustenance. Only 200 years ago, owning a few breeds of “fancy” pigeons would have been seen as a worthwhile hobby like falconry, as well as fashionable, in the Victorian era….
Pig Ear Mushrooms / Gomphus clavatus and Friends
Mushroom hunter: “Hey Alan, do you know what mushroom this is?” Me: “Err, hold on, ok. Send me your GPS coordinates immediately along with panorama photos and no harm will come to you or your family.” That sort of scenario is why I sift through plenty of ID requests and pics from random numbers every…
The Bachelor Farmer, and My First Book
The last restaurant I ran, the place I thought could be a forever home for me, Lucia’s, closed in 2017. Those of you close to me in the Midwest knew that, a lot of others, especially my friends over seas, don’t, as I never wrote about it. It was an ugly close, and it traumatized…
Smilax Shoots / Carrion Flower
A few years ago I was in Northern Florida on a T.V. pilot shoot called Forage to Table that was supposed to focus on squirrel hunting, foraging plants, myself, and Madison Parker: a Vietnam Vet who trains Seal Team 6 in pre-black powder survival techniques. Madison was supposed to get the meat and I was…
Non-Bitter Tylopilus
Boletes! Hot damn, they’re everywhere! Is a typical summer scenario after a heavy rainfall. The heart of bolete season, in the middle of Summer in the Midwest, is *the* fairy tale mushroom season for me, with fungal scenes all over the place, each one something you could make a project out of in a viewfinder,…
Crock Pot Stock and Bone Broth
Guess what? You can make higher quality stock than the majority of professional chefs in the restaurant industry at home using a crock pot. Story goes last year I read a book about the science of home cooking from J Kenji Lopez-Alt, the man behind the intensive blog at Serious Eats. The book won the…
Forager’s Winter Tasting Menu
Ever wanted to put together a menu for an event, or just dream one up? Special event menus are a creative process I crave. The final event I did for 2018 was the yearly gathering for the Twin Cities Chapter of the Society of Amateur Chefs, who requested a 7 course tasting menu following an hour…
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…
The Mangalitsa Bacon
My girlfriend loves to eat great food, and is also a health and fitness guru. Two years ago, while on a water fast out west, I got a message from her about needing to call a butcher. She told me that she’d been craving food (on a water fast, go figure) and decided to buy…