a wild feast

Mark and I spent Saturday foraging for an evening feast. Such riches we found!

The first harvest was pokeweed. Plants in full sun had lots of red in the stems; in the shade the stems were green and more tender. Since there was so much, we could be picky and harvested only the choicest plants.


As we moved along the pokeweed path we found tons of wild onions. We were amazed at how easily they pulled up; the smell was wonderful and pungent.

Wild onion is much easier to clean than field garlic. Next time I'll dehydrate, then pulverize them, to make my own onion powder.

We found a little milkweed (milkweed season is just beginning), some asparagus (it's the end of asparagus season), and lemony dock leaves. Then we left the sunny fields and headed for the woods.

I had hoped to find stinging nettles but alas we did not...instead we found wood nettles a-plenty! Sam Thayer describes wood nettles as even more delicious and just as sting-y as stinging nettles, so I was pretty excited.

(Can you see the stingers?)

After a quick picnic in the cemetery we headed home to cook. And remove ticks. Mark had two and I had three. A small price to pay for a day of exhilirating foraging and the feast that followed:

1) pokeweed soup
2) steamed asparagus w/olive oil, s & p
3) nettle gnocchi w/mushroom and wild onion sauce. I harvested the mushrooms from my front lawn last summer and froze them.

4) mini meat loaves of local beef with chopped lemony dock leaves and wild onions
5) roasted milkweed with olive oil, s & p

6) blackberry crumble w/vanilla ice cream; I picked and canned the blackberries last August
7) homemade pear wine from 2007...it was a good year

That's what I call a Happy Meal, although I confess that the more I ate, the less I photographed. Please forgive me...I was otherwise engaged.