Happy August, food & foraging friends!
We’re dealing with some serious heat in DC this month, and I’m not just talking the temperature. The occupation of our nation’s capitol under the false pretense of a crime emergency has upended so many lives and disrupted schools, churches and businesses; it remains to be seen if we will fully reclaim our city in a few weeks. I’ve been doing my small part following the lead of Free DC, but it feels flimsy in the face of daily kidnappings and harassment too many members of our community are experiencing. As I write, helicopters circle and roar overhead, enveloping my home in a sound cloud of surveillance and hostility.
While I know many do not have the privilege of fleeing this scene, I was elated to have a getaway planned this month to visit an old friend in Colorado, taking a road trip to the Western Slope. It was just what the doctor ordered: plunging our calves into brisk 10,000-foot-high lakes at Grand Mesa, the world’s largest flat-top mountain; sipping peach moscato and eating peach cobbler in the wine and peach country of Palisade; and watching bighorn sheep scramble up the craggy red rock canyons of Colorado National Monument.
Of course, your girl is never not foraging. Hiking in the alpine forest country of Grand Mesa, I nibbled on tiny, tart mountain gooseberries and raspberries on the trail, and gathered Englemann spruce tips to squirrel away for a vacaymaro (more on that in a bit). Unfortunately it had been so dry that a park volunteer told me there had been nary a shelf fungus all summer, but back down in Grand Junction we had fantastic tacos with locally grown huitlacoche and maitake.
Though just an hour and change away, the high desert plateau of Colorado National Monument was a drastically different landscape, with 1,000-year-old juniper cutting jagged shadows and pale green sagebrush (another plant I collected for my infusion) offering trailside aromatherapy. From a foraging standpoint, one of the more intriguing desert plants is the unassuming-looking Mormon’s Tea, which is brewed for health perks, notably the natural stimulant ephedrine it contains.
Back home this weekend, I got to work starting my third amaro of the season, this one from a trio of Colorado terroirs: mint, tarragon and marigolds from my friend’s Denver backyard garden; gooseberries and spruce tips from the alpine region; and sagebrush and juniper from the desert. My other amaro was foraged all from my own neighborhood, to include 20 botanicals, from catmint and chicory to agastache and arugula. A third batch leaned on wild dried ingredients from my pantry, including reishi, spicebush and hawthorn berry.
While I don’t yet have any public workshops open for registration, I’m excited about a number of other events I’m teaching, including a private foraged amaro-making class for two brides-to-be and their guests, as well as a blind foraging walk for the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes. I’m also leading a mushroom class for my fellow forager Candise Jordan’s Fearless Forager’s Club September 20 (registration link to come). September 16, I’ll be interviewed in front of a live audience by the fun and fabulous Lily Liu, whom I met at DCPL’s Five Minute Horror Film Fest earlier this summer (Lily produced a hilarious short on the horrors of aging.) Lastly, I am hoping also to organize a few benefit walks for local grassroots organizations helping to fight to keep our city free and open; reach out if you have ideas!
I love that Free DC’s core principles including “prioritizing joy,” which is so important at a time like this. Tonight I found a hearty patch of purple shiso on my block and made a shiso syrup and started a pear-shiso shrub with a pear rescued from my friends at redelicious yesterday. Here’s hoping you too can forge a daily path to peace and joy in these bewildering times. Tomorrow, we live to fight another day.
Wildly yours,
April
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Image Block 1: From top left, raspberry, gooseberry and chokecherry from Colorado alpine country; wild pine nuts found in a shop; other fun scenes from the trail.
Image Block 2: From top left, three amaros in the making, a pear-shiso shrub, me cheesing with the stinky corpse flower that bloomed at the US Botanic Gardens this month; a massive batch of wild sumac and the resulting sumac-ade; and a lovely, yummy milkcap (cut the gills and taste to make sure the milk is sweet).
