Happy July, food & foraging friends!
When I run into a familiar flower friend while on the road, it’s grounding. Yarrow was that friend on a trip to the Canadian Rockies this month, where I found this sweet little plant, with its lacy leaves and compact white composite flowers, at every turn.
Yarrow is native to both North America and Europe, belonging to the Circumboreal Region that is the world’s largest region of flora. I found yarrow growing on the streets of the twin mountain valley towns of Banff and Canmore, where we stayed, and along the lodgepole pine-scented trails circling glacier-fed lakes the color of a menthol cough drop. Everyday I’d pick a cluster on the trail and crush it between my fingers for a pick-me-up, its potent medicinal aroma somewhere between pine and lavender.
Though I love to see it, I’ve not much worked with yarrow. Recently I did salvage a bunch of golden yarrow from my community garden’s compost heap and used part for a bouquet and part in a sachet to sweeten my bathwater. (The white Achillea millefolium is classic, but other species and varieties come in a rainbow of colors.) But after tasting the flower on the menu of Sauvage, a forest-to-table restaurant in Canmore, I’m rethinking yarrow for the kitchen.
Sauvage is a life dream come true for local chef Tracy Little, made minorly famous from her stint on Chef vs. Wild and as a judge on the recent Canada edition of Top Chef, where she and an indigenous woman schooled contestants about foraging. (Chef vs Wild is one of the only reality shows I’ve ever watched and still lament they stopped at one season. Watch it if you can.)
Chef Tracy’s tasting menu was full of surprises, but yarrow incorporated into a bison blood pudding sure was one of them, along with tasting the unadulterated flowers on BC’s BCs — black cherries from British Columbia. The limey pop of black ants peppering a dish of goose prepared two ways served with slivers of fresh fennel and peach over a hoisin-adjacent sauce was another showstopper. (Who knew goose tasted like pork?)
Yarrow has an illustrious history. Its Latin name comes from the mythological Achilles, who used the plant to staunch soldiers’ wounds at the battle of Troy (that’s a medicinal use IRL today – here is a recipe for a yarrow styptic powder). Yarrow was also found at a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal burial site in Iraq. My favorite historic use for yarrow is as a bittering herb in gruit, a medieval predecessor of beer. This is a good roundup of yarrow’s indigenous uses, including tea, which is how I most frequently see it prepared.
I smuggled some yarrow flowers home and made a syrup, which went into a mocktail with chaga bitters and club soda; I will also use the syrup to finish my current batch of kombucha. A few other fun recipes I found included yarrow bitters and a buttery puree of its leaves.
Another familiar friend and prolific plant around Canmore that ended up on Sauvage’s midsummer menu: pineapple weed, otherwise known as wild chamomile. I sometimes find this daisy family plant (which looks like a big-headed, petal-less chamomile) growing in garden beds or lawns, but it was growing wild everywhere in Canmore, including right outside the restaurant’s doors. True to name, it has a mild flavor somewhere between chamomile and pineapple, great for desserts and cocktails, which is how Chef Tracy used it in our meal. One of the best and easiest uses for pineapple weed is to add the flowers to a salad.
I can’t talk about wild edible Alberta without mentioning the conifers making up most of its forest: lodge pine, larch and juniper to name a few, Douglas fir being the largest, at up to 300 feet. You can read about my take on evergreens here. Chef Tracy made an incredible welcome brioche made from pine cambium — the living layer under a tree’s bark — with smoked butter and a Saskatoon (aka Juneberry to us Yankees) agrodolce. Don’t try this at home, kids — cambium is essential for a tree’s survival and only meant to supplement our diets when it comes down to our own life or death.
Last but not least, I’ve got news! I’ve signed on with Falcon Guides to write their first-ever urban foraging guide, to the mid-Atlantic region. It will take nearly a year to complete and another to get to print but you’ll be the first to know when it does, I’m happy to see the untapped possibilities of the city wild becoming more appreciated and excited to share my knowledge with a wider audience. I’ve also been approached about teaching a class for Montgomery College for next spring, opening up foraging to an entirely different crowd, so stay tuned on that.
I’m including foraging-related resources in key cities throughout the mid-Atlantic (everything from classes and clubs to restaurants and breweries), so reach out with anything you deem worthy. I also will be including a few select recipes from the community, so let me know if you have a special wild dish to share.
April
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Image Block 1: Two types of yarrow, Sauvage’s yarrow bison black pudding with horseradish leaves, and their white-on-white pineapple weed midsummer dessert.
Image Block 2: A few of Calgary’s 50 shades of blue lakes, me and my mom getting mauled by a grizzly, and a rhubarb gin that dare bear the name of my newsletter (a double double entendre!)
