Hello food & foraging friends!
Welcome to The Wild Life, an occasional newsletter on news, events and tips on foraging, #zerofoodwaste cooking, alt garden eats and more. You’re getting this because you signed up for it, or have signed up for one of my past walks or classes with KCDC, Rooting DC, or Bruce Monroe Community Garden. You can unsubscribe or forward this below to friends — no hard feelings either way!
Last weekend a few of you joined my edible weed walk and I promised to follow up with some resources, so let’s start there!
Among the many plentiful, delicious and nutritious wild edibles we found: lambsquarter, pigweed, oxalis, and purslane, and edible flowers included marigold, bachelor’s button, mint family flowers and mallow.
Right now, I’m digging into this salad, with tomato, purslane, Thai basil and marigold from the garden along with Tajin spice, nectarines from my Hungry Harvest box and a splash of home herb-infused vinegar and it’s divine!
I also promised y’all the titles of some of my favorite wild plant books and cookbooks (and I just got back the ones that went missing, yay!) Here are a few of my go to resources:
Forage, Harvest, Feast
Wild Edible Plants
The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
I’ve featured all of these authors in my monthly food column for Natural Awakenings, including the upcoming September piece on cooking with wild mushrooms, which features Forager Chef Alan Bergo, who has an incredible treasure trove of recipes on his website. You can check out some of my past food columns on my website here.
Okay, I’m off to get ready for the Mycological Association of Washington’s meeting tonight — if your interest in foraged food and natural wonders extends to the fungal kingdom, do yourself a favor and spend the 20 bucks for an annual membership to this great group! You can check out recordings of past meetings here, whose topics range from the physics of spore dispersal to composer John Cage’s contributions to mycology.
Next time I’ll have more deets on a foraged food and cider tour and tasting I’m going to be collaborating with Anxo cidery on, to be launched in September, so stay tuned!
Wildly yours,
April
Web: aprilwrites.com