From nettles, to fiddleheads, ramps to cattails and of course mushrooms- foraging is growing as a hobby and passion with many nature lovers, and for good reason.

Foraging gives food lovers a chance to go out and pick delicious locally grown food without any of the work of growing it… sounds like a dream, right! 

It IS dreamy, but let’s not over-romanticize it.  

The food did grow somewhere, seeds were moved about and then nestled into soil. Or underground runners ran and sprouted up at just the right spot. When you find food growing wild, take note- because you are witnessing that plant’s ideal growing conditions. What a gift!

You know I love growing my own good food, but when Mother Nature does it for you, I really appreciate the gift!

Forage Responsibly

In order to forage or harvest responsibly from an area and not kill the remaining plants (or yourself) you need to do a little research before you start ripping food from the earth. Thank you Uncle Google

Minnesota established a Foraging Task Force last year, had listening sessions over the winter ( I sat in on one and it was so informative) and things are poised to change… But haven’t yet. So, a few links to stay updated:  
MN Sustainable Foraging Task Force
MN DNR Foraging Rules

Know Before You Go Out Foraging

Know exactly what variety you’re looking for, where they typically grow and when. Unless you stumble upon a field of ferns or a cattail dell you’ll have to get out, hike around and for your food- which is part of the appeal!  But knowing the habitat of the plant you’re after goes a long way!

Also- did you know you can help our local plant communities by pulling up (and then eating) Garlic Mustard! Foraging for nature in new ways.

the native plants thank you!

Know the land you’re harvesting from. Is the land you’re planning to peruse public or private. Do you have permission to be there? Who can you ask you verify there haven’t been any pesticides/herbicides sprayed? Determining how far back you want a clean record is something to figure out before you jump out of the car!

Know how you’ll use the food when you get home! Food waste is food waste whether you bought it at the store, or found it growing in the wild. It helps me to remember that some animal could have eaten what you foraged, or the plant would have been stronger next year- so make use of what the earth grew for you! Search out recipes before you start foraging!

Local Foraging Line Up

Ramps:  

These are truly the first of the first to emerge in my neck of the woods. Their mild garlic taste screams spring to me. From eggs to soups and breads, these add a depth to whatever dish they’re in.

Please gather these sustainably, as Minnesota ramp flushes are dwindling with the uptick in foragers. I go into details about ramp harvesting in this earlier blog post but basically, don’t take many from each stand, and try to cut above the bulbous root so it can recover and grow back the following year.

Stinging Nettles:

A solid source of iron and a natural spring tonic to help flush toxins, there are so many reasons to eat your nettles!

Yes, they sting- or some say burn, so I always wear gloves and use tongs when working with these.

Blanching and drying does take the sting out, as does pureeing the heck out it, I still recommend blanching before pureeing as the BRIGHT fresh green holds longer after blanching.

For a Nettle Deep Dive and Recipe Inspiration (nettle soup is a favorite of mine) I like the Forager Chef’s Nettles article.

Fiddleheads:

Tasting of mild asparagus , all kinds of ferns start as these adorable fiddleheads. Ostrich ferns are the gold standard for springtime delicacy as far as I’m concerned- this is one that you’ll have to scope out the year before- to see what the ferns turn into after unfurling they’re deliciousness.

Cattails:

Who knew the shoots tasted like cucumber! These are one of the easiest items to forage as they can be seen a mile away, and there’s not really anything else that looks like them  These are simple, fresh + delicious, especially early in the season (like right now)! Do make sure they’re coming from a clean water source as they are a natural water purifier and accumulate toxins. You basically eat the heart of the stalk or shoot, and can also be pickled.

Mushrooms:

This is where it can tricky! Confessed MN Mushroom Newbie! I’ve only foraged for mushrooms in Sweden with experts, so I’m hesitant to dive into this. That and my kids don’t really enjoy them (but my hubby and I do, so…) It is best to go with knowledgeable friends or guides.

Some of my favorite LOCAL guides:
Sam Thayer of Forager’s Harvest
(Gorgeous new Field Guide book)
Alan Bergo of Forager Chef
Tim Clemens of Ironwood Foraging
Jamie of Chick of the Woods

For now I mostly buy them as a treat from my local mushroom farmers or every once in a while grow my own from spores. However, a few favorites I’ll be keeping my eyes open for are Chanterelle and chicken of the woods, I feel confident in Identifying both of those.

I love that there’s always more to learn about the natural world growing all around us!

Lambs’ Quarters

The one non-native MN plant I always like to mention for early Spring foraging: lamb’s quarters. You’re going to find this beauty in disturbed soils. Most people think it is a weed, and it an aggressive little bugger, but I deal with it because I love the flavor and huge mineral stores it possesses. Well worth the space. Similar to spinach it often shows up before and lasts longer than my bolted spinach.

Spring Foraging Recipe Ideas

What’s tastier than foraged nettle + ramp pesto… Eating it with foraged cattail hearts and early harvests from the garden.

I am at best a half-hearted recipe follower, so if you’d like a specific recipe, please google any of the following ideas that tempt you. Bonus: most of these are easy to make with your own spin by substituting ingredients and altering to your taste preferences.

Ramp Salt:
Dried ramp leaves- dehydrate and crush/pulse with sea salt for a sublime seasoning for soups and stews, fish and chicken.
I’ve done ramp butter, but the salt, and just dehydrated leaves work better for my kitchen.

Nettle Pesto:

I blanched the stinging nettles before blending with ramps, pine nuts, cheese and EVOO for a fresh green powerhouse pesto.

Nettle Soup:
Scandinavian Nasselsoppa sounds so much better that stinging nettle soup, right! This is a basic ‘boiled with potatoes and broth’ kind of pureed soup to get you all caught up on your greens!

Nettle Tea:
Simply hang and dry. I mix with other leaves, such as raspberry, lemon balm or mint as I find it too strong on its own.

Cattails:

You’ll peel off over half of the outer layers of leaves to get to the white hearts. I always say I’m going to gather enough to pickle, guess its good to have goals really these are divine just eaten raw with some nettle pesto, or chopped on salads!

Add perennial vegetables/herbs like Rhubarb, chives and Asparagus into the mix and you could be eating flavorful, healthful and delicious meals after taking a walk. Spring in Minnesota is truly a bounty of good wild food!

What will you be foraging?

What other questions do you have about Foraging in Minnesota?

Dig in,
Michelle

The post Foraging + Feasting appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

Hello Spring!

The birds are singing, the ground has thawed and green is unfurling itself before our very eyes. Spring is officially here and that means the locally grown food is soon to follow!

Whether in backyard gardens or further away farms, nearby hidden foraging spots (like when I forage for ramps!), under lakes or deep in forests; our local food systems are waking up! This awakening is happening both with spring’s seasonal arrival and a mirrored cultural movement back towards local food.

Two Years Digging In

I’ve been fascinated with the why’s and how’s of the local food movement and its deeper deep roots. This is a huge part of why I started up Forks in the Dirt just over two years ago (Happy Anniversary!)

The food we eat intimately impacts our daily lives, but for decades we’ve moved further and further away from that simple fact. Big business focused on making food more economical while inadvertently minimizing the dire nutritional and ecological implications. This focus was beneficial in some ways, and detrimental in others. Turns out growing food with an end goal of mass production and longest shelf life hurts our collective health, bank accounts and entire eco-system.

High fives all around for us waking up to those realities as a society. 

Choose Locally Grown

One of the easiest ways you can ‘be the change’ with our food system is realizing that you vote with your dollars three times a day. The food you buy effects the food chain in so many ways. Here’s an earlier article I wrote that touches more on WHY local food matters: Local Food For Thought.

Think about all the places you can make a choice about the food you eat:

• Who grew the seed that grew your food

• Who owns the land that grew your food

• How many miles did your food travel

• Who tended the land and livestock that became your food

• What chemicals have been added to your food

Answers to those questions are inherently baked into each meal and every snack you eat.

It can get overwhelming fast (another hint that our food system is broken)! But asking yourself just one of these questions a day will get you thinking about how much effort (and who’s effort) goes into each plate you eat.

I think the local food movement is an attempt to make food simple again. A pull to take back some control over what we put into our bodies.

What do you think?

My Local Food Journey So Far

So far I’ve had a winding but fun ride down the local food road. 

I started growing more of my own food years ago. Then I got to know a few more farmers that grew food. We raised backyard chickens. I learned how to can, freeze and dry more food. I still buy much of my food from local grocery stores, but I grow my own or buy local when I can. For me its about finding a balance that works for my family.

*Important Reminder*
Everyone’s scales are weighted differently to begin with so there’s no reason to compare!*

I’m in awe of the abundance of the amount and diversity of food right here (like within a 20 mile radius!!) year round. From Deep Winter Greenhouses and Aquaponics providing fresh locally grown food through the dead of winter, to urban farmers changing the way we provide food to our neighbors during the growing season- change is happening, and fast.

Changes coming from places like the North Circle Food Hub,  The Good Acre and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s) plus more MN Farmers Markets than ever.
Gardening in general is up 200% in the last decade, according to the National Gardening Association annual report. Knowing where your food comes from just feels good.

Growing Hope

I recently attended Schoolyard Garden & Local Food conferences at the MN Landscape Arboretum and the message was loud and clear; Minnesotans are already awake to the food we are eating. There is currently a MN Farm to School Bill being decided in our state legislature, feel free to weigh in on that bill! I can’t wait to see how we collectively work to make our food system work better for us all.

As we head into spring and summer when locally grown food is SO VERY abundant, I encourage you to renew your commitment to: eat more local, healthy foods, grow something you can eat, buy from a local farmer. Get to know some of your food’s roots and see how your relationship to your food changes.

You can call me an urban homesteader, a dreamer, or just someone who puts her time where her mouth is. Any way you slice it, life has been pretty tasty lately. Thanks for digging in with me these last few years!

Looking forward to this season as we keep on digging in and crossing paths with farmers, food and doing good! What will you grow this season?

Michelle

The post Springing into Local Food appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

I love seeing metal buckets and blue bags hanging on trees around town this time of year! Those bags are the symbol of two things I love dearly: Spring + Maple Syrup!

I’ve noticed that these buckets and bags have been multiplying in recent years! I hope the trend continues, because maple sugaring is such a simple way to forage your own food, reduce your carbon footprint, add nutrients to your sweetener—all while adding another homesteading skill to your list. Bonus: there’s very little that can go wrong; it just takes some time.

*This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.*

Drill In!

The maple sugaring process is easier than you think. And I’m sharing tips on how to make the process smooth like Sunday morning (pancakes).

Tool Time

A Spile (#1) gets ‘tapped’ into the tree, and brings the sap outside so you can collect it. There are a few different ways to collect sap, but for most backyard enthusiasts, sap sacks or buckets are the way to go. We use this 3-part sack system. You wrap the blue bags (#2) around the collars (#3) and slide into the holder (#4). There’s a hole in holder that fits tight to the notch in the spile. Once you get the sap sacks on, be sure to tug down to make sure the bags are nice and tight (I’ve had one bag get full and work its way off—lesson learned after one bag!). Some people have a hose running right from the spile to a closed bucket, but for us these sap sacks work great.

You can find my favorite maple sugaring tools on my Amazon page!

The only ‘modification’ we’ve had to make is because of the squirrels. One year they must have gotten a taste of the sap and wanted more, so they chewed a hole in the bottom corner of a sack! Saddest sap collection morning ever. So we took a page from the squirrel vs. bird feeder wars and put coconut oil and cayenne pepper on the outside bottom ridge of the bag. After that, they never bothered the bags again.

Tips and Tricks

We’ve been tapping our maple tree for nine years now, learning something new each season. Mostly, each sap run is SO DIFFERENT, and that is definitely part of what makes it so fun!

Some things we’ve figured out so far:

• Each tree is different. Our tree gets her juices flowing later than most—a true late bloomer.

• We are wood-fire lovers and will forever boil sap with a wood fire source.

• Wood ash in your sap doesn’t affect the final flavor …much.

• Straining sap through cheesecloth, or a ‘maple sap filter,’
  helps keep the final product clear.

• Our one big old maple tree with two taps in it *almost* yields enough syrup for our family of four for an entire year.

But by far the coolest and trickiest thing about maple sugaring we’ve learned so far is how to condense maple sap without ALL the boiling…

Freeze Maple Sap Before Boiling

Using the “Freeze then Fire” Technique

We collect the sap in sacks and pour that off into 5 gallon buckets, then use our chest freezer (or just leave it outside if it’s dropping below freezing) to freeze overnight or longer. After freezing, we transfer the frozen sap to a ‘draining bucket’ (another 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom) and let that sit at room temperature until about a third of it has melted. The melted portion has dripped through to the bottom bucket (usually ready by evening if we take it out in the morning)—that’s the precious sugary portion. 

Toss the still frozen ice outside and put the condensed sap back in the freezer for a repeat freeze-thaw cycle, this time keeping the first half of the melted liquid.  The result should be a liquid that has increased from 1–3% sugar to 5–16% sugar. This means a MUCH shorter boil time!

Tip: I use a wine corkscrew to screw into the frozen sap and lift it out of the bucket!

Sweet Success

I love this method because it allows us to hold large amounts of sap all together even if the weather gets too warm to keep it outside. It also helps with sap flow starts and stops and not losing any sap to getting too warm for too long. *You’ll know your sap has turned if it starts to look cloudy. This happens if the sap is held above 40 F for very long. We had to toss two full buckets our first year; it was heartbreaking!

Tap those Trees!

Yes, you can tap other trees besides maple trees.

All maple trees have the potential for syrup, with Sugar Maples coming in with the highest sugar content in aw sap—2.0%. Our Silver Maple is estimated to have about 1.7% sugar content. Other native Midwest trees that can be tapped include box elder and paper birch. There are lots of trees that can be tapped depending on where you are; here’s the LINK to the best list I’ve found so far.

I’ll also throw out there that apartment and condo dwellers can ask their associations if they can tap trees on the land surrounding their spaces. How about a Spring Syrup Social to bring us out of hibernation!

Why So Sappy?

Basically, it is the freeze-thaw cycle that gets the tree’s internal pressure pumping. Specifically, according to Botanics in the Kitchen article,

“Three primary processes can cause xylem sap to flow:  transpiration, root pressure and stem pressure.” Umm, have I mentioned I love nature lately?!

Time to Gear Up for Maple Sugaring

Lots of places have equipment for collecting sap, ranging from your simple taps, brackets, and bags to buckets and tubing galore. My online pick is Tap My Trees. Locally, Fleet Farm and Egg|Plant Urban Farm Supply have got you covered. Egg|Plant has great staff that will talk you through any specific questions!

Want to see what tools I use? I rounded up my favorite Maple Sugaring tools on my Amazon page.

We love our maple sap for so many reasons… Pancakes taste better and my Crunchiest Granola Recipe wouldn’t be the same (or as cost effective) without homemade maple syrup. We also bake with it often, and use it to sweeten tea. And there are so many other trace elements and benefits to be found in that bottle of liquid sugar.

Burn Baby Burn

But first you do have to boil the heck out of it! Making syrup from sap means condensing sap in a ratio of about 40:1. That means it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Like I said, lots of boiling! We started with a very rudimentary setup (it looks ridiculous in the photo, but it worked for us. We burn wood that would otherwise sit around rotting, and we put basically no money into the blocks or stand (we use old shelving standards for cross pieces). It is not the most efficient way to do things, but it is the way that makes us happy, and the kids LOVE keeping the fire going!

We always finish off boiling the sap down inside on the stovetop. We go by a consistency and temperature reading from a candy thermometer. You want to aim for 7 degrees above boiling, so we shoot for 219F.

Professionals will tell you it is not syrup unless you can tell the brix (sugar content) is at 66%. But I’m simply too cheap to buy a hydrometer, and my taste buds thoroughly enjoy anything close to 66% sugar content in my maple syrup. I do store mine in the freezer, and it sometimes freezes a little… also a sign of less than perfect sugar content. Again, my taste buds never complain and it stays fresh a full year out.

Sweet Homestead Skill

My advice with maple sugaring is to start small, because once you collect it you have to boil it. Kind of like with all things homesteading, talking with someone who has done this before if you have questions along the way helps you take that first step. And I’m all about taking that first step; whether it’s drilling into your first tree or digging into your first garden. Ask away if you have any questions. Another great online community is the Facebook Group: Minnesota Maple Syrup Makers, just ask to join if you’re interested. This is a fun process, but it does take time to boil all that sap down!

Drill In,
Michelle

The post Syrup in the City: Maple Sugaring DIY appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

One of my favorite things about fall in Minnesota is the ALL THE APPLES! So many different flavors and crunch levels. So many ways to enjoy your “apple a day.”

Pine Tree Apple Orchard, the  orchard nearest us, has  some of my favorite varieties available right now! Apples in season include Sweet Tango, Honeycrisp, Haralson, Cortland, Red Delicious, Fireside and Regent.

Me, looking a little too excited about all the apples.

Pick a Peck ( or 7)

I got lucky this year! I found a friend (through the magic of a Facebook post) who had three beautiful trees that they weren’t going to be able to thoroughly use, and she let me come and pick my fill. I’m humbled by their generosity.

In farming and food rescue terms this is called “gleaning”. Regardless of what you call it, this was a win-win. I bet if you wanted, you too could end up with more apples than you know what to do with… but you’ll never know if you don’t ask!

These apples were organic perfection; a little apple scab here, some worm holes there, even a bird nest up in the branches. When other wild animals want my food, I see that as a really good sign that the food is good for me. No bugs around means they’ve all been killed, or would die from eating the food growing there (some food for thought). Also, it was as idyllic spot and array of trees. The previous owners knew what they were doing and planted complimentary varieties; Cortland, Honeycrisp, and Fireside. I got roughly a five gallon bucket full of each variety. 64 pounds in all (I had posted 54 pounds earlier on- but forgot about the bags I left in the garage to keep cool- oops!) 

So what does one do with all those apples??
I thought you’d never ask …

Apple a la Skin

I’m a big fan of eating apples old school- wash and eat. I even know a few (slightly crazy) people who eat the core, seeds and all. That’s not my cup of cider… but since nature provides us with a BOUNTY of apples all at once, our homesteading ancestors figured out so many amazing ways to make good use of all the parts of all those apples!

Storing your apples 
Refrigerate with damp towel, or find a damp cool 32-39º F spot ASAP!

Bobbing Beauties

Start with a ‘soak’ , I use a good splash of vinegar (kind of ironic that it’s apple cider vinegar) per big bowl of water and apples. I was going to buy a peeler/corer but I never found just what I was looking for, so I stuck it out another year with my trusty peeler and paring knife.

Since I tend to work with a rough and tumble group of fruits (always organic and usually growing wild so this year was a real treat) I have to cut out more than most- so I peel what I need to, saving any usable peelings as I go.

Sauce Is the Boss

Almost done with the canning!

You figure out quickly how many bowls of apples you can cook down at a time, depending on your pots. I tend to prepare apples for sauce, peeling what I need to because of blemishes and coring each one. But instead of using the entire contents of cooked apples for sauce, I drain off a bit of juice with a jelly bag first. Then I throw the apple mash into my good old Nutri Bullet and whip it, whip it good. The skins melt into nothing, keeping the fiber and adding a beautiful blush to my sauce.

I made quite a bit of apple sauce this year, about 6 quarts and 6 pints so peeling all those apples would have driven me bonkers. You may be thinking, wow this is a lot of apple sauce for one family. And it is! I’ll be using over half of this throughout the year as I make my Crunchiest Granola Recipe.

I go by the University of Georgia’s info when canning. For applesauce I use the hot water bath canning method listed HERE. I also froze a few jars of both sizes, because I ran out of space, and steam (ha).

Freezing Apples

I also froze a few gallon bags of apple slices for a short cut to pies and crisps later in the season. Peeled, sliced and laid out on parchment.  I found Cortland froze the best out of the three varieties I had. U of MN Directions HERE

Peel Baby Peel
I couldn’t let all those apple peelings go to waste, so I did a few different things with them. (*note these were the peelings that did not have not have apple scab or holes in them, the chickens feasted on all those bits for days.)

Apple Cider Vinegar

I’d been wanting to try and make apple cider vinegar for a while, and I finally had my chance. Many recipes call for whole apples, but that seemed just wasteful. But my shining light of homestead happenings, Jill  at “The Prairie Homestead Companion” came to the rescue. She has a vinegar recipe for using apple scraps, peelings and cores; and, boy did I have those!

You basically add some sugar to water, dissolve and add that to the apple scraps, let it sit, ferment, strain, ferment again and refrigerate. Mine is almost ready…yup, I’m (a little too) excited to try this vinegar out in my cooking! *It is not a good idea to use homemade vinegar for canning unless you are fermentation pro*.

Apple Ginger Jelly

The other obvious choice for apple peelings (but not cores) is Apple Jelly! For this you boil the peelings down with added water for a bit and drain the juice off of that, this juice drains so much faster than the whole apples I let hang in my jelly bags! Also, no pectin needed when you use the peelings, because that’s where most of the fruit’s natural pectin is. Gotta love nature.  Again, I go by the University of Georgia’s Extension info when canning. I basically use this recipe. But I add in slivers of ginger and boil those along with jelly. Divine!

Apple Butter

Oh Apple Butter, that magical thick spread made from apples cooked with just the right blend of spices for hours on end. I use the lazy man’s crock pot version, I don’t follow an exact recipe, but this one from Kitchn looks close.  This stuff makes literally everything taste amazing. Bread (duh),  pork chops, granola, salad dressings…) Luckily it doesn’t take much apple butter to do the trick, because even though you can start with a crockpot brimming full of apple bits- by the time it ready to be pureed, you might have half the quantity left.  But that’s why it tastes so amazing; just like the dried apples have a concentrated apple taste, so does this apple butter, but spreadable with an extra depth from all the  spices!

Dehydrated Apples

We went ahead and splurged on this dehydrator from Cabella’s  (which was on sale when we got it) because my husband also started making venison jerky. So for us the cost was worth it (can you believe how expensive the little packs of store bought jerky are?!). For those of you not ready to buy a large machine, I’ve seen lots of recipes for oven dried apple rings too…

I sliced apples (only Cortland and Honecrisp) into different thicknesses and found we all liked the slightly thicker slices left a little chewy- but that is the beauty of making it yourself- you get to decide how the final product tastes! This took 5-ish hours on the 135ºF setting.
ps- both my boys wanted these in their lunches for days after they were made

Last but not least…all the Tasty Treats!!!

Apple Crisp

I’m no Martha Stewart. But I love her buttery apple crisp recipe to crumbles: I used a mix of Cortland and Fireside, added ginger, and spared a bit of both types of sugars.

Baked Apple Oatmeal

One Bowl Apple Cake

You had me at one bowl! Chew Out Loud posted this decadent One Bowl Apple Cake  just in time for me to think, ‘I can do that, it’s in ONE bowl…” and I’m so glad I did! My kids were through the roof- especially since I haven’t baked anything with a gluten flour in quite a while. I still did half the flour in white whole wheat and half in oat flour and it was perfection. The chopping took a while but I was in major apple take down mode so I was already in the zone. Not gonna lie, this and my LARGE mug of chai tea were breakfast two mornings in a row!

I snuck in canning time in between my normal routines for a week straight.  I think our family will be glad for the time spent as we spread that apple jelly or apple butter on warm toast, grab a quick spoon of apple sauce, or enjoy a easily made apple crisp in the depths of winter.

So while you’re out this weekend, pick a peck or seven… and see what becomes your family’s favorite way to eat an apple a day!

Dig In,
Michelle

The post An Apple A Day appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

In case you’re not quite there, hang with me for a minute. Ramps, mushrooms, fiddleheads (the still unfurled fern) and the elusive wild asparagus are all Spring favorites of the Minnesota forager. Berry season is another bountiful blessing. If you want to look at some beautiful ‘found’ eats check out this Pinterest page! Now, that’s the kind of page I could get lost on.

Ground Rules of foraging: respect private land, find out if the public land you’re on allows foraging, sustainable harvesting and to find out what if any chemicals have been sprayed.

For our cozy little time together let’s tackle the savory, short lived ramp; AKA ramsons or wild leek. You know you’re cool when you have three names.

I’ve known about the patch of ramps in my parent’s woods for years, I remember I dug one up decades ago and was utterly confused because they looked like an onion but smelled like garlic and were not so great raw. Turns out they’re the trendy hipster cousin to the onion now in high demand. I usually steer clear of trends (I’ve finally learned my lesson, thank you 1980’s) but these potent little pearls have me jumping on the spring foraging bandwagon. These alliums are taking over the foodie world again this Spring and my kitchen will smell like ramps for the foreseeable future.

What exactly are we talking about here? They are in the allium family, meaning onion. And what they lack in size, they make up for in smell. You can sometimes locate them by smell just as well as sight, but they are some of the earliest greenery popping up from forest floors each Spring.

credit: MinnesotaWildFlowers.info

credit: MinneostaWildFlowers.info

Here’s a close up from the Minnesota Wild Flowers website, showing the flowers and later season seeds. I’ve heard the seeds will take hold if given a loamy deciduous woods home.

Minnesota Wild Flowers   is such a great site. Within each of the listings you can add info on where/when/how many plants you spotted, helping to build a living breathing network of plant life. Fun way to be part of something bigger!

Please, let’s be smart and practice sustainable harvesting of these little guys. There are two ways to go about this: either taking only 10% of a found ramp field or leaving roots intact. You can leave the roots intact by digging down around the ramp leaves, and then cutting where the bulb fattens, so you leave the bottom of the bulb and roots in the ground.

That way you’ll be able to come back the next year and harvest again, and again, and again! Once harvested, get them cool ASAP- I found that a plastic bag (thank you Target) rolled up in the fridge works for a day or so. Past 48 hours and I’ve got no data for you, they have yet to last longer than that in our kitchen.

Since ramps are rocking at the same time as asparagus, and in my case grow about 100 feet apart, it’s only natural that I’d want them to co-mingle their flavors. This is the epitome of simple, local, healthy, flavorful food!

Planting our asparagus patch was one of the best additions to our veggie situation, early perennial vegetables add weeks to our local eating every Spring.

I never follow specific recipes (that’s why my baking is hit or miss!), I’ll just say to go easy on the ramps, you don’t need many to turn up the flavor of eggs, potatoes, pork, or as my ‘faux recipe’ below shows; asparagus.

Heat olive oil over med-high heat in cast iron skillet.

Chop asparagus stems (look how fat yet still tender & juicy ours were) throw them in to sear for a few minutes.

Then add asparagus tops and let them sizzle for a few more minutes.

Then add whole ramps, letting them get roasty so they can show off some smoky flavors.

Devour as soon as the steam allows.

Adding a few chopped ramp stalks to eggs in the morning has even chipped away at my chive love.

I’m going to have to gather some more leaves only (not even digging into the ground) and try the Ramp Salt Recipe at the end of this  article from Carstens Smith, writing for the Star Tribune.

There are ample posts about the uber-love of ramps, including these from Wild Edible and Eater. This is one trend that I hope stand the test of time.

Have you foraged for any food before, for ramps? Want to try it now?

I dare you to dig in this summer and forage at least one food!

Michelle

The post Finding Treasure in Foraged Food appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.