Backyard Foraging!

This week Other Ellen asked me to tell you about my new book,
Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn't Know You Could Eat.

So what makes this book different from all the other foraging books out there?  Well, I approach foraging from a slightly different point of view, perhaps because I'm a gardener by profession, but also perhaps because I'm a little sneaky.  See, I know some people aren't comfortable roaming the fields and mountains searching for wild plants to bring home to feed their families.  So I encourage you to start in your own backyard, where you (hopefully!) already know what's growing.

Lots of our traditional ornamental plants are also delicious, but somewhere along the way, we've forgotten.  Have you eaten roasted hosta shoots, pickled daylily buds, or baked dahlia tuber bread?  Ever tasted wild ginger snaps or rose hip soup?

Lest you fear you'll have to sacrifice aesthetics for deliciousness...don't worry.  As a gardener, I understand it's important to have your hosta and eat it, too.  To that end, I've included tips on how and when to harvest both for optimum taste and to maintain the beauty of your garden.

This is a book I've wanted to write for years, and I had so much fun putting it together, it really didn't feel like work.  Rob Cardillo's photographs are gorgeous and illuminating and the design by Storey Publishing is everything I wished for.  I hope you like it.

photo by Rob Cardillo

THE GLOBAL KITCHEN @ AMNH

Introducing Lucy Platt Guest Blogger.

 I went to the  American Museum of Natural History. I saw the plant exhibit it showed how you can grow  plants in a apartment. there were all sorts of plants.chives, cabbage and all sorts of other plants they had growing there.

 In the other plant and food exhibit there was a "reguler" water melon and a sqare water melon the sqare is grown by puting it in a box when it as just a small fruit but you must keep it on the vine until you are ready to eat it.

 Potatoes come in alot of shapes, colors,and sizes there are pink, purple, red, yellow, and alot more.

 Back in the olden days before they had any supermarkets they would use just an out door flat spot and they would set up what we call a farmers market all the people would go around and get all that they needed for there families.

Hi there! Guest Blogger Annabelle Platt here today! I went to the American Museum of Natural History. There is currently an exhibit there called the  "Global Kitchen." It's about how people grow and eat food around the world, how agriculture has changed, and about the rising problem of too many people and not enough food. 

 But over-producing is also a problem. For example, fishermen have been taking the fish from the seas. Obviously, they want the big strong fish, not the puny one that'll feed maybe half a person, right? But they have taken so many of the big fish that most of the ones left are little and under-developed. It's a big problem. 
Talking about how agriculture has changed...well, now scientists can cross-breed DNA. Maybe they like how this plant grows quickly. Maybe they also like how this plant that grows really slowly is really crunchy and sweet. They can take characteristics like that from plants and breed them together, so they have two things they like in one plant. You know how berries always look smaller in the wild? That's because farmers are going to plant the biggest seeds from the previous year, so they get bigger berrries. Melons? The original melon was very small and hard and bitter. Overtime they have become big balls of water and sugar (plant sugar, not artificial sugar.) Gardeners can even make watermelons square! 

 Waste. Geez, you don't even want to know how much an average person throws out in a year. I'm going to tell you anyway. The average person throws away/discards 414 pounds of food per year. For a family of four? That's 1,656 pounds of food. That's a LOT. So next time you're looking at the menu and thinking I'm gonna get the double cheeseburger with extra fries, maybe the thought that crosses your mind next could be Am I really going to eat all of this, or am I just going to throw it away? 

For further information about the American Museum of Natural History in NYC visit ... The exhibit is on until August 11, 2013

NYC GARDENERS WANDER THE DESERT

Other Ellen and I went to Tucson AZ last week to a national Garden Writers Symposium, tours of public and private gardens, lectures about the newest plants and newest media, networking.

I showed my new book, "Artful Collage from Found Objects", in the Trade Show and found  columnists, bloggers, radio and TV hosts who promised to spread my fame, if not fortune. As luck would have it my book has a desert-inspired cover, albeit with dried green foxtail weeds, not cacti.

Three Tucson garden hosts fed us lemonade made with prickly pear cactus fruit, all made much too sweet for my taste.

We were too late for bloom in the Sonoran Desert but saw remnants of other fruits like that of the fishhook barrel cactus.

 and the teddybear cholla. (below)

And as the sun set in the West, Other Ellen and I cut our afternoon lectures and drove with two other writer/photographers to the fabulous Saguaro National Park where we learned that cactus spines not only protect a plant from animals but offer some shade and shield it from drying winds.  The  saguaro cactus, icon of  old Westerns, may be 75 years old before it sprouts an 'arm' and lives 175-200 years.

When it dies, the woody ribs inside were used by the local Tohono O'odham tribe for building shelters and fences.

Membrillo

(giant Cydonia oblonga v. petite Chaenomeles japonica)

'Tis the season to cook with quinces.

I've extolled the virtues of the traditional quince in the past, but these days I'm looking at edible plants from a different point of view.

The ornamental quince (Chaenomeles japonica) is grown primarily for its flowers. When I was growing up we had a beauty in our garden, and my parents told me the fruit wasn't edible. I'm sure they weren't intentionally lying to me. Most people just don't realize these hard, yellow fruit can be delicious.

Ornamental quince grows well in containers and new hybrids have expanded the flowers' color palette from shades of pink to include orange and red. Please note that some of these hybrids (specifically the Proven Winners Double Take series) do NOT produce fruit. So sad. Were they bred that way on purpose? Did someone think that was a good thing?

Spring is the pretty time for these shrubs, but fall is when they get interesting. Small ripe fruit looks like lumpy tennis balls. They're often marred by large black spots, but these can be cut away during preparation and do nothing to mar the sour, complex taste and fragrance of the fruit.

Flowering quince is great for making jelly. It has loads of pectin and jells easily. But why not be a little more adventurous and experiment with membrillo?

Membrillo (aka quince paste) is a classic Spanish dessert. Most recipes call for traditional quinces, sugar, and water...that's it. I used ornamental quinces, and added a vanilla bean and a Meyer lemon. It's time consuming, because basically what you're doing is cooking all the liquid out of the fruit mixture, which literally takes hours. But boy oh boy is it worth it.

Serve it with slices of manchego or sharp cheddar and you'll impress the hell out of your dinner guests. After they've enjoyed it and praised your culinary skills, you can tell them you picked the fruit from the flowering shrub on your terrace. If you don't have a terrace, you may be able to score some ornamental quince fruit in your local park. Most people let them fall and rot.

I harvest from the same spot every year, offering the shrub's owner some jelly or membrillo in return.

Sorbus americana

Growing up I was told mountain ash berries were poisonous. I'm sure the lie wasn't intentional...my family just didn't know any better. They weren't foragers, after all. Realizing I could cook with the berries gave me the thrill of discovery, as did learning that our mountain ash is the rowan of Lord of the Rings fame. It's the little things.


Mountain ash berries (Sorbus americana) are a classic jelly fruit, tart and full of pectin. Our recent snowfall makes this the perfect time to pick them because the berries (actually pomes) sweeten after a frost. If you live somewhere warm, you can put them in the freezer for a few days to make the fruit more palatable.

Raw berries are juicy and highly astringent. They also contain parasorbic acid, which can cause indigestion, but cooking converts this to sorbic acid, which is entirely benign. The cooked fruit makes a not-too-sweet jelly, traditionally used as an accompaniment to meat, but it's also good with cheese, the sharper the better.


As a landscape tree the mountain ash is relatively short-lived, rarely making it beyond 25-30 years old. In a traditional, in-ground garden that might be an undesirable characteristic, but in containers it's perfectly alright. Even long-lived trees need periodic replacement and root pruning in a containerized growing environment. Small white flowers are very fragrant in late spring/early summer, and they attract lots of pollinators to the garden.

Two thumbs up.

mint-y fresh

I'm obsessing about wild foods these days. Mostly because I'm working with singular focus on the text for my next book (due 12/31!) but also because as the growing season ends I especially appreciate those few plants that are still growing and feeding me!

Last weekend's meals included chestnut cake, sauteed day lily tubers, and the most troublesome (and ultimately most rewarding) dish: wintergreen ice cream.

Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) is a modest evergreen ground cover that comes into its own this time of year. As other plants drop their leaves, wintergreen's glossy green leaves and occasional red berries stand out. It grows best in shade to part shade; in cold temperatures the leaves may take on a reddish tint.


Wintergreen flavor was the inspiration for Teaberry gum (do they still make Teaberry gum?) and its leaves are often used for tea. Which I find a little boring. So I was happy to locate an on-line recipe for wintergreen ice cream. (I do NOT find ice cream boring.)

My happiness ended when I MADE the ice cream and it tasted like MAYBE someone had THOUGHT about wintergreen while making the dessert...seriously, barely a whiff of flavor. And that was AFTER I'd tripled the number of called-for leaves and chopped and bruised the foliage to release the essential oils.

This was an egg-based (custard) ice cream recipe. I thought maybe the strong egg flavor dominated the wintergreen, so next I tried an egg-less (some call it NY or Philadelphia style) ice cream. After simmering more than a cup of chopped wintergreen leaves in the cream/sugar mixture, the flavor was still underwhelming. Slightly stronger, but not what I was looking for.

Feeling dejected, I returned to the library, and eureka! Thank you, Euell Gibbons.


Euell wrote about the weak taste of wintergreen tea in Stalking the Healthful Herbs. He inadvertently discovered that soaking the leaves in room temperature water releases the essential oils and creates a strong wintergreen infusion. Some internet sources say the release of flavor takes place in as little as 12 hours. Euell said 3 days and darned if he wasn't right on the money.


In the end I made a superb wintergreen ice cream with 2 cups of cream, 3/4 cup sugar, and 1 cup of strong wintergreen tea. Sweet, unique, and not on any restaurant's menu. It wasn't easy getting there, but every bite proved it was worth the effort.

Grazing the 'Hood

I know, I know, we've written a lot about The High Line here at Garden Bytes. So sue us. We like it.

Monday morning I took a new friend to visit: Francesca Yorke, who taught the Garden to Plate photography class I took last month in Santa Fe. It was lovely strolling the park with a companion in photography, each of us finding images that floated our respective boats.

No surprise that my boat was floated by the surprising number of ornamental plants with edible parts. I'm a little obsessed at the moment, working on my back yard foraging book. But even for me, who sees edible plants everywhere, The High Line was impressive.

Let's be clear: I am NOT suggesting you graze The High Line! (I promise I didn't pick a single thing.) But take a walk and see what's on the menu. Then use it as a model for your own yard or terrace. You might be surprised by how tasty some of those traditional ornamentals can be.

Use dried, ground juniper berries in spice rubs.

The flesh of yew arils (berries) is sweet and juicy. But spit out the seed...it's highly poisonous!

Sumac berries are tart and lemon-y. You can make sumac-ade, or use it to flavor rum. I vote for rum.

Both the flower and berries of elderberry are tasty in multiple ways.

That's right, sedum leaves. Put 'em in your salad.

Young sassafras (the autumn leaves above are too old), when dried and ground, make file gumbo.

Rose hips are very high in vitamin C and make a great jelly.

Thanks for the acorns, noble oak!
(Thanks for the sign, Manhattan Mini Storage.)

And thanks to The High Line for showcasing so many useful/delicious plants, of which the above are a mere smattering.

potato update

I could have waited a little longer, but curiosity got the best of me.

Following directions, I mounded soil around the potato plants several times as they grew, until the potting mix was within an inch of the top of the container. All told, I added 6 - 8 inches of soil over the first 6 weeks of growing. I only stopped because the container was full.


I waited. I don't usually wish for leaves to turn yellow, but since that's the visual cue for potato readiness...these yellow leaves made me very happy! I tugged on the first yellow stem and was dismayed to find a few, fingernail-sized tubers attached to the roots. Surely this wasn't my entire crop. Yet each subsequent stem yielded the same, measly harvest.

Not willing to accept failure, I stuck my hands into the soil and rooted around up to my elbows. Eureka! First one, then another, then another. So I learned something: potatoes are heavy enough to break away from the roots when you pull on the stem. Did you know that? It may seem obvious to you, but to us first-time-potato growers, it was not.


So there you have it: potatoes from a container. It couldn't be easier (well it could, but it's still pretty easy) and it took up very little space, making it an excellent crop for small city gardens. at all. If I had a little more room, I might keep the container as is and re-use the potting mix next year. Since I don't, I'll dump the mix, fold up the grow bag, and store it away till next spring.

Handy, useful product (thanks, Gardeners Supply) & home grown potatoes. Two thumbs up!

WHILE DAYLILLIES STILL BLOOM

Three daylily flowers, picked in the morning, rinsed carefully because the petals are crisp and crack easily, refrigerated until later that same day for a special treat. Remove stamens and pistil before rinsing.
Place gingerly in crystal stemware, scoop in some raspberry or strawberry sorbet, and top with minced red basil, plus more for garnish. Oohs and Aahs. you're a genius, and such hard work!Use wild or cultivated flowers, ones that you're sure haven't been sprayed, and nothing from the roadside where they've been absorbing exhaust fumes. Daylily flowers are edible though some varieties are more flavorful than others. Usually the aroma will guide you to the best flavors.
Basil and fruit sorbet is a tasty combination.
Yesterday in the New York Times Magazine my favorite food writer Mark Bittman showed recipes for ice pops with various herbs and flavorings. I've been doing this for years, sometimes for kids using paper or plastic cups, and sticking a plastic spoon in the sorbet after it's semi-frozen. Here Lucy extracts a watermelon pop from a plastic cup after holding her hands around the outside for a few seconds to release the ice.

The watermelon was going begging in our house because it was not flavorful. So we cut it off the rind and in chunks, whipped it briefly in the food processor with added sugar, lemon juice and a grind of pepper and poured it into plastic cups. Also resurrect other fruits like limp strawberries or mealy peaches, adding water in the same quantity as fruit.

Hey Lucy, she likes it!