If you know what to look for and how to recognize the plants then the wild harvest can provide many completely free delights for your table. What’s more wild foods are truly and completely seasonal and provide a sense of what our ancestors used to eat.

With spring just around the corner it’s time for all serious foragers and anyone curious about wild foods to venture out once more. We’re about to enter the season of fresh spring greens where dandelions, mustard greens, stinging nettles, deadnettles, ramsons (wild garlic), bedstraw and many other edible delights are at their very best.

Here are two recipes that will show-off many of these wild spring greens to their very best:

Wild Garlic and Wild Mustard Greens Pesto

Ingredients:

1 garlic clove, chopped

sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

150g wild mustard greens, washed and with leaves shredded

12 ramson (wild garlic) leaves, chopped

100g pine nuts, very lightly toasted

100g freshly grated Parmesan cheese

extra virgin olive oil

a small squeeze of lemon juice

Method:

Add the garlic, wild mustard greens and ramsons to a food processor and pulse to a puree. Add the pine nuts and pulse once again. Tip into a bowl and add half the Parmesan. Stir gently and begin adding the olive oil. Add just enough so that the mixture is bound together and you achieve a thick but pliable consistency (a bit like mud). Add the lemon juice and most of the remaining cheese. Season to taste then add a little more olive oil. Alternate adding oil and cheese until you are happy with both the consistency and the taste.

This is best used fresh, but will store for a week if placed in a jar and stored in the fridge.

Nettle Soup

Ingredients:

900g young nettle tips (you need to pick these when the nettles are about 6 to 10 cm tall. May is a good time)
(
900g spinach
(
900ml chicken or vegetable stock
(
3 tbsp flour
(
60ml cold milk
(
4 cold, cooked, sausages
(
3 tbsp sour cream

salt and black pepper, to taste

Method:

Be careful when picking the nettles as even the young tips can still sting. Also only pick young, fresh, nettles as they become very bitter as they age. Wash the nettles when you have enough then blanch them in boiling water (this removes the formic acid). Drain the nettles and return them to the pot along with the spinach. Pour in the hot stock, season and allow to simmer for 4 minutes (add more stock if the mixture becomes too dry).

Set the soup aside to cool then purée in batches in a blender. Meanwhile mix the flour and milk to a smooth paste. Return the soup and the milk mixture to the pot and return to a boil. Chop the sausages into small rounds and add to the soup. Add the sour cream, swirl and serve immediately.

These are only two recipes of the many thousands possible and they feature only two of the many hundreds of edible plants that are all around us in the countryside. Why not begin exploring the culinary possibilities of your own backyard today?

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is the author of the Celtnet Guide to Edible Wild Plants and the recipes to accompany this guide have been collected in his Wild Food Recipes. He also writes articles on wild foods and wild food cooking at Celtnet Articles

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Wild plants have some unique flavors that can be among your enjoyed favorites. Watercress with something sweet such as pancake syrup in a peanut butter sandwich is one I particularly enjoy. Dandelion greens pesto mixed with spaghetti sauce is another.

Since the taste of many wild edible plants is so different from the usual cultivated vegetables, you likely will at first not accept some of them as a delicious flavorful food. Just about any food flavor other than sweet, salty, starchy, and fat are, I suppose, acquired tastes. It takes time for your mind to recognize an unfamiliar flavor as a ‘tried and true’ favorite. Introduce a wild food into your diet by eating a small amount when you are most hungry. Repeatedly doing so can make the new food one that you especially enjoy.

The amount of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in wild food, according to many sources, is on the average, greater in wild foods. Domesticated vegetables have been selectively bred for looks, production quantity, taste, length of storage and other qualities other than nutrition.

The fruits and vegetables sold in the supermarket have been chemically fertilized; exposed to herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and a variety of other chemicals; and they may have been genetically modified and/or irradiated. The safety of eating such produce is of concern to many people. Wild foods for the most part, avoid those concerns. If you do gather wild foods avoid taking them from along roadsides, lawns that have been treated with chemicals or any other areas that may have been treated.

There is the possibility that supermarket food can be contaminated with pathogens. Dozens of diseases can be spread by an infected person handling food anywhere from the time it is harvested until it is put into your grocery bag. Plants growing in the wild are untouched by human hands.

Wild plants can be prepared in many ways. Greens can be put through a food processor or blender to make pesto. Add just enough oil and/or water to let the mixture process well. The pesto can then be easily mixed with other ingredients such as peanut butter, tomato sauce, or syrup for flavoring. Some greens such as lambsquarters, chickweed and purslane can be used anyway spinach is prepared. Strong or bitter tasting greens can be boiled changing the water once or twice to reduce bitterness. This is sometimes done with dandelion leaves. Then other ingredients can be added for flavoring and texture.

Wild fruit can simply be mixed with nuts or seeds such as sunflower seeds or almonds.

Some plants such as cattail tuber shoots and burdock root can be boiled to increase tenderness or to reduce strong flavors and then simply eaten as is.

Be sure of what it is that you are going to eat and be sure that it is edible. Consult a good reference book. If possible have someone who is familiar with a particular plant point it out to you. Most photographs are not of high enough quality to be relied upon to positively identify a wild plant.

Some edible plants have poisonous look-alikes. Some plants have edible parts and have poisonous parts. Some plant parts are edible only after being prepared in a particular way. It is common that a small quantity of a plant can be eaten without problems but if you eat too much your digestive system will protest forcefully.

There’s about 6 or 8 disaster scenarios that I can think of that seem likely to happen at some time. Most of them seem unlikely to happen in my lifetime. But you never know. Isn’t it prudent to be prepared, at least to some extent, in the event the normal food supply is interrupted. Examples of disasters that seem likely to happen are an asteroid hitting the earth, a massive nuclear war, a global epidemic, and the failure of one or two major crops such as corn and wheat due to a widespread disease or climate change.

The gathering of wild foods is interesting and enjoyable. Foraging for a favorite or new addition to your menu may take you through woods, through open fields and meadows and other places of beauty. It is a great way to get out into the natural world and enjoy its complexity and majesty. It adds to the perception that the world is a good place that is to be enjoyed. It is emotionally pleasing to find something that seems free and of exceptional value.

Making use of natural foods gives you greater awareness of the inter-relatedness of living things to each other and to the environment. That greater awareness helps us more appreciate the weather and climate, the abundance of nature, agriculture and the food supply, and the importance of protecting those things.

If you are interested in a few detailed recipes and a couple of other general preparation methods see http://www.bobcatswilderkitchen.com

For more information on wild edible plants and recipes see Foraging the Edible Wild, http://community.webtv.net/Taimloyd/FORAGINGTHEEDIBLE

For a list of links to more informaion see
dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/Wildlife/Plants/Edible/

For a few books on wild edible plants see theforagerpress.com/bookstore/plantguides.htm

Alan Detwiler started the web site Leisureideas. Visitors to the site are encouraged to use imagination and whatever happens to be available to discover new ways to enjoy themselves.

Alan writes books on how to pursue playfulness and a sense of wonder. His books are available in digital format and can be purchased and downloaded on the eBookMall web site. Go to http://www.ebookmall.com Then do a search for Detwiler.

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