The great thing about salmon caught in the wild and teeming waters off the coast of Alaska is that the ecosystems they occupy are still relatively free of pollutants-unlike the open waters being prowled by other fisheries, or the waters of artificial fish farms (especially the latter!).  Wild Alaska salmon, just like the vast majority of fish caught in the pristine Alaskan waters, has negligible or directly nonexistent levels of PCBs, mercury, and other contaminants that are particularly common in fish raised and harvested in fish farms which, unfortunately, are providing a lot of the fish that we find in our supermarkets and seafood stores.  That is why it is so important to check the label on any seafood product to make sure that it was caught in the wild.

Yet not all wild seafood products attain the nutritional excellence of wild Alaska salmon; in reality, few of them even come close!  What wild salmon from Alaska is so rich in is the oh-so important molecule known as omega 3 fatty acid, which contributes to better health in a wide variety of ways.  Omega 3s are absolutely necessary in our bodies, but we cannot produce them on our own; though there are plant sources of this vital molecular compound, they pale in comparison to wild Alaska salmon (both in sheer quantity and because our bodies have to work harder to make the plant variety serve a purpose).  So, if you want a more stable heart, a stronger immune system, better cholesterol, and a more vigorous brain…eat some more Alaska salmon, caught in the wild!

Great tasting Alaska seafood is a healthy way to feed the whole family. You’ll find a ton of great nutrition information at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allie_Moxley

Here’s how to learn about this fascinating subject correctly:

1. Identify anything you’re going to eat with 100% certainty. Some wild plants are poisonous, and they may resemble edible species.
2. Start by learning a few species that lack poisonous look-alikes well. Follow them through the seasons before expanding your repertoire.
3. Watch what you’re picking so nearby poisonous plants don’t inadvertently wind up in your bag.
4. Eat small amounts the first time, in case of allergies or other adverse reactions.
5. Collect only a small fraction of very common wild species where they’re abundant. This is more efficient and leaves no ecological footprint.
6. Avoid contaminated or sprayed areas such as regions within 50 feet of heavy traffic (where heavy metals settle), or railroad rights-of-way, which are sprayed.
7. Rinse off your harvest before preparing it.

Here’s one example of a common edible species, below. You’ll change your connection to our local ecosystems, and your food choices, forever:
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum)

This common edible tree with a history, and the original source of root beer. It’s easy to recognize because it has 3 kinds of fragrant leaves, all smooth-edged: one is oval, one is 3-lobed, and one is mitten-shaped. This medium-sized tree bears loose clusters of small, yellow, 5-petaled flowers in mid-spring, followed by ovoid, blue-black berries. It grows in great abundance in the woods and thickets, along roadsides, and at the edges of woods. To find restaurants using local food, click here. To learn more about local foraging in the New York area, click here.

Intolerant of shade, any saplings that don’t come up in full sunlight can’t survive, so you can pull them up, and they’re in season all year. Wash off the roots and simmer them, covered, 20 minutes. Native Americans used this tasty tea as a spring tonic, and Europeans in the 1500s profited by exporting and selling this native herb with claims for its health benefits growing in lock step with their greed. Eventually, it was supposed to cure everything. Unfortunately, everything includes sexually transmitted diseases, and soon anyone holding a cup of sassafras tea was suspected of having syphilis or gonorrhea. The bottom dropped out of the sassafras market, and the merchants were ruined.

Today, you can chill the tea and stir in chilled sparkling water and a sweetener to make root beer. Or peel the root’s soft cambium, the thin, white layer surrounding the wood, and use it in place of cinnamon to make very exotic-tasting drinks and desserts.

Beware! The Food and Drug Administration removed sassafras from the market when an experiment showed that if you have only the equivalent of 200 cups of sassafras tea, made from artificial concentrate, every day for only 2 years, and you happen to be a rat, you’ll have an increased chance of developing liver cancer. Rats change safrole, the active constituent, into a carcinogen. Humans don’t, and no one ever got sick from drinking sassafras tea. Also, heat destroys safrole. Furthermore, beer, due to its alcohol content, is 14 times a carcinogenic to humans as sassafras is to rodents, and beer’s still available for sale.

Steve Brill is a full-time, freelance, seasonal naturalist and environmental educator, as well as an author, who teaches people about the abundant, renewable wild foods that most of us don’t recognize or notice, hidden anywhere there’s greenery.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Brill

This is probably because many people are almost entirely ignorant of wild greens. The wild plants that can be harvested (often in your own back garden) and consumed.

Indeed, as soon as April turns into May edible wild plants spring into profusion. If you know what to look for then you can probably spot six edible species right in your own back garden. If you venture further afield, to a back lane, for example then with a little practice you will see thirty or more wild plants that are both edible and, more importantly, good to eat.

In fact there are well over a hundred common plants (many of them considered weeds) that you can collect and add to your own recipes. There are as many rarer plants again so that anyone with enough knowledge will be able to gather one wild plant or another all year round. Even in the depths of winter there are enough wild plants in abundance for you to be able to create a hedgerow salad.

Here I present two recipes designed around and incorporating wild spring greens.

Springtime Fritters

Ingredients:

180g flour

pinch of salt

1 egg

450ml flat beer

300g edible leaves and flowers (hawthorn flowers, broom flowers, gorse flowers, young beech leaves, hop shoots, bisort leaves, ground elder leaves, sow thistle, cleavers, ramsons, henbit deadnettle, red deadnettle, white deadnettle [anything that's to hand, basically])

Method:

Add the flour and salt to a large bowl, make a well in the middle and break the egg into this. Pour in a little of the beer and start to mix. Gradually pour more beer and incorporate more of the flour. Mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps and keep adding beer until our have a batter about the consistency of single cream. Cover the bowl with a cloth and allow to rest for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile trim your greens and flowers and rinse with plenty of cold water. Heat oil in a wok or deep pan and mix your flowers and greens into the batter. Drop spoonfuls of the batter mix into the hot oil and fry until golden, turning once.

Lift them onto a plate using a slotted spoon, drizzle with a little honey and serve warm.

A Spring Tart

Ingredients:

80g of spring buds (hawthorn flower and leaf buds, gorse flowers and beech leaves just out of bud)

150g spring greens (the young leaves of primroses, violets and wild strawberries)

12 primrose flowers

80g young spinach

100ml double cream

300ml single cream

60g naples bisket (or any dry sponge cake)

1 whole egg

2 egg yolks

enough pastry for a 22cm pie shell

60g sugar

salt, to taste

freshly-grated cinnamon

Method:

Place the primrose flowers in sugar to partly candy them.

Meanwhile, wash the buds and greens, drain them then chop very small. Add to a pan along with the single and double cream and bring to a boil. Simmer for 3 minutes, or until the greens wilt then take off the heat. Finely chop or grate the naples bisket and stir into the cream along with the sugar, salt and spices. Set aside to cool.

After you have made your pie crust (use either the short-crust for an expensive pie or the standard pie-crust recipes) place in a 22cm pie dish, add dried beans to keep the bottom flat and blind bake in an oven at 200°C for ten minutes.

Whisk the eggs into the cream mixture. Pour this mixture into the part-baked pie crust and dot the surface with butter. Bake the tart in an oven at 170°C for 75 minutes or until the surface turns a golden brown. Take out of the oven and allow to cool completely before decorating the top with the candied primrose flowers.

I hope that these recipes have given you a taste of how you can use the various wild foods and flowers on your doorstep to make tasty dishes from and that you will now want to find out more about how to include wild ingredients in your own cookery.

Dyfed Lloyd Evans runs the Celtnet Recipes site which specializes in Wild Food Recipes. If you would like to include more wild foods in your own cooking then why not check-out the Guide to Wild Foods that can help you identify the wild foods you can use in your own cookery.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dyfed_Lloyd_Evans

For example, young dandelion leaves are quite like bitter salad leaves. You can use them directly in any recipe calling for radiccio or endive. As salt counteracts bitterness in any food you can also blanch dandelion leaves in salted water and use as a spinach alternative.

Wild greens such as sea kale and sea beet, being members of the cabbage family can be used in any recipes that call for other members of the cabbage family (eg cabbage, kale, collard greens, turnip greens, chard and even spinach). They just need to be blanched in salted water for a few minutes to make them tender and less bitter before use.

Common mallow has a taste profile and a mucilaginous nature that’s very similar to Egyptian corchorus and so can be directly substituted to make the Egyptian soup, Melokhia. In a similar vein dried Linden (European lime) leaves are similar to West African baobab leaves and American sassafras and like their culinary equivalents can be used to thicken stews and soups.

Wild fruit, of course, can be used in any recipe that calls for a domestic fruit: jams, preserves, cakes, ice creams, granitas etc. Just remember that wild fruit tend to be a little more sour than their domestic cousins and adjust the sugar content accordingly.

Standard wild greens such as Good King Henry, Fat Hen, chickweed, bedstraw and many others can be used in a very similar way to spinach and work well anywhere spinach would be used. If young they can even be eaten raw in salads.
Edible flowers can be candied (just store in sugar for a few days) and used in ice creams or to decorate desserts and cakes. Edible wild flowers provide an aromatic and sweet note to many dishes and are excellent in salads and as decoration for desserts and cakes.

Young shoots of many wild plants, such as Japanese knotweed and hogweed can be prepared, steamed and eaten in much the same way as asparagus and make wonderful alternatives to this vegetable.

Essentially, once you know what a wild ingredient is equivalent to or can be substituted for you can modify any recipe with that traditional ingredient and substitute-in the wild ingredient for it. So, the question when coming to wild foods isn’t ‘where do I find recipes for this?’ but rather, should be ‘what can I use this ingredient instead of?’ Then you can just mix and match and substitute to your heart’s content.

Make life easy for yourself, rather than hard!

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is the creator of the Celtnet Guide to Wild Foods, a large list of edible wild foods and how to use them. He is also the author of the Wild Food Recipes, a catalogue of recipes incorporating wild foods.

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In Europe, at least, the Second World War marked a watershed in culinary tastes. Foraging for wild foods became an essential part of survival. Wild-sourced foods often became essential dietary staples for those who could access those foods. It was inevitable, after the shortages of the war cam to an end that people would shie away from such subsistence foods and that commercial agricultural produce and processed foods became the be-all and end-all of daily sustenance. Two generations lost the knowledge of which wild foods were edible and which wern’t (with the notable exception of fruit such as blackberries and certain mushrooms). Consumers became more distant from the land than ever before.

But the wheel is turning. Concern for the planet has led to increased awareness and interest in the possibilities of foraging and the finding of wild food sources. This is partly a matter of curiosity and partly an increased interest in the recipes of the past and their ingredients. There is also an increased interest in growing a larger range of herbs and flowers in the garden to attract insects (and many of these insect-attracting plants happen to be edible).

This has resulted in increased knowledge and curiosity about ancient food sources and how wild and different foodstuffs can be used. This the ancient Elizabethan trade in marsh samphire has been renewed and samphire is now on the menu. But it doesn’t stop there. Those people who would look for blackberries in summer are now collecting elder flowers in May, elderberries in August, wild plums and hazelnuts in September, and sloes in October — and these are just the common fruit.

Once you start down this road of discovery you find that common garden weeds such a bedstraw, fat hen and chickweed are not only edible but make good vegetables. Rather than grubbing these up and adding them to your compost heap, you can wash them and add them to your dinner plate! Then there are the wild herbs, the wild greens such as ramsons (wild garlic) in spring and Field Mustard which can be found year round. There are even greens such as coltsfoot, and common wintercress that can be found and consumed even in the depths of Winter.

Part of the attraction of these wild foods is that they bring out the ‘hunter-gatherer’ in all of us. It’s part of our ancestry, our heritage and once you get bitten by the foraging bug you will never quite be the same again. You will find that in spring you serve your dinner guests a hedgerow salad made of wild greens and wild flowers, in summer you will have summer puddings of wild fruit and in autumn you have the harvest of wild nuts and wild mushrooms to draw on. Even in the depths of winter there are stored fruit and wild greens that you can use.

Next time you pass a tangled hedgerow or an overgrown verge why not stop for a moment to look at the range of plant life that exists there. With a simple guide and some patience you will even be able to get yourself a tasty meal from those plants.

Trendy restaurants may be scraping the verges of wild foods to make a statement and make a name for themselves, but you as real cooks can truly appreciate the breadth and depth of the range of wild foodstuffs available to you. They will truly allow you to connect to your ancestors for these are the foods they collected and consumed. Keep the ancient traditions alive and try some wild foods for yourself.

To learn more about wild foods, how to recognize them and cook them take a look at the Wild Food Guide.

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is a cook and Internet author who is passionate about ancient foods and ancient cookery. He shares his knowlege on this subject in his Celtnet Recipes site. His reconstruction of ancient recipes can be found on his Ancient Recipes pages.

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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

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dyfed_Lloyd_Evans

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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