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Pub-style Pink Pickled Eggs Recipe

This week many people are taking that ancient fertility symbol, the egg, and giving it playful colors. I joined in, but I wasn’t using artificial ...

Chicken of the Woods Mushroom (and What to Do with Old “Chickens”)

Finding a colorful, tender chicken of the woods mushroom in its prime (like the one in this photo) never ceases to give me a thrill. One of the ...

Turkey Tail Mushroom: Eat Your (Tasty) Medicine

I used to curse turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor) because in my old stomping grounds in Brooklyn, NY they were the mushroom I was most ...

The Sea Takes It Away

Twelve years ago I wrote this chapter for my first book Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch. At its heart is spotlight on the fallacy of ...

Wild Mallow Seed Pudding or Sauce - New Ways to Use Wild Foods

Today I made a creamy, pudding-like filling for homemade profiteroles using wild mallow seeds. Not the green, immature mallow seeds I wrote about in ...

Elderflower “Champagne” Recipe - Wild Edible Plants

Elderflower "champagne" is a lightly alcoholic beverage that is naturally bubbly and worthy of raising a glass of in honor of whatever needs ...

Japanese Knotweed Bars - Wild Food Recipe

Sweet and Tangy Japanese Knotweed Bars Recipe From The Forager’s Feast: How to Identify, Gather, and Prepare Wild Edibles, by Leda ...

How to Make Carob or Honey Locust Pod Powder

Both carob and honey locust pods can be turned into naturally sweet powders that are versatile ingredients to have on hand. Making them isn’t ...

How to Make Hazelnut Milk Without Shelling the Nuts

Here's a quick video showing how I make hazelnut milk without shelling the nuts (especially handy with wild hazelnuts which tend to be smaller than ...

Turkey on the Roof: An Expat’s Thanksgiving

Once upon a time, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner in Switzerland. Here's how that went. (This is an excerpt from the just-released new edition of my ...

Persimmon Bread with Amaranth - Gluten Free Recipe

This persimmon quickbread recipe is fruity, moist, and lightly (but not obnoxiously) sweet.   I’m not a strictly gluten free person, but ...

Book Giveaway! New Edition of Leda’s Food Memoir

I'm delighted to announce that the new, updated edition of Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes is now available in both ...

wineberries

Foraging Wineberries: a Delicious Invasive

Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius) are one of the most abundant of summer’s brambleberries. In fact, they are often listed as an invasive species. ...

Daylily - a Forager’s Delight with 4 Edible Parts

I love a plant that is beautiful, provides several different tasty ingredients, and is easy to harvest in ways that allow the plant to replenish. ...

Foraging Mulberries & Mulberry Ice Box Cake Recipe

I don’t know why mulberries are so under-appreciated. Homeowners often curse the falling berries for staining their sidewalks, and it's true some ...

Blackberry (or other berry) Shrub Recipe

No self-respecting forager who appreciates a cool drink on a hot summer day should be without a shrub or two in their pantry. After you've turned ...

Make Fruit Leather Using Fresh Fruit

Here's how to make fruit leather (also called roll-ups) from fresh fruit. Once made, this stuff keeps almost indefinitely and is a great portable ...

Lamb’s Quarters Dip in a Bread Bowl (that ’70s Dip, but Better)

In the 1970's, my parents’ generation made a spinach dip in a bread bowl that involved dumping together powdered soup mix, frozen spinach from a ...

Pineappleweed Flan Recipe

Both the custard base and the drizzle on top of this silken dessert are infused with pineappleweed's fruity aroma and taste. Pineappleweed ...

Creamed Dayflower Recipe-Foraging Asiatic Dayflower

Asiatic dayflower (the common name given to several plants in the Commelina genus) is one of my favorite wild edibles. Never bitter, and with hint of ...

Sprouted Wild Mustard Seed Salad

You can grind wild mustard seeds and combine them with water, vinegar, beer, or wine to make your own mustard paste. But what I'm going to share here ...

Pickled Redbud Recipe…& Wild Food Book Launch & Tasting

Redbud blossoms, garlic mustard, violets, dandelion, field garlic, Japanese knotweed...these are a few of the wild edibles I'll be foraging next week ...

Dandelion Beer Recipe

Here's a recipe from my new book The Forager's Feast. It uses both dandelion leaves and roots. Roasting the roots first gives the brew an almost red ...

Foraged Garlic Mustard Pesto Recipe - Eat the Invasives!

I know, I know: it's a forager's cliche to use garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) in a pesto recipe. You know why that is? Because gosh darn it, ...

nettles pie

Hortopita Recipe - Wild Greens Phyllo Pie

Many people are familiar with spanakopita, the Greek spinach and cheese pie with a flaky phyllo crust. This is that same pie but made with nettles ...

Clover Soda Bread Recipe

This clover soda bread recipe can be made with the flowers of several different species of clover, including red clover (Trifolium ...

Stinging Nettles Malfatti Recipe

Nettles are one of my favorite wild greens, and I'm always happy to learn yet another way to prepare them. I owe my friend and colleague Ellen Zachos ...

wild hawthorn, asparagus, and edible greens

The Solstice, Foraging, and Abundance

For this year's Winter Solstice celebration, I’ll light candles and raise a steaming mug of mulled wine to toast my loved ones. I think it is ...

Olives Brined Greek-style (Almost My Grandfather’s Recipe)

Olives straight off the tree are mouth-puckeringly bitter. But transformed through brining or dry salting they become the delicious morsels we are ...

Leftover Sweet Potatoes Bread Recipe

Got leftover cooked sweet potatoes? This recipe turns them into a golden, tasty sandwich bread. Makes 1 large or 2 small ...

Jellied Cranberry Sauce Recipe with Spicebush and Orange

Here's a holiday cranberry sauce recipe from my book Preserving Everything. It has gorgeous color and flavor, and slides out of its jar ready to ...

Wild Burdock (Gobo) Stir-fry

One person’s weeds are another person’s dinner, and burdock (Arctium spp.) is a perfect example of this. Although it is routinely weeded out of ...

Foraging Hawthorn & Cordial Recipe

Hawthorn fruit is piling up under the trees here in Brooklyn. Gather it soon, because this abundant fruit is one of the last of the foraging season. ...

The Forager’s Feast - Spicy Gumbo with Purslane and Sassafras

Here's a recipe that replaces the usual okra in Creole-style gumbo with wild purslane. "Wild" is relative - purslane is probably growing in your ...

Harvesting and Preparing Prickly Pear Fruit

Yesterday I harvested some prickly pear fruits, also known as "tunas" or sabras. These are the fruits of cacti in the Opuntia genus. As you ...

Fermented Tomatoes Recipe

Our garden is overrun with tiny cherry tomatoes. We're not keeping up with them. As delicious as they are to pop into my mouth raw, I wanted to ...

Lacto-fermentation - What It Is and How It Works

Lacto-fermentation is the process that produces traditional dill pickles, kimchi and real sauerkraut. It takes nothing more than salt, vegetables ...

How to Make Mosto Cotto (Vino Cotto Recipe)

Also called vino cotto, saba, and petimezi, mosto cotto means “cooked must.” The “must” is smashed grapes that in this case are cooked ...

Tangy Edible Sumac Extract, Cocktails, & Popsicles

I’m not usually a big fan of fuzzy food. But by the time I’ve turned edible sumac’s hairy berries into a lemony, rosy extract, the fuzz factor ...

Purslane Relish Recipe

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is sold as a gourmet vegetable in France and on the steps of the Old City in Jerusalem...and yanked out of ...

Foraging for Prickly Pears and Scrambled Eggs with Nopales Recipe

Prickly pear cactus is most famous for its edible fruits, sometimes called "tunas" or sabras. But its green pads are also edible and delicious in the ...

Pickled Sushi Ginger (Gari) Recipe with Shiso

If you make your own sushi and sashimi, then you owe it to yourself to make your own pickled ginger, or gari, to go with it. I used purple shiso ...

Foraging Plantain & Recipe for Plantain Leaf Chips

No relation to the tropical, banana-like plant with the same name, plantain is a common weed with edible leaves and seeds. It is also one of the ...

Pineappleweed Cordial Recipe - Wild Plant Mixology

Pineappleweed cordial is one of my hands-down favorite beverages. To quote my dad, "This is one of the best cocktails I've had in a long ...

Foraging for Japanese Knotweed

The theme ingredient at the North Carolina Wild Foods Weekend this year was Japanese knotweed. Had a fantastic time hanging out with fellow expert ...

Sorrel Soup Recipe

Whether you use wild or cultivated sorrel, the plant's pleasantly sour flavor transforms a simple sorrel soup recipe like this one into something ...

Clover Blossom Spoonbread Recipe

Spoonbread is a cross between cornbread and a souffle. It is creamy enough to warrant eating it with a spoon, hence the name. In this clover blossom ...

Foraging with Christopher McDougall for Natural Born Heroes

Twice now I've had the chance to go foraging with Born to Run's bestselling author Christopher McDougall. He was a novice as far as edible wild ...

Pickled Jerusalem Artichokes Recipe

Crisp, sweet, spicy, and sour, these pickled Jerusalem artichoke tubers are a tasty snack on their own. They are also excellent served alongside ...

Henbit Noodles with Creamy Wild Mushroom Sauce

Here's a recipe to go with what I posted a couple of days ago about winter-hardy henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) and related ...

Mallow Leaf & White Bean Burgers - Vegan Recipe

Happy 2015! Instead of egg, this recipe for vegan bean burgers uses mallow leaves and mushrooms to bind the other ingredients. Where am I foraging ...

Mallow Leaf & White Bean Burgers - Vegan Recipe

Happy 2015! Instead of egg, this recipe for vegan bean burgers uses mallow leaves and mushrooms to bind the other ingredients. Where am I foraging ...

Solstice Sauce

Whether you're celebrating the Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, or some other holiday, I hope you're finding time during these long nights and short ...

Pickled Carrots with Ginger and Coriander

I showed up at the Sunnyside Greenmarket with copies of Preserving Everything: Can, Culture, Pickle, Freeze, Ferment, Dehydrate, Salt, Smoke...and ...

Ginkgo Season is Here

Yesterday I saw (and smelled) the first ripe ginkgo fruits hitting the ground. Once you get past the stinky orange pulp there's a culinary treat in ...

Food Justice and the People’s Climate March

Yesterday's People's Climate March in NYC exceeded all expectations. We were hoping for maybe 100,000. 310,000 showed up. I was there marching with ...

Thank You Pickles

One of the first things I did when I arrived at my temporary home was make pickles. I was staying on Manhattan's Upper West Side for two weeks to ...

A Mediterranean Summer (capers and sumac and grapes, oh my!)

I've already put up some grape leaves for future dolmathes. And the caper project (or as Ellen dubbed it, The Caper Caper) is winding down just as ...

Collecting and Curing Wild Capers

I've enlisted my boyfriend Ricky to help collect capers. Capers are the pickled, or sometimes salt-cured, unopened flower buds of Capparis spinosa, a ...

Free Slow Food NYC Event

Tomorrow night (Thursday, May 15th) there's a Slow Food NYC event at The Farm on Adderley restaurant. It's free, and you don't have to be a Slow Food ...