GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: plant identification

  • Dandelion Greens & Bacon Salad Recipe : GF Video

    Dandelion Greens & Bacon Salad Recipe : GF Video

    What do you with dandelion greens? You make a salad of course. Watch our video to find out how to identify and forage for dandelion in your yard, and make a great salad. If you are looking for edible plants in your yard, make sure the yard hasn’t been treated with herbicides or other things that are bad for you to ingest. Check out our other foraging videos here.

    How To Find and Prepare Dandelion Greens

    Wild Greens are abundant if you live in an area with grassy weedy places. They grow, we eat them. Things like mustard grow wild, wild onions, dandelion, purslane, burdock, all sorts. What I like about dandelion is it is ubiquitous and abundant, and it grows all summer. It is said that the dandelion greens are more bitter after the dandelion flower have bloomed, but my personal experience has been mixed. It is true the older the leaf, the more bitter it will be.

    I do suggest buying at least one foraging plant identification book, I’m a big fan of Leda Meredith’s Foraging Books, she also has regional foraging books out as well. A second book you might consider is Joy Of Foraging.

    Dandelion Greens

    Follow this simple dandelion greens recipe, and all will be great. It uses items you probably have in your fridge.

    Dandelion Salad Recipe  makes 2 salads

    1 bunch of dandelion, about a large handful, tap root and flower stems removed, washed and dried.

    2 strips of thick cut bacon

    balsamic vinegar

    2 eggs, poached for 3 minutes

    1 avocado

    Cook the bacon to crisp

    While the bacon is cooking arrange the dandelion in two salad bowls or plates.

    Cut the avocado in half, core and add to the bowls

    Add the poached egg on top of the greens,

    Cut the bacon into small pieces, spread over the salad

    Pour about a half teaspoon of the bacon grease from the pan over each bowl.

    Serve as soon as possible.

    Now on to foraging for Lambsquarters!

    Wild and Urban Foraging for Lambsquarters : GF Video

     

  • Garlic Mustard Weed, Is It Edible? Yes!

    Garlic Mustard Weed, Is It Edible? Yes!

    To me, Garlic Mustard Weed isn’t a weed, its a salad green, right alongside Mesclun. Maybe because it is so ubiquitous in my area people call it a weed. I call it free food.

    Garlic Mustard Weed

    Garlic mustard weed identification is pretty easy, not many plants look like this. These photos are of a the mustard in its second year of growth. The first year it is a low growing green, with what I call a rosette of small green leaves. In its second year, it shoots up with larger leaves and flowers.

    garlic mustard weed
    Photo by Srtg CC 3.0 Wikimedia

    Is Garlic Mustard Weed Edible?

    According to Wikipedia, Garlic Mustard was “one of the oldest discovered spices to be used in cooking in Europe”. You can use the leaves and flowers in salads. I make a really nice pesto with the leaves, watch my video here. In France the seeds are used to season food. So yes, garlic mustard is edible.

    Garlic Mustard Weed

    This weekend I saw some growing along a stone wall near the house so I pulled over and took these photos, then pulled up the plants by their roots. Free food! In a few minutes you have a sharp tasting mustard green for your salads, soups, and pesto. How cool is that?

    I pull the leaves off the stems and save the flowers whole to drop on top of the salad. This green works well with a balsamic vinegar salad dressing, as it has a pretty strong flavor. Add in avocado to balance it out. That ying-yang thing applied to foraged and farmed foods. The irony of that being you pulled the greens from the side of the road and the avocado had to be trucked a long way to your kitchen.

    Garlic Mustard Weed

    To harvest this wild mustard, bring along a trowel or small shovel, and grab the plant by its base and pull out the whole plant, root and all. Don’t feel guilty pulling this out of the ground. In the U.S. this is an invasive plant that is bad for our local trees and fields. It emits chemicals that make the soil hospitable to its growing and everything else dying, basically.

    Garlic mustard produces allelochemicals, mainly in the form of the compounds allyl isothiocyanate and benzyl isothiocyanate, which suppress mycorrhizal fungi that most plants, including native forest trees, require for optimum growth. However, allelochemicals produced by garlic mustard do not affect mycorrhizal fungi from garlic mustard’s native range, indicating that this “novel weapon” in the invaded range explains garlic mustard’s success in North America. Additionally, because white-tailed deer rarely feed on garlic mustard, large deer populations may help to increase its population densities by consuming competing native plants. Trampling by browsing deer encourages additional seed growth by disturbing the soil. Seeds contained in the soil can germinate up to five years after being produced (and possibly more). The persistence of the seed bank and suppression of mycorrhizal fungi both complicate restoration of invaded areas because long-term removal is required to deplete the seed bank and allow recovery of mycorrhizae. Wikipedia

    In other words, this plant is not good for your local area, so pull it out by the taproot and enjoy it in your salads.

     

  • Urban Foraging Chestnut Tree Chestnuts

    Urban Foraging Chestnut Tree Chestnuts

    Bitten by the urban foraging bug, I’m always looking at plants and trees in New York City now. There’s lots of food around if you look. On the way to the subway in Park Slope is a Horse Chestnut Tree, and every year the sidewalk is littered with the empty chestnut shells – the squirrels have gotten most of the nuts.

    The nuts are called conkers, which were used to play a game in the UK called conkers as well. The nuts are considered slightly poisonous, though deer eat them.

    The beekeeper and tree nerd in me was wondering whether horse chestnuts were self pollinated or needed a second chestnut tree for pollination, and whether they were insect pollinated or wind pollinated. According to wikipedia the trees are pollinated by birds and insects, and I found a second horse chestnut tree around the corner from this tree. neat.

    “Raw Horse Chestnut seed, leaf, bark and flower are toxic due to the presence of esculin and should not be ingested.” says Wikipedia. There are a number of medicinal uses for some of the compounds found in the Horse Chestnut conker, which doesn’t surprise me for this cool looking plant.

    Horse Chestnut in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

    What interesting nut trees have you found in your area? Let us know below:

  • We don’t like candycorn GF Radio

    We don’t like candycorn GF Radio

    We thank Matt Cuba for fixing the GardenFork site!

    Rick and Eric talk about Halloween, moving apartments, boxes from old moves you’ve never opened.

    Beekeeping overload has happened to Eric, with the realization that one can only eat so much honey. Rick talks about queenless hives.

    What fun we had with Lynne Rossetto Kasper of The Splendid Table! we hope to have her back on to answer more of our questions.

    The most recent foraging edible plant identification video about purslane is talked about, and upcoming show on sumac.

    Wondering how to remove latex paint from the floor, check out this picture of what can go wrong, and then use windex to remove the paint.

     

     

    photo by earl53

     

  • Foraging for Edible Plants: Purslane GF Video

    Foraging for Edible Plants: Purslane GF Video

    Learn how to forage for edible wild greens and identify edible plants in this Foraging for Purslane video. Edible plants like Purslane are sometimes considered weeds, but you can eat them, watch and learn here in this GardenFork foraging video.


    Purslane grows all over the place, ( it grows well in compacted and dry soils ) so all you urban homesteaders rejoice, here’s a free salad green that grows like a weed. Purslane is considered a succulent, it kinda looks like the leaves of a jade plant, that whole family of plants. We have purslane volunteering in our garden, so if I run across it, I usually just let it grow and harvest it before it takes over whatever plants are next to it.

    From the Purslane Wikipedia entry, I learned a lot about purslane. Purslane is eaten all over the world, just not here in the states. The leaves and stem are edible, not sure about the taproot. It is eaten raw and cooked, and it has a ‘mucilangious quality’ it is also cooked into soups and stews and can thicken dishes.

    Greeks fry the leaves with sage, in Turkey it is cooked like spinach, and again, here, we pull it out as a weed.

    What I found cool is that it has high levels of Omega 3 fatty acids, which few plants have. One usually has to eat fish to get high omega 3 levels. This edible wild green also has antioxidant properties.

    Do you eat purslane? what is your favorite wild edible green?

     

  • Foraging: Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe : GF Video

    Foraging: Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe : GF Video

    Foraging was on our minds this weekend, seeing some edible wild plants in our yard, after listening to this NPR story on eating and cooking wild foods like edible Garlic Mustard and Nettles.

    Yes, you can eat nettles, despite the fact that the stems of the nettle plant have tiny barbs that sting if you grab Nettles without gloves. The secret is blanching before eating the nettles.

    Garlic Mustard is an edible wild green, its leaves have hint of Garlic taste, though the mustard leaf taste is more prominent. Garlic Mustard is a non-native invasive plant that crowds out woodland native flowers like trilliums, bloodroot, etc. When harvesting Garlic Mustard, be sure to remove the entire root base, so it doesn’t grow back.

    Our Wild Edible Plant Pesto Recipe made with Stinging Nettles and Garlic Mustard is inspired by an NPR interview of Leah Lizarondo whose food blog is Brazen Kitchen. A big thank you to Larkin Page-Jacobs of NPR and Leah.

    Please tell us about your foraging recipes and tips below the recipe, thanks.

    Foraging Videos & Edible Plant Identification:

    Here are other plant identification foraging videos we have done:

     Dandelion, How to find, forage, and cook Dandelion Video

     

    Lambsquarter, Foraging and Cooking Lambsquarter Video

    Click for photos of Garlic Mustard and Stinging Nettles for plant identification.

     

    Garlic Mustard & Nettle Pesto Recipe
    Recipe Type: pesto
    Author: Eric Rochow
    Prep time:
    Cook time:
    Total time:
    Serves: 2 cups
    A simple pesto recipe made from foraged edible plants, Garlic Mustard, Stinging Nettles and Dandelion
    Ingredients
    • 1 cup Blanched Nettles
    • 3 cups Garlic Mustard Leaves
    • 1 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, grated
    • 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
    • 1 cup Dandelion Leaves ( optional )
    • 1/2 lemon
    • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
    • 1 cup toasted walnuts
    • 2 medium cloves garlic
    Instructions
    1. Wash all greens in a salad spinner – wear gloves when handling stinging nettles.
    2. Take 2 large handfuls of nettles – wear gloves! and blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain in a colander.
    3. Grate 1 cup of cheese using the large holes on a box grater, don\\\\\\\’t buy the pre-grated cheese, it tastes awful.
    4. Toast the walnuts in a fry pan on the stove, keep an eye on them, the burn easily.
    5. Place the greens, walnuts, cheese, garlic in a food processor, pour olive oil over the ingredients in the food processor.
    6. Add lemon zest and the juice from half a lemon.
    7. Turn on the food processor and watch the fun, you want the greens to become a roughly chopped paste, but not turn to mush.
    8. Serve this over pasta ( whole wheat pasta goes well with these flavors ) or in white bean soup, or on bread, its great.