GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: salad

Foraging For Edible Wild Plants In The Backyard – GF Video

There are edible wild plants in your backyard that you can forage for and make a great salad from. No need to go to the farmers market, you’ve probably got edible greens in your yard you can eat. Identifying and harvesting edible plants is called foraging, but I call it free food in your yard.

Below are some photos for plant identification, but be sure you know what these plants are. These are fairly unique plants, but be sure, OK? And make sure the area you are foraging has not been sprayed with fertilizers, herbicides, etc. You don’t want that stuff getting into your food. You can buy Leda’s Foraging Book here.

Some Wild Edible Plants:

Dandelion

When harvesting dandelion, you can choose to leave the plant in the ground and growing if you want. Just harvest the outer leaves and the plant will continue to grow. The leaves get stronger tasting when the dandelion flowers, but I think you’ll find the taste pleasing.

Plantain

Plantain grows close to the ground usually. Once it sprouts its flower stem, you probably don’t want to forage for it, as the older leaves are not as great to eat. They can be stringy.

Chickweed

Chickweed grows in nice big bunches, and if you cut off just the top 3-4″ of the plant, it will keep growing. It self seeds if you let some of the plants flower and go to seed. Then you’ll have more free food!

Garlic Mustard

Garlic Mustard is a non-native invasive plant. I see it along roads a lot. Harvest it by pulling up the whole plant with the roots. This plant will crowd out native plants, and most states want to get rid of it. The leaves taste like mustard greens, though not as strong. It has some good vitamins, so eat up.

Violets

Violets grow like weeds. There are some cultivated varieties, but the ones in our yard are wild edible plants, and easy to identify. They are low growing and have white – purple flowers. Harvest the flower and stem for your salads. They look great on a dinner table.

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May 19, 2015
Locavore Garden Salad instead of PBJ for lunch

OK, what is a locavore garden salad? Its when you walk out to your garden and cut some salad greens. This all started with lunch.

We were about to have lunch, and it was going to be PBJs, since it was simple and all the ingredients were there. But I have been on this kinda sorta gluten free before 6 pm thing – we talk about gluten free on GF Radio here – so I grabbed my scissors and went out to the garden.

There was kale, and young salad greens that had sprouted 2 weeks ago, plus arugula, which grows like a weed anyway. I cut the greens to that they would grow again – this is going to be our hoop house raised bed this winter – and was back in the kitchen in 5 minutes.

Put water on to make some poached eggs – kinda like the neato Salad Lyonaise video we did – and washed the salad quickly. It almost didn’t need washing it was so young, but… I made a quick vinegarette salad dressing in the mixing bowl. You can use just the egg yolk as a dressing, like in the Salad Lyonnaise recipe, but I wanted the balsamic in there.

And its good I did make the dressing, because I overcooked the eggs, they were no longer soft poached, but they were still good. Not bad for a quick switch from PBJ.

October 25, 2014
Summer Salad with Maple Blue Cheese Dressing Recipe
If this salad looks simple, that's because it is! Cool down with a summer salad with Maple Blue Cheese Dressing and lots of crumbled bacon.

I love Blue Cheese dressing with my hot wings or salad. It’s tangy, salty, and creamy with a rich blue-veined flavor. There’s quite a few varieties available, but Roquefort, Stilton, and Gorganzola work the best. You don’t need much, but do get a good Blue Cheese. I like Danish Saga, it’s less salty and much creamier than Roquefort. I found that crumbled cheese is usually much cheaper than the block since it’s made from what’s left after cutting. Everything else you probably have in the fridge. Let’s get busy.

Danish Blue Saga has more body than Roquefort, and it's less salty.

Maple Blue Cheese Dressing
- 1/2 cup crumbled Danish Blue Saga
- 1/3 mayonnaise
- 1/3 sour cream
- 1 tsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp white vinegar
- 1/4 tsp powdered garlic or 1/2 tsp minced garlic
- 3 tbsp crumbled bacon (optional)
In a small bowl add cheese and garlic into the mayonnaise and sour cream and mix. Make sure not to overwork the dressing, you do want some chunks of cheese in there. Then add maple syrup and a little vinegar and mix well. Adjust ingredients to suit your taste. I always add more Blue Cheese.

Crumbled bacon is optional but I never leave it out. Cut streaky bacon into 3″ strips. Coat a hot skillet with a little oil. Cook the fattiest pieces first to make enough fat for frying. Fry until evenly golden, drain fat, cool and crumble into small pieces. Add about 3 tbsp of bacon to the dressing, reserve the rest for the salad.

My friend Lindsey says her mother makes some kick-ass Blue Cheese Dip. Mrs. McCosh was more than happy to share her recipe with us. This Midwestern classic dip is made with Roquefort and cottage cheese. It’s light with a hearty texture — guaranteed to take the sting out of any hot wing.

The bluest of the blues — Roquefort is an age-old classic cheese.

Mrs. McCosh’s Blue Cheese Dip
- 1/2 cup Roquefort Cheese
- 1/2 cottage cheese, small curds
- 1/2 yogurt
- 3 tbsp white vinegar
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp dried dill
- 1 tsp minced garlic
Dissolve sugar in the vinegar and set aside. Crumble Roquefort in a bowl using a fork then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well, salt an pepper to taste. The cottage cheese hold everything together perfectly, lumps and all. Adjust ingredients to your taste. Pour Blue Cheese dressing into a container and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. It’s served best the next day — then it’s thick enough to stand a fork.

For salad, tear Romaine lettuce into bite sized pieces, toss with thinly sliced white onion and red grapes and plate up serving portions. Add hard boiled egg and drizzle Blue cheese dressing, and (optionally) top with more bacon. Diner is served!
July 17, 2011
Black Bean Corn Salad Picnic Potluck Recipe : GardenFork.TV

Here’s a recipe that’s perfect to make ahead and bring to a picnic or a potluck. Black Bean Corn Salad, super tasty, easy to make, and its made from ingredients you have at home.

Do you have a variation or similar recipe? Please share it below:

Black Bean Corn Salad Recip

1 can Black Beans

1 package frozen corn

1 small red onion, chopped fine

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/2 cup olive oil

3 tablespoon red wine vinegar ( or to taste )

1 tablespoon brown mustard

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon pimenton

Mix together the corn and beans and onion.

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, mustard and garlic and honey.

Pour dressing over corn and beans mix, allow flavors to meld in the fridge for a bit before serving.

September 3, 2010
Grilled Cheese and Chicken Sandwich & Apple Salad

I am a huge consumer of grilled cheese sandwiches. ok? That said, I always make variations to the basic grilled cheese recipe, and this time I had some roast chicken left over. The lightbulb went off in my head to make this a Grilled Chicken and Cheese sandwich recipe. Not much rocket science here, but it tastes great.

Grilled Cheese yum.

cast iron or a thick bottomed pan work best for this, i think.

I like to use Cabot Sharp Cheddar, as its owned by a dairy cooperative, you could be decadent here and drop in some blue cheese as well.

flipping a large grilled cheese sandwich can be tricky. careful.

I usually use olive oil in the pan, and swirl the bread around in the small pool of olive oil. Or you can get one of those Misto oil sprayers, which is more economical with the use of oil. I like my grilled cheese grilled well, as you can see.

use what you've got to make a salad, i do.

I’m all about simple salad. I kinda don’t get most salad recipes, I just use what I have in the fridge. I had some Macoun apples, so i sliced them up and in they go. Apples taste great with cheese, so blue cheese or goat cheese would be great here.

So there you go, a great lunch that probably cost $2 sandwich. Do you have a fun simple lunch, or your version of grilled cheese? Let us know below in the comments:

July 10, 2010
Grow Lettuce Mesclun, Salad Greens GF Video

Watch this video on how to grow lettuce, mesclun and salad greens and learn how to harvest salad and lettuce.

Until the heat of summer knocks them down, loose leaf lettuce is one of those low maintenance pleasures of gardening. There are a ton of varieties of lettuces/salad greens (which we’ll go into in future episodes) right now we are growing a bunch of Deer Tongue and Antares, both from Fedco.

Loose leaf lettuces can be harvested and then they grow again. All you do is cut the lettuce about an inch above the soil line with a scissors, and it will grow back. If you plant a few rows every two weeks, you can get lettuce for most of the growing season. With row covers or cold frames, you can harvest lettuce almost year round.

Eliot Coleman, in his book, the Four Season Harvest, writes at length on how to prolong your lettuce growing season.

Robin Follette writes about meeting Eliot Coleman in her Farm & Garden blog

July 18, 2006