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Foraging and Wild Mushroom Hunting 2014
A new camping season with friends has started, beginning with our first outing of the year, this past Mother's Day weekend. Sure, I didn't get flowers and breakfast in bed, but I did eat morels around...
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Morels Recipe - Morels and Ramps Biscuits
Living in Connecticut, we generally don't find too many morels. The soil is not right, the trees are not right, and historically, there just are not that many here. Last year it took six adults a few...
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Spruce Tips
It's already June, but it still seems a bit cool this year in southeastern Connecticut. Most plants are a bit behind schedule, extending foraging possibilities for spring plants. One item we have...
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Burdock Recipe - Burdock Root Pickles
Burdock is a biennial plant, and knowing which year plant is in is necessary before you attempt to dig and harvest the roots. From the second year's growth, we gather the flower stalk, which is...
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Wintergreen Recipe- Wintergreen Meringues
Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) is a lovely little perennial, ground hugging plant in our area. The leaves are leathery, but can be chewed while hiking for a refreshing wintergreen flavor. The red...
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Connecticut Boletes
July 2014, all found in one park in one hourJuly and August are prime season for finding Boletes in our area of New England. CVMS holds a well attended educational day at the end of August in a local...
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This is Not a Chicken Mushroom
This IS a chickenOne of our favorite wild mushrooms to hunt and eat is the Chicken Mushroom (if yellow pored, Laetiporus sulphureus, if white pored, Laetiporus cincinnatus). When harvested at the right...
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Black Fungi of Summer
Black trumpets (Craterellus cornucopiodes), also known as the trompette de la morte, the trumpet of death. They are actually quite delicious.There are so many colors of summer for which we forage; deep...
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Edible Milky Mushrooms In Connecticut
The foray table, loaded with mushrooms for the ID sessionWeekly forays with Connecticut Valley Mycological Society have us out in many locations throughout the state of Connecticut looking for fungi....
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Making Bayberry Candles
Last summer Gillian went off to Colonial Survivor summer Camp at the Connecticut River Museum and had a great time building stone walls, tending the chickens, erecting a post and beam structure, and...
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Public Event!
Sunday, October 5 | 3 - 5 PM | Sugar HouseWhat are those weird things that pop up in the woods after the rain? Are you mystified by wild mushrooms? Curious? Scared? Or do they make you hungry?Come to...
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Chestnut Recipe-Chestnut Mousse
In our area of Connecticut we can find many Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) trees on old farmsteads and in a few parks. They don't make good landscaping trees because of the spiny hulls that...
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Final Frozen Forage of 2014
Gillian bundled up and foraging on December 31, 2014I was chatting with a friend this morning and kind of whining about how cold it was outside (upper 20's) and how boring the winter is here in...
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Yule Cake
Every year I make a yule log cake for family holiday gatherings, as one of the many belly-busting desserts. According to Wikipedia, from the Encyclopedia of English Folklore: "For as both December and...
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Cattail Griddlecakes with Fresh Oyster Mushrooms for Breakfast
After watching a TED talk given by Sunny Savage, a wild food forager currently living in Hawaii on the island of Maui, we have been inspired to follow her mantra of "Eat a Wild Food Every Day". She...
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Wild Smoothies
One benefit of putting up the wild foods we harvest is that we are able to use many of the ingredients when they are out of season. Drying, freezing, and canning wild food provides us with a full...
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Sharing, Teaching, and Tagging Along
We get asked very often by new foraging enthusiasts and beginners if we give classes or can let someone tag along with us while we are out foraging. We don't offer formal classes for money like many...
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Beach Plum Recipe- Beach Plum and Hickory Nut Quickbread
Deep in the winter, when everything is under more than two feet of snow, we start getting bored with the short days, long nights, and lack of outdoor recreation. None of us are snow bunnies, and we...
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Winter Tisane Party
No matter how we line them up, set them out, brew them up, winter is a great time for a tea party, or in this case a tisane party. Tisanes are herbal teas, an infusion or decoction of herbs, spices, or...
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Tisanes
OK, let's identify and talk about the tisanes, starting from the top row, upper left corner. Most are infusions, and a few are decoctions. Infusions are made by steeping dried or fresh herbs in warm or...
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