Pickled wood ear mushroom relish and how to use it. From foraged wild mushrooms.

My pickled wood ear mushroom relish on grilled Polish sausage with 2 kinds of mustard, grilled peppers and caramelized onions. It tastes as good as it looks!

Wood ear mushrooms are generally regulated exclusively to Asian cuisine, where they are revered as both food and medicine. A Google search will reveal recipes for hot and sour soup, spicy Sichuan salad and the occasional stir-fry.

All great recipes (I've shared my version of hot and sour and Sichuan salad before), but I had to wonder: is there a way for this easy-to-identify wild mushroom to enter main-stream American cuisine?

Wood ear mushroom (also known as tree ear, jelly ear and Latin name: Auricularia auricula), faces a couple of huge challenges.

First, it looks like this:

Despite their unappetizing appearance, wood ear mushrooms have
no flavor, and absorb the taste of whatever you cook them with. 

And second, it has a weird, gelatinous, crunchy texture.

But taste? It doesn't taste bad, in fact, it doesn't really taste like anything. Which is what gave me the idea to pickle it and create a relish.

After all, a good relish is crunchy (wood ear: check) and absorbs the flavors of the vinegar and spices (wood ear: check). Why a relish over a traditional snack pickle? I'm not sure, except I was bored with just pickling things, and I also felt the thin flesh of the wood ear wouldn't hold up as well as a snack food.

The important thing is that they came out great!

Easy 30 minute greenbriar ratatouille. Vegan, paleo, low carb, gluten-free, and low fat.

So clearly I've been on a Mediterranean kick lately, with a cleavers pesto last week (I've been enjoying the left-overs since), and a thistle Greek salad the other day. So when I was looking at an ENORMOUS haul of greenbriar shoots, it's really no surprise that my mind turned to ratatouille.

Ratatouille is a French dish, usually served in the summer because it's loaded with summer veggies: summer squash (zucchini/yellow squash), eggplant, and tomatoes. But it comes from the Provonce region, on the Mediterranean, where the cities of Marseille and Nice are located. It's a hearty, rustic stew, that just happens to be vegan, low carb, low calorie, low fat, dairy free, gluten-free and paleo; though it's often served with bread, you could also eat it as a side dish for meat, or over polenta or pasta.

The spirit of ratatouille is to make a healthy meal out of what's seasonally available, and while tomatoes aren't exactly in season, I did have a ton of spring greenbriar, so I decided to go for it. This dish involves caramelizing the onions, and since I enjoyed the greenbriar caramelized as a pizza topping last year, I thought this would be a slam dunk! It was fantastic, even my husband liked it, and he doesn't like REGULAR ratatouille! Best of all, the greenbriar cooks a lot faster than the traditional eggplant, turning an hour-long prep into a meal on your table in 30 minutes!

Thick and juicy, but still tender and bendable,
these greenbriars are at the perfect stage for eating.

Greenbriars, aka Similax species, are only edible in the early to mid-spring, because it's the young, new growth you eat. The shoots and young leaves are quite tasty, and because of some sugars in them, they also caramelize beautifully. They are fairly easy to ID, I wouldn't quite say beginner level, but definitely for a slightly experienced novice. Please check out my post on how to ID greenbriars.

You CAN eat thistles! Plus a vegan, paleo Greek salad recipe

Thistles. Covered in spikes, bane of young children playing outside, hated by homeowners who want a perfect yard, and loathed by ranchers who fear the weed will take over the grasslands needed by their cattle. Thistles are also edible, at least in parts.

The problem, of course, is the nasty spines. They completely cover the thick, juicy stalks, and the ruffled edges of each leaf. But if you can get beyond them, the inner core of the stem, and the "mid rib" of the leaf (the light green/whitish part), are both edible, and have a texture very similar to celery. There is one downside: thistles, especially the leaf mid rib, tend to be on the bitter side.

Foraging dandelion stem, gluten-free, keto, paleo "noodles" -- for free!

Hello! Do you ever pin something on Pinterest, 100% intending to try it, when the time is right/you have the materials/the plant you need is in season, but by the time you actually can try it, you've completely forgotten about it? I'm ashamed to say that dandelion stem "noodles" are one of those for me. 

I first saw the idea over over at Wild Food Girl, and it seemed totally interesting, but my dandelions were always short-stemmed, and growing sparsely. It didn't seem worth bending over and picking for hours for piddly little 4" noodles. 

But on Sunday, I encountered a field full of densely growing dandelion patches, where I could find 6-10 stalks in every square foot, and those stalks were long! Some were over 12". Fortunately, my mind remembered the post and I decided to experiment.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but many of the stems were a foot or so long!

And oh. my. goodness. What an experiment it was! These might be my new favorite way to eat dandelions. They become perfectly soft, almost exactly the texture of top-quality ramen noodles from your favorite restaurant. The flavor is mild and fresh, very slightly bitter, and tastes incredibly wholesome.  

And why pay for trendy, low calorie noodles, when you can get these for free? They've got nearly 0 calories, low carb, no sugar, no fat, and are gluten-free, keto and paleo!

Best of all, they extend the dandelion harvest even farther! I picked these from dandelion heads that had already gone to seed, long after the greens are good, and even after the flowers. Harvesting these stems extends dandelion season by a week or two; totally awesome, when you consider how nutritious dandelions are for you!

Dandelion stem "noodle" recipe:

Bring dandelion stems to boil in a pot of lightly salted water. Boil for about 7 minutes, or until tender. Drain, and serve as you would any other kind of noodle. Enjoy!

Pickled greenbriar tips foraging recipe. Fat free, gluten-free, vegan, paleo.

It's that time of the year again! Greenbriar   Is a really unique wild edible that you generally can only get in the early to mid spring, March through April around here in Texas, and April through June back where I used to live up north.

Greenbriar, genus name: Smilax, is an easy-to-identify vine, and only the young growing tips are edible, which is why you can harvest in the spring. 

Learn how to identify greenbriar here!

I was only able to get a few handfuls this early, but I'm sure I'll be pulling bags of greenbriar from the woods soon! Because I only had a small amount, I decided to make more of a snack, rather than a full meal. I thought pickling would work out well, and it did! They held their crispness well, and the flavor pairs perfectly with salty, sour, and dill.

Here's what I did, but feel free to try your own pickling recipe:

1. Blanch 2 cups of greenbriar tips in boiling water for 1 minute. Add them to a glass or glazed ceramic container (not metal or plastic)
2. Smack 1 tsp coriander seeds and 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns with the side of a knife a couple of times. Mince 2 cloves of garlic.
3. Bring 2 cups of white vinegar to a boil, add in peppercorns, coriander, garlic, 1 tsp. dried dill, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1 tsp powdered cumin, and 1/4 tsp sugar.
4. Boil for 5 minutes then pour in with the greenbriar. Seal and allow to come to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 24 hours. Store in the fridge and enjoy them within 2 weeks.

Check out all my greenbriar posts!

Henbit and dead nettle shakshuka: eggs, greens and feta in a spicy tomato sauce

Shakshuka is spicy, rich, decadent, yet healthy at the same time. The heat level is why it's commonly known as "eggs in hell". It's a vegetarian North African/Middle Eastern/Israeli meal that's eaten overseas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it's become a hip brunch meal in some of the hottest West Coast cities. It's vegetarian, gluten-free, low in carbohydrates, low in fat and high in protein. You can omit the feta and it becomes Paleo and dairy-free.

There are a lot of Shakshuka recipes out there, but I've been told that they all leave something out, that when you eat it in the Middle East they add a lot of fresh local herbs and spices, many of which would be foraged. With that in mind, I thought adding henbit to the dish was appropriate, as henbit originates in North Africa.  Dead nettle and curly dock aren't from North Africa, but they have become local here in the US, so I felt they would fit the spirit of adding local greens.

Make sure you only use the top of the henbit plants, as the bottom stems are woody and don't really soften in the dish. I inadvertently left a couple in, and they were the only thing I didn't like.

Quick mushroom fridge pickle recipe, with foraged ringless honey mushrooms. Vegan, gluten-free, paleo,

Sour. Salty. Spicy. Dilly, and garlicky.

Is your mouth watering yet?
These are some of my favorite flavors, and they are loaded into these fast and easy wild mushroom fridge pickles.

What are fridge pickles? Basically, they are a veggie or mushroom soaked in vinegar and spices, in your fridge, till the food soaks up all the flavor (over about 48 hours) and becomes an excellent snack or condiment. Fridge pickles must be refrigerated (they aren't shelf-stable), as they are neither canned nor fermented, nor are they salty enough to salt-cure, and they keep for about 2-3 weeks. Because there is no canning involved, they come together quickly.

I made these will ringless honey mushrooms, Armillaria tabescens, (learn how to ID them here) but you can use other wild mushrooms, or even store-bought. The smaller the mushroom the better, as they will soak up the flavor faster!

Avgolemeno recipe (Greek-style chicken & lemon soup) with foraged purslane. Gluten-free, low-carb, paleo

A quick jaunt around the neighborhood yielded quite a basket full of purslane, and some wood sorrel. Both plants contain oxalic acid, with a bright, lemony flavor. I decided to try adding the weeds to a Greek Avgolemeno, a chicken soup with lemon, eggs and fresh veggies.

Given that purslane also has a mucilaginous (thickening) quality, I decided to bypass the rice that's usually added to the soup, and make it 100% gluten-free and paleo. It was a great lunch, and I have plenty to bring to work for healthy lunches throughout the week!

Foraged Japanese Knotweed Fridge Pickles Recipe

When first added to the jar they are very pretty, but unfortunately they loose
their bright green color, and become a dull olive

So I happen to be a pickle-a-holic. My parents tell a variety of stories about my early experiences with pickles; but my favorite is how, at 18 months old, I was such a terror--crying and fussing--that they couldn't go out anywhere. Their favorite restaurant, The Hungry Lion, discovered that if they fed me baby gherkins non-stop, I would shut up, and actually be a pleasant dinner companion. After that, my parent's went there every Friday, and the staff would have a bowl ready-to-go on our table before we were seated.

Knotweed stand, ripe for the picking!

There are knotweed pickle recipes out there, but they tend to be pretty basic--vinegar, knotweed, maybe a spice or two. I tried to get a lot more flavor into my pickles, and I really think it paid off. I made 3 flavors of pickles that I want to share with you: tart & sour, hot & sour, and sweetly exotic. The sweet & exotic were far and away my favorite, and the preferred flavor overall. The knotweed holds up well textually, staying crunchy; and it keeps its slightly tart flavor, albeit somewhat mellowed.

Fridge pickles are pickles that haven't been canned (either by water-bath canning or pressure canning). I don't know if I would try canning the knotweed, since canning involves boiling, and knotweed can get pretty mushy when boiled. These pickles can be stored in the fridge much like any open jar of pickles, for about two weeks--but I seriously doubt you will be able to keep yourself from eating them all in less than half that time!