Spontaneous salads neither sown nor stolen
May 6, 2012
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The lettuces in the DemoGarden haven’t even come up, yet this is the sort of salad that we’ve been eating for the past 3 weeks. All 18 of these vegetables grow spontaneously in our permaculture garden, most of them sown more than 3 years ago. This bouquet-eating abundance is a testament to why we need to transform our cities into resplendent edible landscapes.
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Ingredients: spinach, red orach, chard, smokey fennel, ramps leaves, ramps flowers, chives, chive buds/flowers, mystery speckled red lettuce, purple frills mustard, yellow mustard, raspberry leaf (plucked by accident, tastes wonderful), broccoli shoots, mint, ground elder, sorrel. Not pictured, garlic mustard (alliaria petiolata).
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We’re dipping these amazing leaves into our own lapsang souchong kombucha vinaigrette, also fermented from wild yeasts.
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Edible bouquets, we walk, we pluck.
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We talk about how lucky we are.
debra at 21:42 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Dear Annet,
November 8, 2011
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Weak, Polar Circle light illuminating a dried pear
Thanks for bringing those most tasty and juicy pears to the food co-op last pickup day. We bought 4 kilos and the next day had already eaten an entire kilo! The last 3k we dried because they were threatening to go soft. Just look what they turned into! Golden, chewy, hint of vanilla, sticky, full of flavour!
Please let us know if you’ll be harvesting again soon, because I’d love to go with you and help pluck. Of course I’m happy to dry a bunch for you as well; dried pears bring a huge amount of happiness into the home.
Merçi, verheugnis alom en tot straks op een pluk dag,
Debra
debra at 14:34 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
The Spore Report
November 7, 2011
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A spore print, probably of an agaricus arvensis.
What an exuberant spore print, probably of an agaricus arvensis, or maybe an agaricus campestris, possibly an agaricus bitorquis, or if I’m lucky, an agaricus silvicola. They’re all edible. Still, most likely it’s a horse mushroom, agaricus arvensis. I found it along the bike path, cutting through the woods, near the border of some grassland.
Ruling out the poisonous possible doppelgängers, it’s unlikely to be an agaricus xanthodermus. Why? Because it’s flesh is not turning yellow when bruised or cut, and because it doesn’t smell of creosote. It smells of anise, and of sweet leaf mould, like the woody path it came from. It smells like it’s going to be delicious fried in butter and served on toast at lunch.
And there’s at least one more…
debra at 10:16 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
