Elderberry flower pancakes

 My elderberries are flowering now and since it seems to me like the birds usually get to the actual berries before I do I decided to go ahead and make some elderberry flour pancakes.

Sun choke sprouts

  Sun choke sprouts    Like so many other growing things both the tops and the part that lies under the earth are edible. I had a bunch of sunchokes left over from last year as usual. I pickled them, fry them with potatoes, and add them to beans and other things for an added crunch. Because so many of them had already sprouted I decided to see about adding the sprouts to my salad. They also add a delicious crunch to a salad 

cleaver tonic with pineapple and orange juice

 A friend posted yesterday that she makes cleaver/pineapple juice for her kids each spring and they love it.  I had tried cleavers before and wasn't blown away by the texture so I thought the idea of putting them in a juicer w other greens might just be the thing.  I added some fresh mint, lambsquarters and the petals of dandelion just for fun.  I had opened a can of pineapple and kept the juice a couple of days ago and had a mandarin orange on hand and threw them all together in the juicer and man, was it good!!

What’s in your salad?

I look forward to this time of year for all sorts of things popping up in my yard and my garden.  Here are some finds for this year's salads

Turnip flowers from wintered over turnips

Violet flowers and leaves

curly dock leaves

dandelion flower petals and evening primrose leaves  and lambsquarter microgreens

 There’s nothing I like better than to throw a bunch of spring flowers and a beautiful spring salad. Fortunately I have lots of wild greens and flowers growing in my yard and I bet you do too.

A Cherokee Tradition Spring onions and eggs

  A Cherokee tradition . Spring onions and eggs 

Tradition

Ode to a Forager

 I am working with a group called Poetic Justice.  We do a program involving writing with women in prison.  We both work on the same assignments and share them with each other.  This assignment involved writing an ode to ones self about one or more attributes that you like about yourself  This is mine...

Ode to a Forager

 

When you were young, in meadows wandered

At home in wild, and quiet places

Saddened when the bountiful beauty was lost and squandered

By those taking more, as if it were a race

 

Now siting by a whispering stream

You point to food growing along the banks

Others fail to care, or so it seems

And do not stop to offer thanks

 

Will the gifts given to sustain all the living

be treasured with surprise and wonder

Honored beauty, nurture, healing….

Or lost to us as short sighted work to plunder.

Summer greens That you may have never thought about

That you may have never thought about. 

 This summer salad includes lettuce, with the additions of curly dock greens, okra and sweet potato leaves. I chop them up and take the ribs out before adding them to the salad. These leaves are very nutritious and I cannot decipher the difference between them and lettuce once I’ve added my dressings. The pasta Primavera also includes gifts from the garden. I added garlic, tomatoes, and basil, all from the summer garden.

so my curly dock was cut down to the ground at the middle of summer and now it’s sprouting new growth so the salad has curly dock in it for one. Also I have since planted okra and sweet potatoes. Did you know that you can eat the leaves of both okra and sweet potatoes?! I chopped them up very small and add them to my salad as they are a little bit tougher than what you’re used to if you’re just used to eating lettuce If you chop them up small though you’ll never know the difference :-) also the pasta Primavera had fresh basil, garlic, and tomatoes from the garden.