It’s both a fun and a frustrating time of the year for gardening, because almost all of the plants are in their permanent homes (waiting just a little longer on the tomatoes and peppers for the soil temperature to warm up), but there’s nothing to harvest yet.
However, that’s definitely not the case in the foraging world! I’ve posted before about some of the cool things we’ve found, but today I want to show you some of the ways we’ve been using our foraging finds.
First up, we were so lucky and excited to have found more ramps. These mild oniony little plants have been our favorite thing to forage and eat so far. The only real problem with them is that they don’t keep well in the fridge. The leaves wilt quickly, so our best bet has been to put them into formats that keep longer. Enter ramp butter, ramp mayo, and ramp vinaigrette.
Pierogis with ramp bulbs in place of onions
The ramp butter is pretty simple. Mince up the leaves as fine as you can get them, and mix well into a stick of softened butter. Then wrap it up in some plastic wrap and refrigerate! We’ve loved this on our everything bagels, with scrambled eggs, and to cook up some fish. The ramp mayo is the same principle, just with mayo instead of butter, and Mark has been loving this on his sandwiches at lunch. We just tried the ramp vinaigrette with dinner last night, and although some of the other flavors do mask the ramps a bit, it’s still an absolutely delicious dressing.
We also found an abundance of ostrich fern fiddleheads. I had tried them before sauteed and enjoyed them a lot. But this time after boiling, I breaded them the same way I would chicken (a coat of flour and seasoning, dip in an egg wash, and then bread crumbs and more seasoning on the outside) and fried them in a pan. Delicious popcorn fiddleheads!
The stinging nettle has also been plentiful, and so rather than steaming and sautéing them like we did the first time, I boiled them and pureed them into a soup! This one was a complete experiment; I didn’t use a recipe or anything, just kind of guessed. I added some cream, chicken stock, and some different seasonings and spices. It turned out really tasty! The richness did make it a bit hard to eat a huge bowl of it, but we really enjoyed some small bowls and dipping bread into it.
And it took a try or two, but I finally think I have a method set for cooking wintercress. First, I’m only picking the top couple inches of any given stem. The lower parts of the stalk are super fibrous and can get almost impossible to chew. Second, I try to choose only the stems that have primarily closed buds rather than open flowers. These ones are less bitter. Then, blanch them for just short time, and then sauté with butter, salt, and pepper! I can’t wait to find another patch of these and make a big batch as a side dish with dinner. They’re like a slightly more bitter asparagus as far as taste.
What’s kind of crazy with the foraging is that I’m actually beginning to see a slight cost reduction in the grocery bill. At least a couple meals last week included veggie side dishes that I had found rather than purchased! So it’s a super fun hobby that might actually save us some money rather than cost of some money, and gets us out of the house and into nature. Win, win.
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 