Harvest Recipe: Rhubarb Lemonade

We recently had a bounty of rhubarb and I found myself looking for a great way to use it past the usual recipes. When I stumbled across a rhubarb juice recipe, I had to try it. That original recipe was a little bit (okay, a lot!) too sweet for my taste and even my kids […]

Great Books for Mending, Darning and Improving Your Clothes

You’ve heard of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken pots are repaired with lacquer mixed with gold so they’re more beautiful than they were to begin with.   We can do the same things with our clothes, blankets and other belongings with darning, embroidery, patching and other techniques.  It’s wonderful to learn simple mending techniques, […]

mix and match snack cake (gluten free)

Mix and Match Snack Cake (gluten free)

This is another recipe I’m putting online because friends ask me for it so often.  🙂    Here’s an easy, delicious way to use extra fruits and veggies you have on hand and create a fabulous gluten free treat at the same time.  Every time we make it, it has a different flavor since we […]

spring 2020 foraging wrap-up

Our Favorite Early Spring Wild Foods to Forage

It’s only February but we’re impatiently waiting to start foraging wild foods again.  This time of year, when there’s still snow blanketing our Minnesota landscape, I’m already making mental lists of what wild edible foods will be emerging soon and what we want to look for. Here are our favorite wild foods that we forage […]

How to make old fashioned sugarplums

How to Make Old Fashioned Sugarplums

This time of year, our family really loves making old-fashioned cookies and treats — especially sugarplums.  These fruit-based treats are all natural, gluten free, easy and customizable, plus they’re really fun to make with kids. I’m sure everyone has heard of sugarplums at Christmastime (“While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads” from Clement Moore’s […]

How to Make Easy Crab Apple Cider

So many homes and parks have crab apple trees and so few people put these tasty, healthy little fruits to use.  Here’s a recipe to change all that!  It’s easy, packed with vitamins and antioxidants, and delicious.  It’s also practically free! I came up with this recipe to use up some crab apples that we […]

What to do with lambsquarters

What Do You Do With Lambsquarters?

If you have a garden, chances are that you’ve been pulling up one of the best greens in it for years.  Lambsquarters are a very common “weed” in yards and gardens, but they’re actually a really tasty plant that you should probably get to know! Lambsquarters are also known as lambs quarters, wild spinach, pigweed, […]

The world's easiest and best tasting salsa

The Best (and Easiest) Fresh Salsa!

There’s nothing better when you have fresh tomatoes than homemade salsa — and luckily there’s almost nothing easier too.  Here’s our 3-minute fresh salsa recipe, which is the type of salsa (pico de gallo) you get from authentic Mexican restaurants and so good. Our recipe is adapted from one I found years ago that we […]

You Really Need a Cherry Tree (Plus Easy Cherry Pit Syrup and Liqueur Recipes)

A few years ago, we purchased a little sour cherry tree from some big box store because it was on clearance at the end of the garden season.  That little cherry tree is now a huge, productive tree that we love! It makes the most beautiful white flowers in the spring. And then around July […]

Gluten free pizza crust from scratch

Best-Ever Gluten Free Pizza Crust

Life is too short to eat bad gluten-free pizza, and there’s no reason you have to. Gluten free pizza dough is easy to make at home (it’s even quicker and easier than traditional pizza dough!) and it is honestly delicious. We’ve been gluten free in our family for over eight years now, and pizza was […]

Our 2019 Foraging Wrap-up (elderberries)

Our 2019 Foraging Wrap-Up

Last year was a good year for foraging for our family.  We’ve been using wild foods as a major part of our diet for about 7 years now and it’s become a regular part of our routine for much of the year.  Here’s how it looked for us in 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/B1yDwnQBsi1/ What was good We […]

Foraged and Home Canned Foods We Eat in the Winter

Making Windfall Applesauce

This article was originally published in Daryl’s Cooking with Kids column at examiner.com in September, 2013.  Some links are affiliate links, meaning we get a small commission on purchases made through our links. Making fresh applesauce is something every kid should get to do. We are lucky enough to know several people with apple trees, […]

cranberry walnut muffins

Gluten-free Cranberry Walnut Applesauce Muffins

(Note: This recipe was originally posted by Daryl in his Cooking with Kids column on Examiner.com in 2012.) Here’s a quick and easy way to make tasty gluten-free, dairy free muffins that doesn’t require any special ingredients or much effort. Since our family went GF last spring, we’ve tried a lot of recipes that have […]

The Joy of Foraging: Gary Lincoff's Illustrated Guide to Finding, Harvesting, and Enjoying a World of Wild Food

Review: The Joy of Foraging (What’s Good, What’s Bad)

I read The Joy of Foraging: Gary Lincoff’s Illustrated Guide to Finding, Harvesting, and Enjoying a World of Wild Food while vacationing at a friend’s house, courtesy of her library book pile.  It’s a good book to get from the library before purchasing it to get a feel for whether it will be a good fit […]

Foraging for dock seeds and making dock seed flour

Cooking with Dock Seeds

Dock seeds are prolific everywhere you look right now, so this is a great time to gather them and make dock seed flour.  If you haven’t ever cooked with dock seeds, they’re an easy and healthy source of wild flour to forage. Dock grows as an invasive weed all over the world.  You can often […]

pineapple nettle smoothie

Pineapple Nettle Smoothies

We try to use nettles a lot around here since they’re so healthy, so tasty and grow so plentifully all around us.  One of the kids’ favorite ways to enjoy nettles are in smoothies.  Yes, really! You probably know how healthy stinging nettles are for you, but most folks don’t realize you can use them […]

zucchini fritters (easy, gluten free, vegan version too)

Cooking From the Garden: Easy Zucchini Fritters

Got boat loads of zucchini this time of year?  Here’s a delicious and easy way to make use of them.  Zucchini fritters are kid-friendly and tasty, and the recipe can easily be converted to gluten free (the way we make them), paleo and/or vegan. The recipe is very simple and adaptable, not even really a […]

Trees of Power Review

Trees of Power: A Must-Read for Foragers, Homesteaders and Environmentalists

A somewhat nerdy looking new book was quietly published this year that has the potential to not just greatly improve your life, but greatly improve the world.  I admit that sounds like a bit of hyperbole, but Trees of Power offers a really inspirational look at how the trees that are all around us can […]

Easy two-ingredient sorbet

Easy Two-Ingredient Sorbet (Vegan)

Here’s a super simple recipe that the kids like to make for fruit sorbet.  I even let them make it for breakfast, because they think they’re getting a treat and I know it’s healthy. Just blend frozen fruit (pineapple is a family favorite and what’s pictured here) with sweetened vanilla non-dairy milk of your choice.  […]

Foraging Recipe: Ramp Salt

Wild Ramp Seasoning Salt

Here’s one of my favorite ways to use wild ramps, and you can use it to enjoy the wonderful flavor of ramps all year long.  Dry the leaves and grind them with coarse sea salt for a simple but delicious wild ramp salt.  Simply dry wild ramp leaves until crisp and then put them in […]

10 Edible Flowers and How to Use Them

Flowers can turn meals positively magical.  From drinking out of tulip cups to to scattering flower petals in Wildflower Pound Cake to tossing brightly colored nasturtium petals in a salad, edible flowers can take an ordinary dish and make it extraordinary. There are plenty of flowers that are edible, but you need to be sure […]

Instant Pot Roasted Cauliflower Head Recipe

Instant Pot Makes Roasted Cauliflower Heads Quick & Easy

We love roasted cauliflower heads in our family but it takes a lot of time and effort to roast them traditionally to cook up tender and bake throughout.  I’ve discovered that the Instant Pot can eliminate most of the cooking time and delivers perfect roasted cauliflower heads in much less time. It turns out the […]

Jack's gluten free impossible crust apple or pear cobbler

Jack’s Impossible Crust Apple Cobbler (Gluten Free)

This is a fantastic simple and delicious recipe for apple or pear cobbler where the batter makes its own crust.  Our fifteen year old son, Jack, made it last week and proclaimed that it was his favorite dish so far that he’s baked (which is saying a lot, as the kid loves to bake). We […]

Does Cattail Starch Contain Gluten?

Most foragers know that cattails are an excellent wild food, so much so that Euell Gibbons called cattails “nature’s supermarket.”  Foragers eat the hearts of the young stalks and the immature flower spikes, the pollen and the root starch, which can be used for a versatile cooking flour.  That said, many foraging sites say that […]

What Foraged and Home Grown Foods Do We Eat In the Winter?

Since next to nothing is fresh in the garden or the wild in winter in this part of the country, this is the time we rely on the root cellar and pantry. Canned, dried, frozen and root cellar foods are all staples for winter cooking for our family, including lots of wild foods we foraged […]

Our 2018 foraging wrap up

Our 2018 Foraging Wrap-Up

This past year was a pretty good year for foraging for our family.  We foraged several hundred pounds of wild foods total, including some that were new to us.  We also foraged quite a nice variety of wild foods and medicinal plants — 35 different kinds! We foraged in our own back yard, in parks, […]

Acorn Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (gluten free)

Acorn Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (gluten free)

I brought acorn spice cupcakes to my latest acorn presentation last week, and lots of people have asked for the recipe.  Here it is, excerpted from my acorn foraging book.  This recipe works with either gluten free flour mixes or regular wheat flour.  Most of the recipes in my book are gluten free or have […]

FREE printable foraging record keeping sheets!

FREE Printable Foraging Record Pages

Once you get started foraging, it’s helpful to keep records of what you gathered and when.  We usually keep a running list on the fridge, but I decided it would be fun to have some nice looking printable pages to start keeping a more permanent record of all of our wild food harvests.  Since I […]

Foraged and Home Canned Foods We Eat in the Winter

Easy and Delicious Summer Fruit Cobbler

Foragers and back yard gardeners often have the happy blessing of buckets of fruit to make use of this time of year.  Here’s a wonderful recipe to make use of blueberries, mulberries, black raspberries, mulberries, peaches, strawberries or any other fruit that you have a bounty of. Sometime around mid-July every year, we pick over […]

Acorn Rice Patties recipe

Recipe: Acorn Rice Patties

It’s acorn season, which means one of the best wild foods out there is abundant and free right now.  Acorn rice patties are delicious ways to make use of acorns and also happen to be vegetarian and gluten free. We usually have dried acorns and acorn flour on hand for cooking all year long, but […]

Easy Gluten Free Zucchini Bread

Easy Gluten Free Zucchini Bread

It’s zucchini season, meaning that even if you don’t grow zucchini you probably have more than enough giant zucchinis to find something to do with.  Here’s a delicious way to make use of it.  This zucchini bread recipe is simple and quite versatile.  You can use your favorite gluten free flour mix or a blend […]

Tales from a Foragers Kitchen

Rodale Pulls Foraging Cookbook That Gives Dangerous Information on Elderberries, Acorns and Mushrooms

A well-known Instagram star’s popular new foraging cookbook has been pulled by its publisher, thanks to the fact that some actual foragers got a hold of it and alerted readers to some dangerous (and seriously unpalatable) recipes inside it. Tales from a Forager’s Kitchen: The Ultimate Field Guide to Evoke Curiosity and Wonderment with More […]

The Fruit Forager's Companion: Ferments, Desserts, Main Dishes, and More from Your Neighborhood and Beyond

A New Favorite Foraging Book: The Fruit Forager’s Companion

When I received a digital ARC of Sara Bir’s The Fruit Forager’s Companion, the only thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that it was deleted after the review period and I didn’t get to keep a copy.   I absolutely loved this book and plan to purchase a copy of my own. […]