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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

what to do with mulberries

Wonderful Ways to Use Mulberries

It’s mulberry season!  Whether you have a mulberry tree in your back yard or local park or you have generous friends or neighbors, these sweet treats are all over right now. There are so many reasons to gather mulberries. First of all, they’re incredibly healthy.  Mulberries are loaded with nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and […]

How to cook and preserve chicken of the woods mushrooms

What to do with Chicken of the Woods Mushrooms?

We were thrilled when Daryl brought home two big bags of chicken of the woods mushrooms yesterday.  While we harvest lots of pheasant back (dryad’s saddle) mushrooms and morels, this is our first time finding chicken of the woods and I was so excited as I’ve heard for years how much they taste like chicken […]

Make your own homemade fruit leather

Easy DIY Fruit Leather

  Whether you have buckets of wild mulberries or an excess of peaches that you can’t possibly eat in time, fruit leather is a fabulous way to make use of it.  Fruit leather is wonderfully simple and you can customize each batch with whatever fruits you have and flavors you’re craving. Not only is fruit […]

how to make elderflower syrup

How to Make Elderflower Syrup for Elderflower Cakes

If you’ve been following the royal wedding (or even if you haven’t), you’ve probably heard about the spectacular elderflower cake that pastry chef Claire Ptak designed for the much-anticipated wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. The wedding cake is to be served at the Reception. It was designed by Claire Ptak and features elderflower […]

chipotle guacamole

Chipotle’s Easy Guacamole Recipe

We’re big guacamole lovers here, especially when avocados in season and affordable like this time of year.  Guacamole is fantastically healthy and is also a great non-dairy way to cut the heat in Mexican dishes.  Our whole family loves Chipotle (it’s a very affordable way to get healthy, tasty food on the go, and it’s […]

How to Make Dandelion Syrup

How to Make Dandelion Syrup

Daryl has made dandelion syrup several times with our kids and it’s always a big hit.  Not only is it fun, but the syrup tastes delicious and it’s full of vitamins from the dandelions.  It’s also a great vegan substitute for honey, with a similar color and taste. Although it’s the dead of winter right […]

Acorn Ice Cream (paleo and vegan)

Recipe: Acorn Maple Ice Cream (Paleo & Vegan)

I thought I’d share another acorn recipe from my acorn book, in case anybody else has a stash of newly foraged acorns waiting to be put to good use.  This is an ice cream recipe I developed, and like the acorn drop biscuit recipe it is also vegan.  There is a traditional acorn ice cream […]

Acorn drop biscuits

Acorn Drop Biscuits

It’s acorn season, and anybody who follows my Instagram knows that our family has been foraging, processing and cooking with acorns all month.  Acorn processing #fallforaging #forageandharvest #wildedibles #foraging #foragingfamily #septemberforaging #fallflavors #acorns A post shared by Alicia Bayer (@magicandmayhem) on Sep 4, 2017 at 11:04am PDT I made up a batch of acorn drop […]

It’s Elderberry Season!

Daryl and I have been faithfully checking our elder patches for the past few weeks and he brought home a bag of our first elderberry bounty for the year this week. This particular clump of elders is bordering a nursing home that has given us permission to pick their pears and elderberries.  He harvested them […]

FYFO 100 Feed Your Family Organic for $100 (or less!)

FYFO- 100: Feed Your Family Organic for $100 a Week (or less!)

Yes, you can feed your family healthy, organic, non-GMO food and not go bankrupt doing it! Welcome to FYFO-100, where I’ll share how we feed our family of 7 for around $100 a week. Every few days, I’ll share more tips for how we make it work. You can go all-in and learn skills like […]

Foraging and cooking with elderberries and elder flowers

Now in Paperback!

  My elderberry book is now available in a paperback edition!  We heard from many people who wanted a physical copy of the book, especially to make use of it while foraging and for the cookbook section.  I worked over the past couple of months to create the best possible paperback version, with black and […]

Elderberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Elderberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Elderflower season is coming to an end and that means elderberry season is coming soon!  Make sure you use some of this year’s elderberry crop to make some elderberry jam and elderberry pie filling, because they’re so wonderful in recipes like elderberry cream cheese cupcakes (and elderberry thumbprint cookies, and elderberry fluff, and elderberry frosting….). […]

How to make elderflower syrup (or elderflower sparkling wine)!

How to Make Elderflower Soda (or Elderflower Sparkling Wine)

Have you heard of elderflower soda?  This is a traditional elderflower delicacy that is so popular in Romania that it inspired Coca-Cola to release their own version, Fanta Shokata (though theirs contains no real elderflowers). It is also known as Socată or Suc de Soc. Here’s the recipe to make your own, which is another […]

Elderberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

A Magical Life Cake and Cupcakes (Gluten Free, Delicious and Easy!)

I have been making homemade birthday cakes and cupcakes for my kids for almost 20 years now, and they’ve been gluten free for the past 6 years.  With five kids, that means that I have baked a lot of birthday cakes and cupcakes! I tried recipe after recipe, with none of them giving me the […]

Make your own elderberry schnapps from dried elderberries

Make Your Own Elderberry Schnapps!

Here’s another easy recipe from my new book, Elderberries: The Beginner’s Guide to Foraging, Preserving and Using Elderberries for Health Remedies, Recipes, Drinks and More (available now on Kindle and in paperback). This is a beautiful, deep purple schnapps that is so simple to make with either fresh or frozen elderberries.  See the directions at […]

Quick mix and match mini donuts (gluten and dairy free)

Quick Mix-and Match Glazed Mini Donuts (Gluten Free and Dairy Free)

Our 9 year-old, Alex, asked last night if we could make mini donuts together for breakfast for everybody today.  I said yes, and dug out this recipe that I came up with a few years ago.  This is a really easy but delicious recipe that also includes lots of fruit and/or veggies, since each batch […]

Roasted Tomato Sauce (Simple and Delicious!)

Nothing smells better on a fall day than roasted tomato sauce. With back yards and farmers’ markets brimming with fresh tomatoes right now, this is the perfect time to make up a batch.  Once you try, you’ll never want make tomato sauce any other way! If you’ve never made roasted tomato sauce, you don’t know […]

Roots to Stems: How to use every part of your produce!

Root to Stem Cooking: How to Use Every Part of Your Produce

  When you stroll through the farmers’ market or pick up your CSA box, you’re likely to find something that you won’t find in area supermarkets — whole plants.   Local growers tend to leave the leaves on root vegetables like beets and carrots, keep the flowery fronds on the fennel and otherwise give you […]

30 Ways to use mint

Mint is one of those workhorses of the garden. Once you plant it, your hardest job is keeping it from overtaking everything else in the yard and figuring out what to do with it all. It grows easily in most of the country and robustly returns to even the coldest gardens every spring, where it […]

Famous herbalists tell the benefits of nettles

Famous Herbalists Teach How and Why to Use Nettles

Here’s a wonderful video where famous herbalists such as Rosemary Gladstar, Susun Weed and Matthew Wood teach why they love nettles, how to harvest it and use them, their many health benefits and more. The video begins and ends with herbalists David Hoffmann and Isla Burgess talking about why nettles are their favorite plants. During […]

How to make simple elderberry syrup

Natural recipes: Elderberry honey syrup

Every family should keep a jar of elderberry honey syrup in their refrigerator. This simple, natural elixir is fabulous at preventing and treating illnesses and it couldn’t be easier to make or more natural. What’s so great about elderberry syrup? Elderberry syrup is one of the best things on the planet to fight illness. It […]

How to forage and cook with spruce tips (with video for spruce tip jelly)

Spruce tips are wonderful spring edibles that are not only tasty and unique, but also great for us. They are rich in Vitamin C and have been used traditionally for years to soothe coughs and sore throats, as well as to alleviate lung congestion and to treat lung and kidney infections. Best of all, they’re […]

How to cook ramps

How to cook with ramps

It’s ramp season, and whether you buy ramps at the farmer’s market or forage them yourself in the wild, this is the time to take advantage of this delicious (but short lived) delicacy. What are ramps? The Huffington Post says: Here’s the short answer: ramps are a wild onion that grow during the spring in […]

How to cook pheasant’s back or dryad’s saddle mushrooms

Pheasant’s back mushrooms can be incredibly easy to find this time of year and incredibly tasty — but you have to know which ones to use and how to prepare them right. Many foragers are told not to bother with pheasant’s back mushrooms, also known as dryad’s saddles. While it’s undisputed that they are edible […]

10 Delicious ways to use mulberries

(Note from Daryl:  This was originally shared in my urban foraging column on Examiner many years ago.) I shared how to easily harvest mulberries with your kids last week. Now, here are ten great ways to use your haul. A little about mulberries: You can use them in any recipe that calls for berries. If […]