Foraging

My family and I worked a patch of blackcap raspberries along a road winding through the mountains of central Pennsylvania. We’d waited until the heat of the July day broke with the evening to come pick. With only an hour of light left, we quickly tried to fill a gallon to freeze, and hopefully a cup...

If you’ve ever accidently grazed against a stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) with your bare skin, you’ll know it. You’ll first feel a stinging sensation, quick and sharp, and then your skin will start to blister. The accompanying pain and itch can last for days. This is all thanks to the hollow hairs...

Milkweed is a shining example of why we shouldn’t believe everything that we read. It carries with it, to this day, many myths that have traveled from mouth to ear and onward without fact-checking or personal experience. Myth number one is that it’s toxic, myth number two is that it’s bitter, and...

Spruce tips have been having a culinary moment for a few years now, which I love and understand—they are delightful, but I don’t know why the spotlight hasn’t expanded to include the tender tips of all our other evergreens, too. Pine, fir, and hemlock are easier to access for most people in the...

I grew up on a farm, not far from where I live now. No one has lived there since my parents sold the place, but there was some road work done out front about a decade ago with heavy excavation. Someone sure did move in then, and fast—Japanese knotweed. Since the first shoots emerged from the freshly...

It’s April. If you’ve noticed the world seeming louder it’s not just spring thaw and songbirds, it’s also millions of people arguing about ramps. These sweet little wild leeks that never make a peep sure do cause people to get rowdy. I’m not going to weigh in on one side of the great ramp debate or...

If we learn anything from the bear about emerging from winter, it should be to not mistake the mud of spring for barren ground. There might not be showy greens and flowers waving their flags for us to come eat, but if we had the sense of a hungry animal we’d know that the real meal is in the soil...

Seaweed used to be the stuff of my nightmares. As a kid, at the beach, the rafts of seaweed floating in the surf were like ominous clouds in the blue sky of my ocean-swimming plans. I could not imagine what swam beneath their cloak being anything less than sinister. After storms, when the whole...

Bitterness is one of the nastiest traits in a person, but the flavor version shouldn't have the same bad rap. Bitter foods aren’t things we’re often compelled to eat piles of, like sweet or salty snacks, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to love a burst of bitterness here and there. It’s thought...

There’s this one meal that I still think about, years later, whenever I smell smoke on a wool sweater. We were jump-shooting ducks from a canoe, slipping down this little switchback ribbon of a stream toward a cranberry bog. It was a tremendous year for fruit—the bog was gem-studded with them and...

Most of my favorite childhood memories rush back to me with a whiff of mint because I likely had a birch twig clamped between my teeth when they happened. This was thanks to my best friend's older brother. He was a born-in-workboots kind of farm boy with a talent for cussing so impressively that he...