How-To (DIY stuff)

How to Make Oil Cured Black Olives

Curing olives in springtime? Who knew? But early spring is the time to gather ripe black olives for oil-curing, and I love me some oil-cured olives.

How-To (DIY stuff)

Chasing the Clam

I have dug clams my whole life. But nothing prepared me for the thrill of clamming for Pacific horseneck and butter clams. This wasn't foraging, this was hunting. And I love it.

Recipe

Edible Amanitas: Vernicoccora

Sacramento is a haven for amanita mushrooms. Many are deadly. But not all. One, the coccora, is among the finest-tasting mushrooms in the world. But be very careful.

Ducks and Geese

How to Make Smoked Duck

If you have never smoked a duck before you really ought to. Duck and goose lend themselves to the caresses of smoke: They're rich, fatty and are wonderful as leftovers in sandwiches.

Foraging

Eating Santa’s Shroom

Amanita muscaria can be a hallucinatory mushroom, a possible symbol of Santa and his flying reindeer. But it also can be eaten safely, if you do it right. So I decided to take a Christmas trip down the rabbit hole...

How-To (DIY stuff)

Homemade Hot Sauce

I've been making my own hot sauces for years, but none have been as good as this sauce I made with wild chiltepin chiles from southern Arizona.

Berries and Fruits

How to Make Elderberry Syrup

It's elderberry season, and making elderberry syrup is the first thing I do once the berries turn ripe every year. After all these years running this blog, I thought I'd finally write down the recipe.

Foraging

Cooking Blue Camas

Blue Camas, camassia quamash, has been a staple of the Northwest Indians for centuries, but few modern cooks have experimented with this edible bulb. Here are the results of my experiments.

Foraging

Blue Camas and Other Edible Bulbs

Last week I found lots of wild edible bulbs in the High Sierra, notably blue camas. But eating bulbs has twin problems: Poisonous look-alikes, and the fact that their flowers are achingly beautiful.

Foraging

Sea Beans, Salicornia, Samphire, Pickleweed

How to pick and cook salicornia, the plant of a thousand names: Saltwort, samphire, chicken feet, whatever -- no matter what you call it, this is one of the finest foraged foods around.

Foraging

Bracken Fern: Food or Poison?

Bracken fern lives all over the world. And most every place it lives, people eat it. Yet it's recently been branded as a carcinogen. That seems to be true, but like all things, the poison's in the dose.

Foraging

Eating Yucca Flowers

No matter where I went, from here in Sacramento all the way to South Florida, yucca plants are in bloom. There are lots of different species, but the flowers are all edible - they taste like a cross between a green bean and an artichoke leaf.