Wednesday, December 30, 2015

A Wild Year


Well, how do I choose the highlights from 12 months of foraging? Impossible.

So I close my eyes and point. I have thousands of images from 2015, have filled another Moleskine notebook with new recipes, and have spent more hours than I know hunting, collecting, cleaning, cooking, reading, thinking and writing about wild herbs, vegetables and fruits. Plus a mushroom or four. Apart from the heavy duty fiction I love to read, I can think of nothing that has given me as much pleasure as discovering plants, their flavours, and how to use them in the kitchen.

January - that was a shoot for Edible Manhattan's 2015 Alcohol Issue, using pickled field garlic
February - spicebush-naartjie cordial for Kaia Wine Bar
March - quinces, in South Africa
April - back in New York: Japanese knotweed tips and field garlic
May - upstate wood nettles
June - American burnweed
July - elderflower cordial fizzing over
August - suuring, Oxali pes-caprae, in Cape Town again
September - Cape vermouth making, with indigenous herb and garden flowers
October - yippee, mushroom season in New York: puffballs and maitake, with mugwort
November - a snack for a walk: barberry-spicebush loaf, quails eggs and mugwort dipping salt
December - cold-season oyster mushrooms

A new year of foraging is just around the corner...

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4 comments:

  1. That would have made a nice forager's calendar for 2016. Maybe you should keep that in mind for 2017? Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, Marie! Such creativity; truly impressive. I've seen and read a lot of interesting year-end wrap-ups in my life but this one truly takes the cake ... or "leads the weeds" or something. Thank you for another year of thoughtful, creative and inspiring posts; 66 Square Feet always brightens up my days. Cheers and the best to you both,
    Diane in sub-freezing but still sunny
    Denver CO

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Diane - and thanks for the encouragement.

      Delete

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