Come Join Me! Nettle Foraging Workshop with Slow Food Seattle- March 30th

Come join me & other Slow Food Seattle members & friends - I'll be leading a nettle foraging workshop on March 30th, from 12 PM - 2 PM at Discovery Park in Seattle! Tickets are $10 per person, and you'll go home with a bag full of nettles, as well as plenty of ideas on how to use them! Tickets are available here!

"Join Slow Food members & friends on Saturday, March 30th at Discovery Park for an afternoon spent identifying, harvesting, and sharing recipes & uses for stinging nettles.

Experienced nettle foragers & Slow Food Board Members Renai Mielke & Julia Wayne will be leading this two hour class. We'll go over how to identify stinging nettles, safe & ethical harvesting practices, as well as our favorite ways to use & store them once home.

Please meet us in the grassy area at the end of the North parking lot, promptly at 12 PM. We'll spend a few short minutes talking before heading out into the park to hunt, and will not be easy to locate once we begin. We will be doing some easy paced hiking, likely no more than 2 miles.

We ask that you bring a pair of gloves to wear while harvesting (rubber gardening gloves, or dish gloves are best), and a plastic or cloth produce bag to collect nettles. We highly recommend wearing both long sleeves as well as long pants, and avoiding open toed shoes. Please dress for Seattle weather.

Each attendee will leave the class with their own harvest of nettles and an information sheet to use as a resource once home.

We will have some nettle filled treats to share at the end of the event. Please feel free to bring a light snack to share once we are done harvesting."

Book Review & Giveaway: Pacific Feast- A Cook's Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine

"An intimate guide to the food at our feet, Pacific Feast shares expert advice on how to identify the good eats, harvest responsibly, and create delicious meals." - Pacific Feast

Far more than just a field guide or collection of recipes- this book includes a section of full-color photographs, recipes from chefs including Christina Choi (!) and Tom Douglas, harvesting calendars and beautiful introductions to each species covering area history and the Authors personal experiences.

Recipes range from Sea Urchin Gazpacho to Maple Blossom Fritters to a Spotted Owl (Nettle Martini), and Jennifer perfectly explains how and where to harvest your goods. Her experiences have taken her from California to Alaska and British Columbia and she doesn't seem to overlook a single worthwhile edible.

Among the stack of books that makes up my current reading list- this is the only one that bounces around my living room and kitchen constantly. I find myself reading through recipes at random on an almost nightly basis. My copy was a gift from a dear friend- and I'm thrilled to be able to offer a copy to one of my dear readers! Read on for details!

There are four (!) ways for you to enter to win your very own copy:

1. Leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite wild food is. If you don't have one- just tell me what's on your mind.

2. "Like" Skipstone Books on Facebook and leave a separate comment here telling me that you have.

3. Sign up for the Skipstone Books Newsletter and leave a separate comment here telling me that you have.

4. Follow Skipstone Books on Twitter and again- leave a separate comment here telling me that you have.

The contest will run for one week- ending April 13th at 9 PM Washington time. The winner will be chosen at random and contacted soon after. Please be sure to include a way to contact you in each of your entries. Good luck and happy foraging!

Pro-Soup and Pro-Soap

One of my very favorite people, and fellow Alaskan moved South- Brittany of Pro-Soup Propaganda just recently started up a sweet little shop on Etsy- Pro-Soap Propaganda! Many of her soaps are Alaska themed- North Star, Chinook, Fireweed, and my favorite- Rain-Dogg! (That's Rainier Beer for the Alaskan challenged).

Cafe Au Lait

For the month of April- Brittany is donating 5% of all sales to the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad in Ketchikan, Alaska. In Brittany's words: "They are a volunteer-based organization in my hometown who provide search and rescue services, most recently for a friend who went out snowboarding and never came back. :o( They did the best they could and I'm happy to be donating to them this month because we need services like this in our community. Thank you for your support!"

Dwarf Star Lemon Poppyseed

Brittany is currently hosting a giveaway for a bar of her North Star. Click here to check it out- and you have until Monday, April 4th to enter! Good luck!

Edit! Holy smokes. I just came home and what do I see, but a link to a brand-new soap- Renai's Pinecone! Seriously serious. 

Reading List:

Top to bottom:

1. Edible Stories: A Novel in Sixteen Parts, Mark Kurlansky. I just started reading this. It gets mixed reviews, but I'm enjoying it so far. Many of the characters and themes are carried throughout the book and the short story format works really well for bus reading.

2. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver. My absolute, all-time favorite book. I re-read it about three times yearly. It's a quick and easy read, but I just love it more every time I finish it.

3. Pacific Feast: A Cook's Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine, Jennifer Hahn. This beautiful book was a gift from my love Becca. The guides and recipes cover everything from weedy greens to shellfish to edible trees. I'm quite smitten with it.

4. Take a Walk: 100 Walks Through Natural Places in the Puget Sound Region, Sue Muller Hacking. While this book covers a lot of smaller, more urban parks and trails- it also offers up some really great options for easy day hikes and beaches. I'm excited to use it for new weekend running routes.

5. The Last Fish Tale, Mark Kurlansky.  "...provides a delightful, intimate history and contemporary portrait of the quintessential northeastern coastal fishing town: Gloucester, Mass., on Cape Anne. Illustrated with his own beautifully executed drawings, Kurlansky's book vividly depicts the contemporary tension between the traditional fishing trade and modern commerce..."

6. All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms, David Arora.  This guide is eccentric, if not extremely informative. David Arora has a reputation for being a little bit nutty- and while the cover of this book is on the odd side, the full color photographs and serious details within make it well worth checking out.

7. The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship and Discovery in the Alaskan Wild, Lynn Schooler. "Schooler, who has worked for many years as a guide in the unpredictable waters of the Alaska Panhandle, has distilled a life of unusual intensity into his first book. The story centers on the renowned nature photographer Michio Hoshino, a client who became a friend, and the two men's ongoing search for the elusive glacier bear, a blue variant of the North American black bear."

 8. Bradt Travel Guide: Iceland, Andrew Evans. Spring of 2012! This guide is the best I've found so far- and does a really great job of covering a lot of what I hope to experience.

Nettle Foraging & My Favorite Green Smoothie

Prickles!

Last weekend I spent a few good hours tromping around Discovery Park with some folks from The Seattle Wild Foods Meetup Group and my bff Amy. The two of us eventually split off on our own and found a few really good spots for nettle picking. Honestly- this time of year it's nearly impossible not to find good spots all over the place. They're coming up like the wild little weeds that they are.

Blanched or dried- the vicious little things quickly turn into a culinary dream. Their flavor is earthy, fresh, and a little zippy. They make an easy replacement for cooked spinach in recipes, brew into an earthy tea, and blend into a gorgeous pesto or ravioli filling. I blanch mine for 2-3 minutes, run them through the food processor, and then freeze into ice cube tray portions. From there I can thaw and add them to just about anything. Most recently I've been adding them to my smoothies.

Cranberry & Nettle Smoothie

This has been my lifeblood lately. In an effort to cut down on gluten- I started making myself smoothies for breakfast most mornings. It took me a few tries to get a combination down that really did it for me- but I am over the moon about this one. The great part about smoothies is that everything is more or less interchangeable. If you don't have access to nettles- no problem. There are an infinite  number of things that you can use instead. I've included some good alternatives in notes marked with red astrix below.

This smoothie is pleasantly tart, and lends its creaminess to raw cashews soaked in water. Ideally it's best to soak cashews overnight- but an hour will suffice, and in a pinch I've just thrown the cashews and water in without soaking at all. Still great, just not as smooth. If you're freaked out by the idea of adding greens to a smoothie- try it first with a small amount of spinach. You'll be pleasantly surprised- you truly can't taste it at all. Feel free to adjust the amount of honey that you use based on your tolerance for tartness.

Cranberry & Nettle Smoothie:
- 1/3 cup raw cashews + 1/3 cup warm water
- 1 handful nettles*, blanched
- 3/4 cup frozen cranberries**
- 1/2 cup kefir***
- 1-3 tsp honey or agave nectar
- 1 tsp flax meal
- 2 ice cubes

Combine all ingredients in blender (they layer best in the order listed), and blend using quick pulses until smooth. That's it! Seriously. Smoothies aren't hard.

* Spinach, kale, chard, arugula, etc. (no need to blanch these greens before using)
** Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc.
*** Yogurt, fruit juice, non-dairy milk, etc.


More great information about nettles can be found here.

Kombucha Homebrew

Finally! This has to be the one post that I've talked about, started writing, and thought about more than any other. And I really have no excuses- as it's incredibly simple and straight forward.

I started brewing my own kombucha about a year ago and have since been more or less unable to enjoy the store-bought stuff.  As it turns out- I like my kombucha extra vinegary and herby, and I also get some sort of strange joy out of creeping people out by brewing it on my kitchen counter.  It really isn't the prettiest thing to look at.  For some more information about what kombucha is and why I drink it- this is a good source, if not a little woo-woo.  Fact of the matter is- I love the taste, and I feel great when I drink it.

Mmmmm

What you need to begin:

- Large pot (at least 4 1/2 quart)

- Large glass jar (a sun tea jar is perfect)

- 4 quarts of water

- 1 cup sugar

- 4 tea bags (green, black, or white, not herbal or decaffeinated!)

- Cheesecloth or a thin kitchen towel to cover your brew with

- Kombucha SCOBY (mother) and 1/2 cup starter liquid*

*You can grow your own SCOBY by following this guide which has you start with a bottle of the store-bought stuff.  This is how I grew mine originally, and it has never let me down. Starter liquid is basically already brewed kombucha, and if you do grow your own SCOBY you'll already have some ready to go.  If you live in the Seattle area I have quite a few extra SCOBY's right now- and I'd be more than happy to pass them along. Just leave me a comment and we can coordinate an exchange.

How to brew:

- Start by either filtering or boiling your water for ten minutes to get rid of any existing bacteria and other funky stuff that could mess up your brewing process.  If using the boiling method- add an extra half cup of water, as you will lose some volume via steam.

- Add sugar to your boiling water, and stir until fully dissolved.  Remove from heat, add tea bags, and allow to brew for 15 minutes. Remove tea bags, and allow mixture to cool until room temperature.  This is a good time to sterilize your large jar (running it through the dishwasher is great, as is "rinsing" it with boiling water).

- Carefully pour tea mixture into sterilized jar, using a funnel if needed (you really don't want sugary tea all over your kitchen counters). Gently pour SCOBY and starter liquid into your jar with tea, cover with cheesecloth or towel, using a rubber band or string to hold it on.

- I allow mine to brew on the kitchen counter, as it's fairly warm and can sit undisturbed until it's ready to drink. Taste your brew after the first week and decide if it's the strength that you'd prefer. I've left mine to brew for up to 3 weeks for a very strong, vinegary brew. Once it's your desired strength- remove your SCOBY and 1/2 to 1 cup of your liquid, and set aside for your next batch. Brewed kombucha should be stored in the fridge, and will keep for a long time- you'll most likely drink it all before you ever have to worry about it going bad.

Once you're comfortable with the brewing process- feel free to try experimenting with flavored teas, and different types of sweeteners (honey, agave).  Just be sure to always use caffeinated tea, and not ever use sugar substitutes as your kombucha culture won't be able to grow and ferment without caffeine and sugar present.

Most of all- have fun, gross out your friends, and feel awesome because you no longer have to spend $4 every time you want to get your hippie on.

Link Love!

Despite the fact that I'm currently supposed to be following an elimination diet- focusing on cutting out gluten and dairy- I am failing miserably.  I am truly guilty of only wanting what I'm not supposed to have.  This is no help:

- Perfect Cinnamon Buns from Chloe of Shoplifting in a Ghost Town make me want to weep a little.  Chloe has a really hilarious yet informative way of writing that I've always really admired (back in the days of Livejournal!)  Plus her kitchen tutorials include lots of food with faces.

- I feel a little like Patrice's groupie at times- but I totally can't help it.  Woman blows my mind!  Check out her recipe for Mid-Winter's Day Chai over at The Fantastic Mr. Feedbag.

- Both from Serious Eats:  Lemon Salt with Fennel and Chili- the prettiest herb salt I've ever seen. And Quick Homemade Hard Cider- using fresh apple cider and a few homebrewing essentials.  Kind of fantastic.


And a few non-food related goodies:

- Without Words (A Tiny Love Story) from Resurrection Fern is my kind of love.

 - Beating the Winter Blahs #5 at Painted Fish Studio has some great, simple wisdom, and a link to some really gorgeous coloring pages.  There's no such thing as being too old to color.

- My favorite, favorite, favorite blog as of late is Yum and Yuk.  I want her to post 300 times a day.  "A blog on books, running, the law, & design I can't afford. "There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum." - Tom Robbins"

Food, Lately

Clockwise from top left: Popped amaranth salad with summer veggies and fresh goat cheese; upside-down tomato tart; grilled sockeye, arugula, and re-fried black beans with leeks and white wine; frozen Discovery Park blackberries.

I realized the other day that I barely post recipes anymore.  This isn't due to a lack of cooking- I am in my kitchen cooking from scratch almost every single day.  The problem is that I forget that it's exciting and new.  It's just dinner- who cares, right?  Most of my cooking is about using up the things that we have in our fridge and cupboards, and more often than not- I don't have a clue how much of what I put into a dish.  That popped amaranth salad is actually from a few months ago, and I was so excited about sharing it- but then I never did.  It seemed so simple, and so obvious that I felt a little like I might be insulting some of you by posting it here!  I forget that everyone thinks and cooks differently, and often we don't think to change our routines unless prompted.  My cooking style is unique to me, and my recipes are too.  The recipes that I get the most excited about are the ones that use ingredients that I already know and love- but put them together in new (to me) ways. 


I'm working on writing things down, taking more pictures, and remembering to share.

Link Love!

Food, oh food.  Once upon a time my Link Love posts contained all sorts of fun and exciting things.  These days my definition of "fun and exciting" basically includes the making, eating, finding, creating, reading, learning or traveling all for the sake of food.  Mmm.  As you saw in my second half of our Mt. Rainier camping adventure pictures- the trip ended with the purchasing of a whole blackberry pie.  I can't help it.  I really can't.

- Is it wrong to start off with a cocktail?  No?  Alright!  This Cucumber-Rosemary Gin and Tonic makes me wish it were possible to drink nothing else.  Water?  Pfft.  

- I love bread puddings and stratas, but rarely ever make them. This recipe for Summer Strata with Spinach, Basil & Roasted Garlic Custard from Eat Me, Delicious pretty much covers every base that needs to be covered.  Bread, cheese, custard, greens, garlic... mmm.  Hi.

- A few of my favorite semi-recent articles from Serious Eats:  How to Build a Tolerance for Spicy Food is excellent and worth a read.  I adore spicy foods, but it took me a long time to get there.  Healthy Corner Store Initiative Takes Off in Providence is a great article about a group of students in Providence, RI who work to make-over convenience stores and corner markets to carry more healthful options. 

- Four Fish by Paul Greenberg feels like one of those books that I am just supposed to read.  I think it's so important to understand where our food comes from, how it's procured, and what that means in terms of sustainability and longevity.  And, well- fish matters.  Especially to me, a giant fish nerd.

- Working Class Foodies is an awesome online show that follows two siblings in their quest to turn local and seasonal ingredients into great meals for under $6 per person.  The recipes are beautiful and easy to follow along.  Some recent recipes: Ice Pops, Ricotta, and Zucchini Pancakes, Homemade Veggie Burgers and Potato Salad, and Soda with fresh fruit and herbs.

- These Sweet Corn Pancakes from Smitten Kitchen sound like the perfect weekend treat.  I'm so excited that corn is becoming the new trendy food to experiment with.  I'm happy eating it out of the bag from the freezer (yes, still), but nothing beats fresh corn.  Especially when combined with breakfast.

- How to Become a Poacher has nothing to do with illegal activities, and everything to do with delicious food.  Beautifully outlined.

- Lastly- this list of 5 Quick and Delicious Lunches under 400 Calories is just awesome.  I'm not much of a calorie counter, but I also prefer to eat light small meals throughout the day, and the presentation of these is just phenomenal.  

Summer Love

U-pick flowers, mint, and lavender in Sequim, WA.

Farmers market green tomatoes, hand picked mint, blue cheese. 
It all went into a green tomato pie!