Why don’t more people know about wineberries? Everyone recognizes raspberries, and most people know a black raspberry when they see one, but tell someone you harvest wineberries and you get a blank stare. Like its more famous cousins, the wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is a bramble berry. It ripens slightly later than raspberries and black raspberries. Where I forage, it bridges…
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The Cocktail Hour: Foraged & Farmed
If you’re going to be on the Cape at the end of this month, consider joining me and C.L. Fornari for a special cocktail garden event on Sunday, August 27th. Want to know more? Download a printable pdf here.
How to Make Your Own Foraged Spice Cabinet
When it’s time for me to cook or bake something really special, I look through my foraged spice cabinet. I don’t do this for just anybody. Foraged herbs and spices take time and effort to gather, and I only use them when I’m cooking for someone I think will appreciate their specialness.
Pennsylvania Bay Leaf, aka Myrica pensylvanica, aka Northern bayberry
Let me start by saying that Myrica pensylvanica is not a misspelling. (Yes, I’m a bad speller, but I looked this one up.) I don’t know why the botanical name is spelled with only one n when the state is spelled with two, but whoever made that mistake made it a long time ago and taxonomists are not going to…
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Queen Anne’s Lace
The queen has hairy legs. Don’t forget that. It’s a key identification factor for Queen Anne’s Lace. Queen Anne’s Lace is a member of the carrot family, Apiaceae. Foragers know: you don’t mess around with the Apiaceae. It includes a number of highly poisonous plants, so understanding how to safely identify the edible members of this plant family is very…
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