Foraging and canning.

This summer has been very busy volunteering at the food pantry farm. It's a two acre farmed owned by a retired farmer that donates all the produce to the local for pantry. The farm is planted, weeded and harvested by a team of about 6 volunteers including myself. Last year we grew 6,000 pounds of produce. I'm not sure what amount we will have this year, we have had a few set back. Its' been a very wet and cool summer up here in northern Wisconsin. Sadly, the potatoes and tomatoes got blight. We were only able to get a very tiny harvest of potatoes. The tomatoes have sort of just gave up. The whole farm just seems weak.

So, between the farm and the local farmers market I have been busy canning. My salsa turned out so good last year that I used the same recipe agian this year.

salsa

I love the Hmong farmers at the local farmer's market. They have the best produce around. It's better looking and more fresh than the grocery store's produce. One of the farmers gave me some fantastic Thai chilis and sweet peppers to make sriracha sauce. I changed the recipe a bit this year and added more tomato paste so its more like a Thai ketchup. I like to use this sauce in my cooking classes through community education.

Finished Sriracha

One of my farmer market friends grew beautiful plums this year. I bought an ice cream bucket full and made plum jelly for the first time. I was cooking down the plums and straining them, I was amazed at the brilliant magenta juice I ended up with. The jelly is a little runnier than I would like but man does it taste good. I'm going to test it out served over pork loin, meat balls and other savory dishes.

I picked a bag of cucumbers from the farm and made a batch of dill pickles. I have never been super impressed with the way my pickles turn out. I tried a new recipe this year. I probably would have skipped them all together but my son adores pickles. He would eat a whole jar if I would let him.

finished pickles.

fished plum jam

I bought some fantastic sweet corn out of the back of a pick up truck. I grilled it and made some of my famous corn relish. It is wonderful on beef tacos and breakfast tacos. It also pairs really nice with black beans.


























My son and I had an exciting summer picking fruit too. There is a pick your own strawberry patch near us. We picked a bucket of strawberries. I think between what I picked and what I bought from the stand I ate about 5 quarts just to myself. Nothing is better than biting into aa fresh strawberry and having the juice pour down your chin. The rest of the year the store strawberries just do not come close to that flavor.

We have massive amounts of blackberry plants along our driveway and this year I even found a few raspberry plants. The raspberries were not a huge producer. We ended up going to the pick your own place again when their raspberries were ripe.

Wild blackberries and raspberries

I took all the fruit and made a fruit booze again this year. Last year I had big plans to give away my fruit booze as Christmas gifts but ended up drinking all of it at Thanksgiving. Each fruit that becomes ripe I put in a glass jar and pour vodka over it and repeat for each fruit until the jar is full. Then it soaks until the holidays. I enjoy it with a touch of simple syrup and sparkling water. It's also good straight in a low ball glass with ice.

blackberry picking

fruit booze

I had a great year mushroom hunting. I even found some varieties that I have not found before. My son loves learning about mushrooms and helps me identify them. He even found Black Trumpets all by himself. He was running through the park and says, "MOM! I found black trumpets." What do you know he was right. We found a nice haul of chanterelle mushrooms that I gave to my friend.

I went to northern Minnesota and found a nice chunk of chaga mushrooms for my tea.

After a rain I found a chanterelle, oyster and puffer mushrooms on my property. My husband stir fried them up and ate them with his dinner. I also found a little patch of lobster mushrooms in the same place as last year and a new patch of shrimp of the  woods mushrooms.

spring oyster mushroom

lobster mushroom

destroying angel mushroom

On our hike I was able to find a destroying angel mushroom. My son loved that it had such a cool name. He asked if it was a bad guy I told him yes. It will kill you.

The three wild hazelnut trees had nuts this year and we were able to get to them before the squirrels got them. I attempted to roast them but I messed it up some how and they did not turn out.

Now its time to prepare for winter.