Archive for the 'eating wild things' Category

Spring 2010 Garden Plan

Published on January 22, 2010 in eating wild things and garden. 0 Comments

So here’s the plan for the vegetable garden this spring.

I started some seeds already in the basement, including leeks, kale, wild chicory, bee balm, and Asclepias tuberosa.

There are a lot of things I haven’t found a place for yet, including melons, peas, squashes, beets, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. I don’t have seed potatoes yet, but I kinda wanted to try growing a bunch of them. I might need to build some raised beds to accommodate a decent number of potatoes. Remington volunteered to help and it seems like a job where help might help. Help haul the wood back from the lumber yard, right? I wish.

To that end, I should probably work more on the yard-scope plan to place all of these things.

That is an exciting diagram, as it includes a bunch of other works in progress and nice ideas.

Circumnavigation of the Hood Canal

Published on August 11, 2008 in bike and eating wild things. 0 Comments Tags: .

Evelyn and I rode around the Hood Canal. Counterclockwise.


View Larger Map

Here is a flickr set of the trip.

Friday

We met at Westlake Center just before 5pm. We took the 5:30 ferry to Bremerton.

There was a detour and we didn’t quite know which way to go after taking an alternate road in Bremerton, so we stopped and bought a map. Then we rode up a steep hill. Soon we found Campus Parkway, which was a wide gravel road into a cleared strip in the forest. We camped where the road narrowed. There were lots of ATV tracks and berries around, and a dead car in a dirt pit with a little makeshift shelter next to it.

Saturday

We awoke to rain, went back to sleep a few times until it stopped, and got up.

We gathered wild berries for our breakfast, but rode to square lake before preparing it. It was a nice lake, but the park had no trash or water.

We stopped at a newly installed pre-fab house for water, but it tasted gross and made us paranoid. We stopped at a highschool for water, but couldn’t find anything except a vending machine with bottled water, so we bought one. Then it rained. When the rain slowed, we left.

When we stopped for lunch at a crappy gyro deli on 106 it started pouring. We waited with two motorcyclists on Harleys until the rain slowed. One was a fireman and one was a Native American.

The rain continued periodically all day, but when it wasn’t raining, the sun shone through and warmed us and dried our clothing. At some point Evelyn got a flat tire.

We stopped at a vegetable stand at the south end of the canal to get vegetables for dinner. We got peppers, okra and apples.

We tasted and bought a bottle at the Hoodsport Winery before turning inland from the canal. The road to Lake Cushman was a huge hill. About 3/4 of the way up, we were resting and a woman pulled up and offered to let us stay at her house near Lake Cushman. We went to the park by the lake, but it wasn’t a state park anymore, it was a private campground. There was one site left. We had a campfire with wet wood that was hard to light.

Sunday

Lake Cushman had a lot of huckleberries, which we had in our cereal for breakfast. They were sour and good. I dug up a small beargrass plant, Evelyn took some pictures of the lake, and we set off for the north end of the canal.


It was a hilly ride. Evelyn got another flat tire once we got back on 101. It was a blowout through the hole made during the flat on Sunday. We stopped and constructed a boot from a mini vodka bottle on the side of the road. The replacement tube had 2 holes that needed to be patched before we could use it, and my pump stopped working. I oiled it and tightened it and hoped it would work later. We inflated the tire with her pump.

We stopped at the Pleasant Harbor marina for lunch. Soon we left the canal for Walker Pass, which I had not realized was almost 800 feet high. I guess the road to Lake Cushman was almost 1000 feet, but it was hotter when we climbed Walker Pass. The ride seemed long as we headed for the Hood Canal bridge. I got a flat tire. My pump worked. After the Hood Canal Bridge the ride didn’t seem so long. We got home and ate at Tacos Guayamas. I had a wet burrito al pastor.

Mallow Seed Relish

Published on July 17, 2008 in The Adam Diet, eating wild things and garden. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

At great personal and communal expense, I have pickled a feral relish.

After harvesting the cheeses from the weedy mallows of my garden, I had extensive help from Adam and Cameron in removing their outer coverings.

This relish is pickled in tribute to the coastal first people gatherers who toiled long and hard digging roots and rhizomes, picking berries, and preparing and preserving these wild foods.  They were taught that the berry spirits disapproved of those who ate while they picked, and scarcity would strike the berry patches of women whose berry-laden hands strayed to their mouths.

I am planning to serve this relish not with the Grease of the Eulachon, but with grilled cylindrical protein.

The relish is pickled with cider and rice vinegar, fennel seed heads, serrano peppers and garlic.

Photo credit for this first one goes to Evelyn. I might also mention that I just got a new digital camera, so perhaps I’ll be better about including my own photographic work in blog entries of the future.

Tolt Camping Trip

Published on May 27, 2008 in bike and eating wild things. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Here’s a map overview of the trip:


View Larger Map

If you link to the google map page, you can find all kinds of more intricate information on the trip, including my planned routes out and back, and the routes that I actually took. Find out where I had to get off and walk, where I was lost and tired and turned around, where I ate lunch, and where there are gates.

The idea of the trip was to follow the Tolt pipeline trail out to the reservoir, or however close I could get, camp, and ride back. I made the route a little more interesting by riding up to the Snoqualmie valley on a logging road before coming back.

The Tolt pipeline trail was not bad, once I got up to it, and the day was unexpectedly beautiful. The trail follows the pipeline straight across all landforms, so there are many unnecessary hills. All except the first were ridable. At some point out in the middle of nowhere it becomes paved, which is nice. There were these huge imposing buildings, and then the big gate at the Tolt Regulating basin. I turned around and took the other less-imposing gate and got back on the dirt roads. This was the hottest part of the day, and I had worn wool pants since the weather report was for clouds and rain. Bad idea. The climb was grueling. I stopped in shady spots to cool down. When I got to the top of a ridge, there was a lot more active logging and bare, hot dirt. I didn’t want to go over the ridge because I knew I’d have to climb back up, and I was too tired to buy into that. I coasted back down to a turnoff I had seen earlier that looked promising and camped there. It was a nice camping spot.

I surveyed the area for edible plants and found violets(Viola sempervivens) and Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium).

I ate some of the violet leaves fresh as a snack. They tasted great, like wintergreen. I put quite a lot of them in my dinner as well, which was seasoned rice with canned smoked herring. I don’t think the herring and the violets went together very well, but it was alright. Next time make the violets into a salad or dessert or something.

I saw some Mahonia, and had just read a blog post about Mahonia tea a few days ago, so I wanted to try it. Finding enough was difficult, as most of the plants were small and spread out, but I got an amount that I thought would work. The tea was excellent. Sweet, sour, and with a pleasant but hard-to-describe flavor.

It rained before I got up, so my tent got wet, but I stayed dry. The morning was cool and I was grateful for my wool pants for the first few hours before regretting them again. The logging roads to the Snoqualmie valley were fun. I had to go under or around lots of gates, but that was okay. I only got a tiny bit lost a few times. I saw a pack of squids and about that many other cyclists on Highbridge road. I had lunch at the Snoqualmie Ice Cream factory. Sunday was a nice day, and the Burke was pretty busy the whole way home.

weedy gumbo

Published on May 22, 2008 in The Adam Diet, eating wild things and garden. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Last night I made a soup with two plants that I had been meaning to eat for a while. Cleavers and Mallow.


Galium aparine and Malva neglecta

Mallow is from the same family as okra (Malvaceae) and probably the same subfamily, etc. Wikipedia gets foggy at this level of phylogeny. The important part is that mallows have a similar slimy (mucilaginous) texture to that of okra, so they can thicken a gumbo just like okra can. When I had the big pile of mallows on the cutting board, I thought it would be more than enough to thicken the gumbo, particularly when I picked up the gummy mass and tossed it into the pot, but once the leaves and shoots were cooked they got a lot smaller and I decided that I could probably have used 2-3 times as much mallow as I did. The texture was good, but definitely could have been thicker.

The cleavers I added very near the end, at the same time as some fresh oregano. I could have used a lot more cleavers too. I thought there were more of those growing in my garden. I will have to wait a week or two and make another weedy gumbo. Perhaps next time I’ll use the caribou stew meat that’s in my freezer. I think that would make a good wild gumbo.

Ingredients I remember putting in the gumbo, in rough order of addition: butter, onions, garlic, celery, potato, carrot, lots of capsicum flakes, veg. bouillon, filé, mallow, mixed cajun seasoning, asparagus, cleavers, oregano.