Ramps

Before yesterday, I'd only had ramps once. We were on a day-trip to Nashville (three years ago), and saw them on sale at Whole Foods; I didn't think much of them, but Matt knew exactly the kind of delicacy that we'd found. 

Since first tasting them, I'd been on the lookout for ramps, but  hadn't been able to get any until this weekend. As we were digging up the succulent ramps, I couldn't help but be mindful of over-harvesting. I want the ramp spot to provide people with this spring-time delicacy for years to come, and  I feel like we were almost too greedy, taking not just he leaves, but the bulbs, too. 

I hope that this year isn't the last time that we have ramps, but I'm willing to forego them if it means preserving them for the future.

Urban Land Scouts--Fed by the Land

Jeff Ross, discussing the onion

When I earned my Urban Land Scout Level 4 badge last year, I didn't know much about foraging. Well, I knew something--just enough to put a few things on the Urban Land Scouts map, and know that I could handle the thorns of the wild blackberries in order to make dessert out of them. I also knew that there was wild garlic growing around our neighborhood, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
I was looking forward to yesterday's workshop as a kind of chance to re-affirm my level 4 badge--I definitely wanted to learn more about the edible things that could be foraged in the urban and suburban environment. Once Jeff Ross, the garden manager from Blackbery Farm, started talking, I couldn't help but try to hurriedly write down everything that he said. In the hour and a half of the tour, we barely made it outside of the grounds of Beardsley Farm; in that time, Jeff identified at least twenty five different edible or useful wild plants, and discussed some of the lesser-known points of a couple cultivated ones. In the picture above, he's demonstrating that the stringy roots of onions--the ones most people usually cut off and discard--have a lot of the great onion flavor, and taste incredible when flash-fried.

My head is still spinning a little, not just from the sheer amount of information Jeff presented yesterday, but with the knowledge that it was only the beginning. There is so much more to learn! I'll leave you with a picture of my notes--maybe you can make some sense of them. By the end of the workshop (on the following page, not pictured), my notes deteriorated into exclamatory remarks, such as, "Forsythia is NOT edible!! Pea tendrils are delicious! Let your collards go to seed and eat the florets!" Let me know if you have any questions, and keep in mind that a lot of the notes are specific to Beardsley. (Also, I probably misspelled or mis-wrote a few things....)