November
Winter Storehouse of Herbs and Wild Foods
The Freezer, The Root Cellar, The Refrigerator, The Pantry
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In all things give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you. 1 Thess 5:17 |
November brings a hush over the land; the twilight of the year as we travel towards the darkest day, the midnight hour. The leaves are all down now and the landscape has changed dramatically, with sober grays and piercing blues shining through the bare branches.
My garden still has a few late offerings like chard, leeks and those stubborn wild greens that appear in spite of the shortening day lengths and frosty nights. I am able to forage the frost-hardy wild greens well into the month of November, depending on whether we have a long, protracted Indian summer or an early blanket of snow. Once the first snow buries the lingering wildlings, the harvest is finally complete and I can enter into winter's rest.
November begins the season for turning inward, a time for deep contemplation and for surveying our lives and the fruits of our labors. All the doors and windows are shut tight, my shelves and cupboards are fat with the harvest, and my family can continue to enjoy the bounty of the land throughout the frozen, sleepy winter months. We can look back with thanksgiving at all the happy memories of gathering in the gifts of nature and look ahead to the sure resurrection of spring with the first flow of the Maple Sap and the first basketful of Watercress in March.
November is a good time to take inventory of the winter stores. I thought it would be fun to take my website visitors on a virtual tour of my storehouse so you can better see how wild foods can be integrated into a family's food supply.
I have quite a bit of wild food in amongst my frozen goods. I would say that up to a full third of what's in my freezer came from the wild (including venison). Here's a list of some of the wild stores in my freezer at this time of the year:
*Frozen Wild Greens:
I freeze quantities of greens every year for use in the off-season. The all-time best wild greens for the freezer are Lambsquarters, Wild Amaranth, and Dandelion Greens. I also freeze Stinging Nettles, but it tends to get an off-flavor and gritty in texture if stored too long. I usually prep them for freezing when I gather in large quantities. I freeze the baby Nettles in the early spring before they get more than 8-10 inches tall. I freeze the Lambsquarters whenever I weed my garden and get a large amount of them, and I freeze the Dandelion greens as a fringe benefit of my Dandelion Root expeditions.
Greens cook down substantially, a gallon of greens can cook down to as much as one or two cups, so each freezer bag of greens is a concentrated quantity of nutrition.
To freeze them, I just blanch them in a pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes, until they are very tender, then drain and cool them thoroughly. I like to put them into quart size freezer bags, in either 2 or 4 cup portions. I label them with the name of the herb and the year. Sometimes I even save the cooking water that I simmer them in to use as a super-nutritious soupstock in the winter. I freeze this in plastic juice bottles or 1/2 gallon milk jugs.
*Frozen Burdock Root:
The only wild root I preserve for food is Burdock Root. Burdock Root is very adaptable to food preservation techniques. It is possible to store it by drying, pickling, preserving in oil or vinegar, and by freezing. I usually harvest a good quantity of Burdock Root in the early spring (at least a bucketful or two). I dry the second-year roots, which are too tough for eating, to use for teas and tonic infusions. I prepare the tender first-year roots for the freezer by simmering them in salt water until they get tender, cooling them thoroughly, and putting them into 2 cup portions in freezer bags. Freezing them seems to tenderize them even further, somehow the freezing process helps break down the chewy fibers, and they are excellent in winter rice and stir-frys.
*Frozen Berries:
In a plenteous year, I have more than enough berries to juice, jam and freeze. Berries are so simple to freeze that it is a perfect way to preserve them during too-busy days. All you have to do is put them into freezer bags and plunk them in the freezer, it's that simple. It takes only a few minutes to put up a bucketful this way. I have Blackberries, Black Raspberries, and Sumac Berries from the wild, but since I'm such a berry fanatic, I also like to have Strawberries, Blueberries and Red Raspberries from local U-Pick farms.
Unfortunately when they thaw out they are never quite the same; they tend to get soggy and seedy, although some kinds of berries fare better than others. They just aren’t as good in the dessert recipes as the fresh berries. Since they won’t behave in pie or cobbler recipes anymore, I run my thawed berries through a sieve and just use the pulp or juice to make a variety of treats. See the section on using berry juices for some great ideas for using your frozen berries this way.
Here’s a link to a website devoted to Frozen Berries, just loaded with recipe ideas and nutritional information:
Creative Gourmet: Frozen Berries
*Frozen Berry Sauces and Glazes:
I have a variety of berry sauces and glazes in the freezer. Sauces and glazes are a wonderful way to get something good out of berries that you can only collect in very small quantities. For example, we have wild gooseberries in our woods but it's almost impossible to fill up even a quart jar with them as they are so sparsely bearing. I gathered only two pints of Gooseberries this year and made 2 or 3 cups of Gooseberry glaze with them, enough for a couple of special desserts. I also make sauces and glazes out of the pulp that I strain out of my berry juices.
Here's my glaze recipe:
Berry glazes are wonderful to use on top of cheesecakes, drizzled over coffee cakes, drizzled over frostings on cakes, or on ice cream. In European cuisine, berry glazes are very popular on meats.
1. Put 3 cups of berries into a blender and whiz them into a paste. If you are using blackberries or raspberries that have a lot of little seeds you will have to strain them through a fine sieve to get rid of the seeds. You should end up with 1 ½ cups of berry sauce, more or less.
2. In a small bowl or cup mix together 1 cup sugar (I’ve never tried honey, don’t know if it would work) and 3 Tbsp cornstarch.
3. Put the berry sauce into a pan and mix in the sugar/cornstarch mix. Heat gently until it reaches a boil. You must stir constantly as it will get very thick and could scorch easily.
4. Let cool.
*Berry Sorbet Mixes:
I bought my husband and ice cream maker for his birthday a couple of years ago. It makes one quart of ice cream at a time, and we have had a lot of fun inventing special ice cream recipes. When I discovered the world of sorbets, I was quick to test out some wild berry recipes. They are absolutely heavenly beyond your wildest imaginings! Sorbets are especially wonderful because the berries are still raw, so all their precious vitamin C and fresh flavor is kept intact. Now I make sorbet mix ahead while the berries are in season and freeze it, so we can enjoy wild berry sorbets out of season. Imagine a wild Black Raspberry sorbet in the middle of January, now that's the height of decadence, eh?
Here's my recipe for sorbet:
Makes 1 quart
2-2/3 cup berry puree (be sure to strain any seeds out)
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
2 tsp lemon juice
Combine all the above ingredients and follow instructions for using your ice cream maker.
*Frozen Maple Sap:
I still have a jug or two of Maple Sap left from last March. I freeze it in plastic juice bottles or half gallon milk jugs. Most of what I freeze I use during the summer to make iced teas, but I also like to have some in the winter to make hot tea with or to cook rice and hot cereal grains in. I also like to just drink it for a little energy boost during sluggardly winter days.
*Frozen Mushrooms:
I'm not an avid mushroom hunter so I don't usually have a big supply of wild mushrooms, but I generally have at least Morels and Oyster Mushrooms available. To freeze them, I sauté them first in butter or olive oil until nice and tender, then freeze them in 2 cup portions in freezer bags. Here's a link to a great article all about preserving mushrooms:
The Great Morel Site: Preserving Morels
Please see also my article on using caution when harvesting wild mushrooms:
*Frozen Nuts:
I keep all my nuts in the freezer to protect them from rancidity, which can actually make nuts mildly toxic. I most especially keep my wild nuts in the freezer for this reason because they are especially precious, costly if purchased and labor intensive if wildcrafted.
I have in the freezer several pounds of both Hickory Nuts and Black Walnuts. I also keep Acorns in the freezer when I have them. Unfortunately this year was a dry year for Acorns so I am having to do without this year! Pray for a bumper crop next year!
My nuts are already shelled, so using them is pretty straightforward. I do like to take a little time to sort through them before I add them to baked goods, especially the Hickory Nuts because there are often bits of teeth-breakingly hard shell in them.
*Frozen Garlic Butter:
I love to make green garlic butters for the freezer each year. I use mild raw greens like Lambsquarters, Purslane, Chickweed, Watercress or spring Dandelion greens to make it. It makes a great spread for toast, biscuits, cornbread and other hot baked items. I also like to use it to sauté veggies, onions and garlic and whatever else I'm cooking up. My garlic butter recipe uses quite a bit of greens in it, so it is a very good source of raw, wild nutrition as well as healthy fats needed by the body.
Here's my recipe:
*Frozen Pestos:
Pesto is a good way to preserve raw wild greens. Some of the old European recipes don't even require freezing, but I haven't learned how to do that yet, so I freeze mine. Pesto is simple to make, uses a lot of green in each batch, and makes for simple, yet elegant pasta dishes. I make pestos out of all kinds of wild greens, even as early as March when the Garlic Mustard carpets the forest floor. Here's the basic pesto recipe using Garlic Mustard, but you can substitute any wild green. There is also a version of pesto called Mondo Bizarro that calls for tomatoes rather than olive oil that is delicious as well.
*Cough Syrups:
I make my cough syrups in big batches, a quart or two at a time. I keep this "mother" stock of syrup in the freezer for longkeeping and pour off smaller bottles as needed to keep in the fridge. I make other syrups besides cough syrups, such as a deep green iron tonic, a nourishing root syrup, and a ginger/garlic syrup that I keep in the freezer as well. (Note: I have an upcoming article on making your own herbal syrups in the works. Look for it in the Articles section of the website. Meanwhile, you can check out my Wild Cherry Cough Syrup recipe here.)
*Roots and Root Powders:
There are some dried roots and root powders that I use in special formulas and medicinal preparations that I prefer to keep in the freezer for maximum preservation, especially the expensive ones like Osha and Echinacea. Other roots that I will use during the course of the year I generally just keep in dry storage in the pantry.
*Herbal Infused Oils:
I keep a variety of herbal infused oils that I make in the summertime for my salve-making workshops and personal use in the freezer to prevent any chance of rancidity or deterioration of quality due to age. This year I have Plantain, St. Johnswort, Calendula, and Yarrow oils. All of these are good all-around salve-making herbs. I make them in quart glass jars and freeze then right in the jars.
*Wild Venison:
I can't get through the November web log without mentioning Venison! In times past, wild game provided a source of fresh food all through the winter. The flesh from these animals is in reality built from the wild herbs and vegetation. There's some debate as to whether it is more natural and nourishing to eat the herbs or the herbs-as-flesh (the ol' vegetarian vs. carnivorous diets).
Nowadays hunting is regulated by the DNR and we can't go out anytime after our winter meat, so November is the main hunting season. I am grateful that my husband is a good hunter and provides venison every year for our table. I prefer wild game over domestic anyday, knowing that the deer are feeding on the nutrient-dense wild herbs, nor are they pumped up with hormones, antibiotics and artificial food. I get a special pleasure from watching my children eat wild venison, knowing they are getting nourished indeed.
We like to butcher our own deer, thus being sure to use every part, even boiling down the bones for mineral-rich stock. It is out of the scope of this site to get into the nitty-gritty of processing venison or other wild meats but there are plenty of great websites to check out on this topic. Here's a couple to get you started:
I have a room in the basement that I use as a root cellar. It is not ideal temperature-wise (ideal is 40° year-round). The temperature fluctuates too much between summer and winter for cold storage but it works out just fine for keeping canned goods, bulk foods, potatoes and such. The only wild foods that I can in jars are berries and fruits. I would say only about 10-15% of my canned stores come from the wild. I hope in the future to experiment with ways to can and preserve wild greens, but I do not wish to subject them to the intense heat of a pressure canner, which I feel destroys the nutrients I would be trying to preserve.
*Jams
and Jellies:
I put up all kinds of jams and jellies every year, both wild and tame. I would say nearly one-third of my jams are from the wild, including Black Raspberry, Blackberry, Wild Grape, and Chokecherry. It's been many years since I bought a jar of store jam. What a joy it is to go downstairs on a cold, white winter day and have such a fine selection of homemade jams to choose from, truly we are rich. For more info on jelly and jam-making click here.
*Juices:
I can a lot of different kinds of juice from the
fruits of the land as well as making them into jellies and jams.
Each year I also get a quantity of apple
cider from a local orchard (5-10 gallons) and can that into quart bottles.
The wild juices are canned into small pint or cup-sized jars as they are not as
freely abundant. Wild juices are so strong and intense in flavor that one
pint will flavor a whole gallon of cider. I have
Black
Raspberry,
Chokecherry,
Blackberry,
Wild Plum,
Elderberry and
Wild Grape
juices in store right now, plus many other from local fruit sources like
Strawberry, Peach, and Plum. For more info on juicing your fruits click
here.
*Maple Syrup:
We have three Maple trees in our yard here in town, enough to put 5 or 6 taps into each year in late February/early March. We collect more than we can deal with each year in our little home syrup-making set-up, which is basically just a large 5-gallon stainless steel cooking pot and an outdoor propane cooker. We come out with roughly three gallons of syrup each year, plus lots of Maple sap for freezing raw and cooking with while it is in season. I can the syrup into little 12-oz juice bottles and always have a store of it for cooking wild.
*Syrups:
Besides the Maple Syrup, I make herbal syrups as well, namely Dandelion Blossom Syrup and Red Clover Blossom Syrup, and keep a supply of each down in the root cellar for those wild recipes. There is a lot of room for further experimentation in the area of wildflower syrups using the same technique, for example, how about Wild Rose Petal Syrup? Or Elderflower Syrup? The possibilities are certainly intriguing!
Sometimes I make some of my wild juices into syrups by adding sugar and cooking them down until they are thick and rich concentrates. I don't usually can fruit syrups, I prefer to make them as needed and use them right away.
Due to the limited size of my refrigerator, I don't keep a whole lot of my preserves there. Sometimes I fantasize about having a second fridge so that I can experiment with temperature-controlled preserves, especially lacto-fermented pickles and such, as my 'root cellar' in the basement gets too warm in the summer to keep these.
*Condiments:
Herbs and herbal vinegars lend themselves very well to the making of condiments. Mustards and many other condiments are easy and fun to make at home. I usually have a few of these on hand at any time of the year. Here's a good webpage full of condiment recipes for making your own:
*Lacto-Fermented foods:
I have only recently discovered the world of lacto-fermentation. I have to store mine in the refrigerator because the root cellar does not keep a constant temperature of 40 degrees. This year I experimented with cucumbers from my garden and Wild Grape Leaves from the wild. I ended up with a whole shelf full of quart mason jars in the fridge, so would need to invest in a second fridge if I were to get serious with this method of food preservation. In the future I want to experiment with lacto-fermenting wild foods, such as Burdock Root. I think it may be possible to lacto-ferment tonic infusions and some of the wild juices as well.
I am very thankful that my kitchen has lots and lots of cupboards!
Dried Herbs and Roots:
I have one full cupboard of dried herbs and roots that I use for medicinal teas and preparations, tonic infusions, and soups. I keep all my herbs in plastic freezer bags, each one labeled and dated. I keep the roots in one section and the leaves and flowers in another. I like to keep my dried herbs for only one year and to restock them annually. Roots keep up to three years. I have a large assortment of herbs in this cupboard, probably 50 or more different kinds.
Coffees and Beverages:
I have another smaller cupboard where I keep all my coffees, coffee substitutes, pre-mixed teas and sweeteners. This one currently has in it:
*Coffee Beans
*Roasted Dandelion Root Coffee
*Pre-mixed teas (both commercial tea bags and home-made loose teas)
*Cafix (instant coffee substitute)
*Honey, Brown Sugar, Raw Sugar, Mexican Raw Sugar (peloncillo)
Herbal Medicine-Making Supplies:
I have a row up small upper-level cupboards where I store all my other herb supplies. I have them organized into categories:
*Poultice and Compress supplies--This is mainly clean linen cloths and first aid tape
*Salve-making supplies--I have all sorts of
salve ingredients, essential oils, beeswax and other supplies
*Tinctures and Tincture-making supplies--mainly vegetable glycerin, distilled water, and bottles of brandy, vodka and gin. I also have lots of home-made tinctures stored in their original pint jars. I pour them off into smaller dropper bottles only as needed.
*Herbal Vinegars--I have several jars of herbal vinegars. Surprisingly enough, they generally won't last until spring when I start making them again!
*Empty bottles and Jars--I always try to keep a collection of jars (and lids!) handy. I especially like to have a good supply of brown-glass dropper bottles, brown-glass bottles for cough syrups, and salve containers. You can order nice bottles for your home remedies from herb suppliers:
My stores and supplies are tailored to my family's own personal tastes and needs. It has taken me years to learn what herbs and foods are most popular and most useful and which ones I needn't bother with. It has also been a learning curve to discover what appropriate quantities are, it is so easy to get carried away! Some herbs, like dried Nettles or Red Clover blossoms, frozen Lambsquarter and Dandelion vinegar I never seem to have enough of, while others I still have plenty leftover when their new season starts again. a lot of it has been trial and error and most of it has been just plain fun in the field and in the kitchen.