“I’ve been mushroom hunting before and you'll kind of squat down and look in between all of the low plants, and then you move to the other side and you look on the other side and all of a sudden you see like four, and they’re right there.”
This week it’s the third installment of our series, Earth Eats Eats Wild--a nine-part seasonal special all about foraging for wild food.
We couldn’t wrap up our spring season without a morel hunt. Rose Harding takes us on a hike in the Hoosier National Forest where we share secrets that might help YOU spot a few this year.
We talk with The Forager Chef, Alan Bergo, about what it’s like to eat a pine tree, and we walk through the steps of making spruce tip ice cream.
Morels
When most people think of spring foraging in the midwest, one image usually pops into our minds: morels. Morel mushrooms are the delicacies of the deciduous forest, strange and rare, surrounded by mystery and lore– many experienced foragers confess to not having much luck finding them.
Rose Harding describes herself as a hobby mushroom hunter, and she has some good tips for finding morels. She says you can start looking for them when the weather warms in the spring–but it's not too hot–and after a good bit of rain,
“My identifier is when I see the mayapples are coming up and spreading out their leaves. I think that's a good indicator of the temperature in the soil [being] right and the temperature above the soil [being] right."
Mayapples are one of the spring ephemerals. They grow fairly low to the ground, with a broad, umbrella-like leaf. You can see a few mayapple leaves just above Rose’s hand in the photo above.
Spotting all of those delicate early spring wild flowers can be a consolation prize if you don't happen to find any morels.
I hope you do find a few yourself this season. And if not, I hope that you’ll enjoy the search. A slow walk in the woods in springtime is NEVER a waste of time.
Spruce Tips
In this episode we also talk with Alan Bergo, the Forager Chef, and author of The Forager Chef’s book of Flora: Recipes and Techniques for Edible Plants from Garden, Field, and Forest (Chelsea Green, 2021). He’s a professional chef, a 2022 James Beard award winner, And he’s located in Minnesota, where he has crafted his life and career around foraging and teaching people about wild food.
I invited him on the show to talk about spruce tips. His blog was my introduction to them. Spruce tips show up in the spring, they are a lighter brighter green bundle of tender needles on the ends of the branches of spruce trees–it’s the new growth for the tree.
All spruce and pine are edible, so they are a safe plant for new foragers. The only toxic look-alike is an evergreen called yew. It’s a bush that’s frequently used in landscaping, and it has needles. But if you crush the yew needles and sniff them, they have no pine or spruce aroma. That's how you know it’s yew.
I have made several recipes from The Forager Chef, including Spruce Tip Syrup and Spruce Tip Ice Cream. Since they are his recipes, I will send you straight to his site.
I have also made spruce tip sorbet, which involved diluting the syrup and freezing it in an ice cream maker.
I tried a spruce tip and mint cake which was delicious, but it might need some tweaking to the recipe to get the spruce flavor to really come through. It was fun to decorate, with edible spring blossoms!
I hope you'll give spruce tips a try, and if you do, let me know what you think! Send us an email at eartheats at gmail dot com.
Watch this space
This is the last of the spring episodes in the Eats Wild special series (listen to episode 1 and episode 2)
Next, look for 3 episodes in May and June, featuring berries and other summertime wild treats.
In the fall we’ll share wild edible favorites to forage at the end of the season.
Music on this Episode
The Earth Eats theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey.
Additional music on this episode from Universal Production Music.
Credits:
The Earth Eats’ team includes: Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Toby Foster, Luann Johnson, Leo Paes, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Shemenaur, Payton Whaley and Harvest Public Media.
Earth Eats is produced, engineered and edited by Kayte Young. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.
