Salmon-Stuffed Daylily Blossoms

The daylilies are blooming like mad and I got to make one of my favorite wild dishes. These blooms always provoke a lot of questions when I take them to a dinner. They're a great first introduction to wild foods.



To make these simply remove the stamens from the center of the flower and stuff any kind of tasty filling into the hollow. I usually use long pieces of wild onions or chives to simulate the stamens, but this time I've used the flowers from some Lady's Thumb for decoration.

My salmon salad recipe is basically 1 can of pink salmon drained and with the bones removed. Chop up one apple and add it to the salmon, along with a couple of dollops of mayonnaise to taste.

That's it! You'll be surprised at how good this simple recipe tastes. You really don't need anything else. Use this salmon salad to stuff into the Daylily flowers or just on a sandwich.

Goosegrass Harvest

Here is a picture of my final goosegrass harvest. I also snipped some wild onion tops, and the tender upper portions of nettles. There were many dandelions in flower, so I got about a cup of those.



I ended up making a sauté from these greens. Next time, I would just leave out the goosegrass because it is coarse and flavorless at this point. The dandelion flowers lost their yellow color, but were mild and good in this sauté.

Again, I'm relying on past pictures. It is raining now and has been for awhile. I just don't get the urge to pick wet plants during the rainy spells. I harvested this about a month ago. The goosegrass has gone to seed now.

If you want goosegrass for its medicinal properties (lymphatic cleanser) the best way to do it is to harvest the goosegrass as it's flowering and make a tincture.

You can do this by watering down vodka and covering a packed jar of herb with the mixture. Shake it every day or so and strain it out after about two weeks. Tinctures can stay good for a couple of years.

Oh, here's a picture of some wild edibles that my sister saved for me while working in her garden. There's a nice poke sprout and a lamb's quarter plant.



Lamb's quarter is another wild plant that is very nutritious. It is an especially rich source of vitamins A and C. I boiled this young poke with some dandelion greens in one change of water. Then I added the lambs quarter and some other greens. We had THESE greens with cornbread.

It sure seems like all this stuff turns into greens of one kind or another. I'll just have to be more creative in my cooking.

Wild Harvest Soup

Let me tell you about the soup that I made after Harvest Day. Okay, that was about a month ago. I didn't wait a month to make the soup, I only waited a month to tell you about it.

At the time I harvested several gallons of various plants. I made a soup from about 6 cups of chickweed, a cup of violet leaves and a few dandelion leaves.

I made the soup by sautéing some onion, carrot and celery for a few minutes. I don't know why, but onion seems to taste so much better if you sauté it before you boil it. Another thing that I like to sauté a bit is fresh cracked black pepper. I've never been a big pepper fan, but frying gives it a rich, mellow taste.

To the vegetables. I added the chopped greens and wilted them. Then I added some chicken broth to deglaze the pan and transferred the whole thing into a stock pot.

After that, I just added a little more chicken broth, water, and a can of diced tomatoes. I seasoned the soup with salt and garlic, then a big handful of fresh sage from my garden, and some dried herbs like basil and thyme. I added some leftover rice and let it simmer for maybe 20 minutes (cooking the rice that long made it open up like a butterfly).



We had the soup garnished with some dillweed. It was good! A little weird, since the chickweed stems had a different texture than most "store bought" vegetables. They were crunchy and tender though, and mild. In the soup they looked like little green noodles.

Stephanie has a post on Lady's Thumb in her garden (and out of her garden). This is a wild edible that I haven't tried much yet! Check it out.