A spring foraging primer

The roots of evil. Garlic mustard roots can be tasty but
hard on kitchen appliances. 

It pains me to admit this, but I experienced my first foraging casualty this week.

No, I didn't feed my husband — or anyone else — a bad mushroom or toxic leaf. Instead, I killed my mini-food processor.

I watched as it and some garlic mustard roots got their roles reversed and instead of the sharp, high-speed blades pulverizing the weed's tap roots, those tough bastards broke my blade to bits.

I unceremoniously tossed the processor — one of my first kitchen appliances, donated to me by my mother eons ago because I couldn't afford, nor had the room for, a proper, large processor. It was a bitter good-bye made even worse by the fact that I had now wasted the evening harvesting, scrubbing and peeling the pointy roots and their tentacle-like offshoots only to have to chuck my handiwork and, well, my entire evening on the compost heap.

And I had so been looking forward to the results, hot like horseradish with a garlicky kick, much like I'd sampled at a foraging workshop just two weeks ago.

Of wild violet jelly and career-limiting moves

My wild violet jelly.

My boss bought me a chocolate chip cookie yesterday.

A kind gesture, yes, but don't be fooled into thinking there was anything altruistic about this. I'm certain this was a pity cookie.

You see, my boss has taken to teasing me about my dining habits of late. I often tell him that he could pick an entire meal's worth of food on his way home from the office, given he traipses through a forest that's akin to a wild produce section.

There's garlic mustard, burdock, wild garlic, ramps, mayapples and plenty of dandelions.

He laughs when I tell him this. Pokes fun at me because that's where I stock up on the makings of pesto, jelly, frittata and stir-fries. Inquires about the welfare of my husband and whether he's still alive or has wasted away on weeds. I'm certain he thinks I come home from work and put myself out to pasture in my backyard, grazing the night away like a cow.

In fact, he has not-so-subtly hinted that's what he thinks when he said my name and "out to pasture" in the same sentence recently. I'm fairly confident he wasn't talking about my career.

Tomatoes, tomahtoes and more at Linda's Tomato Days sale

By Linda Crago, Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetables

Need some great heirloom tomato seedlings?

I've got lots!

Beginning on May 18 and right through the long Victoria Day weekend, I'll be selling my tomato seedlings. And thereafter until I can sell no more.

The plants will be all laid out on my driveway, and me, my family and friends will all do the best we can to make sure you find exactly what you would like. Be patient with us, especially me. I love to talk tomatoes with people and I'd love to talk them with you, too!

I am not a fancy nursery, I am a farmer. The advantage is that I know these tomatoes and other veggies because I grow them all myself.

Consider it a tomato lovers treasure hunt. There are treasures to be had for sure.

A Sappy Tale: All in favour of waffling

Our syrup harvest with the silver maple that produced it, each colour representing a different point
 in the harvest and how long the sap was boiled.  The darker the syrup, the later the harvest, though
the jar that's second from the right wasn't boiled as long as the one next to it.

I never really got the waffle.

Other than munching a toasted Eggo in all its cardboard-like glory on the drive into work on days when my love affair with my pillow prevented me from eating a proper breakfast, I never really got why people would want to eat them unless for a perfunctory bite to start the day.

At breakfast spots, I'd hardly notice them on the menu, skimming over the strawberry-topped, crispy grids to get to the good parts. The pancakes.

Yes, in a battle between breakfasts made of batter, I choose pancakes.

Wild Food Wednesday: Call me Al

Sautéed wild allium atop sourdough bread and chèvre. Remember when cleaning
wild onions and garlic to remove the outer layers of skin because they're extremely
tough but underneath the bulbs are tender.

He was deft in the brokering of his deal with me.

About a year into our marriage, my husband skillfully put forth a clever proposal that has remained in tact in the three years since. It came after he languished in the hot sun on the edge of a Niagara vineyard while I spent an hour wrestling wild garlic from the grips of some very hard, very dry earth.

With each bulb I lost to the rock solid grasp holding it in place, and each groan of disappointment from me after trying so hard to harvest a few tiny bulbs, I could see I was losing him.

He grew evermore engrossed in his BlackBerry. His pleas to go to the grocery store to buy garlic instead grew more frequent as my first foray into foraging waned and my frustration waxed. 

Until then, we had done pretty much everything together with a smile. But on this day, we realized we had rather different interests. Still, I was oblivious to it as I climbed back into the car with a small handful of aromatic rhizomes yanked from the caked, concrete-like dirt.

Cooking up collaboration between old and new food media

Some of my most loved copies of Food & Drink.

I love Food & Drink magazine. Every time I see an issue, I want to lick its colourful, glossy pages. If it wasn't so gauche, I'm certain it would prove that you can actually taste whatever dish or drink is printed on them.

I don't often get a copy in my clutches because my fellow drinkers who frequent the same neighbourhood libation station known as the LCBO seem as ravenous as me when they see the magazine hot off the press and temptingly on display at the store's entrance.

The copies I do have, I squirrel away in a special place — my cookbook cupboard. They are dog-eared, buckled and stained from ingredients I drop on them while concocting the recipes on their pages.

Given that history, I couldn't wait to sit in on Lucy Waverman's session at the recent Food Bloggers of Canada conference in Hockley Valley. Lucy is the magazine's food editor. She's also food writer royalty in my world, writing a regular column for the Globe and Mail. I unabashedly covet her job and I planned to hang on to her every word as she talked about the new face of food writing.

I gathered, though, from what she had to say, that it's a face she doesn't love.

Weed Wednesday: Make that hairy bittercress

This is hairy bittercress, its identity given away by its white flowers while
winter cress has yellow flowers. 

Tell me if hairy bittercress sounds remotely appetizing.

I'm going with no. Anything edible with the words hairy and bitter in its name desperately needs a PR makeover. Sorry hairy bittercress but you sound like the weed equivalent of the naked mole rat.

Not much about hairy sounds redeeming, let alone edible. But unlike the hairless rodent with translucent skin and teeth that would challenge even the best orthodontist, hairy bittercress is a bit of a misnomer.

Oh, it's bitter, being part of the mustard family. But it's not hairy. In fact, it's quite smooth, much like those naked mole rats. And it's also the weed that I called winter cress in my Weed Wednesday post last week.

Man, I hate being wrong. But I do take comfort in the fact that hairy bittercress and winter cress are related. They're both brassicas. The possibility that I had confused the two was pointed out to me by a reader from the U.K. My first thought when my eyes fell on the words hairy bittercress: Dear god, what did I eat?