WILD BLACK CHERRY SAUCE By Lisa Caccamise

Makes about 3/4 cup

2 cups black cherries, no need to pull the stems as they will be strained out along with the pits.

water to cover

1/4 cup sugar or more to taste

1.  Add cherries and water to a medium pot and bring to a boil.

2.  Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, then uncover and simmer another 15-30 minutes or until cherries are soft and liquid is reduced by 1/2.

3.  Cool slightly.

4.  Add cherries to a food mill, or to a fine sieve and mill or press the cherries until the seeds release and the juice strains into a clean pot.

5.  Add sugar to a taste.

6.  Bring the liquid, if watery, to a boil and reduce until desired thickness.

to read more about black cherries, click here

The post Recipe: Wild Black Cherry Sauce appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

Choose pods that are young, firm and easily sliced.  If they feel at all tough or stringy, don’t use them.

Ingredients:

24 young milkweed pods

Cup precooked grain (Rice, millet or quinoa)

Small onion

2 cloves garlic

1/2 small red pepper

1/2 cup wild greens (lambsquarters, purslane, mustard or stinging nettle)

small piece of ginger

teriyaki sauce

Salt & pepper

Coconut oil

Directions:

Turning the pod in your hand, look for the seam.  Split the pod carefully along the seem so that you expose the white seed cluster without pulling the pods apart.  Using a blunt knife, work the center out of the pod.  If it comes out whole, it will resemble a small white fish.  Put it on one side.

Put the pod cases into boiling salted water and cook for about 5 minutes.  Drain

Filling:

Slice the ginger and sauté in a pan containing two tbsp coconut oil

Chop the onion fine and add to pan

After a minute add finely chopped garlic cloves and chopped red pepper

Chop greens and add to mixture and cook for another minute

Stir in the grain and cook until hot

Remove ginger and flavor with about 1 tbsp teriyaki sauce

Add pepper to taste

Carefully fill each pod with stuffing and arrange on a platter

Garnish and serve

to watch our video, click here

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to read the recipe for stuffed milkweed pods, click here

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2 cups wineberries or raspberries
1 750 ml bottle of Riesling or other fruity/semi sweet wine – Grape juice or ginger-ale can be substituted for non-alcoholic version.
2 bottles of Kombucha – flavor of choice – we used 1 bottle citrus and 1 bottle hibiscus
2 T honey
Fresh orange slices – plus more for decorating sides of serving glasses.

1. Mix all together and chill well.

STUFFED GRAPE LEAVES
Makes about 30

30 wild grape leaves
Sea salt
1/4 cup white vinegar
DRESSING:
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup red clover or apple cider vinegar
1 tea Dijon
2 T honey
1/2 cup olive oil or more to taste
FILLING:
2 onions, chopped finely
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup olives – black, green or a combination, chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
3 T milkweed buds
1 T milkweed pods, chopped
2 T field garlic kernels
1 T black mustard seeds
2 crisp apples, cored and chopped fine
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 T herb spice blend of choice – TJ’s 21 salute is very nice
4 cups COOKED millet

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add 1/4 cup white vinegar and grape leaves. Simmer at least 10 minutes, then turn off flame and steep leaves until cooled enough to touch the without burning.
2. In a jar or food processor, add all the dressing components and mix well until smooth.
3. In a large bowl, combine all of the stuffing components** and mix well.
4. Add 1/2 the dressing to the stuffing and mix. Add more dressing a little at a time or until the filling starts to clump together easily.
5. To stuff: Lay one grape leaf down on a flat surface – pretty side down – and top with about 1 T filling. Fold both sides over the filling and bring one flap up then the other and, while guiding the stuffing inward, roll the leaf away from you until a tight cylinder is formed.
6. Continue with rest of the leaves and brush with olive oil to keep the leaves moist and glossy.

** The ingredients we used were what we had on hand. Please feel free to add, subtract or change any of the filling ingredients. Rice for millet, cranberries for apples, sunflower seeds for pumpkin seeds. . . etc. Also, if you have a favorite bottled dressing, you can use that vs the homemade dressing above, although in our opinion, homemade is always best :)

to watch the video click here

The post Recipe: Stuffed Grape Leaves and Wineberry Sangria appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

for Chef’s Lisa’s recipes click here

The post Video: Feed Your Farmers: Stuffed Grape Leaves and Wineberry Sangria appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

What we gain and what we lose with the conveniences of modern living

Faster than Fast:

“It takes a village”

My husband Emilio grew up in the Dominican Republic, and he can’t remember a dinner he ate during his youth without his nuclear family. Even when his mother had to raise 5 boys alone, she woke up early every morning to make their lunch, and was home to make dinner every night. And at least once a week, they gathered for a meal with his large extended family, all who lived locally, and ate food from the family farm. In his family, there is a reverence and commitment to eating together.

I was born here in the American suburbs, and I can remember plenty of disjointed, hurried, slap dash meals that had nothing to do with “Gathering Together”. We were always rushing thru meals for various reasons. The only time we made it a point to eat together as a family was holidays. On these occasions we prepared our families’ traditional dishes such as matza brie for Passover or my Aunt’s Christmas mac’n cheese.

The decision to eat together as a family can be a matter of culture, religion, tradition, family choice, physical distance, and/or economics. Some cultures hold much more strongly to the idea of eating together as a family, however this, like many traditions can be lost within a few generations.

What is the price of convenience? What have we traded?

Most of us are guilty of pulling a microwave dinner out of the freezer, popping it in the microwave, and then scarfing it down in front of the TV. This is in no way uncommon in this country. And this can be done alone, or with family, or roommates. I have created meals like this or similar, including a pot of instant mac n cheese, hot dogs, and other fast foods that can be prepared in minutes in the home kitchen.

Is this easy and convenient, oh yes.

What do we gain? Time. The first thing we gain is time. That is VERY convenient. But what exactly are we all doing with this extra time?

When I was in college, a quick and easy meal meant more time to work. So that was an advantage for me. Working 40 hours a week or more, I rarely had time to cook. (Not that I knew how. I still remember my friend and I in our dorm kitchen trying to figure out how to boil and egg. We exploded 4 before we figured it out). And I had STUFF TO DO!. Work or homework or the party I HAD TO GO TO. I had places to go! And eating was an inconvenient thing I had to do to get it over with so that I could go and do something “better”.

I remember one summer internship I was working 8am to whenever I passed out, and my hatchback was littered with fast food wrappers. Absolutely papered with them. I really didn’t have time for anything else.

If we gain time with fast food, what do we lose? The social bonding of a community working together for a goal that benefits everyone.

(For any of you Weston A. Price people who are also yelling “nutrition”! I’ll get to that another time).

Gathering around a wooden table with knives and cutting boards, and bare hands, talking, laughing and telling stories, all contributing together to the community meal.

These days in my life, my meals are all about preparing and cooking food with friends and family, and eating Together. My understanding about what food means in my life has changed profoundly.

While most weeknights it is just my husband and I, we do prepare meals from scratch and cook together. Long, slow cooked recipes he learned from his mother back in DR.

On the days that I am lucky enough to have the time to eat with friends, I gather together with my fellow Suburban Foragers and Eastern Light Project friends and we prepare meals as a group, and eat together as a group using a combination of foraged and local farm foods.

Sometimes this takes form as a Suburban Foragers cooking Workshop. Sometimes it is just an enjoyable Sunday afternoon. And most recently it is Joyful Thursdays, where we gather at Cropsey Farm to cook food for the hard working farm team and some of the volunteers. It is a wonderful way to encourage community, and to give thanks for all their hard work.

The days when I can gather together with friends and family, and prepare food together in a group are my favorite. We gather an assembly line of cutters and dicers and cookers and slicers. We cook as a group, eat as a group, talk as a group, and clean up as a group. This is my favorite way to experience food. It is peaceful and thankful, social and nourishing to the body, but also our more esoteric parts. Those bits and somewhat undefinable pieces that are commonly considered neglected by our modern societies’ irreverence for the lost wisdom of slower times.

Whatever your village is up to, find the time to gather together.

The post Blog: Gather Together: A Journey Thru Food appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

visit our friends at the Eastern Light Project here 

The post Gathering Together: Video: “Wild Foods Pizza Party at the Eastern Light Project” appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

Caramelized milkweed pods

Here’s a recipe for this month’s seasonal ingredient Milk Weed Pods: simple and delicious.

CARAMELIZED MILKWEED PODS

2 T coconut oil
3 cups fresh milkweed pods, cut in half horizontally

1.  Add coconut oil to a large skillet over high heat.
2.  Add pods, cut side down, and sear for about 1-2 minutes or until nicely browned.
3.  Flip pods carefully with tongs and cook on second side about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
4.  Season lightly with sea salt and pepper add to pot with meatballs.

To Learn More about Milkweed click here

Pork and Lambsquarters Meatballs in a Coconut Chicken Broth

Serves 8-10

MEATBALLS:
1 T coconut oil
1 stalk lemongrass, tender part only, minced
2 cups onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups lambsquarters or spinach, chopped
1 T lime juice
1-2 eggs
2 lbs ground pork
1 tea salt
1 T liquid aminos or soy sauce or soy free coconut aminos
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup spelt flour or all purpose flour

SAUCE:
2 T coconut oil
1 stalk lemongrass, tender part only, minced
2 tea fresh ginger, grated
2 fresh tomatoes, diced – or 1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (15 ounce) can coconut milk
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tea palm sugar or brown sugar
squeeze of lime juice to taste

1.  Preheat oven to 400.  Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.
2.  Heat 1 T coconut oil in a large skillet and cook onion, lemongrass and garlic until soft.
3.  Add lambsquarters in batches, folding in until all are wilted and reduced to half their volume.
4.  Add lime juice off heat and mix well.  Set aside to cool slightly.
5.  In a large bowl, mix pork, sea salt, liquid aminos and cinnamon.
6.  Add greens and mix well.
7.  Add spelt flour to firm up the mixture if too wet.
8.  Roll meatballs into 1/2 inch or quarter sized balls and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Bake 10-15 minutes or until cooked through.
9.  While meatballs are in the oven, add 2 T coconut oil to a stock pot over medium high heat.
10. Add lemongrass and ginger and cook 1 minute, or until fragrant.
11. Add diced tomatoes, coconut milk and chicken broth and bring to a boil.
12.  Add sugar and stir to dissolve bringing the broth to a simmer.
13.  Add meatballs and simmer in the sauce for anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour.  The longer they simmer, the more tender they will be.
14.  Serve with Caramelized Milkweed Pods and soba noodles, if desired.

Recipe by Chef Lisa Caccamise, Simple Earth Cuisine Personal Chef Service, LLC.

 To watch the cooking video click here

The post Recipe: Caramelized Milkweed Pods and Pork and Lambsquarters Meatballs in a Coconut Chicken Broth appeared first on Suburban Foragers.

To Learn More about Milkweed click here

For our recipe click here

Cropsey Farm

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