Wild and Free: Another Wild Food Adventure with John Kallas, Dandelion Wine and more

Dandelion petals: If you want yellow fingers but don't smoke...

In the past few weeks I’ve done a lot of foraging. First I gathered dandelion petals with my friend and her daughter for this year’s batch of dandelion wine. If you want 3 gallons of dandelion wine you need 3 gallons of dandelion petals. That’s what we wanted but we settled with one gallon — which took the better part of an afternoon to collect. I wrote about last year’s dandelion wine for Imbibe.

Yes, those scissors are a little big but she insisted. At least it's not a sweat shop.

Another wild food event this season was an informal gathering of all sorts of Portlanders — connected via food, work, friends — that I won’t share too much about since a story is currently in the works. I will show you a photo of a bit of the resulting food — 3 jars of delicious collective kraut. In our collective batches of vegetable ferments, amongst MANY ingredients, were backyard bull thistle, dandelion greens and black radish…

There are things in these jars that I'd never heard of until this spring

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend another one of John Kallas’ Wild Food Adventures. Kallas is one of my favorite Portland food people because he often goes where no one else does in search of delicious wild foods growing all around us — urban, suburban and off the beaten path. This Sunday we went to Oxbow Park out in the Sandy River Gorge not far from Troutdale.

Eat me -- stinging nettles

We were lucky that we didn’t get rained or hailed on as we hiked around sampling all sorts of wild spring greens including sheep sorrel, waterleaf, salmonberry stems (the inside of new growth stems tastes sweeter and juicier when peeled than fresh asparagus), miner’s lettuce, stinging nettles and much more. Well, we didn’t try the nettle but John did. He has a trick for plucking them with his bare hands and eating them on the spot without a sting….

Our fearless leader John Kallas -- stinging nettle in hand

I haven’t been foraging for morels yet this spring even though one popped up in our backyard a few days ago! I hear it’s a later season for them this year so maybe there’s still hope. Happy foraging everyone.

Wild Food Adventures
John Kallas
www.wildfoodadventures.com
503.775.3828
mail@wildfoodadventures.com
***Most workshops still have openings but they fill up fast***