Wild Edibles Dishes (Healthy meets Delicious!)

As summer dawns upon us, my family and I look forward to picking wild and garden berries. I have already started by picking mulberries and cherries. Right now I am unemployed so everyday I try to pick a different local park to walk my dog at while there I bring my tools for picking any edibles we find. This helps because if I find some berries at one park, I can come back a few days later and more of those berries will be ripe. I only take a small portion each time leaving plenty for the wildlife. As I pick a couple cups of a certain kind of berry, I try to find interesting recipes to use them in. I love to bake with wild edibles. I am often not satisfied enough to eat the fruit on its own although, there are many times that while I am picking (especially in my own yard) I do just that. Last year I had a lot of fun making cakes, pies and other things. However, as delicious as these were, they were not the healthiest dishes. I still want to do some of those same dishes to some extent, but I want to challenge myself to make those dishes healthier or to find healthier dishes to make. I will divulge one of my biggest secrets. You will not believe this coming from someone like myself who tries to live a pretty active and healthy lifestyle. I HATE GREENS (SALAD)! I think they taste terrible, but thats just me. I do eat greens (I even grow spinach), because they are extremely good for you, I just have to mask them in fruit and veggie smoothies. So, I dutifully get my greens in nonetheless. So, of course if you like salad, just throw your favorite wild edibles into that. Thats the healthiest option of all, besides fruit salad of course, which I do like. But if you like to indulge your sweet tooth every once in a while here are a few of my favorites recipes and I have variations on them you can feel less guilty about.

My first dish was a cherry-apple crisp. Here is the recipe and in bold are the changes I made and the rest in bold green are changes that I would suggest making or would make if I had all the money in the world to buy everything organic.

• 2 pounds Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and thinly sliced (Organic Apples are a Must- Pesticides are the Reason)
• 3/4 cup cranberries (or cherries, whichever- organic if at all possible)
• 1/4 cup white sugar (organic coconut palm sugar or the like)
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon (organic cinnamon)
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (organic nutmeg)
• 1/3 cup quick-cooking oats (organic oats)
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour (un-bleached all-purpose flour would be best)
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar (organic brown sugar)
• 1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces (organic butter)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (organic pecans)
• Addition of Organic Ground Flax Meal and added to the cherries some cherry jelly I made from last year, since I was a little short on the cherries.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C.) Butter an 8 inch square baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix together apples, cranberries, white sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Place evenly into baking dish.
3. In the same bowl, combine oats, flour and brown sugar. With a fork, mix in butter until crumbly. Stir in pecans. Sprinkle over apples.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until topping is golden brown, and apples are tender.

Next we have one of my favorite recipes to add wild edibles to (either in the recipe or afterwards) Granola. This time I chose to make a cherry chocolate granola.

Ingredients

• 3 cups rolled oats (organic oats)
• 1 cup slivered almonds (organic almonds)
• 1 cup cashews (organic cashews)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar (organic brown sugar, plus I use the 2 tbsp for coconut palm sugar instead)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup (real maple syrup, organic even better)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (use organic safflower or coconut oil for cooking, do not cook with olive oil or vegetable oil in oven heres why)
• 3/4 teaspoon salt (sea salt)
• additional ingredients I used are:
• flax meal (3 tbsp)
• artichoke powder (which is usually used in smoothies, but I sometimes use it in other recipes as well its called Artichoke Vitae Plus)
• raw organic pumpkin seed (chopped up, but if you like them whole then go ahead and use them that way, 1/4 cup)
• organic cocoa nibs (I use about 1/4 cup or whatever looks satisfactory when mixed in)
• cherries (pitted and again I dump some in and keep dumping them in and mixing until I get a consistency I like)

 Follow recipe as below, but add or change ingredients along the way where necessary.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, and brown sugar.
3. In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil, and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color.
4. Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl.

Original Recipe