Edible Plants & Seaweed
This was one of my favorite events of the past 3 seasons! This year had a focus on the coastal plants, both edible and non-edible. We met up at 10:00am in Little River, which was a great location for seeing a variety of coastal plants and common native plants.
The addition of seaweeds made things really interesting, and I had to visit a few locations on Cape Breton Island to get them: Lousibourg, Englishtown and Little River. The kind of coastline / habitat you need to look for in order to find certain species will vary.
Sarah Robinson, Biologist, was back to guide us through all the local plants and once again brought so much to the table in terms of snacks, preserves, vinegars and foraging secrets to talk about over the lunch break. We also did a forest walk back at my place in Wreck Cove where could focus more on trees and plants more often found in the woods.
Of course we had SNACKS out in the field and plenty to keep us hydrated on a hot August day. We sipped on Bladderwrack & Ginger Iced Tea, Rose Lemonade, and had a Pineappleweed Banana Loaf. After our beach hike we returned to my place for lunch and some chats about how to preserve and dehydrate plants, and how to use them. We provided examples of vinegars, infused honey, powders, compound butters, beverages, fermented and pickled items, brandy, and more.
Sarah always makes sure that here are tons of books and resources about plants and cooking with foraged ingredients for people to look at. We fried up some wild Boar sausages, had a bread and butter bar, several different plant-based drinks.
The Drink Menu & Bread n Butter Bar
Bladderwrack & Ginger Iced Tea
Elderberry Blueberry Mint Beverage
Ground Ivy Iced Tea
Cold Bunchberry Tea
Rose Lemonade
Pineappleweed Banana Bread
Salt & Vinegar Crickets
Seaweed Chips & Dehydrated Seaweed Snacks
Mugwort Biscuits
Lavender & Chanterelle Focaccia
Sugar Kelp & Garlic Confit Focaccia
Garlic Scape, Chanterelle & Dulse Butters
Nasturtium Pesto
Fried Wild Boar Sausage
Sea Rocket Mustard, Chokecherry Catsup dips
Mugwort Sauerkraut
FUNGI & PLANTS WE TRIED AT THIS EVENT
There are so many! We tried something from all three varieties of seaweed / algaes (brown, red and green). We had both Sugar Kelp and Horsetail Kelp, Bladderwrack, Dulse, and tried fresh Sea Lettuce that I went for a swim to gather right before we met up.
In the food and in the field we tried: Sea Rocket, Wild Carrot, Elderberries, wild Roses, Blueberries, Nasturtiums, Chanterelles, Pineappleweed, Bunchberries, Garlic Scapes, Spruce Tips, Ground Ivy, Lavender, Mugwort, and more.
