Early flowering chickweed

Staten Island, NY. With the balmy temperatures we’ve been experiencing in the city this winter, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find tenacious chickweed (Stellaria media) with its corn-like flavoring in flower so early this season. Last week, campus was filled with the tiny green ground cover and its wee white flowers soaking up the sun. Turns out, chickweed isn’t the only thing in flower: I’m currently eight months+ pregnant with our first child, and thrilled to see the appearance of all of my favorite wild edibles coming up so early before I have to head indoors to make the big push myself.

Through the years, I’ve written about chickweed for the New York Times City Room and Local sections as a tasty weed that grows among the ice and snow, which makes a delicate wild substitute for micro-greens. But it also has skin-soothing properties, which I, as a pregnant woman, have found very helpful—especially when dealing with eczema, which I had a bad bout with in my 1st trimester, and with avoiding stretch marks (so far so good).

My secret weapon to combat both was an infused sesame-chickweed oil (with the chickweed strained out); it’s marvelous and works better than any prescription cream I’d ever gotten from my doctors. Note: Sesame oil is denser than almond or coconut oil, and when you’re dealing with a severe case of eczema as I was, this is what you want. If you’re having a difficult time locating Stellaria media in your neighborhood or on your front lawn, sesame oil alone can be helpful. Any old sesame oil from the supermarket will do, though avoid the toasted kind as you’ll really end up smelling like a marinade to your partner.

Wild, protected sea kale, enjoying the summer sun in Dungeness

Dungeness, England. I was very excited about our U.K. trip, not just because it was an opportunity to meet future family members and see where Owen grew up, but also for the myriad foraging opportunities. Seaside foraging? An opportunity to see where some of the weeds I love originated? Sign me up.

The first wild edible I saw was sea kale, growing on the rocky shores of Romney Marsh in Kent (midway between Dover and Dungeness). Sea kale is hearty and tough, but has a hell of a time gaining purchase in the rocky coastline; in Dungeness, this particular species (pictured) is protected and illegal to harvest. So I had to be content just to photograph it, though I couldn’t help imagining what the young shoots would taste like boiled and sauteed with garlic, onions, and bacon.

The Brits are wild about their wild food, which we soon discovered at a pub where we feasted on local lamb and wild marsh samphire. I’ve nibbled on salty samphire (Salicornia ssp.) growing along the Long Island Sound in the Bronx, but never had it in a restaurant before. We gave this particularly lovely culinary practice—serving the food that an animal would eat alongside it—a big thumb’s up: the saline succulence of the samphire married nicely with the lamb and real baby carrots. De-lish.

Marsh samphire with lamb and real baby carrots

Ava in the WNYC Studio

New York, NY. I was thrilled to be in the studio again on WNYC’s “All Things Considered” with Amy Eddings discussing summer wineberries. The “Last Chance Foods” segment highlights all things fun and foodie, and you can find our conversation here.

I always bring Amy some wild food to sample, as her reactions are so great. Last time, we talked about ginkgoes. (Unfortunately, I gave her an over-peppered sauteed “nut” that caused a coughing fit. Won’t be doing that again).

I’ve seen wineberries from the Bronx to Staten Island, and often see them growing just outside commuter rail train stations. For more info on wineberries, check out my previous post.

If you’re picking from any of the city parks, be aware that there’s a new crack-down on foraging practices by the parks department. More on that later.

Summer jewel. (Photo by Ava Chin)

Wineberries. (Photo by Ava Chin)

Staten Island, NY. Love this summer fruit, which I just wrote about for the Urban Forager (“wineberries“). Tart, juicy, and thimble-shaped, wineberries taste like a blood orange infused with a shot of raspberry. Because the temps have been so ferocious this month, they seem to have peaked early, but if you hurry, you can still find them from the Bronx to Staten Island.

I recently spoke on-air about the fruit on WNYC’s “All Things Considered,” being broadcast next Friday (93.9 FM for all you New Yorkers). I’ll post a link when it goes up. Until then, here’s a pic of my impromptu lecture on the deliriously delectable fruit for a group of Public Schoolers last year.

Ava Chin lecturing on wineberries

Ripening black raspberries. (Photo by Ava Chin)

Brooklyn, NY. It took me a while before I realized that this little juicy treasure, which I wrote about in the Urban Forager recently, was lining the roadsides and trails of my favorite park. As with many things in foraging, once you can positively identify a plant or a fruit, and find the botanical a few times on your own (hopefully in different stages of development), you will know the plant forever. I’m happy to have this little gem in my repertoire.

Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) a k a black cap, black cap raspberry, or thimbleberry, is a relative to the raspberry and like most wild fruit is smaller but more flavorful than the cultivated version. I’ve spent many a meditative hour slowly picking black raspberries from the brambles in friends’ yards, trying to avoid the thorns. I won’t bore you with the details of how I got seduced by the most perfect Rubus occidentalis fruit—a lovely black specimen surrounded by thorns which caught on my hand, sleeve, waist, and jeans—at a yoga retreat last summer, but let’s just say gathering black raspberries is an exercise in mindfulness.

I like black raspberry so much that I feature it in the banner of this website.

Tip: The blacker the black raspberry, the better the flavor and nutrient content. (See pic, below).

Black raspberry, mature and ready for plucking. (Photo by Ava Chin)

New York, NY. What does summer in the city mean? Aside from Shakespeare in the Park, fire hydrants mutilated into sprinklers, and a mad dash out of town on Friday afternoons, summer heat translates into the sweetness of summer berries. While everyone boards their Hampton Jitneys, I’m happy just kicking back in the five boroughs and enjoying the fruit.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about juneberries, which appeared in the NY Times Sunday Metro. Truth is, my fiance and I had been dealing with some sad news, and foraging was one of the few things that comforted me—just like discovering mulberries on the day my grandmother passed away two years ago. Standing inside that juneberry tree, on the hunt for the sweetest purplish-black berry, and witnessing that cardinal land on a branch only a few yards away, kick-started me out of my grief. It was the physiological equivalent of holding a cube of ice in my hand—I literally couldn’t think of anything else except that bird.

I watched the cardinal warily regarding my fiance, completely unaware of me. Then it plucked a fat berry in its beak and flew away.

We collected about 8 oz. of the berries that day. Back home, I made juneberry-blackberry jam sweetened with honey from a friend’s hive on Staten Island. Other friends in the NYC area gathered enough for several tarts and pies. It was a pretty, er, fruitful juneberry season this year.

Here’s a shot my fiance took, mostly of the juneberry tree. (I’m to the right, just outside the frame). Can you spot the birdie?

Holy Sap! Photo by Owen Brunette

Staten Island, NY. I’ll admit it–while this week’s cold spell sent many complaining New Yorkers scrambling for their winter coats again, I was wildly, deliriously happy. Daytime temps dropping to the 40s with freezing evening temperatures can only mean good things for our city maple sugaring project (Urban Forager: Maple Sugaring on Staten Island): lots and lots of sap. Those 60 degree days only weeks before had me convinced I’d missed out on the season, and now I was vindicated: the sap has been flowing on Staten Island, people!

Last year, we tapped a giant tree in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and the home owner and I experimented with outdoor and indoor cooking methods (outdoor is best, but what can you do if you’re constrained by a tiny 2-room apartment in Brooklyn? Answer: Open every window). The results: various grades of maple syrup, and even poached eggs in maple sap (from a tip by @JuleeWhalin).

The experts at the Cornell Sugar Maple Program were very helpful, especially Mike Farrell, whose advice to just drink the sap straight was a welcome one. Maple sap tastes like really fresh water, with just a hint of sweetness. According to Farrell and others, it’s rich in amino acids and other nutrients (meant to support the production of spring leaves) that are boiled away in the sugaring process.

This year, while the homeowners of the Staten Island tree have been busy hovering over boiling pots, I’ve taken to kicking back in Manhattan, sipping sap from a mason jar.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll sprout a full, leafy crown this season. (Namaste, Acer saccharum).

[Note: tapping a mature tree the correct way does not harm the tree. See my recent NY Times Urban Forager post on tapping for details. Btw, I have no idea how the paywall is going to affect these links, but there's only one way to find out...]

Agaricus bernardii, ready for its close-up

Staten Island, NY. I found this wild relative to the most cultivated mushroom in the world—the white button—last fall off an inner road on the college campus where I teach. It was the envy of several mushroom lovers that season.

Turns out Agaricus bernardii is relatively rare in NYC. Dennis Aita, vice president of the NY Mycological Society, has only ever seen it twice in the city. While most mushrooms crop up year after year, A. bernardii is unpredictable. What seems to be the key to its emergence? A generous dose of road salting the winter before.

A. bernardii blushes red when sliced

As mycologist Dr. Richard Kerrigan (Agaricales of California. Vol 6. Agariceae) told me recently, A. bernardii favors alkaline and saline environments.

This hefty beauty, which I profiled most recently in the Urban Forager, reminded me of the dense and chocolatey portobellos which I love to grill in the summertime—albeit with a distinctive seaside aroma and a fleshier consistency under the fork. So I wasn’t surprised when I learned that robust Agaricus bernardi is indeed related to the portobello (a white button grown to Nigella Lawson proportions).

Note: A. bernardii has dark brown-black spore prints and bleeds red (classically redder than what is pictured here). As with all wild mushrooms, make your spore prints, and consult with mushroom experts and field guides, like Gary Lincoff’s National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. I personally would never eat a mushroom that hadn’t gone through all of the above.

With this year’s liberal road saltings all around the city, I’m hoping to find more Agaricus bernardii next autumn. Check back in October for updates.

Happy year of the Rabbit, everyone.

Springtime Chickweed

New York, NY. Despite the black ice and mounds of unruly snow, spritely chickweed survives on the Upper East Side and throughout the city. The Stellaria media sample in the Times pic was a little bedraggled (I had to kick through the snow and ice to excavate it), so for those who’d like a clearer photo to help with IDing, here’s a picture of some healthier-looking spring chickweed from a farm in East New York, Brooklyn.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll help kickstart spring around here.