Last year was a scouting year in the woods by my house.  I kept my eyes open while walking the dog (and the kids) and located an area near the creek that was heavily populated with nettle and ferns.  On the Summer Solstice last year I harvested a whole bunch of nettle and used it to make various things, but the ferns, while beautiful to look at, were well past the edible "fiddlehead" phase for the season. 

I noted where those gorgeous ferns lived, and headed back to their patch last week.

Our dog, Oscar, helped me that day!

 I was rewarded with fresh fiddleheads (harvested sustainably, only 1 or 2 from each fern plant) that I sauteed up with some tamari and olive oil and ate as part of a side salad served alongside some "Ramped-up" blackbean burgers.





So, why do I keep on referring to my blackbean burgers as being "ramped-up"?  Well, it's because on this particular fiddlehead-gathering trip to the woods, I happened to realize that there were colonies of ramps EVERYWHERE.  Super abundant this year (and about 14.99/lb at the local grocery store).  So I gathered some of these beauties as well.





You use ramps just like you would use green onions. 

Lately I've been using dinner salads as a place to finish up all of our leftover side dishes (grain salads etc) along with getting my daily intake of ferments, and foraged goodies.  

Yep, I said FORAGED goodies.  The weather finally broke and the green things are HERE!   It's almost impossible to go outside with my girls lately and NOT pick up a few flowers.  


This absolutely isn't a new topic for me.  Last year I covered the use of foraged wild sweet violets, bittercress flowers, and onion grass in this gorgeous post. 

This time around, I kept it simple and added the flowers to our salad plates along with baby dandelion greens, homemade purple sauerkraut, and a Quinoa salad made with some of this season's first onion grass (which, for all intents and purposes tastes very much like mild chives.  I substituted Onion grass for the green onions called for in the original recipe, and carrots for the daikon radish). There's also a couple dolmades on there.  I cheated and bought those from the Greek bar at the store, BUT here's a recipe for those as well!

And here it is, in all it's HUMONGOUS dinner salad glory.

 

Ingredients for Quinoa Salad

Enjoy!!