Mother's Day Hike

Spencer's only Mother's Day request was a hike with the family and somehow of my famous homemade pizza.  So, we went to a local spot to try and find any last remaining morels, ramps, and nettles.  We tried Declan out in the hiking backpack and he LOVED his new viewpoint on the world. 

We found a few old morels that weren't worth picking, but still fun to find and revisit for next year.  The ramps were sparse and older too, but would be great for pizza night (on my half :). And the other added bonus was this backpack was big enough to fill with enough nettles as I wanted.   We found a really cool box turtle on our trip just chilling in wet patch of the woods.  And we got a few gobblers to play along to some louder than normal aggressive cutting.  There are some benefits to no hunting on Sundays in PA.  We had a great hike, but no bear tracks this year!

I baked the nettles in some coconut oil later that evening and baked up a killer pizza for the evening dinner.  Great day to celebrate our #1 team MVP.

Ramp-o-mania 2017

One could argue there is no better foraging event than spring-time ramps.  And if you know what you're doing and where you're going, it more like production digging than actually foraging.  I've found them in small patches before, but one of my best buddies called me and said he found the mother load.  I take no credit for this one....but I can follow directions very well.  And he was right.  A shovel and couple bags was all that was needed.  

To simply call it a cross between a onion and garlic would do this spring delectable a disservice.  But, it would get you in the right direction.  For 3 weeks I eat them fresh in salads, on sandwiches, fried with venison, steamed / sauteed as breakfast side, deep fried, or just straight raw.   For breakfast you saute the entire ramp (leaf and all) and you pair these with sunny-side-up dippy eggs.     Trust me, Its a match made in heaven.

With the surplus I had this year, I ended up pickling them.  That was a production in itself.  i will post details in the recipe section.  In short, if you happen to be in the fortunate position to have more fresh ramps than you know what to do with, this is a great (and fun) option.  Be forewarned though, this takes some serious time and work to clean and prepare them. But that is all part of the fun.

A couple weeks after this, my sister-in-law sent me a picture from Brooklyn, NY where they were selling 4-6 ramps in $5 bundles at a local farm market.  I'm pretty sure this hillside has about a million dollars in ramps!  Maybe next year I can start a ramp side business.