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The wild taste of spring!
From my youngest childhood days, I remember foraging for fiddlehead ferns with my Uncle Leonard, a great forager of wild native foods. Heading out to the woods with him and my Aunt Mary was always a treat; she searched for antique bottles around old cellar holes, while he turned his attention to wild foods.
In the spring, Uncle Leonard gathered fiddleheads along with the fragrant ramps (wild leeks) that grew in great abundance and, when we were lucky, morel mushrooms.
Preparing your fiddleheads
To prepare the fiddleheads: First, soak your fiddleheads in cold water for 10 minutes and rub off any brown, papery scales with your fingers or a soft cloth. This substance is extremely bitter. Drain, add fresh water, and soak an additional 5 minutes. If the second water is still...
The unbearable lightness of daffodils
The first sight of it signals that the dark heaviness of the heart in winter is over and gone
Daffodils can break your heart in so many lovely ways. "I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o'er vales and hills/When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils," wrote William Wordsworth a few years after he and his sister, while walking by a...