Another great year at the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. This was our 4th Annual gathering and this year we had a spontaneous music recording with all the awesome musical talent attending. Listen to the Wild Food Summit song as you watch the video!

Here’s the final video from the Wild Food Summit, held on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota around the summer solstice.
Click here to watch part 1, and here to watch part 2. This video is the remaining interview with Sam Thayer, author of Forager’s Harvest. Sam and his wife Melissa recently challenged themselves to eat solely wild foods for one month. Sam actually continued on longer than the one month time period and said he really enjoyed the experience. Although he already eats a diet comprised of many wild foods, taking the leap to exclusively wild was a fun process.

Here is the second video of 3 from the Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation. Be sure to stay tuned for part 3 in this series of videos. Click here to see part 1. Or click here for part 3.

The White Earth Tribal and Community College, located on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota, hosted the 3rd annual Wild Food Summit. This gathering, which was held during the summer solstice, brought folks together who were interested in learning about identifying and preparing wild foods. But as shown through the various interviews, the gathering runs deeper than that, and is really about that intersecting point between how plants and people shape each other.

The above video is the first of 3, which includes interviews with some of the presenters and folks attending the event. Below is the recipe outline for a cattail stirfry prepared during the event. I got the idea for the nettle and sesame seed powder from Susan Weed’s book Healing Wise, and the stirfy is just one of the many number of ways our family prepares cattail hearts/shoots. enjoy!

Nettle/Sesame Powder
Harvest your nettle leaves, clean them, and then thoroughly dry them. Take some sesame seeds and put them into a hot skillet. Keep moving them around with your spatula so they don’t burn, and watch out because they will start to jump and pop. Once they start to smell like they’ve been toasted and start to brown you can remove them and put into a food processor/blender/mortar & pestle, along with your dried nettle leaves and a small amount of salt (I used 1 tsp of salt to a 1/2 gallon mason jar full of dried nettle leaves and about 2 cups of sesame seeds). Experiment with how many nettles to sesame seeds you like. Use this powder to top rice dishes, soups, salads, etc. It is loaded with nutrients and adds a delicious nutty flavor to your foods.

Cattail Stir-fry
Gather your cattail leaves/shoots and pull off the tough/fibrous outer leaves until you reach the tender white inner core of the cattail heart. Wash them thoroughly and cut into roughly 4” pieces. Put a healthy amount of high-heat cooking oil in the bottom of your skillet. Put in your burdock root slices into the hot oil, which are cut diagonally about 1/8” thick, and cook for about 5 minutes. Then add chopped spring onion, carrots that have been cut into long strips (julienned), and the chopped burdock petioles. Cook about 3-5 minutes and then add cattail shoots, minced garlic, and minced ginger (you could use a small amount of wild ginger). Cook for about 3 minutes. Then add a few splashes of sesame seed oil, some black sesame seeds, chopped red cabbage, some finely chopped wild greens (we used sow thistle greens) and a lot of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos/soy sauce/tamari/shoyu. Cover and let cook for about a minute. Serve with Nettle/Sesame Powder sprinkled on top.

Click here for part 2 and click here for part 3.

Here is the second video from a wild plant retreat I attended with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook. Based out of the Sunnybank Inn, which sits along the Appalachian Trail near Hot Springs, NC, we traveled to some amazing places nearby and learned a wealth of information from these two astute mountain men. Doug Elliott is a gifted storyteller and musician, and we start this video off with his Dandelion Song. The remainder of the video highlights Frank Cook of www.plantsandhealers.com. Frank has an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants, and the real beauty lies in that he blends this knowledge with love and wisdom. Frank travels the world learning about and teaching about plants, and he has a wonderful way of bringing truth’s out and making you think about your own evolution. Please check out his website to see some of the articles he’s written, books he recommends, and his tour schedule.

I really fell in love with those Appalachian Mountains, and send a big thanks to all the plants, the people attending the retreat, and our amazing teachers!

Here is a long-overdue video from my time spent in the Appalachian Mountains with Doug Elliott and Frank Cook, during the late part of April. I attended an absolutely wonderful wild plant retreat with these gentle giants of the plant world and learned so much from them both. Doug is a gifted mountain man who, in addition to his knowledge of the natural world, shares his enthusiasm for it through stories and song. He is a national treasure…keeping the stories and songs alive, and I would encourage you to visit his website www.dougelliott.com to see the wide range of CD’s and books he has available. Doug is a tender-hearted man, with a lifetime of experience living off the land and staying attuned to the plant world.

One of my favorite things I learned from him was that when you are walking through the forest and you go through a spiderweb…well, that’s the forest imprinting your face! And when you step over one of those rocks that tips and wobbles a bit…well, that’s the forest figuring out how much you weigh! And finally, when you stumble upon one of those jack (or jill) in the pulpit’s…well, that’s the microphone of the forest and they’re listening to your words. It’s alive!!! Please check Doug’s website for his class schedules, and stay tuned for part two.