Yeehaw…I’m getting back into making videos!
Over Christmas I went on an awesome trip with 12 of my family members to explore and adventure through New Zealand. Going by airplane, foot, sailboat…it’s always an adventure traveling with us! My stores of dog rose (Rosa canina) hips are already gone and the elderflowers are now blooming on Maui. The New Zealand flax (Phormium sp.) was so cool to see growing all over the country, this part of the video was shot on Great Barrier Island…awesome island with huge tree ferns, crazy bird calls, and a wild spirit. Lambsquarters were growing all over the place and provided many large feasts along the way. I’m so excited because my fiance and I now have our production for pro video and music going. We’ve been making music with our band ‘Sunny and the Ryan’ and are trying to have original music in all our upcoming videos….yeehaw! The video below is a sneak peak into bi-weekly video blogs I’ll be doing for Veria

After a long hiatus from filming Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage, I just signed my newly amended contract with Veria…with the addition of being Associate Producer this go-round! We’ll be filming the final 9 episodes of the second season in coming months. Veria is also paying me to make video blogs…so there’s added incentive. They will be launching their new and improved website www.veria.com in early March, so check in with them to find recipes/videos/comments/etc.

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!

Processing acorns! Everyone does it a little bit different, and for me it seems like every year I’m somewhere different and do it in a little bit different way. This year I was in north central Texas, and luckily had myself some great help. You’ll follow from picking them up, to shelling them in my handy sheller, to letting them dry so that the papery sheaths can be removed, to grinding them up in my hand crank/hand powered blender, to leaching them with cold water to remove the tannic acid.

Click here for a recipe for Puffy Acorn Pretzels. Click here for a recipe for Acorn Black Walnut Bread. Click here for a recipe for Acorn ‘n Sagebrush Chicken. And click here for Acorn Hummus.

Ever wanted to see the inside of an eco RV?
I’ve been traveling on the road in this 2009 diesel Road Warrior by Weekend Warrior for the last 10 months. After finding out that I would be filming a television show about wild foods all across America, I needed to find a way to not be separated from my son for long periods of time. My cousin suggested an RV and it seemed like a great idea. The network I would be working for was not too excited about the idea of me driving the RV to filming locations, thinking that I could possibly be breaking down on the side of the road and unable to meet productions schedules. So, the trade-off was that I buy a new one with all the warranties and bells and whistles.

Similar to purchasing a new car, I had heard about the large amount of toxic fumes and particles released…especially during the first 6-12 months after its manufactured date…in a new vehicle. Unlike a regular car, we would be living in the RV with a friend full-time. I decided to put in the extra capital to make the RV as environmentally friendly as my budget and time would allow. We nearly completely gutted out the interior, installing recycled bamboo flooring using non-toxic adhesives, cork ceilings using non-toxic adhesives, peeling the walls of their carpeting and linoleum and applying non-toxic zero VOC paints that also included some clay to further absorb toxins from the air itself, stripped some of the wood and used non toxic stain, built custom frames for all the windows so that we could install 100% organic and wild crafted nettle curtains, we took out the existing mattresses and put in organic cotton filled ones…then covered them with bamboo and organic cotton sheets. We got some beautiful organic, wild-crafted, hypoallergenic milkweed filled comforters and pillows. We then installed 8 solar panels on the roof, creating enough energy for all our power needs (all interior lights/fans/computers/chargers/power tools/blenders/food dehydrators and more!). The rig is a diesel, so we were able to run biodiesel for much of the time. This rig is actually what’s called a toy hauler and the entire back side drops down so that you can drive a motorcycle (I have my 1998 Yamaha Virago 1100 Special parked in back), 4-wheeler, jet ski, smart car, etc. into. Besides its huge diesel tank, there is also a completely separate tank for unleaded gasoline for your toys. My dream was to convert it to run on vegetable grease that I got from restaurants. This motorhome is especially well designed to be a grease RV because it’s already a diesel and with some welding and conversion magic you could have the smaller ‘unleaded’ tank hold the diesel necessary to start the rig, with the much larger ‘diesel’ tank used to hold straight grease.

I recently ended filming my upcoming television series ‘Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage’. I’ve decided to sell the RV, as well as the motorcycle. I think it would be a great for a family, as a traveling educational ride, or for someone wanting to bring a business on the road. If you’re interested in purchasing it please contact me at: sunnysavage@gmail.com

Check out this behind-the-scenes look into my last day filming the upcoming television series Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage. The show is a travelogue, filmed all across the United States, where you explore the great outdoors and learn to identify, harvest, and cook up a wild food plant or fungi. All cooking is done over an open campfire or using my solar oven.

photo taken from www.alunajoy.com

I’m really excited about the spirit of hope and unity I feel as an American and global citizen today. The excitement and anticipation of better things to come will fade as we face the reality of how to transform our problems…but I hope we will hold this feeling of unity close in our consciousness.

I’m also really excited that kids will be part of our social-political consciousness. Bringing kid energy back into the White House will be good. My vision of having every child in America learn 10 wild food plants in their bioregion seems more easily achievable, and of creating cooperatives of people who are harvesting and distributing wild foods seems more achievable *yeehaw…progressives have been empowered. Enjoy your personal life, while participating in our collective experience in an active way. Teach the children well.

I am so excited to announce the launch of my new eco clothing and design company Savage Designs. It all started with a dream to create clothing out of wild harvested nettle, clothes that heal us and the earth. Besides being an incredible wild food, nettle has been used as medicine and fiber for millenia. Although nettle is our signature fabric, we also use other fabrics like bamboo, wool, organic cotton and wild crafted hemp (along with a few other, as yet, unrevealed wild-crafted fibers).

Above is a photo of Stardust Magick, our head designer, and a Village Chief who showed us how to harvest nettle bark in the jungle. We work with tribal villagers in Nepal, in a just and conscious way, who have retained their sacred knowledge of working with nettles. You can watch a short clip in the video below, which highlights how the villagers strip the bark from the plants (about 5 minutes into the video), as well as see how how it is spun into thread. You will also hear the ancient song of the giant himilayan nettle (Girardinia diversifolia), sung by an 18-year old Kulung Rai woman named Naibi Lakchhi Rai, who sees the importance of keeping their traditions alive.

We are coming into a new stage in our human evolution, a time in which we realize the fabric of our lives is connected, an era in which our organic beauty can be freely expressed and celebrated through the clothes we wear and the relationships we harbor. I would like to see small fiber cooperatives of people forming in the United States…to create fiber security and remove us from the cycle of capitalism. I don’t see this as a step back, but rather we will learn how to take ancient knowledge and techniques and work them creatively in new ways.

Standing with a giant himilayan nettle plant.

Adorned in a crown of raw nettle bark and a 100% wild crafted nettle shawl knit by Kulung Rai women.

Please click here to visit the Savage Designs website.

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.