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.

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.

The Canadians are definitely ahead of the game on publicly bringing in the ‘goods from the woods’. As leaders in this movement for the North American continent, our neighbors to the north have private businesses, educational institutions, and government monies dedicated to promoting and supporting the harvest and distribution of wild foods. Click here, to read a recent CBC article on the increased interest in wild foods.

Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon popularized local eating in Canada with their 100-Mile Diet. Canadians have started to gain deeper connections with their foodsheds, and are starting to nourish their curiosity of ALL available foods growing in the areas in which they live. The Centre for Non-Timber Resources at Royal Roads University in British Columbia has a cool website called BuyBCWild. They organize and are host for the 3rd annual Shop the Wild Festival. This festival celebrates all things wild that are available from BC forests, along with educating folks about the benefits of buying local and going green.

I have always felt that creating cooperatives of people harvesting wild foods is the route we must take to make wild foods available to the populous. We should all, especially children, learn about wild foods to ensure our own health and ability to survive. Good, healthy food is our birthright and it’s all sitting free right out our own doorsteps…but we still need people to focus on creating beautiful music, amazing art, innovative designs, building homes, etc. For those who enjoy spending large amounts of time in the great outdoors, becoming a full-time wild food forager, I think, will become an economically viable profession of the future. Creating job opportunities in our rural communities is an essential function of these cooperatives. So, chalk it up to the Canadians to get things rolling in this direction. Forbes Wild Foods is a wonderful company located in Ontario who supplies wild foods to individual consumers, as well as restaurants/hotels/health food stores/etc. They purchase their wild foods from remote rural communities of Aboriginal Canadians who respect their lands, and who also regenerate and plant the forests they are harvesting from.

Way to go Canada!

Check out the video below to see how the Ogallala Comfort Company is creating beautiful high-quality products out of one of my favorite wild plants, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). I was able to interview Herb Knudsen, who founded the Natural Fibers Corporation back in 1986, at their headquarters in Ogallala, NE. For those interested in finding job opportunities that get you outside, while getting exercise and enjoying the great outdoors, Herb’s company is an active buyer in the milkweed trade. Contact his company to find out more details about becoming a supplier.

Hello from Boulder, CO!
I’ve been having such a great summer, spending most of it outdoors and eating a lot of wild plants along the way. One of my favorites is common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), and it’s time to eat its silk. So luxurious! Will probably be enjoying some for dinner over the full moon tonight.

I’ll be posting a video from the Wild Foods Summit on the White Earth Reservation, hopefully soon. But also wanted to put a call out for anyone who might be interested in joining my son and friend/assistant Johnny along the way. We need someone to assist with harvesting and preserving wild foods, researching wild foods, logistics of where the plants are and what they are doing, helping me prep and clean up from filming cooking segments of the television show, and general upkeep of life in the RV. If anyone is interested, please send an email to: info@wildfoodplants.com. There’s a small stipend for the roughly 3 1/2 month commitment, from early September through mid-December.