Sweet Saturday -- eating wild

Seems like all of my Sweet Saturday posts have been flower/garden/outdoors related.  Guess at this time of year the outdoors really pulls and all of the growing and blossoming and greening is what's energizing me. 

One of the goals of moving to the country and cultivating a small farm is to live more sustainably.  We planted a crop of garlic last fall and have been tending seedlings, collecting seed potatoes and onion sets for this year's garden and planting fruit trees.  We're also anxiously awaiting the arrival of our baby chicks and ducklings.  Right now we can't yet sustain ourselves.  We did, though, begin to harvest some edibles that are growing wild on our property.  First, an herbalist friend came over to help us with harvesting some nettles.

They are growing EVERYWHERE here.  In the gardens and the meadows.

I had my first run-in with them last fall when I was cleaning out the area under the lilac tree.  I discovered that they're called stinging nettles for a reason!  But we found out that they're incredibly nutritious (and lose the sting when cooked or dried).  We wore gloves to harvest them and set some up to dry.  I made lunch with some, sauteing them with onions, garlic and olive oil then adding a bit of water and covering the pan.  Seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper and served over a mix of grains (rice would work, too), they were really delicious.  My mom also added some to a soup she made... yummy!

The next harvest was of asparagus growing wild beneath the lilac tree.  I'd noticed the ferny growth last fall and remembered to look this spring. 

I used a recipe in the wonderful cookbook The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper (the first recipe I tried from it... I just enjoyed reading the book).  Onions, olive oil, salt, pepper and asparagus pieces cooked under the broiler until slightly browned and then eggs cracked into the pan and cooked a bit longer.  The eggs took a little longer to cook than the recipe suggested, but the resulting meal eaten with chunks of homemade bread (made by a local baker friend) was delicious.  I'm imagining next year's asparagus eaten with eggs from our own chickens!