Infused Wassail Cider: A Recipe For Blessing The Earth (and Ourselves)

January 10, 2017.Reading time 13 minutes.

Yes, the sun has begun her official return. But as I write this, frost shimmers, the ground is frozen and every footstep crunches. And it’s easy to understand why our ancestors, as the pantry grew lean, wanted to give mother nature just a little loving nudge in waking up. So to me, in the barren starkness of […]

Grand Fir Dark Nougat: Winter Solstice Sweets

December 3, 2016.Reading time 11 minutes.

I found the recipe for this “extraordinary and irresistible traditional Christmas candy” in a treasured old cookbook “The Auberge of The Flowering Hearth”. Created with only three ingredients, pine honey, toasted almonds and a pinch of thyme, it was caramelized down into a dark, delectable, chewy brittle known as Black Nougat. Well, I was enchanted. Not […]

Winter Woodland Medicine: Delicious & Warming Tonic Syrups

November 25, 2016.Reading time 12 minutes.

When dark, winter days challenge our bodies as well as our spirits, nothing makes a better remedy than old-fashioned tonic syrups. Time-tested & true, these potent preventatives and remedial healers call on the nourishing, medicinal powers of conifers, wild berries, tonic plants and adaptogenic herbs, honey and warming spices. And not only will they help […]

Wild Weedy White Bean Dip with Rosemary

January 20, 2016.Reading time 4 minutes.

It was such an unseasonably warm winter up here in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve literally been swimming in wild greens. And while it seems wrong to benefit from the ill-gotten gains of climate change, you still gotta trust mother nature to know what’s right – right? So if she wants me to feast on her […]