From the April showers will be the May flowers, more morels, and pheasant back mushrooms and a personal favorite green, ramps! It’s so nice to take a walk in the forest at this time, the neon green leaves on the poplar trees, the flowering bloodroots, trilliums, showy orchards, jack in the pulpits and trout lilies. Mother earth is in bloom as we celebrate all the mothers out there including her. Tail gate market season is back in full swing, along with festivals and warm weather, I’ll be all over the place this month!
Markets this month:
East Asheville: https://www.eastashevillemarket.com/ All month on Fridays 3-6pm
Lester Market: https://www.facebook.com/Leicester-Farmers-Market-220235964749303/ I’ll Announce week of: Wednesdays 3:30-6:30pm
Enka/Candler: http://ashevillefarmstead.org/enka-candler-tailgate-market/
5/12 Thursdays 3-6pm
Highland Brewing Meadow Market: https://highlandbrewing.com/event/meadow-market-2/2022-05-01/ Sundays 12-5pm I’ll be there 5/8
Mars Hill: http://marshillmarket.org/ Saturday 5/7 10-1pm
Yancey County: https://www.facebook.com/yanceymarket Saturdays 8:30-12:30pm
I’ll be there 5/28
HEEAL Market: One World Brewing West Saturday 5/14 2-6pm https://oneworldbrewing.com/event/heeal-market-healing-with-earth-experience-art-love-2022-05-14/
Trust General Store and Cafe: Saturday 5/21 11-3pm 14535 Nc 209 Hwy, Corner of highways 209 and 63. Town also known as Trust or Spring Creek., Hot Springs, NC 28743 Season Opener Celebration! We’ll have live music, archery, vendors, a Covid vaccine clinic, line dancing, and more!
Monthly Special: Mullein Double Extracted Tinctures are $10 off, 1oz will be $15 and 2oz $25. Mullein is a beautiful, fuzzy plant that gets quite large and can be found on a lot of mountain hillsides. It’s wonderfully medicinal with benefits including: improving asthma, coughs, upper respiratory infections and flu. I like taking the tinctures and drinking the tea with fresh leaves and flowers. https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-benefits-of-mullein-89575
So many wonders coming to life this month. Pheasant Back mushrooms are a favorite in look, smell and taste for me. Resembling the tail of a Pheasant, these mushrooms are polypores (no gills) with white undersides and a strong scent of cucumber. They are best when young and tender, as they fan out they can get tough to eat, I love mine in an omelet. There is still time to go pick some Morels, I’m guessing a week or two left in the season this month, more likely in higher elevations, it’s been an amazing year for them. Ramps, or wild leeks are a strong tasting spring delight. They are considered over harvested in some places so it’s best to leave the bulbs as much as possible, taking only stems and leaves. Ramp season is only one short month long. I love these in omelets again, but here’s some other ideas: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/ramps-recipes
Ramp Pesto is really good!: https://adamantkitchen.com/ramp-pesto/
Another great spring edible plant is Indian Cucumber, the whorled pattern to leaves give it away and at the root is a small treat, a tiny cucumber. Garlic Mustard is a common edible green that has a nice spicy snap to it, I eat the leaves raw or throw them into a sauté. Fiddle heads are a tasty edible but with caution. Not all fern fiddle heads are edible and some can be toxic! Getting to know which is which is important. Here’s a short guide: https://fearlesseating.net/fiddleheads/
It wont be long until Reishis start to bubble up on the trees and lots of other wild edible and medicinal mushrooms as well.
