gretchenswildalaskablog.recipes

Bathed in the dueling songs of robins and juncos and the sweet fragrance of spruce, we moved quietly between the trees, picking off the lovely pale green new growth, taking care to distribute our gathering efforts between trees. After about two hours of picking we called it good, hands dotted with little blood spots from contact with the older needles, laden with satisfyingly hefty re-used shopping bags of new growth spruce tips. Dump cleaned spruce tips in stock pot, cover with the water, put lid on pot and bring to boil. Strain spruce tips from water with colander, return water to stock pot, add sugar.

In addition to the occasional escapes to gardens, I took weekly flower arranging (ikebana) classes with a kimono-garbed sensei (teacher) in an elegant room above a flower shop in a good neighborhood of Tokyo. My Japanese classmates and I spent the next hour arranging our flowers, then sipping tea and admiring each other’s arrangements, making a few corrections at the gentle suggestion of sensei, then disassembling the arrangement to carry it home in our specially made flower bags. I cut the requisite three branches and headed off to ikebana, feeling pleased with myself but a little like George Washington must have after he cut the cherry tree down. I brought my ikebana equipment with me when I came home to Southeast Alaska and have been reveling in the abundance of luxuriant foliage to make gorgeous flower arrangements ever since.

I became interested in using elder flowers after reading one of Alexander McCall Smith’s books; it was his ‘Sunday Philosophy Club’ series about the stodgy Scottish amateur sleuth, Isabel Dalhousie. His description of her drinking elder flower cordial on a warm summer day was so appealing I set about to make it myself! Instructions: Put sugar and water into stock pan, gently heat until sugar has dissolved, stirring occasionally. Wash flowers gently with cold water to remove dirt or bugs, gently shake water off and transfer to syrup along with lemons, zest, and citric acid.

First, we targeted twisted stalk (Streptopus species), fiddlehead ferns, and devils club (Oplopanax horridus) buds. Then we went to get a few dandelion greens (Teraxacum species) and some stinging nettle (Urtica species). I’m hoping for some long-lasting effects of the nettle stings on my wimpy arthritic knee, but I sure won’t make that mistake again, even if it does help my knee. First,  harvest only the growing tip of a mature nettle plant, older leaves are inedible, second care should be taken not to confuse young twisted stalk with the very poisonous false hellebore (Veratrum species), and third, only completely furled fiddleheads of species besides the bracken fern (which have been associated with stomach cancer) should be gathered.