Central Park
Saturday, April 26

Central Park provides a great window into the world of wild foods as mid-spring approaches. Making a meal with these plants is simple at this time.

For an appetizer, try simmering field garlic bulbs in diluted vinegar with Italian seasonings to make an outstanding pickle.

It's the peak of the season for wild greens, and we'll be finding great quantities of wild vegetables. Spicy mustard greens, such as garlic mustard, hedge mustard, and poor man's pepper, abound on lawns everywhere.

Offset their flavor in a salad with milder-tasting greens such as violet leaves, Asiatic dayflower, and chickweed, also abundant. With the inclusion of sweet redbud flowers, sour greenbriar and sheep sorrel leaves, plus tender, cucumber-flavored cattail shoots, you'll have the best salad you've ever eaten.

Wild mushrooms will provide a gourmet side dish. We might find dryad's saddle, wine-cap stropharia, or chicken mushrooms on this tour.

If you're thirsty, wash down the meal with caffeine-free coffee made from the seeds of the Kentucky coffee-tree, the world's best coffee substitute.

Burdock root is one of the few wild root vegetables that remains in season throughout the warm weather. Add razor-thin slices to soups or rice.

Pokeweed, another seasonal potherb, is superb boiled in 2 changes of water (it's poisonous raw!) and flavored with tamari soy sauce and garlic lightly browned in olive oil. The first shoots should be appearing at this time.

And for an exotic dessert, why not stew apples or pears with cinnamon (or wild sassafras), ginger (commercial or wild), and nuts, then add sweet, perfumed blossoms of the wisteria vine?