To celebrate the fifth birthday of Pop-up City Live, they are hosting The Pop-Up City Live, an experimental event for urban innovators in Amsterdam on Tuesday May 21st where they will bring the blog to life on stage. They have invited me along for a live cooking show with wild veggies and herbs from the sidewalks and parks of Amsterdam. Eleftheria Rosi, one of my apprentices and an awesome wild food cook, will transform my foraged finds into some tastey treats. Whilst that goes on, they will chat to me about urban foraging.
Category Archives: Blog
We Plucked Our Lunch!
Thank you very much to everyone who joined me for a lunchtime forage in Frankendael Park on Sunday 12th May. It was so nice to meet new faces and to welcome back several previous urban herb walkers.
Miraculously it didn’t rain a drop throughout the two hour walk. But as expected, we found lots of beautiful herbs, many edible and tasty. Here is pungent Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum) Daslook.
And bold, beautiful, bitter Burdock (Arctium lappa) Grote Klis, in a stand of potential urinary tonic Pennsylvania Pellitory, with a sprig of parsley scented Ground Elder (Aegopodium podograria ) Zevenblad in the left of the photo.
We also found some poisonous plants, to be known and avoided by foragers, like this patch of Dog’s Mercury (Mercurialis perennis) Bosbingelkruid. This unassuming little pointy leaved plant with delicate spikes of tiny flowers, is a member of the super toxic Euphorbia family (Wolfsmelkfamilie). In this photo (below), the Dog’s Mercury is mixed in with a little flowering Wild Garlic. Another reason why thoughtfully plucking one leaf at a time is a useful idea…
We talked about the Carrot family, with it’s crazy mix of tasty members such as Ground Elder, Fennel and Angelica (Angelica archangelica) Grotengelwortel, as well as deadly Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum), Gevlekte scheerling Hemlock Waterdroplet (Oenanthe crocata) and Fool’s Parsley (Aethusa cynapium). All of these and more are found throughout Amsterdam. It is vitally important that foragers know how to identify plants such as these. A good field guide and taking walks with experienced foragers helps people to gradually build up their wild plant knowledge – plant by plant.
On a lighter note, we spread my three-day Dandelion and Burdock Honey onto Mugwort bread swirls, ate Lime leaves (Tilia europa) Linden, tasted Blackberry bush leaves, Horehound foliage, Meadowsweet (Filpendula ulmaria) Moerasspirea, White Deadnettle (Lamium alba) Dovenetel (above) and lots of other incredible plants.
We learned how to prodding around with a chopstick can help make a good tincture, how honey often makes a great herbal carrier and is a remedy for many ailments. And, how a fairly damp day like yesterday, is not ideal for setting up a cold oil infusion.
I spoke about how to pay a little back to the land we forage from, by simple gestures such as tidying up, to longer term projects such as growing little Elder shrubs.
I always love showing people the plants and had such a great time with you all. Thanks again!
On Tuesday evening (21st May), I’ll be taking foraged plants to the Ready Stay Cook section of Pop-Up Amsterdam Live. It would be great to see some of you there.
My next guided foraging walks are on Sunday 26th May in Westerpark and Wednesday 29th May in Park Frankendael.
Urban Dandelion and Burdock
Europe is awash with roaring Dandelions at the moment. They are standing proud and showing their wooly faces in parks, along roadsides, in fields and hedgerows. They also grow happily on my roof (and from there I harvest its leaves and roots) .
I love the taste of Dandelion and Burdock syrup, especially when mixed with water and drunk in the summer sunshine. Not many flavours remind me so fondly of my English childhood. But to make Dandelion and Burdock syrup, the roots of Burdock and leaves of Dandelion should be collected and boiled up with sugar water. I don’t use using sugar unless there is no other option and I don’t dig up Burdock roots. Roots tend to concentrate toxins, they are tough to dig up, fellow park visitors may pounce on me and tell me to stop and most of all, I’d like the plants to grow to maturity so that I may harvest the seeds and leaves.
Regarding the Dandelion leaves, I don’t ever harvest them in quantity from Amsterdam public spaces. They live on the plants for a long time, they get walked on and everything else you may like to think of happens on them, whereas the flowers are far more transient. I can more easily see if they are dirty, they only stay on the plant for a short time so are less open to pollution and I just love the sight of them in a jar of honey! Having said this, harvesting herbs from ground level in public spaces is always a bit of a risk, pollution is everywhere. But with syrups, a small amount is consumed in one go, the use of honey kills many bugs naturally and I feel that the benefits far outweigh the concerns. But that’s just me perhaps!
My version of Dandelion and Burdock simply requires honey, 20-30 fresh Dandelion flowers and a small Burdock leaf. That’s all. It has all the medicinal properties that Dandelion and Burdock plants offer, it is quick to make, tastes deliciously bitter-sweet and it keeps well.
How to make Urban Dandelion and Burdock Syrup
1. Harvest 20-30 clean, fresh and lively Dandelion heads from a clean area.
Harvest one young, equally vibrant Burdock leaf from a super-healthy looking plant.
2. Place your harvest on a clean white surface for about an hour, to allow any resident bugs time to crawl away.
3. Tear up the Burdock leaf and layer dandelion heads and burdock leaf in a medium sized (250ml) jam jar.
4. As you layer the herb, carefully spoon in runny honey. Poke around a little with a clean chopstick so that air bubbles are released.
5. Continue to layer herb, spoon in honey and prod with the chopstick until the jar is full.
6. Check for obvious air bubbles and prod some more. Top up with honey (right to the lid) and secure with a well fitting lid.
7. Leave to stand and infuse for at least three days.
8. Use as it is, as a toast spread or strain (or not) and use as a syrup base for refreshing summer drinks.
Bitter-sweet yum! It taste’s of the English summers of my childhood. We’ll try it on the Pluck Your Lunch! forage this Sunday
Pluck Your Lunch in Westerpark!
THIS WALK IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
Please join me for an urban herb foraging walk in Westerpark!
Westerpark (exact meeting point to be arranged)
Sunday 26th May 2013
11:00 – 13:00
€10 per person (children free and very welcome)
Booking via email (lynn.shore@gmail.com) or this link
You will learn how to:
- Ethically and safely forage from city parks, streets and green spaces
- Identify lots of edible and medicinal plants which are available all over the city.
- Turn your harvest into tasty food
- Make simple home remedies
- Pay back the land that we forager from
We will ethically forage some of the plants that we find and turn them into tasty and nutritious teas and sandwich fillings and more, on the spot. I am passionate about helping people to discover the edible plants growing around them. My 365 ended a few weeks ago – identifying, photographing and writing about Amsterdam herbs each day for a year.
Please note: You don’t have to eat from the wild on this walk but you certainly can if you want to!
We can expect to find such tasty, useful treats as:
Lime leaves, Hawthorn flowers,
Garlic mustard, Comfrey,
Ground Elder, Dandelion,
Nettle, Magnolia petals,
Mugwort, Self heal,
Edible tree buds and far far more.
There are hundreds of edible plants around at this time of year.
You will receive a useful colour handout with names, photos, uses and folklore of many of the plants we will find on the walk.
I’ll bring along some herbal cake or breadsticks for everyone to try.
You don’t need to bring anything along to the walk but if you want to get the most out of it, here are some suggestions:
- Bring along whatever food you like to accompany your herbal harvest.
- A flask of hot water to make tea and some bread and butter would be useful but not essential.
- A couple of paper bags to take some leaves and flowers home
- A small glass jar filled with vodka, to make a tincture – I’ll show you how.
- A small jar filled with olive oil to set up a herbal infusion.
- Small notebook, to take a few personal notes and press some leaves, to help you find the plants another time.
Come celebrate the edible green gifts that this beautiful city has to offer!
Herb and Strawberry Tower
Here’s my latest rooftop planting creation: A simple tower of three plastic plant pots, packed with plenty of molehill soil and organic compost.
The plants used are babies from those we grow already on the roof, except the tiny Wormwood, which I found growing in between street pavers. I planted a mixture of Strawberries, Wormwood, Lady’s Mantle, Strawberry scented Mint, Sedum reflexum and Yarrow. All of these plants are edible and most have medicinal properties as you will see from the links.
This is a simple way to plant vertically, creating herb habitats offering areas of relative shade and wind shelter, little space for weed seeds to settle and it is easy to tend – all very handy on a small plot.
I’ll see how these plants fair and will no doubt add or substitute others as time goes on. It’s my equivalent of a premaculture herb spiral, something I covet but just don’t have space for at home.
Here’s the beautiful (and enormous) Strawberry tower at Jeugdland in Amsterdam Oost. I wrote about it last year. Now that would make a fabulous herb tower!
May Bowl
Tomorrow is May Day or Beltane and a wonderful time to celebrate fertility, growth and development.
My balcony moon garden is growing beautifully and today was the day to harvest a few flowering tops of a lovely scented herb, which now grows there – Galium odoratum. It is the plant with frothy white flowers, growing up the railings at the back left of the photo. It usually grows in woodland and is a native perennial. Sweet Woodruff is a close relative of Cleavers (Galium aparine) and can easily be mistaken for it. No great harm in that confusion if making May Bowl, both are edible and useful. Cleavers is far more common in Amsterdam. I do find Sweet Woodruff in park Frankendael but it is not very widespread so that is the reason for buying this plant from the local garden centre. Other herbs could be used in place of Sweet Woodruff but I think that this is the best – it simply smells of verdant spring!
Here’s the May Bowl recipe I am using Galium odoratum for. It is basically a cold 24 hour herbal wine infusion and it tastes delicious. For more recipes and information about May Day country lore, please see this post.
May Bowl
Woodruff (Gallium odoratum) – one handful per bottle of wine, finely chopped.
Add to white wine.
As a pinch of lemon rind if you have any to hand.
Leave with lid/cork on for 24 hours at room temperature, to allow the herb time to infuse in the bottle.
Strain.
Drink with friends for a merry May Day – tomorrow!
Frank suggested this wine, made from the Grillo grape because it is “neutral with the potential to become fragrant”. I’ll take his word for it and it does smell and taste great!
Pluck Your Lunch – Sunday 12th May 2013 – Park Frankendael
Please join me for an urban herb foraging walk in the most beautiful park of Amsterdam O
ost!
Park Frankendael (starting from main old entrance)
11:00 – 13:00
€10 per person (children free and very welcome)
Booking via email (lynn.shore@gmail.com) or this link
You will learn how to:
- Ethically and safely forage from city parks, streets and green spaces
- Identify lots of edible and medicinal plants which are available all over the city.
- Turn your harvest into tasty food
- Make simple home remedies
- Pay back the land that we forager from
We will ethically forage some of the plants that we find (in and around the park) and turn them into tasty and nutritious teas and sandwich fillings and more, on the spot. This is my local foraging ground, where I pick something to eat every day. I am passionate about helping people to discover the edible plants growing around them. My 365 Frankendael Project ended a couple of weeks ago – identifying, photographing and writing about Amsterdam herbs each day for a year.
Please note: You don’t have to eat from the wild on this walk but you certainly can if you want to!
We can expect to find such tasty, useful treats as:
Lime leaves,
Garlic mustard, Comfrey,
Ground Elder, Dandelion,
Nettle, Magnolia petals,
Mugwort, Coltsfoot,
Edible tree buds and far far more.
There are hundreds of edible plants around at this time of year.
You will receive a useful colour handout with names, photos, uses and folklore of many of the plants we will find on the walk.
I’ll bring along some herbal cake or breadsticks for everyone to try.
You don’t need to bring anything along to the walk but if you want to get the most out of it, here are some suggestions:
- Bring along whatever food you like to accompany your herbal harvest.
- A flask of hot water to make tea and some bread and butter would be useful but not essential.
- A couple of paper bags to take some leaves and flowers home
- A small glass jar filled with vodka, to make a tincture – I’ll show you how.
- A small jar filled with olive oil to set up a herbal infusion.
- Small notebook, to take a few personal notes and press some leaves, to help you find the plants another time.
Come celebrate the edible green gifts that this beautiful city has to offer!
Bug Hostel
Here’s my first attempt at a rooftop bug refuge. It’s simply a long slim plastic plant pot, stuffed full of dry hollow stems which I found in my kitchen and around the rooftop planters. The stems are from long dead Fig trees, Honeysuckle, Chamomile, Hollyhocks, Clematis, Elder, Reed fencing and a few old and snapped Bamboo canes. I packed it all into place with some dead Apple tree twigs (not hollow but sturdy and available) and also some beautiful Pine and Alder cones, which I collected around town.
Once assembled I wedged it between the roof fence and a Goosberry bush pot. It faces roughly south and is less exposed than most other parts of the roof terrace.
I’m more used to making big wildlife piles in quiet corners of land so I’m sure that I’ll need to improve on this a lot. But for now it offers a place for native bees, ladybirds and other useful wildlife to lay eggs and find refuge.
Making Bug Hotels was one topic at this weekend’s River of Herbs meeting. If you’d like the booklet then let me know. For more information about what we did, some useful links and details of how to make well designed bug and bee hotels, see this post on the RiverofHerbs.org website. Encouraging bees and bugs into your herb garden is something not to be overlooked. They help to pollinate your plants, keep aphids in check and generally keep your plot (however small) healthy.
Putting my feet up
About 8 weeks ago I strained my foot, lugging a heavy suitcase upstairs, in worn out shoes. Clearly not a good idea as I’ve been annoyed by a sore foot since then. I gave in and headed for the doctor on Friday, suspecting something worse than a strain. Thankfully nothing else seems to be wrong, apparently just more time is needed and some pain killing anti-inflammatories to settle things down. Fed up with limping and not being able to do yoga, I slicked two of the pills. After a 12 hour psychedelic sleep and then a day feeling like a space cadet, it seems I’m allergic to the tablets. So back to the herbs and surprise surprise, they are working a treat and my brain feels clear again.
Here’s what I made to speed the healing and ease the inflammation (if you dislike the idea of lard, use ghee or a quality vegetable oil – which you can later thicken with beeswax). This healing lard based ointment feels silky smooth, cooling, calming and takes the pain away.
1 block of lard (250g)
9 medium Comfrey leaves (Symphytum uplandicum x)
9 Elder leaves (Sambucus nigra)
Handful Ground Ivy stems (leaves, flowers and all) (Glechoma hederacea)
3 Wormwood leaves (Artemisia absinthum)
3 Ribwort leaves (Plantago lanceolata)
1. Chop all the fresh herbs and place in a heavy based saucepan along with the lard.
2. Heat over the lowest possible flame to melt the lard and then to simmer it for approximately 40 minutes (stay with it and stir every minute or so, obviously the lard is highly flammable if left unattended).
3. After 40 minutes the herbs should be just turning slightly crispy, as all the moisture leaves them. This is a good time to stop, turn off the heat, move the pan from the stove and allow the mixture to cool for a few minutes.
4. Strain the herbs from the infused lard by carefully pouring through a muslin/super clean tea towel and sieve.
5. Add the spent herbs to the compost bin and pour the infused lard into a sterile container or two.
6. I keep this ointment in a fridge and use it freely on sprains, strains and skin irritations that benefit from cooling.
365 Frankendael day 365
A year ago I decided to show you a taste of what can be picked and eaten from the streets and parks of Amsterdam, every day for a year. That year came to an end today. It has been quite a journey!
There was never a day without edible or medicinal herbs growing wild. As the year moved on I found more and more herbs, fell in love with some such as Hollyhock and learned secrets about others. Whilst on holiday, friends in Amsterdam were often kind enough to email photos to me. The Christmas holiday was difficult, Amsterdam had miserable weather so fewer photos from friends. In place, I added a batch from my holiday in Tenerife.
I am very grateful to Joop Eisenburger, Lina Kremin, Elodie and Herman den Otter, Dennis Breedijk, Lynne Dunstan-Wadsworth and Dana Marin and others for their beautiful photos, whilst I was away from time to time.
So what is around today on day 365? It was an apprenticeship group meeting for me so friends to share the discoveries with.
Above is Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum). Just braking into flower in some parts of park Frankendael, this patch is still perfect for the pot.
Below, Fumitory. Renowned in some regions as a cleanser of radiation from the body and more well known as a tonic for the digestive system.
Next is Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) NL Hartgespan. Returning from its winter underground hide. Beloved, bitter herb.
Here is Pennsylvania Pelitory, I was so pleased to learn of its urinary tonic effect last year.
Primrose (Primula vulgaris). This plant will be focused on in my next project – growing and using native herbs in public (or private) spaces. There is not enough Primrose to pick in Amsterdam, so why not grow some more?
Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). Orange sap for herpes and dissolving skin growths. So many more uses for this herb but be careful, it is caustic.
Horsetail (Equistitum arvensum) flowering, ahead of its foliage – so useful for brittle nails due to the high silica content.
Soapwort, also just emerging from the soil. Still used by some musea to gently cleanse ancient fabrics. It is a wonderful herb for many skin complaints and grows easily in a pot. It’s other common name, Bouncing Bet, aptly describes it’s flowering beauty in summer.
Russian Comfrey (Symphytum uplandicum x). Bone set in old country tales, rapid wound healer and more for us today. It smells and tastes of Borage and Cucumber, is gooey inside and is so easy to use on your body and your compost heap!
I’m so happy to find this plant. Really happy! It is Wormwood (Artemisia absinthum). It is an endangered species in the Netherlands, this is the first patch of wild Wormwood I have found in Park Frankendael.
Some of my apprentices gathering Bread & Cheese from a beautiful Hawthorn tree (Crataegus monogyna). May Day here we come!
Here is Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata). One of the best eating wild plants in town. Pick just a leaf per plant when you find it and it’ll treat you to delicious meals until autumn. Pick a whole plant and you’ll really miss out later on!
And Ground Elder (Aegopodium podograria). I love this plant but most gardeners try to rid their patch of it. A carrot family member, it tastes of parsley, clears gouty, sciatica and rheumatic joints and I’ll be eating it daily from now until early winter!
There were far more plants today but now it’s time to stop.
So a beautiful day, a beautiful project (to be continued in some form but not daily), amazing plants on our doorsteps and wonderfully enthusiastic people to share them with. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved on some way and especially Frank for his tolerance. I’ll now have a little rest and then organise the photos into something useful. Also time to finish my book on making remedies.
If you’d like to walk with me and learn about the plants to be foraged in Amsterdam, there is a chance on Sunday 26th May.
Urban Herbology 