The cuisine of spring

As I keep saying (over and over and over), spring is coming! And with it come some delicacies growing right under our noses. All you have to do is go outside and find them (and dig them up). Three plants we enjoy foraging for in early spring are fiddlehead ferns, wild onions, and cattails.

: Fiddlehead ferns can be found in wet, damp soil. The time to pick them is in early spring, when the frost is just beginning to recede and shoots are starting to break through the earth. A good strategy is to find a spot where you’ve seen ferns growing in the past, and check it every week or so to catch the fiddleheads when they’re ready.

: Wild onions are a tasty treat that grow almost anywhere, including hayfields, front lawns, and the sides of country roads. They’re easy to distinguish from grasses; simply pull a couple stalks and smell them, and the onion scent will be unmistakeable. They also tend to begin growing before any other grasses do. Pluck or snip a handful, rinse them off, and chop them up to add into salads, omelets, and more.

: These are probably the hardest to find, since you not only have to know when to harvest them, you have to locate them and venture into some pretty wet areas to get to them – and then fight off the assorted wildlife that favors the tender shoots, too (elk, moose, and geese all seek it out). But the delicate cucumber flavor makes it all worthwhile!