Blog Party Berries Salal

I chose the Salal Gaultheria Shallon because it is native here in the Pacific Northwest. The name Salal comes from Pacific Northwest Native Americans. This plant was the first to get the attention of David Douglas when he landed on the Oregon Coast May 9th, 1825, he brought it back to Europe as a garden ornamental. These berries are great, they have a slight almond flavor and are similar to blue berries. You can make Salal jam, syrup, or mix them with other native berries such as Oregon Grape, Salmonberry, or Thimble Berries for pies, jams, and deserts. Salal makes a great wine (see recipe below) The coastal Native Americans used to dry them in large cakes weighing 10 to 15 pounds to store for winter use. Later when they wanted to eat them the cakes were soaked and then dipped in whale or seal oil. The leaves had medicinal uses among Native American tribes as well. The leaves were chewed to relieve colic or heartburn. The chewed leaves were used as a poultice to apply to wounds and sores. The leaves could also be used as a tea for coughs, TB, or diarrhea. Some of the Northwest tribes would blend Salal with Kinnikinnick to make a smoke blend.

Fresh Berry Soup

1 quart fresh orange juice
4 cups of any combination of yogurt, buttermilk, sour cream
1 Tbsp. honey (more, to taste)
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon or lime juice
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
1 1/2 pints fresh berries (raspberries, Salal, strawberries, thimble, Salmonberry)

Whisk together everything except berries.
Chill thoroughly.
Wash and drain berries.
Blueberries or raspberries should be left whole. Large strawberries should be sliced.
When ready to serve, divide berries into individual serving bowls.
Ladle the soup on top.
Garnish with sprigs of fresh mint.

Salal Berry Salad Dressing

Ingredients:
Salal berry jam
Olive oil
Rice wine vinegar, or white wine vinegar
Tossed salad greens, or baby spinach
Dijon mustard (optional)

Directions:
Mix together equal amounts of salal berry jam, olive oil, rice wine vinegar or white wine vinegar. Serve over tossed greens. Add Dijon mustard for additional zest.

As seen on "A New Day" with Bruce Williams
VILand Television, April 18, 2003

SALAL BERRY WINE

• 4 lbs salal berries
• 1� lbs granulated sugar
• 6� pts water
• � tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 crushed Campden tablet
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 pkg wine yeast

Put half the water on to boil and stir in sugar until dissolved. Meanwhile, wash berries and cull out any that are not ripe or are unsound. Put berries in nylon straining bag and tie closed. Place in primary and mash berries. Pour sugar-water over berries and add remaining water to help cooling. Cover with colth and set aside until room temperature. Stir in acid blend, yeast nutrient and crushed Campden. Recover and wait 12 hours. Stir in pectic enzyme, recover and set aside another 12 hours. Add activated yeast and recover primary. Stir twice daily until fermentation dies down. Remove straining bag, squeeze to extract maximum juice, and discard pulp. Allow to settle overnight and rack into secondary. Top up if required and fit airlock. Rack, top up and refit airlock after 60 days and again when wine clears. Set wine in cool, dark place for 4 months, checking airlock periodically. Stabilize, sweeten to taste (if desired) and set aside for 14 days. Rack into bottles and enjoy.

Resource: Profiles of Northwest Plants Peggy Robinson

wine recipe source

Kiva's Blog Party Local Herbs

Have you ever read Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific Coast by Michael Moore? Well if you have you see the difficulty I have narrowing this down to my 100 mile radius~ I do however have some plants I really want to focus on, these of course will not be the only plants I work with and there will be barter and trade going on. Some of these are old friends that I cannot be without and others I want to get to know better. This was so hard to narrow down! No real order, I kept adding herbs as I thought of them. Honestly, my list was much smaller, but I kept adding plants LOL! I may not get to all of these, or I may work with others I run across, but I think this is a good start!

Herbs:

Aster, chokecherry, Yarrow, mullein, nettles, false solomon's seal,sage, crains bill, self heal, osha, angelica, goldenrod,usnea, violet, red root, mallow, California poppy, cow parsnip, skullcap, Devil's club, Ground Ivy, maidenhair (& other) ferns, plantain, Hawthorn, Salal, yellow dock, wild ginger, red root, mints (& work more with bee balm monarda fistulosa, henbit Lamium amplexicaule), licorice, horehound, evening primrose, Coptis, coltsfoot, currant (ribes species), cleavers, elder berry, evening primrose, Rosemary, catnip, burdock, bunchberry (cornus canadensis), chickweed , chicory, red clover, dandelion, wild rose, wood betony, uva ursi, valarian, St Johns Wort, red raspberry, motherwort, echinacea, horsetail, Hound's Tongue, Huckleberry leaf, knapweed, meadowsweet, Oregon grape, Pearly Everlasting, pyrola, serviceberry, sheep sorrel, sweetroot Osmorrhiza occidentalis, Thistle, Wild Mustards Brassica nigra Capsella bursa-pastoris and Lepidium perfoliatum, Black Walnut Hulls, Wild strawberry root and leaves.

Trees (OK give me a break I have to list these separate, so many!)

Alder
Ash (fraxinus)
Elder
Red Cedar
Willow
Cottonwood
oak
Douglas fir
Pine

Devil's Club, Mountain Berries, Baneberry and a chipmonk

Top 3- Pic 1 Thimble berry (rubus sp) 2 Red Huckleberry Vaccinium parvifolium (today they were a bit tart, but I like this flavor) they are at their peek of ripeness right now. The leaves are alternate along the stem (pic 3), snow berry is white and the leaves of that plant and the bush itself look similar but they are opposite (across from each other) along the stem, keep this in mind when you are trying to ID the plant if there are no berries on it (clearly if they are white berries they are snowberry).

Next 3 are Devil's Club I wrote about this a few years back here
The leaves are huge! The pic does not do it justice, there are even spines under the leaves (so I found when I went to look under one to snap the shot of the stem) Really amazing plant! You really have to be in it's presence to know what I mean, it literally stopped me in my tracks as I was walking by (and it did not reach out to grab me with those thorns either), very powerful, and if you break a stem, the smell is very penetrating as well, it made me sneeze and my eyes water a bit. See how by the picture the leaves sort of resemble the thimble berry? But, if you are mindful and really look at plants as you are walking this stands out because the leaves are just huge in the full grown plant, they do kind of cover the whole plant (as you can see in the photo) , so I did not immediately see the spiny stems- they are hidden under those leaves. I was done for the day and heading back to the car, so this was the last plant I got to see before my drive home.

Next Baneberry (with the red berry cluster) Actacea rubra - sometimes confused with sweetroot, an edible member of the umbel family (I saw some of these near by as well, the do not have the red cluster on top) In herbalism Tilford from Edible and medicinal plants of the west states it should be handled with extreme care, that it is useful as a strong antispasmodic. I have not used this plant, this is the only one I found in the local area where I was walking today. I am sure there are more if I keep my eyes peeled:)

Creeping Raspberry rubus
I also enjoyed these wild raspberries on my walk, and noticed the salal arn't quite ripe yet, but I found so many I will be checking back.



I think the chipmunk was hoping for me to toss him some food (I was pretty close to camp sites) unfortunately, I had none with me. He hung out for quite a while on that rock, until of course I tried to zoom in for a closer shot.

Walk up on Wildcat

It was a beautiful day today, I love this time of year, when fall is approaching. Soft breeze on my face, warm and sunny, yet cool enough. I pictured some really great plants today, just when I was getting started my battery went dead! Here is a few I captured.
Centaury centaurium umbellatum a lovely little bitter!
Goldenrod Solidago canadensis. As I learned from Kiva, lovely topical for sore muscles, and has many other fabulous uses.
Yummy Salal berries, nice little treat in the middle of the day!
Some snowberries symphoricarpos albus not really an edible, but you can chew it up and apply them externally on bites and cuts.
I could go on about my plant stories (much like fish stories) of all the other great plants I saw, but alas I do not have proof, I plan on going back up the mountain tomorrow, hopefully this time I will make sure the battery is charged!