STAGHORN SUMAC

It's that time of year, when the ravines and hillsides are spotted with the brilliant red fruit of the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). Also known as the “lemonade tree,” many people avoid this shrub because they think it is poisonous, but it is actually a delicious sour treat and a great local alternative to lemons. Staghorn sumac are most easily identified by their fuzzy red cones or “drupes.” Their common name comes from the fact that the branches resemble the velvety antlers of a young stag. While there is a type of sumac that is poisonous (Toxicodendron vernix), it is easy to distinguish from staghorn sumac because the poisonous berries are smooth and white, and despite sharing a name, they are not closely related. 

The fruit of the staghorn sumac generally begins to ripen in August, turning a rich crimson colour. The best time to harvest is on a dry, sunny day. If harvested after a heavy rainfall, the fruit will not be as flavourful, as much of the malic acid will have washed away. You can test the sumac before harvesting by rubbing your fingers along the furry fruit and licking them - if they taste tart and lemony, then it is a good time to harvest.

It takes a little bit of work to extract the spice from the plant. Although you could pop the seeds directly in your mouth and savour the lemon flavour, they do not have succulent flesh like typical berries, and most people don’t particularly enjoy snacking on the fuzzy seeds. A very simple way to consume sumac is to make a lemonade by steeping the drupes in cool or room-temperature water (hot water will release the bitter tannins) and then straining out the berries and lightly sweetening the flavoured water.

One of our favourite things to make with sumac is za'atar - a traditional Middle Eastern spice mix which often contains thyme, oregano and/or marjoram and toasted sesame seeds. It is commonly eaten with pita that has been dipped in olive oil, or combined with hummus or labneh. We enjoy sprinkling it on roasted vegetables, sliced avocados or fried eggs. Although traditional za’atar is made with Sicilian sumac (Rhus coriaria) which is native to southern Europe, staghorn sumac works too.

We harvested a large batch of sumac, separated them, cleaned them, removed any bugs and brown bits and let them air dry until they were no longer sticky. You could also speed up the process by putting them in a dehydrator (Courtney puts them on a tray and lets them sit in the sun on the rear dash of her car, which acts as an effective dehydrator in a pinch).

These are the whole sumac berries after being sorted, dried and separated from the stems. The next step is to remove the furry red fruit from the seeds.

We put the sumac in a food processor and whipped it up until the spice had separated from the seeds. Then we passed everything through a mesh strainer. This can be a quite time-consuming process.

These are the seeds and sticks that were left behind. I am told there are other uses for these, but we ended up discarding them.

The beautiful, fine, powdery sumac spice. It is bright and lemony - this is what all the hard work was for!

Now, to make the za'atar. There is no single official recipe and no standard ratios. We make ours with thyme and sesame seeds, some like to use more thyme, while others like the sumac to be the more dominant flavour. Through trial and error, the ratio we have come to use is two parts sumac, two parts toasted sesame seeds, one part thyme and salt to taste.

Za'atar can be used on any number of dishes, however we prefer not to cook with it, as heat changes the flavour and destroys the delicious tartness, so we use it as a condiment and sprinkle it on meals after they have been served.

Ingredients

• 2 parts sumac spice
• 2 parts sesame seeds
• 1 part dried thyme
• sea salt

Directions

• toast the sesame seeds over medium heat in a dry skillet just until they begin to turn brown
• grind up the thyme in a mortar and pestle until it begins to break down (but before it becomes a fine powder)
• wait until the sesame seeds have cooled, and then mix all the ingredients together
• salt to taste

NOTE: In rare cases, while staghorn sumac is not poisonous, some people may have an allergic reaction to the plant. Those who are allergic to cashews or pistachios are most likely to react, as they are part of the same family. If you think you might be allergic, you can rub some of the plant on a small patch of skin and wait for about an hour. If a rash appears, then it is best to stay away from this plant. Regardless, it is always a good practice to consume only a small amount when trying a new food for the first time.

YARROW TEA

The botanical name for yarrow is Achillea millefolium. The genus name Achillea comes from an ancient Greek myth about the Trojan hero Achilles. As the story goes, when Achilles was a young boy he was brought to the centaur Chiron who was a teacher and healer, and became a mentor to Achilles. Chiron taught him the ways of the gods and bestowed upon him the plant yarrow, teaching him about its healing properties. Achilles took this knowledge to the battlefield and used it to staunch the bleeding wounds of his soldiers. For this reason, yarrow is also sometimes known as herba militaris, or soldier’s herb.

Its specific name millefolium meaning “thousands of leaves”, refers to the profusion of small feathery, fern-like leaves.

This plant has also historically been used as a divination tool. Chinese cleromancers would use bundles of 50 dried yarrow stalks that were cut uniformly and removed of leaves to cast the I Ching. Although nowadays most people use coins, some diviners still prefer to use the traditional yarrow stalks.

Yarrow’s medicinal properties are characterized as astringent and drying. Because of this, it is a great herb to have in your first aid kit. A simple yarrow poultice can be used as a styptic and antiseptic, to stop bleeding and disinfect small cuts and nosebleeds.

In ancient times, yarrow was associated with witchcraft as it is a very potent healing herb. It can both staunch and stimulate blood flow and is wonderful for women’s reproductive health, as it can be used to both decrease heavy menstrual bleeding and stimulate a delayed menstrual cycle - I have heard it called "master of the blood."

In these photos, we harvested a bunch of yarrow tops - including the leaves and flowers, dried them on elevated wire racks for about two weeks, and made it into a medicinal tea for later use. I have been experimenting with drinking the tea a week before the onset of my cycle, as it is supposed to ease the symptoms. Because yarrow is drying and tends to strip away, we like to follow it up by consuming something with emollient and demulcent qualities such as calendula or mallow. These marshmallows perhaps?

(Yarrow is an emmenagogue and should be avoided during pregnancy. I have also read reports of it being used as a contraceptive, so use only for a short time).

I steeped the dried yarrow in freshly boiled water for about ten minutes before consuming. The tea is fragrant and tastes a bit like a combination of chamomile and something vaguely coniferous - if you are bothered by the bitterness, you can add a little bit of honey.

SORREL SAUCE

You may have seen this common weed in your garden and mistaken it for clover. But while both have compound leaves with three leaflets, the leaflets of wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) are heart-shaped, while those of clover are oval-shaped and usually bare white or pale green chevrons. If you taste wood sorrel you may be pleasantly surprised by a burst of tart lemony flavour. The sour taste comes from oxalic acid (the same constituent that makes rhubarb sour) which is found in many other green vegetables such as broccoli and kale. Eaten in high amounts, oxalic acid inhibits the absorption of calcium and can be toxic. It is best avoided by people with rheumatic ailments such as gout or arthritis and kidney stones. However, used sparingly, wood sorrel's mild lemon flavour can be added to fresh salads, used to flavour a lovely summer soup, as a condiment to fish, a delicious fresh pesto or a light snack while gardening. As with most sour fruits and vegetable, wood sorrel is very high in vitamin C and can be used to quench thirst while on a hike in the woods.

Since the weather was so hot this week, we decided to make a fresh sorrel sauce to go along with our cucumber salad. For this recipe, we picked about a cup of wood sorrel.

We added a few chives (but you can use any allium of your choice, including shallots, onions or garlic).

And a few sprigs of cilantro from our garden.

We placed everything in a food processor with about three tablespoons of organic full fat greek yogurt.

Once blended up, the mixture is a bright green. We added salt to taste.

The sauce tastes tart and lemony, and goes well with fish or in a simple salad. You can serve immediately, but we like to keep this sauce in the fridge overnight, to let the flavours develop. 

We made a lovely crisp summery salad by chopping up some cucumber and covering it in sorrel sauce. We added chive and sorrel flowers (which are both edible) as a garnish.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sorrel
• handful of chives
• a few sprigs of cilantro
• 3 tbsp plain organic full fat greek yogurt
• salt

Directions

• rinse herbs and put them in a food processor with the yogurt
• blend until smooth, and the sauce is a bright green colour
• add salt to taste
• optional: let sit in a sealed container in the fridge overnight, allowing flavours to develop
• pour over your dish of choice! 
• (in the above photo, we chopped up some cucumber, added our sorrel sauce and garnished with chive and sorrel flowers)

STINGING NETTLE

We have been craving this plant. Everything about its deep rich green colour packed full of nutrients as food and as a medicinal ally appeals to us. Consuming this plant always makes us feel healthy, strong, and ready to face the world.

Strangely, over the last few years we have had a difficult time tracking down stinging nettle (Urtica dioica). While we have had access to wood nettle which has similar properties, we’ve only ever been able to find sparse patches of nettle, until now.

We came to the Stone Boat Farm Artist Retreat hoping to find stinging nettle on the property and had been speaking about this plant with our host Amy Nostbakken. Amy asked us about our luck finding any on our first few wanderings, which had been fruitless.
“How do you identify them?” she asked.
“Well,” we said, “Definitely the most obvious way is by the stings."
 “Ohhhhhhhhh!!" said Amy, "I know that plant! I always thought it was poison ivy. My brother and I would get stung by them all over our legs when climbing the apple trees!”

And so, we ventured over to the shady apple trees and sure enough we came across an enormous patch of stinging nettle.

While we weren’t too concerned about the population of stinging nettle, we still aimed to harvest only the tops - pinching them just above the intersection of the fine toothed slightly heart shaped leaves. This ensures that the plant will continue producing and also prevents it from going to flower. This is important if you want to harvest the leaves from the same plant throughout the season as some claim that after flowering, stinging nettle leaves contain cystoliths which could irritate the kidneys. However, this compound is destroyed after drying, so does not pose the same concern for dried tea.

Courtney harvests stinging nettle with her bare hands, making claims to the antihistamine properties of nettle stings and their ability to increase circulation and ease joint pain. Others prefer to use gloves as the hairs on the nettle stalks and leaves contain formic acid which cause quite a bit of irritation that can last for anywhere from a few minutes to several days. We don't worry too much about that, as one of the antidotes to nettle stings is the juice from nettle itself! 

We decided to see if we could transplant a few because we love the idea of having a nettle patch in our home gardens.

One of the other artists at the farm, the talented dancer Nyda, joined us in harvesting this delicious medicinal plant.

“It’s so funny because before we went up to Stone Boat I’d been reading about nettle in terms of kidney cleansing and supporting liver and skin, and I couldn't find any here in Toronto. I work in an organic grocery store part-time and checked the Big Carrot. I went all over the city to different health food stores and wasn't able to find it anywhere.  And then I came out here and there were whole fields of nettle." Nyda laughs at the overwhelming abundance of stinging nettle.

"Because I work with my body I want to feed it everything I can that is going to support it. It's mainly for the health benefits of nettle that I will keep seeking it out, and I want to plant the one that I have.”

We brought our bounty back to the farmhouse and made some delicious mineral-rich medicinal tea by pouring boiling water over the leaves. Nettle loses its stinging properties the moment it is cooked or covered with hot water.

Like most wild-crafted foods, nettle contains substantially more nutrients than many other known "superfoods" including iron and calcium (much more than spinach and kale) magnesium, silica, vitamins, phosphorus, trace minerals, and protein. It is used to treat anemia, rheumatic ailments such as arthritis and gout, and various skin conditions including acne and eczema. Nettle also has antihistamine properties and we've used it to both treat and prevent seasonal allergies. 

In an effort to consume nettle in every possible form, we fried up a bunch of the leaves with dandelion buds and flowers, and wild leeks for lunch.

We cannot begin to sing this plant’s glory enough, and this one article by no means covers its diverse uses and applications. We put some nettle aside to dry for future recipes and will continue to write about it in future posts!