Foraging in the Boulder Foothills: Cooking Wild Edible Foods

boulder foothills foraging

Ever since they started putting dandelion greens in my salad, I’ve been curious to know what other, seemingly annoying, wild plant or flower could be served up on a plate in some sort of gourmet manner involving the words “crudité” and “chiffonade.” But, you know, without the pretention of calling it those words and calling them what they are: raw veggies and dip and shredded up leafy greens.

It’s fortunate for me, and others like me, who are interested in learning more about foraging, but without all the hoity toity attitude that comes with it, that the Center for Integrative Botanical Studies is hosting a Forager’s Table Series with a famous woman that goes by the nickname Butter.

As silly as a nickname as Butter is, I have to give props for picking a delicious food like butter instead of a flower, fruit or vegetable. I would have a hard time taking someone nicknamed “Cauliflower” seriously, no matter how much I love that veggie.

I digress.

The point is that Butter is a renowned forager and creator of the blog, Hunger and Thirst, which talks about—spoiler alert—foraging. While I may be getting a little tongue and cheek here, I have mad respect for a woman who can go out looking for wild plants and then use them to make a dish called Chicken Liver Pate with Black Walnuts.

The series, hosted at Three Leaf Farm, is six sessions long and the first begins Sunday, June 8th.  Butter will focus on a different foraging technique each class and teach not only how to find the plant, but how to use it within your everyday cooking.

The goal of the classes isn’t to give you encyclopedic knowledge of every plant know to mankind, but to give you a working knowledge of the best wild foods of the season and how to process them.

For example, one of the proposals for the June classes is harvesting wild cattail pollen and processing and storing, then using it to make golden cattail pollen pancakes.

I won’t lie, there’s a big part of me that thinks, “Man, when the zombie apocalypse happens, I’ll be able to feed my ragtag group of survivors with gourmet meals almost every day because of my awesome wild food knowledge.” The other part of me wants to serve this food at a fancy dinner party and when guests rave, I’ll get to say, “Oh, it was just something I found growing on the side of the road.”

And then they will all be jealous of how freaking sustainably I live my life. And all from foraging in the Boulder foothills.

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Kelly Tidd

Kelly Tidd

Unicorn lover and player hater. Total adventure junkie. Kelly Tidd has been a writer for most of her "adult" life and a freelance writer for three years. She focuses on blogging and website content optimization (a fancy way for saying she makes SEO copy look pretty).
Kelly Tidd

Kelly Tidd

Unicorn lover and player hater. Total adventure junkie. Kelly Tidd has been a writer for most of her "adult" life and a freelance writer for three years. She focuses on blogging and website content optimization (a fancy way for saying she makes SEO copy look pretty).

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