Begone Winter, Welcome Spring!

 It is spring. And here is a gift of quiet hellebores.

And pickled eggs, with a wintercress (Cardamine hirsuta) nest. They are destined for a picnic tomorrow in Prospect Park, and my first plant walk of the year, in the pale sunshine, with the singing of the hundreds of congregating American robins.

Here is our Begone, Winter Menu:

To Eat:

Beet-pickled deviled eggs with field garlic and garlic mustard root

Le grand field garlic aioli - baby carrots, pink chard stems, watermelon radish, Chinese broccoli stems, snap peas and field garlic mayonnaise for dipping

Endive and avocado bites with field garlic

Carrot-spicebush puff pastry vol-au-vents

Cattail pollen garlic biscuits with field garlic butter, juniper ham, and apple-spicebush compôte (from the fizz, below)

Spicebush chocolate truffles

To Drink:

Spicebush apple wild-fermented fizz (no ABV) with forsythia and spicebush ice

Fortified with an optional Calvados shot

_____________

Forage Walks and Picnics