Wild Harvest Life - Winter Family in PNW

Finding this firm, fresh American matsutake in July was an unforgettable PNW forest surprise. I could hardly believe what we were holding. Matsutake is the mushroom my husband and I normally associate with cool autumn rain, fallen needles and the unmistakable fragrance of the fall forest. Yet there it was in the Pacific Northwest—in the middle of July. The mushroom was firm, clean and remarkably fresh. It had not been damaged by insects, and it carried the familiar aroma that we usually wait all year to experience. For a moment, I kept wondering: How could a fall mushroom be growing here in summer? As many of you may already know, I am a Korean woman approaching 50 who married an American and now lives in the mountains of Washington State. Living here has taught me that food memories can travel across oceans. Sometimes they remain almost exactly as we remember them. At other times, they meet a new forest, a different climate and another family—and become an entirely new tradition. Mats...

Have you ever seen this beautiful mountain plant? At first glance, its enormous green leaves look lush, healthy, and almost ornamental. Water gathers between the deep parallel ribs, and the broad leaves rise from the forest floor like something that should belong in a shade garden. But this is not a plant to place in a foraging basket. In early July, my husband and I drove up to about 4,300 feet in the mountains of Southwest Washington. We had heard that cauliflower mushrooms ( Sparassis species) might be appearing, so after the drive we stepped into the forest to look around. We did not find the mushroom we had hoped to see that day. Instead, we found several fascinating mountain plants—and one of them was this false hellebore. As soon as I saw its huge, deeply pleated leaves, I knew this was a plant I wanted to introduce through both a video and a blog post someday. Not because it is edible, but because learning toxic plants is one of the most important parts of learning to for...

 Whenever I go searching for matsutake mushrooms, I meet many other fungi along the way. Conks, Amanitas, Russulas—and many strange mushrooms that make me stop and wonder: Is this poisonous? Could it have a traditional use? Or is it simply another beautiful part of the forest? When I hike with my husband or friends, there is one fungus we seem to encounter surprisingly often. It is Dyer’s Polypore. This mushroom looks as though it has slowly hardened into a piece of wood. A mushroom that looks like wood. A piece of wood that turns out to be a mushroom. When someone asks me what it is and I explain that it can be used to make natural dye, the usual reaction is something like: “Really? This?” I understand the surprise. By the time we find it, it is often so brown, dry, and hard that it barely resembles the soft mushrooms most people imagine. But this unusual forest fungus can produce shades of yellow, gold, orange, green, rusty brown, and deeper brown. Have you ever dye...

For several years, I did not really maintain my vegetable garden. I still grew a few familiar Korean vegetables and herbs in containers on the porch—perilla, lettuce, minari, dolnamul, and tomatoes—but I mostly left the garden itself alone. Before long, volunteer plants began filling the open ground. Some people might look at them and see only weeds. I do not really think of them that way. Curly dock and broadleaf dock appeared, along with oxeye daisy, plantain, two kinds of thistle, common vetch, bird’s-foot trefoil, self-heal, and many other plants that had found their own places in my forgotten garden. Then one especially large plant caught my attention. A Common Mullein plant in my Washington garden as its central flower stalk begins to develop. Its broad gray-green leaves were covered in such dense, soft hairs that they looked almost like velvet. The leaves spread outward around the base, but the center of the plant was beginning to change. A tightly folded structure was ri...